How strange the workings of this world! When the shadow of death looms over us, casting its pall over the meadows through which we frolic, should not all the petty interests of man wither like frost before the morning sun? Yet, for many of those gathered this night on the moonlit steppe, even with annihilation sweeping through their ranks, the mundane tasks of life had not abated.

  Away from the locations besieged by that mysterious demon of the plains, the artisans in their thousands continued labouring. In some pockets, the smoke of cooking fires rose to the cloudless sky, as provisioners, sweat dripping from their brows, turned great spits of meat and stirred cauldrons of soup. In others, craftsmen of the arcane bent over delicate filigrees of silver and jade, embedding wards into amulets. Elsewhere, alchemists tended their retorts with such haste that their noxious fumes melted the faces of the unlucky, while teams of engineers nailed ladders and shaped tools for entrenchment. Elsewhere still, perhaps to assist those struggling with the monster, armourers hammered ceaselessly at breastplates and helmets, and forgers of weapons drew sparks from their grinding stones, sharpening the edges on blades to a keenness that might pierce the demon’s thickened hide or scales.

  But most curious among the persisting industries was a mobile pavilion of feminine delights, where the service that could not be stopped was that most needful and most ancient service, the service of the loving flesh.

  To circle from a height this brothel’s fenced enclosure was to glimpse a paradise insulated from the surrounding grime, where lilies, gazanias, and agapanthuses lined the walkways. Amidst this flora drifted the ladies up for purchase, creatures of such unnerving perfection as if moulded by a sculptor’s hand. Their skin possessed the flawless sheen of porcelain, and their features were drawn with perfect symmetry. They formed their own bouquet of floral allure, each cultivated to a different taste: here walked figures of regal bearing draped in silks; there, nymphs in gossamer gowns that revealed limbs of exaggerated voluptuousness; and elsewhere, beings with the wide, vacuous eyes of children, feigning an innocence long since tarnished. Some of these last, practising their giggles, plucked the blossoms lining the walkways to garnish their hair, seeking to enjoin the flowers' fleeting graces to their own.

  Maidens preparing; vulture spying soul-expandingly

  Attracted to this oasis of forbidden pleasures, a solitary vulture wheeled down from the soot-stained sky, alighting in a bed of flowers and hiding its azure plumage in their colour. From this vantage, it nestled like the lover Genji infiltrating the garden of a mistress, and it cocked its head to eavesdrop on the beauties still at work.

  One group starting their shift floated by, hurriedly attending to their toilet, combing hair and applying fragrances that masked the rustic odours of men and death travelling on the breeze.

  "It does not feel quite as it should," a maiden whispered, gazing in a pocket mirror.

  "Do not distress yourself," a companion answered. “You shall have ample occasions to perfect it before the night is done.”

  Another, tilting the first girl’s chin, observed, "The lines of your lips are too severe. Yet, these gentlemen, in their haste, will surely not perceive it."

  "Will they not?"

  "My dear, you are an image of the divine," she assured her, and recited tenderly:

  “Though the autumn wind

  May scatter the bloom's bright hue

  On the moorland path,

  The flower in the mirror

  Keeps its spring for you alone.”

  At this, the cloud lifted from the maiden’s brow, replaced by a smile that seemed, to a spying bird, almost too bright, as though she were not a thing for sale but a dancer waiting in the wings for her grand debut, trembling with a strange sense of mission. The other maidens shared an identical enthusiasm, smiling beatifically even as they smoothed their skirts for tasks that would ordinarily bring a flush of shame to the cheek.

  Another maiden in this group, holding a jar of pearl-dust ointment, appealed to a companion with a heavy sigh. "The dry wind of these plains is cruel to the skin; I feel as parched as a riverbed in summer. Would you be so kind as to apply this unguent to my bosom?"

  "It would be my joy," her friend replied, dipping her fingers into the jar.

  The first maiden reached for the sash of her robe, her fingers lingering upon the knot. The azure vulture, sensing a spectacle that might expand the soul, craned its neck with sudden vigour, hopping closer through the flower bushes with the lecherous intent of an old minister spying through a bedroom window. Its beady eyes widened, and a tremor of anticipation ruffled its feathers as the maiden’s silk began to loosen, promising a glimpse of that hidden treasure within.

  But alas for the feathered voyeur. A guard, spotting the ill-omened bird trampling their blossoms just as the robe was set to part, charged over and raged.

  "Ay! Get the fuck out of here, you pinche scavenger! Don't be bringing that bad luck to our spot, ese!"

  The guard, it seemed, had not received the appropriate tutelage in elegance.

  With a croak of indignation, perhaps offended by the unsophistication, the azure vulture took flight.

  It did not go far, however, for its attention was snagged by the roar of a great sea of men nearby, the patrons flooding in from the surrounding encampments. So many had arrived as to sustain a secondary industry of vendors dragging carts laden with wares: skins of wine, skewered meats, and strange elixirs promising to elevate their vigour. A mob at the gates of the pleasure palace divided into two distinct streams: a slow, creeping line for the expensive dignity of the original, solitary service, and a rushing torrent for a novel discounted option for groups, installed in tents hastily erected to satisfy the surge in customers. A group of comrades exiting after the latter service emerged with glazed eyes and dishevelled attire, and one member bore on his shoulder the unsightly, stained residue of their shared frolic.

  A queuing patron pointed at the obscene fluid, and felt a sudden wave of moral guilt.

  "Comrades, such cannot be the hour for this vice!” he asked out loud. “Death wanders hither, and we have prepared ourselves against him by stripping off our armour and donning our brother’s lustful filth!”

  A neighbour queuing laughed. "Save the sermon, comrade. There’s never been a proper hour for nutting in enslaved bot pussy. Shit’s vile.”

  "You hypocrite!” replied the hysterical questioner. “You perceive yourself that these gates lead to corruption, yet you would enter them by your own feet!”

  The one accused, in answer, indicated the scene of distant battle, as being studied through sorcerous displays by some other patrons in the queue.

  Seen was an earthen fortress, besieged by wave after wave of soldiers, relentless as a story tide beating against a cliff. Skeletons, perhaps minions of the demon, loosed arrows at them from the windows of the fortress, while a demon of grotesque aspect—possessed of a jaw of dangling entrails—strode about gurgling commands. Aiding these were serpents that cast strange enchantments binding the feet of men and driving the animals of war insane. And, indeed, the fortress itself joined this monstrous chorus, for the very earth seemed possessed of a malicious will; its walls shuddered and heaved, casting soldiers from their heights, and when teams of engineers sought to bore into its flanks, the ground opened like a hungry mouth to swallow them whole, and always the fortress was expanding outward, sprouting new heads and filaments like mushrooms devouring a corpse abandoned to the forest.

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  Yet, horrifying as these creatures were, the true agent of destruction was something harder to perceive, a phantom of annihilation that blustered with the caprice of a storm. Now amongst the vanguard of the soldiers, now amidst the rear guard of sorcerers, wherever its invisible journey passed, men fell in their piles, broken and dead. The swiftness and erraticness of this phantom were such that the great host of soldiers seemed a colony of termites being stamped out by the mallet of some giant, cackling lunatic.

  “However we conduct ourselves,” surmised the one accused, “this lunatic is on the way. I’m dead. You’re dead. All these gorgeous clanker sluts are dead. The only difference tonight is in how we choose to die. Will you die, comrade, with your nuts full of regret or with your nuts drained fucking womb-deep into nirvana?”

  “Nuts drained!” answered another neighbour.

  “Tyrant won’t even get to kill me,” proclaimed another. “Ima bust so hard I have a stroke!”

  A chorus of similar agreement propagated through the queue, repeating the sage wisdom to the one with doubts. And, if there had been amongst them a man blessed with greater cultural refinements, he might have spoken thus:

  “If the world must end

  And the bridge of dreams

  Collapse Into the darkness,

  Let us wet our sleeves tonight

  In the river of delight.”

  Within a tent serving as the headquarters of this pleasure district, the master’s taste was displayed with a frantic lavishness. Screens of heavy brocade encircled the tent’s interior, depicting scenes of a most intimate nature. In each, Venus-like beauties were being serviced by a youth of slender, boyish grace, endowed by the artist with a nether instrument so exaggerated it seemed the fancy of a dream, lengthy as a cucumber and girthy as a gourd. His amorous adventures with this engorged sceptre seemed to range a globe, from spring meadows, to snowy peaks, to the grim fields of war. The floor was a labyrinth of luxury. Cushions of scarlet piled upon resting couches, pedestals groaning under the weight of grapes, and golden statues draped in beads all jostled for space, alongside a station for the brewing of intoxicating draughts. Commanding the room’s centre, like the dais of an Emperor, sat a sleeping platform of monstrous size, asserting its dominance over the clutter with an erotic grandeur.

  Through this gaudy accumulation drifted a breeze of sorcerous chilliness, circulating the mixed fragrances of incenses and the perfumes of several maidens decorating the tent. One seated in the corner played the koto with languid skill, layered in the robes of a Heian court. Nearby, a damsel in the veils of a Persian princess brushed the mane of a slumbering lion. Upon the sleeping platform rested seven other maidens, waiting with the stillness of dolls. The expression of this last group was blank, their smiles fixed in an expression of absolute obedience, and they were attired in the garments of “Japanese school girls”, drawn from a costume rack. Their hair was dyed in hues unknown to nature, and their eyes were of a size that disturbed the spirit, vast and saucer-like. Had they worn their ordinary costumes, they might have been recognised by connoisseurs of the various "anime" fashionable in this sacred year 2050.

  Fetish items

  In the centre of this boudoir, a council of men had gathered. A first group seemed quite at home amongst the luxury; these were men of Asian heritage, slight of build and possessed of an androgynous beauty, with skin as soft as a newborn babe's and seasoned with lotions and perfumes. They spoke with a practised refinement, their hands accompanying their speech with twirling grace. Standing in violent opposition to these was a second company: men of rough breeding, possessed of violent countenances and muscular frames in battle garment. Their skin was savaged by crude tattoos of ink, repeating a motif of iron nails and chains. A stench of dried sweat, cold iron, and old blood clung to them, waging a silent war against the perfumes of the master’s court. They sat like jagged rocks in a stream of floating petals ugly to the eye, reminding the observer of the perils stalking in the world outside this paradise.

  This company had directed their attention to their own sorcerous display of the demon’s distant battle. Their mood was decidedly morbid, many of them detecting the shadow of oblivion that was stretching gradually towards their own doorstep.

  "Ey, homes, what’s the movida? We got a plan or what?" asked one of the rougher, uncultured gentlemen with tattoos. "Count? We might need to chill on the operations, ese?”

  The personage addressed as Count stood amidst his subordinates like a white chrysanthemum blooming in a patch of weeds. He was of that company of slender, fair-skinned men, and he wore a robe of unpatterned silk, open at the collar to reveal oak leaves embroidered in thread of gold, and beneath this, his chest was bare and utterly hairless, draped only with chains of jewelled ornaments. Indeed, were one to glance at the erotic tapestries upon the wall and then back to him, the resemblance would be undeniable, the supreme lover frolicking through glade and snow none other than this master in the flesh. Furthermore, a discerning eye, falling to the nethers of his robes and an anomalous protuberance of the fabric, might draw recognition from the artistic endowment.

  The Count, however, had missed the initial query. His attention was fixed upon a different sorcerous display—a floating grid of lights accounting the finances of their pleasure operation. This luminous scroll listed the number of staff, their active duties, and the myriad requests of the guests, all shifting in real-time like the ripples on a pond. He had been smiling at the figures of profit ascending toward the moons, heedless of this chaos on the plains.

  When a lackey alerted him to the question, the Count’s expression soured, as if he had bitten into a persimmon before the frost had sweetened it.

  "Business," he replied, "continues unaltered. How limited is the understanding of the common mind! This advance of the enemy, which you fear, has but simplified our path. By daring to descend from his high throne, the Emperor has exposed himself to the fatal stroke of usurpation!"

  A few of the smarter lackeys exchanged glances of confusion, for this declaration seemed to possess more poetry than reason. The strategy the Count alluded to—a gambit from the antiquities of Saana known as ‘Shake The Throne’s Four Legs; Catch The Falling Emperor’—was a method devised to topple deities too strong for direct confrontation. It relied on overrunning the enemy’s territory at too many locations for the god to manage and severing the flow of divine power by culling their worshippers. In the circuitousness of this strategy was a humble admission that, in truth, the said Emperor could not be bested on the fields of war.

  The Count raised a slender finger and darted it about like a dragonfly courting its mate. "The Emperor, by daring to leave his throne, has already written his fate in his own blood!"

  As he threw back his head to laugh, the maidens seated around the room began to applaud, imitating a characteristic quirk of his by peeling back their lips to flash more of the teeth. The androgynous members of his retinue added a chorus of flattery.

  "Truly, the Major’s wisdom pierces the fog of war like the morning sun!" cried one.

  "Even without his celestial chariot, he soars above the doubts of lesser men!" added another.

  "To follow such a star is the only path to glory, Major KK-sama!"

  This other title, 'Major', was no empty honorific, but a relic of his achievements in the past. Prior to his entry into the business of flesh, he’d been, phrased in the vulgar parlance from before his learnings of culture, a professional ‘pilot’ in the 2046 ‘space-shooter’, ‘Spaceblitz II’. It was this reputation that had led his entourage to follow him into this floating world. He had used his earnings from those days to invest in the digital territories of Saana, specifically in the territories of the local slum, where his genius had seen potential where others saw only ruin. His biggest strike of gold had been in becoming one of the first backers of The Empire, in first recognising the rising star of its leader, the Argentine lord Ramiro, whose political comprehension almost rivalled the Count’s own mastery of trade. The return on his investment had been over a hundred-fold - at least it had been, prior to the recent financial troubles and his demotion to this new venture of trading pleasure.

  The tattooed men of their company, however, were not swayed by this history or reputation, assigned as they’d been only for these recent operations.

  "Is that the official plan, homes, or are you just making that shit up?" one doubted.

  The Count ceased his laughter abruptly, his face flushing with indignation at such impertinence. As a matter of fact, he had indeed been fabricating the plan of counterattack, for his superiors were far too occupied to send missives to a mere Count. But, unable to admit to such a slight or to the existence of any superiors, he doubled down on the claim. He insisted, with the air of one entrusted with grave secrets, that assassin teams were already lying in wait.

  "The Emperor is dead!" he proclaimed, his eyes shining with a desperate fervor, and he recited with a flourish:

  “Like the foolish worm

  That spins its own silken trap,

  He binds his own neck,

  And leaves the pearls of his throne

  To be gathered by our hand!”

  It was a beautiful sentiment, though to any mind unclouded by loyalty, it defied most practical understandings of battle. For how does one set a snare for the lightning? To guard against such a phantom may have been as futile as trying to stop the snow from dusting the slopes of mount Hiei.