The Precept Keepers

An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd of manimals and pirates. Frederigo D'Honaire, now no longer a Lord or even a human but rather a sort of lycanthrope, regretted that he did not have his trusty sword in this strange situation. He had grown used to using his claws as weapons during the months he'd lived here, but he would rather have had his trusty sword by his side. But would his sword be any use against these creatures. They didn't smell like living things at all. They smelled like a mix of armor and boiling oil with a strange scent almost like that of the air during a thunderstorm and other things he couldn't even guess at. It was an alien scent of war and death. By comparison the pirates, stinking of rum and spilled blood, were scarcely threatening.

Alicia stepped forward uneasily. "What land do you come from? I've never heard of beings quite like you," she said. "And what do you need this tiberian for? We might aid you in obtaining it, in return for aid against the dragon who imprisons us here." Taylor almost stepped forward to correct her, but reluctantly stood down. After all, Fred realized, Alicia had been an heir to her throne (wherever that may have been) and had training in these matters. His admiration for her rose.

"We are honored to be in the presence of Man," said the lead golem in its crackling monotone voice. "We will try to explain ourselves, although it will not be easy. We come from very far away. In fact, we are from the future, although not your future. Think of time as a... as an ocean. We are all borne along on its currents, but some of us know how to sail on it if we harness its winds. Although maybe time is more like a river, because it splits into different forks. It is impossible to travel into our own past, but we can travel into other pasts. In relation to us, you are one of those pasts. We are from a point corresponding to something like fifty thousand years in your future." The manimals gasped as the implications of his statement sank in. The pirates began to shift uneasily. They couldn't understand a word of what he said and wondered whether they shouldn't just kill them and take anything valuable they may have.

"As to who we are," continued the golem, "we are the Precept Keepers of the Western Alliance. We are not organic life like you--although some of you, the manimals, have been modified--but rather entirely artificial life. As you've probably been able to guess." Fred couldn't tell whether the golem was attempting humor or not. "However, we are almost like you in every way except one--we cannot dream, at least not naturally, nor have we found out how to program ourselves to do so. There are two factions of golems in our era. We serve the first, the Precept Keepers. We seek to follow the ways of Man and preserve their culture. But not all of us follow this course. There are those whose hunger to dream and whose hatred of the ways of Man are so great that they will steal the dreams from the minds of organics. They call themselves the Children of Morpheus. We call them the Dream Eaters. Tiberian is used in our weapons against them, but we mainly mine it any chance we get so that they will not be able to use it. They use it to steal the ability to dream from the minds of organics. Doing so kills the organics or turns them into mad and twisted monsters which the Dream Eaters use as weapons themselves."

"And what about the humans in your future?" said Alicia. Even she seemed deeply shaken by now.

"There are none," said the golem. "All organic life, even the plants, died out on our world thousands of years ago.

1. The confrontation continues--man, beast-man, and machine-man...

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