DEATH IS ETERNAL #448 by GIC
ENGINES AT THE EDGE and THE SOCIETY FOR THE RELIEF OF SOULS
Contents
ENGINES AT THE EDGE (genre: dieselpunk)
THE SOCIETY FOR THE RELIEF OF SOULS (genre: dying earth science fantasy)
ENGINES AT THE EDGE
Genre: dieselpunk
Word count: 496
The sky over Dagan Vale was thick with ash. Grey sheets of soot drifted from the bombers’ trails, soft as funeral shrouds. Sergeant Veiko Tarn adjusted the rebreather strapped across his face and scanned the valley through brass-rimmed goggles. Below, the Armature Horde assembled — all rusting plate, rotary cannons and shrieking hoverbikes — a swarm of smoke, oil and fury.
“Last stand of the Locusts,” Lieutenant Kaile said, voice muffled behind her mask.
Veiko shook his head. “This is where they start falling apart.”
Above them, the Dominion’s dirigibles hovered like bloated scavengers. One by one, the airships vented ballast and released their payloads — not bombs, but vials of glimmering glass. The vials cracked mid-air, spilling clouds of engineered spores that twisted into steam before vanishing into the wind.
Moments later, the Horde’s front line faltered. Riders tumbled from mechs, choking. Bio-links snapped. Their machines spasmed and collapsed, grinding into the dust.
“Signal the Black Irons,” Veiko ordered.
Kaile raised a flare launcher and fired. A red burst bloomed over the ridge — the mark of the final push. A low rumble followed. The ground trembles as the Dominion’s war trains roared into motion, descending from the northern cliffs. Covered in blackened steel and humming with arcs of blue electricity, the trains tore through the ash with shrieking wheels and grinding pistons.
Gunports snapped open. Gatlings roared.
The Horde wavered.
They had ruled the lowlands for decades, ever since the fall of the Irelian Ascendancy. Forged from scattered warbands, the Armature Horde became an empire of scavenged code and patched armour, guided by the iron will of their khan — Yurkesh the Boundless. He commanded from the back of a six-legged war crawler the size of a chapel, its deck a throne room, its engine fuelled by stolen spirits and shattered oaths.
But ambition made brittle scaffolding.
“Flank collapsing,” Kaile reported. “Left line’s in full retreat. No orders. No coherence.”
“Then we take the river.”
The Tarnin twisted at the foot of the vale — a black ribbon of poisoned memory, chocked with slag and old wrecks. The Horde had never defended its far bank. They had assumed no sane force would cross it.
They were right. The Kharzani Dominion was not sane. It was determined.
Veiko raised his arm. Dominion crawlers — squat, insect-like walkers with twitching legs and twin flame-caster — charged the slope, belching smoke and fire as they advanced. Kaile followed, her coat flaring behind her.
They plunged into chaos.
The battlefield became a thunderstorm of smoke, flame and fractured metal. Veiko fired until his arc rifle hissed and cracked. Kaile drove the Dominion standard through a fallen hoverbike, blood soaking the cloth.
By nightfall, the valley was silent. Yurkesh’s crawler lay crippled at the river’s edge, legs torn away, reactor flickering.
Veiko stood on the bank, his mask hanging from his belt. Kaile limped beside him.
“It’s done,” she said.
He watched the last of the Horde flee into the dark.
“No,” he muttered. “It’s only beginning.”
The end
THE SOCIETY FOR THE RELIEF OF SOULS
Genre: dying earth science fantasy
Word count: 1,218
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