“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” ― Voltaire
The man, everyone on the great, empty plain that surrounded the colossal engine, called the Commandant, sat quietly in an improvised armchair as he always did, gazing up at the great engine, pondering it's workings and meaning. It glowed and seethed with strange and magnificent fluttering lights and titanic sparkling energies in the form of a gigantic halo, slowly and inexorably revolved like a gigantic, glacially turning water wheel. Surrounding the halo's lower edge was a sprawling city or what seemed like a city to those that gazed upon it from the plain. It consisted of vast walls, courtyards and towering structures which seemed to combine the aspects of vast towers, colossal cathedrals and gigantic castles.
These structures and the city as a whole seemed to have the express purpose of controlling, stabilizing and directing the titanic energies of the glowing halo. Although that was merely conjecture by the inhabitants of the plain, as no one who had entered the city ever returned to the plain.
The sole inhabitants of great engine, were almost as strange and fantastical as the sprawling city and the great slowly revolving halo itself. The inhabitants of the plain, all of whom were, as they had discovered from talking amoungst themselves, people who had died through the accidents and trauma of human warfare whether they were soldiers or civilians. To date, they had only observed four of the peoples who dwelt within the walls.
The first and most commonly seen were what many called the Maidens of Mercy, by the lost souls, came and when between the city and the camps that surrounded it, bringing food, medicine and building materials so that the souls living on the plain could be comfortable while they waited. They took the form of beautiful, angelic and cloak shrouded women. The second type was the towering metallic, completely armoured warriors, that the souls called for lack of a better term to describe them, the Knights, they seemed to be guardians and provosts of the city. They kept the horrific wraiths and other monstrous entities that inhabited the haunted forests and escarpment well away from the city and the vast sub city of camps that surrounded it, they also helped the maidens and those souls designated by the commandant, who was appointed by them and the heralds to over see a degree of order and organization amoungst the souls on the plain, who number easily in the millions if not the hundreds of millions.
The heralds the third of the peoples, interacted with the souls at certain times, and while they were solemn of manner and their appearance disturbing, they took the form of heavily robbed skull faced monks or priests, they were also polite and dignified and the souls generally felt reassured by their periodic presence. Generally, they explained the rules of conduct within the camps around the city, and explained what the souls were waiting for: which was a chance to step into the great halo and be reborn, reincarnated in a new life in another time and place then the life they had been originally been born into. The Heralds, explained, that all the souls gathered here, we people the celestial order had decided were deserving of another chance or people who had some unfinished business to resolve for themselves. They had already died, so they could not start anew, where they had been from but could make a completely fresh start some where and some when else.
Typically the Heralds would leave the city via one of the great gates set into the vast city's walls and call the names of one thousand individuals, who would be escorted by the heralds and some of the knights and maidens, who explained the mechanics of what was about to happen to them. These souls were never seen upon the plain again by it's inhabitants, and the halo would always seethe and flare brightly with titanic energies, as each soul departed to wherever and whenever they were going.
This involved the last observed of the inhabitants of the city, perhaps the strangest of the four, that the souls had seen in their time in this strange place, which they realized was a form of limbo, or waiting place rather then heaven or hell. Most of them agreed they had already been through a form of hell, by their lives and deaths in humanity's endless wars, and while naturally apprehensive about the challenges of being reincarnated and finding their footing in a new life, many were actually looking forward to it.
The fourth of the peoples, were referred to as choir or band masters by the other three denizens of the city and the halo. Their music could often be heard drifting from the top of the walls and towers, and ranged in also sorts of styles and instruments some of which the souls recognized and others they could not fathom. It was explained that this individuals, none of whom any of the souls had ever seen, assisted in the process of reincarnation, as they understood and could guide safely the souls to were and when they were destined to be going and give them helpful or necessary hints or advise on how best to proceed in their reincarnated lives.
Time had no relevance in this realm of eternal night so no one felt any sense of impatience or boredom in their wait which could have taken a few minutes or a few millennia for each soul for all they knew or cared. In any event, the Maidens and Heralds provided them with food and drink to their respective tastes and games and reading materials or education in any discipline of science or the arts, as struck the souls needs or interest.
Copious clouds of tobacco smoke drifted lazily around his head and face, as he puffed contemplatively on his long stemmed pipe. The bright moonlight that flooded the plain, caused the ice and snow that enshrouded his body and clothing to glitter and sparkle. One of his elbows rested on a barrel beside the armchair, which was further occupied by a couple of upended mugs and two bottles of red wine.
His heavily gloved hand reached for the one mug that was turned upright, which was more then half filled with dark red wine, then suddenly froze in mid motion. He swung round in the chair, his bicorn hat, shedding particles of ice and snowflakes, as his empty eye sockets and frozen skull swiveled towards the distant, haunted escarpment which all those who now dwelled upon the plain feared and dreaded. He sensed the calls of the forest patrols hunting horns, even before the sound of the horns could even reach the Great Engine so distant was the escarpment. Such however, were the powers granted to him by the great engine as they had been granted to each serving commandant of the plain, in their turn.
He stood abruptly, his skull faced visage visible to all around him as he discarded his still smoldering pipe. He rummaged in his frozen, bullet ridden overcoat for his telescope, quickly found it and snapped the collapsing sectioned tube out to it's full length as he brought it to his hollow eye socket and aimed it at the distant escarpment. The watch fires along the fortified lines that guarded the only safe way down the escarpment were glowing brightly as usual, and he could sense that the shadowy wraiths were gathering within the edges of the dismal, haunted forest in some strength, their maleficent hatred and terrifying hunger was all but palpable, even at this great distance.
The sound of various types of hunting and military horns, trumpets and pipes echoed through the haunted forest, snapping Marie Luise violently out of her shocked examination of her skeletal features. The Indian soldier drew a short stemmed, belled muzzled British style hunting horn from his satchel and sounded three ringing blasts upon it. This was shortly answered by similar blasts of sounds from various directions, some nearer and some farther away, it seemed to Marie Luise.
Suddenly a deep voiced musical instrument, that reminded her of the the great mountain horns, the Alphorn or Alpenhorn, popular in many mountainous lands such as Switzerland and parts of her native Styria, sounded. It spoke with a deep, thundering dirge like note, that echoed and re-echoed throughout the forest and reverberated through her whole being with an astonishing force that was as much physical as spiritual. Her companions stiffened when this sound reached them and hurried to leave the clearing, gesturing for her to join, them with some haste. Marie Luise realized as they began to run, that this was some sort of agreed note of recall or retreat.
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