Brotherhood of the Khumaak
Preface
Brotherhood of the Khumaak is a piece of player-created fiction written by Casiella Truza. Originally published on the blog Ecliptic Rift.
NB: This story contains scenes that may disturb some readers.
Brotherhood of the Khumaak
I hate going through quarantine: showering off the pod fluid, submitting to the indignities of the medical bots, finding a uniform, making myself presentable. But the agent wanted to talk to me, something about a signal from my ship’s XO, and I hadn’t reached a level yet where I could easily blow him off.
At least the receptionist didn’t make me wait. Either somebody in the Tribal Liberation Force had started to notice my efforts, or the agent really did have something important. The clicking of my boots echoed loudly off the station floor as I strode through the antechamber. Stirring paintings of heroes of the Rebellion lined the walls, bathed in dark reddish light. I thought I could hear music playing faintly, but just as I started to try to follow it and identify the piece, I reached the doors to the agent’s inner sanctum.
He smiled mirthlessly. “We’ve awaited your return anxiously ever since getting the mission completion report from your executive officer.”
I narrowed my eyes. “It takes some time to fly back from The Bleak Lands. Especially with roving 24IC squadrons…”
He held up a hand dismissively. “No excuses required. You have returned with a cargo we need.”
This caused me to furrow my brow slightly. “Well, we did eliminate the sector adjutant as ordered. He didn’t survive…”
“No, but the rest of the command staff did. And you retrieved them, something not every capsuleer does.”
Of course we don’t, I responded mentally. As soon as we reached the enemy facility, they’d broadcast a system-wide signal on the local communications network, not to mention engaging us with everything they had on-grid. Eliminating the ship or facility or whatever Command decided they wanted gone took all we had — sometimes more, and the crews paid the price. If I ended up in scoop range when I’d neutralized the target, I’d engage the short-range salvagers to pull whatever had survived the explosion, then burn to the gate and get the hell out of there.
But I didn’t say any of that. I just nodded.
“We already have them in debriefing, of course. But– someone wants to speak to you. Someone important.”
I did the best I could to restrain a smirk. Given how he reacted, I clearly didn’t succeed very well.
“Yes, well. Someone far more important than me. A shuttle will await you tonight at 0200 in docking bay Tiwaz-47. It will take you where you need to go.” I turned to leave, but he put a hand on my shoulder for a moment. When I looked into his eyes, they shone with a steely light I didn’t understand. “The old gods will go with you. Remember that.”
As I stepped off the shuttle onto the planet surface, a trio of shaman acolytes awaited me without a word. One beckoned for me to follow them, and so I did. We entered a nearby bunker whose door carried the sign of the Khumaak, the ancient weapon that symbolized our fight against the Amarr Empire.
Inside, the air smelled faintly of incense. I could hear gears grinding far away. The lift carried us down for some time, but I couldn’t tell how far.
We stepped out into a large domed hall, perhaps one hundred meters across and nearly half that in height. A cylindrical structure stood in the middle, three meters tall and apparently carved from one piece of solid stone. I could see no decoration on it except five archways, each with a torch and an unfamiliar rune above them, spaced equally around the structure. Between two of them stood a Khumaak.
Elsewhere on the circular floor of the hall stood idols and statues of creatures and gods, at once unknown and familiar. Perhaps I had worshipped them in another lifetime. A few grates also lined the floor in a regular pattern. We could hear grunts and scraping from within them.
Further along the wall from where I stood with my escorts, a door opened and several large guards stepped out. They carried some sort of polearm bladed weaponry. Five prisoners followed them, stumbling over the uneven grey-red stone floor lit only by flickering torches.
A shaman followed the prisoners into the hall along with a diminutive robed figure, about one meter in height, and as they appeared, the acolytes who had accompanied me made a strange sign. I shuddered despite myself and imitated them, remembering the words of the agent.
The prisoners walked to the cylinder and the shaman indicated to each of them that they should stand in a particular archway. I recognized their faces from my recent mission, but perhaps only due to the training I had received from my tutors. Their hours in captivity had not treated them kindly. I saw no wounds nor scars, but the dull look in their eyes and hunched, shambling walk spoke volumes.
Together, the shaman and the robed midget chained the prisoners inside their archways. When done, each of the captives stood with his feet apart, arms to the side, and head unable to move more than a few centimeters in any direction.
At a signal, the acolytes began to chant in a manner I’d only ever heard once before. Guttural and throaty, they each chanted in three-note chords. In the university, I’d seen a holo once of Achuran monks who had trained their voices in a similar way, but this chanting caused every hair on my body to stand up straight. And they didn’t chant alone. My eyes had finally adjusted to the low, flickering light, and I noticed other acolytes on balconies around the circumference of the entire hall.
The shaman began to speak. I didn’t understand his words; they sounded like our language, but evaded comprehension. A few words here and there sounded familiar. Perhaps an older tongue, perhaps even from centuries ago before the Amarr came to our worlds. Regardless of the specific meanings, I could tell he spoke some sort of invocation.
When he’d completed his prayer, the robed midget ran to one of the floor gates and tugged it open. A slaver hound stumbled out, but rather than attack, it tried to sit back on its haunches. In stops and starts, the guards who had preceded the prisoners into the hall pulled the chains on the hound’s collar until it had reached the shaman, standing at the cylindrical structure.
One of the prisoners whimpered pitifully. This sound awakened the hound slightly, and it growled and tried to bite the prisoner. The smaller priest yanked back on the collar and the creature acquiesced.
For the first time in these dark proceedings, one of the acolytes with me stood forward and spoke aloud, her voice carrying throughout the hall.
“We will Rise.”
As if with one voice, the other acolytes throughout the hall echoed her words. “We will Rise.”
“We will Rise Again.”
Once more, they responded in unison. “We will Rise Again.”
“We will Rise Again until the our enemies fear the Seven Tribes.”
At this, the other acolytes screamed. Anger, revenge, passion, malice, release… the emotions every Minmatar felt for the tragedy of our people. But this shout, this riotous noise, came from no intellectual contemplation of our race’s history.
Hatred. Pure, unadulterated, unbound hatred.
I joined in the screaming until my throat went silent and raw.
The prisoners, chained in this prison of blood and retribution, writhed in their chains. We’d inflicted no pain directly upon them, but apprehension of what must come filled them with the dread of our forefathers.
In one lightning-quick motion, one of the guards sliced the head off the slaver hound. The body remained standing for a moment, and as it fell, the midget steadied it and held it up.
The acolytes fell silent as the shaman bathed his hands in the neck of the hound. He went to each prisoner, daubing the hound’s blood on their faces, torsos, and limbs. I could smell their incontinence as the fear took hold of their bodies.
The other guard rotated his polearm and held it out. Withdrawing an unlit torch from within the unbladed end of the shaft, the shaman turned back to the prisoners. The guards stamped their left feet once.
In one voice, the acolytes spoke. “Purify the sacrifices.”
The shaman ignited the torch’s projectile flame and proceeded to purify the flesh of the sacrifices where he had applied the blood of the hound. And as they screamed, I felt hands pushing me forth, compelling me to join the gruesome spectacle.
As I gripped the Khumaak, instinct gripped me and I acted. Each of them fell silent under the blades and mass of the ancient weapon as I carried out my task, unbidden, with all the fury of the generations of my people I had not yet unleashed.
When I had finished, the robed midget inspected closely what remained of the sacrifices in the archways. He turned to me and spoke in a raspy voice.
“Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Khumaak.”