There are things that should be known to the readers of this tale:

axe: The rock guitarist's name for his guitar, not just for its shape but what it is used for.

riff: A phrase in an instrumental composition, like a single statement by a musician.

dragon scale: The word "scale" appears once in this story, and if you look it up in a dictionary you will find that almost every sense of the word in all forms of speech are utilized at once in that single instance. As it specifically relates to music, scales are large sets of notes that go together and are used to compose a song, centered on a particular sound. You have the A major scale, B minor scale, etcetera, and of course, the dragon scale.

Selene: The Moon's actual name. She dislikes being called "the Moon" as you might dislike being called "the Human" or some other such moniker.

Terpsichore: The Muse of dance. She is single.

skank: A dance like running or strolling in place traditionally done to reggae music. The goddess of dance could figure out how to skank to whatever type of music she so felt.

krump: An aggressive dance style involving both fluid movements and sudden halts and reversals of direction.

infinite: Designates an instrument that utilizes electronics to be able to play any variation of tone in an entire range. A piano is precisely tuned with scientific exactitude so that as a key is pressed, one specific note is sounded by releasing the corresponding vibration into the air. An infinite instrument is able to create any vibration rate between those recognized as notes, typically played by tapping or sliding on a touchpad.

fretless: At some point in the development of bass guitars, a neck without frets was devised, creating a smoother sound requiring greater mastery to play. The instrument in the story has both strings and a touchpad.

bassline: What the bass player plays when he plays the bass.

horticulture: This story contains no gibberish; every word is used purposefully, including "horticulture". It commanded its presence in the sentence where it appears, and its significance becomes clearer later on.

moshing: A phenomenon at rock shows where fans begin to run about in a frenzy and collide with one another, either for the sheer joy of it or because they have lost themselves in the music.

Cameleopard: The name the Romans used for the giraffe, which they believed to be a sort of hybrid between a camel and a leopard. While considered by some to be the "traditional" name of the giraffe in English, the word is only ever used in relation to the constellation depicting a giraffe in the night sky.

coda: The final passage in a longer musical composition, not merely a repeat or reworking of what came before it but an addition and augmentation to the overall piece.

waltz: Waltz is a technical term in music denoting a specific structure of musical tempo. The word is not used in the technical sense in the story, but figuratively to signify ease and grace of motion.

metal sign: A hand gesture made by holding the ring and middle fingers with the thumb and extending the index and pinkie in the shape of horns. It is used by rockers to express celebration, victory, solidarity and rebellion.

A note on grammar: Nouns are verbs, verbs are adjectives and adjectives are nouns. Additionally, past and present tense are the same thing.

This story takes place over the span of seventeen minutes and thirty-six seconds.

At the edge of civilization, Kirps Astrolabe dons his battle pants and cape of justice, consummating his axe with loving precision - standing on a cliff face, waiting for the sign. The moon is hanging and sandy wind cuts tracks in his face - the time is coming and as always there is none to waste. The sand is howling now and in this very place were all things that matter coalesce into these single hanging moments - Kirps places his triple symmetry crystalline boron and phosphorus pick against molecular braided strings and hands burst out from the sands and Kirps lets out a calling crying wail into the black night.

His chord rip-sizzles in the moonlight, laying out an intro that dragon scales Terpsichore from her holy interlude of swaying needs be filled in woeful lusty mornings - and so the desert rips its skin in ragged holes as the horde emerges, clad in leather tight and needle spikes, knives and swords and groaning throats, a clatter mob shatter birthing in the thin strands of moonbeams. Kirps kills this riff, his master fingers playing frets with nothing but the greatest floating smashing lifting pulling ease, urging Selene the moon to puff her cheeks in heaven and blow her dust shine and white shine wholly down a raging horde. She can't stay crescent, not for Kirps Astrolabe, the Aether Champion! Ecstatic she opens in the night sky full bloom atom bombs and liquid silver raining down on yelling upturned mouths and banging blades so frantic and waylaid urgent.

Kirps's last note rings out in floating long-held resonance in that so-bright night, and a new sound begins. A bass line thrumming, a bone-deep dark and daring ground swelling high-threat bass line driving rumbling knowing you in ways you knew not yourself. On the peak beside him - Donathan Skiyrmonger, the Gentleman Warlord, with razor steel tusks surgically implanted at the age of four, his infinite death bass fretless neck touchpad synthetic masterly techno-Masonic masterpiece of tight puissant all-reaching presence, hanging low from his neck, guided in its conquest by tapping sliding pads of finely honed fingertips. And in amidst this superior vibration, that deep crumbling dark pulling sound - the staccato begins. Not against but counterpoint to it, for who knew best what it meant to drive a rhythm blasting spastic sedentary horticulture and madness rocking far-flung and exotic she - Kiranda, the Freckled Feline, her tawny coat speckled brown flowing laughing spots - the cheetess, tail twitching and nose grinning in the wild-eyed mistress pounding out a faithless faithful undertow of rhythm with double-barreled drumsticks and a knack for perfectly constructed sabotage and mayhem drumming.

And in this onslaught the maddened horde found no solace, and in this onslaught did their rage despair and weapons drop and limbs detach, moaning hopeless wordless drowned out nothing from nobody. The atoms ceased bonds and molecules averted as the horde sloughed and dusted earthy inescapable disabling dissolution. But there were plans and plans were machinations and these machinations were not to be dissuaded. And so the volcano erupted skull cloud spewing on the horizon, darkening the sky and thunder rolling over choke-hold beat bar percussion and livening the horde again with thirst for rage and eating and the thrill of bleeding out everything that touched them.

And so Kirps laid in the melody, and there HE was, astride the blazing pimple burst of ash and spite - the Pit Lord Dark Lord Death Lord holding a hoarse whip barreling chest spitting and loving hatred burning bright in an assful of dynamite. The song was not for him yet it meant everything to him, yet it blew holes through him and so he pushed and heaved bellowing punishment driven sex symbol foreign dictatorship pulse minded heavy ended carved and chrome plated codpiece commanding the horde surge running, dragging, scraping, charging across the sands towards a mountaintop cliff face precipice where four stood between them and the remnants of humanity, Last City, clinging endless and obdurate living they, they people unyielding, like a rock in a raging river forest fire hurricane - Last City, still commanding as Mankind does with engineering and fortitude a domain enough to keep on living.

But, wait - four? Yes, because standing behind the others - he has not yet made a sound - Megroth Walkroth, the Hulking Intellectual, a concert piano hanging from a strap over his shoulder, his fingers placed patiently, waiting. Kirps is the wonderchild, the blustering star-eyed whirlwind in a Coke can reaching star-long and full-steam flinging himself martyrdom and soap opera for the sweat and exaltation of a million moshing stomping powered full-body headbanging fans. Megroth knows the beauty in not playing one's instrument, and when to fill the silence. So though there was grave danger and an ever charging horde, teeth and claws and hand grenades plenty, Megroth knew what his brethren would do, and he waited. His time would come, and it would be perfect.

The Pit Lord laughed a thousand mile wide eyed and flaming lips laughter, driving a chariot of whore pigs squealing, and the spewing of the festering crack wound volcano blackened darker than his spent coal soul, and so Kirps began the first verse, his voice full and daring, clear bright and breaking at all the edges:

Blacksmith churning
Fetid demon's gripping hand
Bright eyes yearning
Crystal golem made of sand

At this Donathan began his bass solo. Though low-birthed and slaved tether bound technicians could not conceive a bass solo, Donathan Skiyrmonger was the Gentleman Warlord, and his bass was the infinite death bass, and so Donathan tallied a low driving nut crunching earthquake bassline summoned up and molded wholly at the exact subterranean altitude needed for a seismic shift starting in the sands below the cliff face where the horde would not stop running. Donathan's tusks were well oiled and rust free and made for eviscerating, and this is where it began. The rumbling was everywhere, that heart attack heartbeat of the desert itself induced with each stroke of the touchpad into cataclysmic climax until a long deep fissure pushed open in the sand, and the horde fiends yelled and slipped falling into the hot maw gaping wider until a colossal head emerged, sand worn crystal clear and faceless, atop shoulders and torso, arms and legs all the same crystal, solid, dependable and honest.

And so Kirps went into the second verse, sweat steaming from his naked chest:

The Earth needs to
Seek the poison in her veins
The Earth bleeds, too
Lend a chalice, drink the pain

At which Kiranda held nothing back, every paw rolling out a complicated rhythm rolling over and under itself, stampeding out, shifting, barreling through any roadblock and barrier, barricade, blockade, stone wall or fortress, a hundred depleted uranium tipped rhinos charging from her pawtips and drumbeats. She pummeled her bass drums with both feet flaring, not because she could but because it was right, not because they were there but because it needed to happen. The horde knew this, it was something inside of them, and as they were charging they charged quicker still, whipped into raw frenzy, the mountains so close! Last City behind them! Blood and victory, the taste was calling! Kiranda's liability, so painfully apparent, but she didn't stop, no, she pulled it tighter, taking to the drum tops and high hats with thriving verdant heat and a hunter's snarl!

Kiranda's favorite pastime was napping peacefully beneath the canopy of the garden she tended carefully, each plant grown from seeds and seedlings by her own paws until she had a jungle in miniature spliced into her place in the city, but she knew the earth in more ways than one. The horde felt the drumming drumming deep inside them, and so too the earth was trembling to the beat. There was raw hot knowledge in that drumming, the knowledge of life and living, knowledge of the world. And something new began to happen: metals trickled out of the crack where the crystal golem had emerged, alloys and oxides, compounds and other minerals flowed out in threads and needles and began winding and coiling in the air, attaching to the crystal golem, embedding in its surface, forming spikes and claws, bright black horns, square eyes and angry eyebrows.

Laughter died in the Death Lord's throat at the sight of it, no longer just a brilliant creation but a tool of war, mouth-less and glaring. He yanked the reins of his jizz-colored sows complaining and skidded sideways to a stop, with barely time and space to congeal a new thought before the third verse began.

The Blacksmith waves his hands
Across the molten sands
What war is won when battle's done
Is the mystery of Man

And this was where everything was leading to. Kirps Astrolabe bade his guitar deal justice, and that was what it dealt, each chord he played a condensed packet of white-hot fury and cold calculated punishment sublimated into the sound waves of a guitar solo that did just as all good justice should - the righteous rejoiced and the wicked crumbled. For with the first entry into that escalating instrumentation the crystal golem went into action, sweeping out to dash the horde fiends around it as it made it's way straight for its foe. The Dark Lord screamed and covered his ears, commanding for the crystal golem's demise at any sacrifice. Those heading for the cliffs doubled back, they swarmed the golem, using it as a rack of skewers to pierce themselves on and bleed out in the sand. It was all so pointless - their weapons bounced off its solid skin, their flesh was torn by its razor claws, and the Dark Lord urged his fallow sows on to cut a path through the desert dunes that might escape pursuit.

Kirps gave no mercy, shredding the juicy bliss from a ripe riff of his creation, and the constellations were all captive and watching. Leo was pacing, agitated as a caged beast, while Terpsichore was with the Seven Sisters, skanking and krumping to the music. Orion clubbed the Serpent and was about to make his way to the Cameleopard when we spied Virgo and made new plans. Selene was being hit on by both Twins, but she had eyes only for Kirps. And the Dog Star, the Bear Star, Leopard Star and the Otter Star sat in council, the wisest of all, and simply watched.

The Pit Lord whipped his pig team, racing through a canyon deep that might conceal him, pain and chaos in his eyes. He looked back to see the crystal golem striding easily, long legs straddling the canyon, long piercing notes and high-speed embellishments driving it. A single horde fiend was hanging from its collar, hacking with the end of a snapped falchion, until the golem flicked the nuisance and it was gone. Then its reaching arm glitter cast refracting in the moonlight, it wrapped clear fingers with deadly blue claws of tungsten cobalt oxide around the Pit Lord's massive and manly muscles by force of will and electrostimulation torso and lifted him from the canyon flailing failing and wailing. Just then the drumming stopped, the bass notes ceased, and all that could be heard was the tearing full-winged rocket bloom punctuation mark of guitar that could mean one thing only. Desperate fire was erupting from every of the Pit Lord's orifices to scorch the golem and set him free, but the golem felt no pain. A single strident destiny chord was ringing in the hot dry air and with a simple motion, it gripped the Pit Lord's head in its other hand, and with a sick wet pop, ripped his spine out up through his neck.

In that moment the desert was chaos. The snake's head was severed and the rest went into throes of madness, instantly and absolute: horde fiends fought each other, ran in circles, stabbed themselves and ate fistfuls of sand, shoving it in hand-over-hand like the only thing they'd eaten in years. The final strains of guitar strings singing came to and end, and now all that could be heard were the moans and yelling, the wounded and the insane, they'd lost their limbs or lost their way and bleak uncertain fates were more even than their thoughts could carry. It was lingering abjection floating in what could have been a second or a lifetime, as abjection goes, until - a single tone played out, soft and certain, and then a melody - the coda: Megroth Walkroth's fingers on the piano keys, dancing out not a waltz but waltzing, a chariot driver white and stunning in a world of wretched beggarly. There was not just certainty in the sound but forgiveness, not just strength but resolution, a cascade of notes and tempo that was both soothing and invigorating, and soon enough the horde quieted and listened. The wind held still to hear his playing, the night sky's winking lights held breaths to miss not one subtlety or nuance. And things began to change. The bleeding stopped and weapons dropped, the horde cast off their garments rough and telling of a life devoid of honor. The golem's decorations, implements of war unwound and receded back where they belonged, natural state minerals embedded in the earth. The golem blank and true again, looked to its masters, and Kirps, Donathan and Kiranda each gave him the metal sign, a statement not just of job well done, but acknowledgment in the fullest sense of the word. The golem raised its fist in return, and after that eye-to-eye moment, it lumbered back into the fissure which sealed itself again, until nothing could be seen there but sand. The past fiends did not wave, but turned to the East and departed, walking through the dunes away from Last City to find solace and a place were they could work.

And then Megroth was done, and the only sounds that still remained were the pigs in the canyon, eating the corpse of their master and tormentor. And while the people of Last City knew not if they had only defeated the horde but summoned it, what they knew for certain was that when the Alchemancers worked their metal, Heaven and Hell were there to listen.