The Behemoths of Kalburin

They are not to be disturbed.

This was a key tenet of the Sh’sesha order of which Harn was a disciple. A tenet he was disobeying.

Not for the first time, either.

Kalburin was a barren world beneath a hostile binary star. Harn wasn’t born here. No one is born here. And no one ever leaves. Ever.

The Sh’sesha perform the reproductive withering on all who come to Kalburin. The people are as barren as the land. Many are pilgrims from the Outer Limb or the forsaken stars beyond—fanatics too enlightened for even the temple worlds. But not Harn. Harn was sent as a babe, still too young to know the face of his mother; an offering from faithful parents who owed the Sh’sesha a dreadful debt. He’d never known the light of a G-type star.

He was a cleanser. His duty was to cleanse the minds of the interpreters to slow their madness. The madness ran deep and could never be purged, for its root was immaterial, but with enough cleansers working diligently its progression could be slowed. The longer the interpreters survived, the greater their prognostic power and, it was argued, their influence over the Behemoths.

That’s what was really at the heart of all things; the heart of Kalburin, the heart of the Sh’sesha, even the heart of a young cleanser named Harn.

The Behemoths were living Gods. They could be found in the empty wastes beyond the borders of the Sh’sesha sanctuary, fulfilling their interminable and unfathomable designs. They took many forms, and some said they were all a single entity—though such definitions have no useful meaning in this context—but to Harn they were giants: 30 meters tall, wrapped and swaddled and draped in all manner of golden cloth, sullied by the desert wind and a cosmological eon. They walked single-file in an infinite line that disappeared into the gloom.

Yes, Harn had secretly learned the ways of their speech, if you could call it that. He’d gleaned it from the minds he should have been cleansing. And then he’d come, on his own in the gloaming of a single low arc of starlight, and spoken to them directly.

He asked them for the madness. He wanted it. And they gave it to him. But not only that.

Their knowledge exceeded human imagination. They taught Harn not to cleanse, but to compartmentalize. To garden, and to harvest. Again, these words as such provide little use for the concepts they are meant to signify, but it is all we have.

Harn’s madness was very mature now. Very powerful. And he knew he was ready for what came next.

The ground rumbled, and from the dust the Behemoths emerged.

Notes: I used an image as a writing prompt for this piece. You may be able to find the image on the artist’s ArtStation page. Image by Sergey Vasnev, used with permission.