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(Page 1 of 4) The Intervention by David Scholes
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The far distant future
Somewhere in our Universe
The long search for truth had finally brought the two humanoid types to a remote and cheerless world.
From their mountainous vantage point they looked out over the ancient battlefield. Strewn across it were the remnants of vast amounts of military hardware.
Urrle recognized some of the technology. It would have been state of the art for that time.
Amidst the battlescape two things stood out. A fallen warrior, almost perfectly preserved, and dressed in the light body armor of the Brell. And something else. Something that seemed to have no place in this battlescape. A small hammer with a head large in relation to its relatively short handle. The handle was wrapped in some resilient material and there was a thong of the same material at the base of the handle.
"Does either of them mean anything to you?" Urrle enquired of his companion.
The venerable ancient, Leandarr, the oldest living of all among the Tolden super power empire, thought for a moment. "The soldier is probably the last soldier of the Brell to have died in battle during the great war, but the hammer, I don't know, something is tugging at my mind but I cannot say what it is. Though I feel that it is, or at the very least once was, an object of great importance."
"Arcane energies abound here," said Urrle "even I can sense them. You, you must be overwhelmed by them," he added looking with concern at his friend.
"I recognize some of the residual mystical energies," responded the old man fearfully "the energy signature of that which we never speak. As to the other energies, they appear to be associated with the hammer and I do not recognize them." Yet even as he said this, the elder felt something again tugging at his mind. Something from long, long ago.
Urrle was thoughtful. How strange that that of which they never speak, an entity which had not even been sighted for so long, could still evoke such fear even in the minds of the Tolden. Would they ever be entirely free of that fear?
"There is something more Urlle," the Tolden elder's voice was very soft, "perhaps you do not sense it? Residual elemental godpower. Gods of some kind were once in this place.
* * *
"Looks like it was a fair fight then," quipped Urrle, almost changing the subject "one single Brell soldier against a well equipped technically advanced army."
"Only if you also count the downed star fighters and the starship we saw on the way in," said his friend, pulling up several over the horizon three dimensional images simultaneously. "I'd say he took them down as well."
"Of course there's the hammer," said Urrle quietly and with a respect that he just knew was appropriate "we don't know what part it played in the battle here. Like the Brell armor, the hammer seems totally undamaged, even in this fearsomely hostile environment,"
Both of the male humanoids knew that Brell body armor could survive civilizations yet perhaps the hammer could to.
"There may have been two separate battles here, at around the same time" speculated the Tolden elder, after a long and thoughtful silence.
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