Mind-Warriors of Kon

James Abraham Carter

I. Encounter at Sunset

The sky of Kon did not know the gentle, bruised twilight of Earth. When the twin suns sank beneath the jagged, copper teeth of the western ranges, the atmosphere caught fire, bleeding deep, violent shades of vermilion and bruised violet across the vault of heaven.

Eric Vance watched the brilliant sunset from the smoking flight deck of his survey ship, his fingers hovering uselessly over a dead telemetry display. Atmospheric entry had been a battle with a dying drive unit; the landing was an ungraceful plowing through a desert of jagged rocks that had sheared the port engine nacelle clean off, leaving the hull a dented, battered wreck. If it hadn’t been for the ship’s protective shock absorbers, he’d be dead. The Klystron hyperspace drive was a marvel of 23rd century engineering, but it wasn’t perfect. Unfortunately for Eric, this was one of those rare occasions of catastrophic failure.

"Diagnostic complete," the ship’s synthetic voice droned, flat and devoid of pity. "Primary drive generators are unrecoverable. Power cell reserves: fourteen standard days."

"Thanks for the cheerful news, old girl," Eric muttered, coughing through a haze of acrid smoke as he unbuckled his safety harness and cycled the airlock.

He climbed down from the hatch, his boots crunching upon sand that glittered like crushed gemstones in the fading light. His mission had been to map Kepler-452b, an Earth-like world orbiting a star about 1400 light-years from Sol, until the drive malfunction had dropped him out of hyperspace. But where was he? It was impossible to tell. This was an uncharted planet, not marked on any star map. Around him, the alien world stretched out in a breathtaking, indifferent expanse. To the east, the great desert rolled away in dunes of glittering sand, shifting under the winds like a rolling sea of diamonds. To the west, the mountains rose like the skeletal spines of ancient titans; their peaks were capped not with snow, but with crystalline minerals that caught the dying light and threw it back in dazzling, cruel shards.

Eric surveyed the scene, holding fast to his courage. He was marooned. Rescue was unlikely. He’d known the risks of deep-space exploration and had taken them on with the recklessness of youth. He stood a little straighter in defiance of the intimidating situation. This was a world of stark, magnificent contrasts—stunningly beautiful, yet brutally primitive. And Eric Vance, deep-space surveyor, second-class, was entirely alone upon it. Or so he thought, until the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and the low, vibrational hum of a psychic intrusion battered against his temples.

It felt like a cold thumb pressing directly into the soft tissue of his frontal lobe. Eric stumbled, his hands flying to his head as a phantom wave of nausea rolled through his gut. The sand around him seemed to ripple, blurring into monstrous, multi-limbed shapes that hissed and spat fiery venom. But beneath his skin, deep within the genes of a Terran physiology alien to this world, resistance flared as his brain fought against the phantom intrusions.

The hallucinations shredded like wind-blown smoke, dissipating before his eyes. The multi-limbed horrors vanished, leaving only the quiet evening breeze that carried the dry, spicy scent of the desert.

And out of the gloom stepped the Ugans.

There were six of them, tall and lean; their skin was dark gray, and their hair was as red as blood. They wore primitive armor of bronze-studded leather - kilts and cuirasses of cuir bouilli. Conical bronze helmets protected their heads, and they carried bronze spears and axes; their eyes were yellow and dilated with the psychic strain of their failed assault. They stared at Eric not with fear, but with cold, vulturous curiosity. One of them, a warrior with interlocking geometric symbols tattooed across his cheeks, raised a hand in a signal to repeat the mental strike.

Eric didn't wait. He lunged forward with the speed and skill of a man well trained in unarmed combat and slammed his fist against the leader’s protruding chin. The fellow’s head snapped back, and he dropped like a felled ox; his head struck a rock with a sickening, fatal crack. But before Eric could attack his remaining foes, the surviving warriors pounced on him like leaping tigers. Sheer weight of numbers crashed against him. Hands like iron vices gripped his arms; his legs were swept out from beneath him, and the glittering sand rushed up to meet his face like a boxer’s fist. As the darkness took him, the last thing he felt was the strange, rhythmic ticking of his neural implant beginning to record and analyze the fantastical melodic syllables of a tongue he had never heard before.

II. The Skull Throne of Zomor

The journey to Zomor was a descent into the underworld.

For three days, bound at the wrists with rawhide rope, Eric marched alongside his captors, who rode strange tawny animals that looked like furry velociraptors, across the burning wastes. With every league, his implant—humming softly against his temporal bone—absorbed the alien dialect of his captors. Tomu, they called it - the universal tongue of Kon, the name they had given their world. By the second day, he could understand their sharp commands; by the third, he could parse the vicious bets they muttered among themselves regarding how the great beast of the pit would tear him apart.

In the unsettling twilight of the fourth day, they came upon a soaring mesa that raked the darkening sky with its imposing height and entered the gaping mouth of a gloomy cavern at its base, which descended into the bowels of the earth; its floor worn smooth by countless centuries of bare, calloused feet. After a descent of perhaps half a mile, the tunnel debouched into the gloomy immensity of an open space deep beneath the earth.

The underground city of Zomor was a nightmare carved from limestone. Built upon the shores of a vast, subterranean lake whose black waters caught the ghostly luminescence of phosphorescent fungi clinging to the cavern vault. The strange metropolis was a labyrinth of Gothic-like architecture with snarling gargoyle-style carvings, intricate spires, and arches, all stained red by the glow of innumerable flambeaux that cast wavering shadows across the grotesque buildings and the narrow, twisting streets. The cool air smelled strangely of spores from the fungal gardens that fed the population.

They dragged him through the winding streets, past arched doorways where grey-skinned men and women watched with dead, unblinking eyes, until they reached the far end of the enormous cavern. Here, an entrance to an upward-leading tunnel gaped in the rock, and they began their ascent to the massive citadel built high atop the mesa. After a long, exhausting climb, they emerged onto its flat peak. Here stood the warlord’s imposing edifice, brooding under the alien stars. Its sinister entrance was flanked by braziers burning smoky oil, whose crimson light cast long, dancing shadows across the cyclopean stronghold. Eric’s brutal captors dragged him through its imposing, heavily guarded entrance and into the shadowed throne room at its bleak heart.

Here sat Karg, warlord of Zomor, the most powerful of the six savage desert cities.

The Ugan leader was a mountain of muscle and malice; his skin was scarred with old battle wounds, and his bare chest, shoulders, and arms were covered in the black geometric tattoos of his rank. He sat upon a throne carved with grinning skulls, each one representing a slain enemy—Kaman valley-dwellers, desert nomads, and perhaps even rivals from his own clan. Two flaring brass torches stood on either side, casting writhing shadows across the gloomy room.

The warriors shoved Eric to his knees before the dais.

"Great Chieftain,” their ugly leader reported, his voice echoing off the cold limestone vault. "We found him in the outer wastes. He fell from the sky in a metal thing. When we cast the mind-veil upon him, he shrugged it off. And when we tried to take him, he struck down Brog with a blow of his bare hands, which killed him."

Karg leaned forward, his yellow eyes fixing upon Eric with a heavy, hypnotic intensity. He did not speak aloud at first; a wave of psychic pressure rolled off him, heavy as an anvil. It struck Eric’s mind with all the force of a physical blow, and it took all the Earthman’s willpower not to buckle beneath its crushing weight.

“Grovel, slave,” snarled Karg. “Beg for the breath in your lungs, the blood in your veins.”

Eric kept his spine straight. He gazed back defiantly at Karg, sensing the man would have even less respect for him if he sank to his belly on the dusty floor in an act of spineless debasement. "I groveled for no man on Earth, warlord, and I certainly won’t do it for you.”

The Ugan chief blinked, surprised. Then a slow, ugly grin split his face, revealing teeth that were startlingly white against his gray skin. "You have spirit, stranger, to defy me. Rare among my people, whom I rule with a fist harder than bronze." Karg raised a hand, snapping his thick, calloused fingers.

From the shadows, two guards dragged forward another prisoner—a young naked woman, one of the teal-haired, orange-skinned people of the oasis valleys. The girl’s hands were bound behind her back. Her face was bruised and pale with exhaustion, and blood stained her thighs from recent violations. She was forced to her knees before the warlord and gazed at him with wide-eyed terror.

"I could use a man like you among my warriors,” Karg announced to the assembly of clan chiefs in his throne room; his voice was like the rumbling of distant thunder. “If you agree to join me, I will spare your life, but only if you prove your loyalty. If I free you of your bonds, will you take this bronze blade and sever the captive’s throat? Swear your fidelity to me on her blood, and you shall ride at my right hand when we burn the rose-stone city of Hodan to ash.”

Karg tossed the dagger, and it clattered noisily onto the floor at Eric’s feet.

Eric looked down at the weapon, then up at the terrified Kaman prisoner, whose entire body trembled with the expectation of violent death. Finally, he looked at Karg with unconcealed disgust.

"I'm an explorer, Karg,” Eric said softly, his voice steady. "I map worlds. I don’t butcher unarmed girls for tyrants.”

The smile vanished from Karg’s face as if it had never been. The Ugan leader rose from his skull throne, towering over the assembly. His face contorted with rage, the veins standing out purple upon his grey temples.

"Defiant trash!” Karg roared, his thunderous voice causing some clan chiefs to flinch. "You insult me with your refusal. Let the arena claim him! Let the gan strip the flesh from his insolent bones before the howling thousands!"

III. The Dungeons of Zomor

The dungeons were little more than niches hacked into the damp rock above the black lake. Water dripped from the ceiling with a maddening, metronomic cadence—plink, plink, plink—as if each drop were measuring out the remaining seconds of Eric’s life.

They had thrown him into a cell barred with heavy iron rods. Across the narrow corridor, through the thick gloom, a pair of assessing eyes watched him.

"I heard the talk of the guards. A lesser man would have killed the prisoner,” a voice said. It was melodic, cool, and carried the crisp, elegant cadence of the Kaman speech—a stark contrast to the harsher accent of the Ugans. "Karg values obedience above all things. Defiance only brings you a more painful death. You are a brave man."

Eric pushed himself up from the damp floor, rubbing his bruised wrists where the ropes had been cut away by the turnkey. He peered through the iron bars. In the dim, greenish phosphorescence, he saw another orange-skinned woman sitting with her knees drawn to her chest, but of a different character than the poor unfortunate in the throne room. Despite the dirt smeared across her high cheekbones and the torn, silky fabric of her blue kilt and tunic, there was an innate royalty in her bearing. Her hair was the color of teal, and her eyes burned with fierce, unbroken pride.

"And you would know about Karg’s predilections, I take it?" Eric asked as he moved closer to the bars.

"My name is Semar," she said, standing and approaching the barrier. "Princess of Hodan. I was on my way to visit my cousin Avar in the city of Madjan when my caravan was ambushed as we crossed the Savannah of Winds. It was a horrific battle. My warriors cast a web of illusions. The sky rained fire, rocks transformed into ravenous monsters, and the air became thick with malodorous fumes. The Ugans replied with distracting hallucinations of their own: biting, venomous insects crawled across the skin of my men; friends took on the appearance of foes; strong sword arms withered as if stricken by disease. And then, through the fog of these bewildering phantoms, there was the actual clash of axes against shields and the real screams of dying men. In the end, we were overwhelmed, and I was taken prisoner.

“I could not fight back, for I am one of the few unfortunates among my people who do not possess the power to cast illusions. Karg spared my life not out of mercy, but because he wished to force a marriage—to weld the bloodlines of the valley-dwellers to his own savage hordes and expand his rule across the entire region. Although I was forced to kneel before him, bound and helpless, I overcame my fear and told him I would rather drink my own blood than wed a monster such as he."

"A dramatic choice," Eric murmured. "I imagine your answer displeased him somewhat."

Semar managed a faint, ghost of a smile, though her eyes remained haunted. "You are not of the Kaman, nor are you of the Ugans. Your skin is the wrong color for an Ugan, and the wrong color for a Kaman; your clothes are of a fabric I have never seen. Who are you?"

"Eric Vance. Explorer. And now, a castaway." He reached through the bars, offering his hand. She looked at it for a moment, surprised by the gesture, then placed her small, delicate hand within his. Her skin was warm, a reminder of humanity in the cold underworld of Zomor. "And if I have anything to say about it, Princess, neither of us is going to be dinner for whatever monster Karg has waiting in that arena."

"You do not know the gan," Semar replied, her tone somber as her grip on his fingers tightened. "It is a creature of the deep wastes. Ten minbars of muscle, armored plates, and a mind bound entirely to Karg’s will. No man has ever faced it and lived."

"Well," Eric said, his neural implant giving a reassuring little hum against his skull as it calculated probabilities, "there’s a first time for everything."

IV. The Monster of the Arena

The arena was an amphitheater carved directly into the limestone floor of the immense cavern, rising tier upon tier in concentric rings of screaming, baying Ugans. Thousands of gray-skinned faces stared down from the stone benches; their mouths twisted in feral anticipation. Their collective psychic malice pressed against Eric’s skull like the hand of a malevolent giant.

Beside him stood Semar, her jaw set, her head held high. Both had been dragged from their cells about an hour after Eric’s imprisonment.

From the royal box high above the western wall, Karg leaned forward, a grim smirk playing across his thin lips. With a careless flick of his wrist, the Ugan warlord tossed two heavy war axes down into the dust of the arena floor. They landed with a heavy thud, sinking half an inch into the packed sand.

"Fight!" Karg’s voice boomed across the amphitheater. "Fight for the amusement of Zomor!"

The bronze gate on the far side of the arena squealed as it was hoisted up like a portcullis.

Out of the darkness crept the gan.

It was a monstrosity born of fevered nightmares. Thirty feet of segmented, chitinous armor plating that shimmered like oiled steel under the torchlight. Dozens of stubby, clawed legs churned the sand beneath a body as thick as a transport-wagon, and its head was dominated by a pair of massive, crushing mandibles dripping with corrosive venom. Its eyes—four of them, arranged in a band across its foul visage—glowed with a sinister, hypnotic violet light.

Semar gasped, stumbling back against Eric’s shoulder. "The psychic leash," she breathed. "Karg is controlling it with his mind directly through its brain."

The gan lunged, its massive bulk moving with terrifying speed.

"Stay behind me!" Eric shouted. He scooped up the two heavy war axes, their bronze heads well balanced in his strong hands.

As the monster surged forward, its mandibles snapping shut with a sound like scissoring steel, a wave of pure psychic terror washed over the arena—not from the crowd this time, but from the beast itself, which amplified Karg’s paranormal powers. The world tilted. The sand beneath Eric’s boots turned into a blazing sea of fire. In the distance, he heard Samar scream in pain and terror.

Eric gritted his teeth. He could feel the heat, feel its burning agony. He saw his flesh catch fire and turn to ash, falling away to reveal the charred bone beneath. He fought against the frighteningly real illusion; fought against his knifing fear. The fire vanished. The arena returned.

The gan was upon them.

With a wild cry that echoed off the stone tiers, Eric hurled the first axe and threw himself aside. It was a desperate, defiant act born of courage and sheer survival instinct. The heavy bronze blade spun through the air, and the gods were with him. The whirling weapon smashed into the gan’s skull, striking a vulnerable point and smashing through into the neural cluster that formed the node for the mental link.

The beast shrieked as it stumbled past—a sound like grinding tectonic plates. The psychic tether snapped as it crashed against the wall.

Released from Karg’s control, the gan’s mind dissolved into a frenzy of blind, unadulterated pain and animal panic. It thrashed wildly, its tail-spike smashing into the wall of the amphitheater’s pit, sending chunks of limestone flying.

"Now!" Eric grabbed Semar’s hand. "Run!"

They sprinted across the arena floor and into the creature’s pen as the panicked monster began scaling the pit’s wall. The crowd screamed. A stampede erupted as everyone tried to flee at once. The horrid beast, further provoked by the yelling throng and their wild movement, ran amok as it sought to escape the chaos, its massive jaws tearing through the fleeing Ugans in a storm of blood and violence. Guards rushed forward from the service entrance to the pen, but Eric’s resistance to their psychic illusions allowed him to thread the maze of shimmering phantoms they projected, pulling Semar safely through the web of vivid, mind-twisting illusions.

A guard leapt into his path, axe raised. Eric struck out with his remaining weapon. The man screamed and fell, his arm severed by the wild blow. Then they were charging madly down a corridor leading to an exit. The escapees burst out of the amphitheater’s service entrance and sprinted through the tortuous streets. Semar, who knew something of the layout of the city, guided Eric to a nearby stable. They barged into the building where rows of harans were tethered by thick ropes.

Eric brought his war axe down upon the restraints of the nearest beast. The haran shook its crested head, letting out a sharp, bird-like cry. Semar grabbed its reins before it could bolt.

The Earthman managed to saddle the skittish creature. "Mount!" Eric yelled, hoisting Semar up onto the ornate saddle of tooled leather. He vaulted up behind her as she grabbed the braided reins.

With a sharp kick to its flanks, the haran bolted, bursting through the open stable door. With a wild yell, Semar sent it charging along the winding streets, scattering the few Ugans who had not attended the arena’s spectacle, then they shot up the pathway that led back toward the surface world, leaving the screams and chaos of Zomor far behind in the subterranean darkness.

V. Horror of the Dead City

The journey across the savage landscape was a desperate race against time. Day after day, they pushed the haran through the blistering heat of the sparkling sand dunes and up into the foothills of the crystal-capped mountains, their water skins, which were part of the saddles' accoutrements, growing lighter with every league.

Behind them, Karg’s scouts were never far. They could see the distant plumes of dust raised by Ugan trackers riding haran, closing the distance.

On the fourth evening, as the twin suns dipped below the horizon and the sky bruised into violet, Eric, who had now mastered riding the beast, spotted salvation—or what looked like it—in the distance.

Rising from the foothills like a row of broken teeth were the ruins of an ancient metropolis. Colonnades of crumbling rose-stone stood half-buried in the shifting sand, and vast archways gaped emptily into the gathering dusk.

"Inside,” Eric said, guiding the panting haran toward a wide, pillared plaza.

Semar’s arms tightened around his waist; her eyes widened with horror as she looked at the silent ruins. "Not there, Eric. That is the City of the Ghouls. No sane person enters those gates."

"Our friends from Zomor are right behind us,” warned Eric as he pointed back down the trail, where three Ugan riders had crested the ridge, their silhouettes sharp against the burning sky. "I’ve pushed our haran as far as I can. It’s on the verge of collapse. We have no choice. We need to stop and find somewhere to hide and rest. I'll take my chances with ghosts," he concluded as they passed beneath the arch of the silent city.

"They are not ghosts,” Semar replied, dismounting and looking anxiously around. "They are the Ghouls, the survivors of the ancient wars of magic that destroyed this city and many others. They were once men, but the magic changed them. They crawled into the dark sewers and never came back out. They fear the light, but when darkness falls...”

They led the haran into the shadow of a crumbling building, hiding in its shadows. To Eric’s astonishment, as he peered cautiously from behind a pillar, the Ugan trackers halted at the perimeter of the ruins. The three warriors reined in their beasts, and stared into the shadowy plaza with expressions of superstitious dread. They refused to cross the threshold, turned their mounts back down the slope, and set up a distant watch-fire on a rise about half a mile from the ancient ruins.

"Well," Eric said, lowering the bronze axe he had taken from the arena. "It looks like our tail has gone home."

"They have not gone home," Semar said quietly. "They are waiting for the ghouls to do their work for them."

Eric placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I’ll build a fire and we’ll take turns watching. Evertyhing will be okay.”

They made camp in the lee of a massive fallen statue, lighting a small fire of dry scrub-wood. The flames cast dancing amber shadows against the ancient stone walls. The air in the foothills was cool, and the fire was small due to a lack of fuel. Semar shivered, and Eric placed his arm around her and drew her closer to him. The princess was no longer cool and distant. Their mutual adversity had bound them together, and as they shared the last of their dried meat and water, the professional alliance born in the cells of Zomor was far behind them, for it had transformed into something deeper, warmer, and with the potential to become more than just friendship.

Semar leaned her head against Eric’s shoulder, her fingers tracing the smooth fabric of his Terran jumpsuit. "If we die here," she murmured softly, her breath warm against his neck, "I want you to know... I am glad we met."

Eric smiled, placing his hand on hers and pulling her closer. "We aren't dying anywhere, Princess. I’m going to get you home safely."

Then the sound began.

It rose from the piles of cracked and fallen masonry—a dry, skittering rustle, like many beetles crawling through autumn leaves. From among the arid, dusty pillars of the ruined plazas and from the gaping black manholes of the ancient sewers, the shadows began to detach themselves.

They had once been human, perhaps, but generations in the dark had warped them. Their skin was leathery and chalk-white, stretched taut over skeletal frames. Their eyes were huge, entirely black, and sensitive to light, blinking rapidly as they scuttled forward on long arms, knuckle-walking in the manner of an ape. Their clawed toes clicked against the stone. They were hairless and completely naked.

"The ghouls!" Semar screamed, scrambling to her feet; her face blanched with terror.

Six of the foul creatures descended upon them in a wave of ravenous hunger. Eric leaped forward, swinging the keen bronze war axe, catching the foremost creature across the chest and sending it reeling back into the dust. The rest fled before his furious attack. But they were simply a distraction. A half-dozen others poured from a partially collapsed sewer behind the statue.

Before Eric could turn, many pale, clawed hands seized Semar by the arms and legs. She cried out in wild fear. Her tunic was torn away in the struggle. She was hoisted into the air and swiftly dragged backward toward the dark hole from which the ghouls had come.

"Semar!" Eric frantically shouted.

He didn't hesitate. Snatching a flaming brand from the campfire, he swiftly leapt into the hole, charging into the darkness of the sewer network.

The air inside was thick with the dust of ages, choking and dry. Some sections of the floor were thick with ancient bones that crunched beneath his boots. Ahead of him, the skittering echoes of the ghouls bounced off the vaulted limestone ceiling - savage calls that sounded like the unnerving laugh of deranged hyenas.

Rounding a sharp corner, Eric burst into a wider chamber, the junction of several tunnels. For a second he stood in shock at what he saw. Two of the pale creatures had pinned Semar to the stone floor. A third was tearing the remaining clothes from her body while the rest of the tribe stood in a circle around the struggling, shrieking girl, their jaws unhinging to reveal rows of shark-like teeth.

Eric bellowed an inarticulate cry of utter fury. He hurled the burning brand straight into the face of the nearest ghoul. The creature shrieked, its hypersensitive eyes instantly blinded by the crimson glare of the writhing flame. It fell back, thrashing wildly. The other horrors howled, shielding their eyes from the burning radiance. Eric leapt among the dazzled monsters, his axe swinging in great scything strokes that sheared away heads, arms, and legs in a fury of bloody destruction. The fiends screeched and fled before the light and the withering onslaught of his wild attack, retreating into the dark recesses of the sewer network.

Eric dropped to his knees, gathering Semar into his arms. She was trembling violently. Her face was pale, and her cheeks streaked with tears as she buried her face in his shoulder.

"I've got you," Eric whispered, his voice thick with emotion. He pressed his lips to her hair, holding her naked body tight against his. "Forgive me. I should not have been so nonchalant about your warnings."

After several minutes, Semar had recovered sufficiently to stand. With the flaming torch held high, its light clearing a path through the retreating shadows, Eric led the shaken princess back up into the ruined city, where they waited out the remainder of the night standing back-to-back against the stone pedestal of the fallen god, their hands locked together as the first pale light of dawn began to bleed across the eastern hills.

Exhausted from the night’s ordeal, they slept in the sunlight, ensuring that no ghoul could touch them, and at noon set off once more. The watch fire of their pursuers was cold ash; the trackers, having heard the commotion in the night, had departed, assuming that the fiends of the city had done their evil work.

VI. The Siege of Hodan

Two days later, Eric and Semar, riding double, sat astride their haran as it stood on a ridge, overlooking the fertile oasis valley of Hodan, which lay spread out before them in a glorious vista of inviting green fertility.

The city of Hodan was a magnificent metropolis. Built entirely from rose-colored stone that seemed to blush in the morning sun, the habitation was surrounded by massive, battlemented walls designed to withstand centuries of war. But today, the picturesque scene was marred by a savage and unwelcome presence.

Encircling the city ramparts was a sprawling sea of Ugan skin-tents, war-banners, and primitive siege engines. Karg’s entire barbarian horde—thousands of warriors, pack animals, and heavy battering rams—had settled around Hodan like a swarm of malevolent ants.

"My home," Semar gasped, horror tinging her voice. "They are laying siege to Hodan, starving the city out."

They tried to skirt the perimeter of the sprawling encampment, but fortune, which had favored them so long, finally turned. A mounted patrol of six Ugan warriors intercepted them as they sought concealment in a grove of willowy mori trees. Before the haran could speed away, they were surrounded with sharp spears leveled at their throats. They were dragged down from the saddle, and their hands were bound securely behind their backs.

They were not killed on the spot, nor taken back to the desert. Instead, they were hauled directly into the massive central pavilion of the Ugan army—Karg’s command tent.

Inside, the tent was lit by hanging brass oil lamps. Gathered around a folding map table crafted from lightweight wood were the chiefs of the Ugan clans—savage, scarred warriors, arguing in harsh voices about the timing of the initial assault on Hodan’s gates.

Karg sat at the head of the table, carefully listening to all sides of the argument before making the final decision. When the guards shoved Eric and Semar forward into the lamplight, the Ugan leader was taken by surprise. First, his eyes widened in astonishment, then a slow, triumphant smile spread across his ugly face.

"Well, it appears that the ghouls did not kill you after all," Karg stated, standing up and dominating the assembly with his savage aspect. "Good, now I can have the pleasure of killing both of you with slow torture. You made quite a mess in Zomor, and I will relish exacting brutal revenge."

The other clan chiefs murmured their approval, casting dark glances at the prisoners.

Semar put on a brave front, hiding her fear behind a calm expression. Beside her, Eric stood tall, despite the rough hands of the warriors on him. His jaw was set, and his eyes were fixed on Karg with absolute coldness. He knew he and Samar had only one slim chance of getting out of this alive. "You're a coward, Karg. You hide behind your horde, you hide behind your psychic illusions, and you hide behind your beast in the arena."

The tent went dead silent. The clan chiefs stared in shock. No one spoke to Karg in such a manner—least of all a prisoner about to die horribly.

Karg’s face darkened with fury, the veins on his temples throbbing. "I will have your tongue torn out, filth, and have it fed to the desert scavengers."

"Then do it yourself," Eric challenged, his voice ringing loud and clear so that every chieftain in the tent could hear. "Unless the great warlord of Zomor is afraid to face a man who doesn’t have his hands bound behind his back. A duel, Karg. Right here and now, before your chiefs. Let them see if the great leader of the Ugans has the stomach for a real challenge."

A murmur rippled through the gathered clan chiefs. On Kon, cowardice was the ultimate sin; to refuse a public challenge before one’s allies would mean an immediate loss of authority and the collapse of the confederation.

Karg looked around the table. He saw the sharp, evaluating gazes of the clan chiefs resting expectantly upon him. He had no choice.

"A duel," Karg snarled, his voice trembling with rage. He snatched a heavy, double-bladed battle-axe from the tent pole and tossed a matching weapon into the dust at Eric’s feet. "Bok,” he cried, addressing a clan chief, “You cut his bonds. I will cut his throat.”

The assembly spilled out of the tent into the open ground before the siege lines, with thousands of Ugan warriors forming a massive, howling circle around the two combatants when the duel was announced.

Karg concentrated, his mind powers surging. Suddenly, there were six mirror images of the warlord. They charged instantly, a blur of gray muscle and flying bronze. The blows of their battle-axes struck the earth where Eric had been standing a fraction of a second before, sending a geyser of dust and sod into the air.

Eric rolled, coming up with the heavy axe firmly in his grip. “Have you forgotten,” he taunted, “that I can see through your illusions?”

Karg swore and furiously came at him again. Eric parried the warlord’s next strike; the impact rang like an anvil in his ears, jarring his arms to his shoulder. Karg was immensely strong, fueled by raw hatred and generations of bloody combat. He rained blow after blow upon Eric, driving him backward step by step across the sward to the cheering of the savage warriors.

Through the haze of sweat and dust, Eric felt his neural implant pulse once, twice—a steady, rhythmic stabilization of his body. He didn’t try to match Karg’s brute strength. Instead, calling on all his years of training, burned into his muscle memory, he waited for the precise moment of overextension.

Karg lunged with a massive, two-handed overhead swing meant to cleave Eric from skull to crotch. Simultaneously, the warlord hurled all the force of his mental projections at the Earthman in a final, desperate attack. Bursts of brilliant, blinding light erupted in Eric’s vision.

Semar gasped in horror as Eric faltered for a fraction of a second. Then he sidestepped, the speeding axe missing him by the narrowest of margins. As the weapon flashed past, Eric lunged, driving the spiked poll of his battle-axe forward with every ounce of strength he possessed.

The heavy bronze spike caught Karg squarely in his chest, driving deep into his heart.

The Ugan leader froze. The massive axe slipped from his fingers, thudding into the grass-like ground cover. He looked down at the shaft protruding from his chest, his yellow eyes wide with sudden, uncomprehending shock. Then, without a sound, the great warlord of Zomor collapsed onto the sward, as lifeless as any other corpse.

For three seconds, absolute silence blanketed the thousands of watching warriors.

Then, chaos erupted.

"The warlord is dead!" shouted one of the clan chiefs from the eastern wastes.

"He was weak!" roared another from the southern canyons. "Zomor’s rule is ended!"

“I. Logoth, will take his place,” shouted one swaggering chieftain. “All know I am the strongest warrior.”

Someone scoffed at that remark. Insults and threats flew back and forth across the camp. The Ugans were a wild lot, brimming with petty hatreds and rivalries. Karg’s iron rule had kept these in check, but now that he was dead, the pent-up tensions exploded. Within moments, the heated arguments turned to violence as two of the rival clan chiefs drew their axes and lunged at each other. Their savage followers immediately waded into the fray, and the contagion spread like wildfire through the besieging army. Ugan warriors began fighting Ugan warriors, with clans turning against other clans in a bloody, free-for-all that knew no bounds.

Eric swiftly cut Semar’s bonds with the axe. "Now!" He grabbed the princess’s hand. "Run for the gates!"

They didn't look back. Racing through the chaotic, churning mass of fighting Ugans, who were too busy slaughtering one another to notice the fleeing prisoners, Eric and Semar sprinted across the open plain toward the rose-stone walls of Hodan.

High upon the ramparts, standing amidst a cluster of archers, King Namos—Semar’s father—stared down through the dust cloud of battle. His eyes caught the flash of teal-colored hair and the tall, pale figure running beside her.

"Open the gates!" the old king roared, his voice cracking with emotion. "Open the gates for the princess!"

The heavy bronze gate swung wide, revealing the safe, sunlit streets of Hodan within. Eric and Semar crossed the threshold in record speed just as a stray Ugan arrow clattered harmlessly against the gray stone paving behind them.

The massive gate slammed shut, locking the violent, bloodthirsty chaos of the unruly Ugans outside.

King Namos rushed down the rampart's stairway, his arms wide, tears streaming down his weathered cheeks, as he caught his daughter in a loving embrace. "My child! My little girl! They told me you were dead, slain in the Ugan ambush!"

"I nearly was, Father," Semar laughed, her voice thick with tears as she hugged him back. Then she pulled away, turned, and took Eric by the hand, leading him before the king. "And I would be, if not for him. Eric Vance, of the stars. He fought the gan in the arena of Zomor; he carried me through the City of Ghouls, and he slew Karg before the eyes of his own horde."

King Namos looked down at the Terran surveyor; his expression transformed from royal sternness to deep, profound respect and gratitude. He unclasped a heavy medallion of office—a sunburst forged of pure gold and sparkling rubies—and placed it around Eric’s neck with his own hands.

"You are a stranger from a world beyond the sky, Eric Vance," King Namos said, his voice a rich baritone. "But you have risked your life for my beloved daughter. You are welcome in our city as a son, and as a hero."

Outside the walls, leaderless and torn by internal blood-feuds, the Ugan army disintegrated. The clans broke camp, and the survivors of the bloody battle retreated into the burning wastes of the desert and the gloomy cavern of Zomor, leaving the Oasis Valleys at peace once more.

Good had triumphed over savagery and evil. The long night of fear was over.

VII. Sunrise on Hodan

Months later, after salvaging what he could from it, the wreckage of Eric’s scout ship was quietly buried by the shifting sands of the desert where it had fallen, its broken hull sealed forever beneath Kon’s glittering wastes.

On the wide, colonnaded balcony of the royal palace in Hodan, high above the city’s cobbled streets where the morning markets were beginning to bustle with life, Eric Vance stood side by side with his bride. Semar leaned against his shoulder, her hand resting over the Earthman’s heart, and her teal-colored hair catching the brilliant fire of Kon’s twin suns rising over the eastern ranges.

Eric looked out across the fertile valley to the breathtaking, savage expanse of mountains and deserts that had once been so alien to him, but was now his home. He had come to Kon as a castaway, a stranger thrown by fate into the heart of a primitive world. But as he looked down at the magnificent city waking to a peaceful dawn, Eric Vance knew he would never leave.

He was no longer a stranded traveler. He was a prince of Hodan with an adoring wife, ready to forge a new future beneath the strange, brilliant stars of a world he had grown to love.

The End