Well, I'm starting to get email asking if I'm really writing this, so I
thought I'd dump a teaser on the list, then go back to actually writing
this monster.  It's going to be huge.

***************************************************************************

      Once upon a time, a faerie prince exiled himself to a little bitty
backwater town in the far reaches of his father's kingdom, for the jealous
faerie nobles hated him and his mother, and he tired of this.  He lived in
the tiny little town for centuries, for the faerie are a long lived race,
you see.  It was a town full of mortals, and he fell in love many times,
and had many children, but rarely did he ever tell them what he truly was.  

      The problem with marrying mortals, is that mortals die, and to watch
your loved one age when you do not is a tragedy for both of you.  One day,
the woman he loved died, and he retreated from the world, hardly speaking
or acknowleging his two daughters.  One of his daughters was kind and
understanding like her mother, and she took care of her father in his
grief, finding comfort from comforting him.  The second grew wroth, for
like her father, she had no stomach for ill treatment.  She left in a
rage, swearing never to return.  

      She wandered the world around the town, and finally found a man to
love.  She knew not her faerie heritage, nor the power that lay within
her.  There was no need for magic in her life, except the magic of love.

      One day, her son grew strong and tall, and went to study with the
sages of a larger town.  From them, he learned many crafts, and the power
within him stirred.  He had a vision, a vision of a world in which magical
golems would free the masses of their tiresome labors and leave them free
to create beautiful art and to learn all that was learnable.  

     Yet, he lacked the materials he needed to build his golems, so he
went to the local merchant's guild and offered to share his knowlege if
the merchant would pay for materials to build the golems.  The Guild
Master agreed, and they began to build many wonderful golems.  

      The wizard was happy.  He had a beautiful wife and two happy
children, a boy and a girl.  His golems were like children to him, and he
had hundreds of those.  Yet, not all was well in the kingdom.  The wizard
spent too much time in the lab, and his wife never saw him.  She thought
he loved the golems more than her, so one day she ran away.  That shocked
the wizard, and he began to look around him.

      He saw that not all was well in the land.  Some of the merchants
were arming his golems and using them for conquest.  They did not follow
his instructions closely, and some of his golems had badly drawn runes, so
they went mad.  What he did not know was that some of the members of the
Merchant's guild were inflamed by greed and power and consumed by the
demons with which they had been consorting.  The power of the great god of
destruction, Shiva, was upon them and they saw that the wizard must be
eliminated before he could fight them.  So one of them slew him.

       What they did not understand is that it is not wise to meddle in
the affairs of wizards.  He had seen his fate coming and cast a mighty
spell.  He gifted his children with his powers and his wisdom.  It would
fall to them to save his children, the golems, from the power of Shiva.

      Shiva's followers grew in strength in the towns of the fringes of
the great Faerie empire.  His avatars came, bearing his power and
aiding his servants.  They invoked Shiva, and he destroyed a great
city for them, then they came in to 'help repair the city' with their new
golems.  Soon, everyone was dependent on them and they ruled the city in
all but name.  Many lands fell under their dominion, yet the great Faerie
emperor did nothing, for his lands were vast, and he had almost forgotten
the very existence of the province Shiva's followers ruled.

      The wizard's daughter, however, could not forget.  She took the
power that her father had given her and his wisdom and went to his forge.
She forged gleaming suits of magical armor with which to do battle against
the Merchant's guild, which now called itself DEMON.  But she had no
warriors to wear her suits, so she went out into the streets of the city.

      She found a street urchin with a heart of fire and took her away
from her petty street fights and gave her a cause to fight for and mighty 
weapons with which to fight for it. She found a dancer in the wind and
gave her wings with which to fly.  A clever and beautiful sorceress, who
was also of royal blood, though she knew it not, heard her call for help
and came to the wizard's daughter, passing every test she gave her.  To
her was given further understanding of the powers of machines, of how to
trick the golems and other mechanisms, and to see with magical sight.
Though they often made fun of her, they all knew it was her wisdom which
often guided them to victory.  

*************************************************************************

     "And I suppose you also spun straw into gold in your spare time, eh,
Nene-chan?"  A female voice cut in.

      Nene was sitting on a large plush bed covered with sheets of golden
satin.  In her lap sat a young girl with long red hair like Nene's and
soft brown eyes.  Like Nene, she was dressed in an elaborate striped
kimono with all the colors of the rainbow.  She had a golden bow in her
hair, while Nene was wearing a golden tiara upon her brow with a ruby set
in it.  Nene started at the voice and looked up.  "Priss-chan!"

      Priss winced faintly.  Only Nene could call me Priss-chan when I'm
in combat gear.  She was wearing loose black pants and a heavy long
sleeved dark tan jacket.  Her hair was tied back in a pony-tail, and her
face was marked with long black wedges along her cheeks.  A metal rod sat
in a holster on her belt on her left and a large nasty looking pistol on
her right hip.  "Telling your daughter lies about the good old days, eh?"
She walked over and knelt down facing the little girl in Nene's lap.  "And
how are you today, Himeko?"

      Nene laughed.  "Like you were any better when I heard you telling
Samantha about how you used to kill five boomers before breakfast and all
you needed was your bare hands.  You said you just used a hardsuit so the
rest of us wouldn't feel inferior."

      Himeko laughed and reached over and hugged Priss.  "Hi, Auntie
Priss!  Been fighting monsters again?"

      Priss laughed.  "Hey, at least my lies are more plausible than
yours, Nene-chan."

      "Killing boomers with your bare hands is plausible?  I don't THINK
so."  Nene laughed too.

      Priss picked up Himeko, "You want to be big and strong like me when
you grow up and not flimsy like your mommy, right, Hime-chan?"  She walked
over to the window with her 'niece.'

     They both stared out the window as Nene got up and walked over to
them.  Tiny specks of light shone in the blackness of space.  A small
blue, white, and brown planet slowly receeded in the distance.  Himeko
said, "I'll contribute to the team with my brains and good looks!"

     Priss and Nene both laughed.  "Your mommy taught you to say that,
didn't she?"  Priss asked Himeko, who nodded happily.

     Nene stood by Priss' side, looking out the window at the retreating
planet.  "I can't believe we're not going to fight this."  She gestured,
and her cup floated over to her from the bedside table.  She drank deeply,
suddenly thirsty.

     Priss sighed and reminded herself not to swear in front of the child.
"If I had my way, we would.  I don't like running away, but Celia doesn't
think we can win."

      Nene nodded. "We've evacuated as many people as we could.  If only
we'd been able to kill it back then...Maybe this could have been
prevented."

      Priss forgot about the child and swore anyway.  "We did kill it,
Damnit!  Things are supposed to STAY DEAD WHEN YOU KILL THEM!"

      "Can we be sure we REALLY killed that thing? And even if he is
dead...I guess we didn't get all his children..."

       As they watched, they could see the ice creeping across the face of
the planet as it slowly shrank to a speck in the distance.  They would not
see the world on which they had been born again for over a thousand years.

       They would always wonder if there had been some way they could have
prevented it, could have saved their city, saved their world.  The time
would come when it would bloom again, but that task would fall to other
heroes.  To the Knight Sabres would fall other duties than sleeping under
a crystal mountain 'til that day.  It was time for them to enter upon the
rewards for their years of labor, years of battle and despair.  The stars
were theirs...

*************************************************************************


     Together, they fought the evil of DEMON and slew many rampaging
golems.  Yet, the masters of the guild eluded them, for its head had made
many golems of himself, and he could not be killed.  Nor could the guild
be destroyed, for it was vast beyond measure, and if you struck down one
head, it grew two more like a hydra.

      For time beyond measure, the wizard's daughter, her brother, and her
three mighty knights did battle to protect their homeland, but it seemed
as if their battle would never end.  Shiva laughed at the puny humans.  "I
am the great lord of destruction, who dances across the universe without
ceasing, leaving only flames and ashes in my wake.  You cannot hope to
stop me, for my vengeance cannot be denied.  I AM vengeance, and your puny
efforts to avenge your father are but a shadow of my power, my glory, and
my wrath."

      The wizard's daughter did not hear this, for the blood of the
faeries slumbered within her, and she could not see into other worlds as
they did.  She knew naught of the Gods and spirits.  The seven secret
names of Vishnu were a mystery to her, and she could not have named the
Angels of the four corners if her life depended upon it.  

     Thus it was that she knew not truly what she fought.  Though the
golems of DEMON grew stronger and weilded ever greater powers of magic,
she thought it mere human artifice, as did her warriors.  They knew naught
of the emperor either, for he had been absent from these lands for
millenia.  They knew nothing of the empire to which they belonged or the
great emperor across the sea who would have thought he ruled them if he
remembered he existed.

      Only Shiva knew, and he moved carefully, for he would have nothing
thwart the building of his power base until he was ready to move and smash
the empire to bits.  All the world would burn in flame and he would dance
in the ashes.

      There was only one loose end...he knew the emperor's son had visited
these lands, and the blood of the fae slumbered within many.  They had to
be destroyed or else they might awaken and defeat him.  He still smarted
from the many defeats that the faerie had administered to him in ages
past, for they were a cunning folk and mighty.  

     He told his servants to slay them, one by one, so that none of them
would suspect they were being stalked.  His servants, some willing, some
unwitting, went forth to slay those who possessed the blood of the faerie.  

     Shiva laughed, for there was no one to stop him...

     The place is Mega-Tokyo.  The year is 2034.  The Dance of Shiva is
about to begin.


THE DANCE OF SHIVA
A story of the Knight Sabres

Coming soon (I hope :))
[When I say 'Soon', I'm talking Geologic time here, though...:)]




John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu       
naru@sailormoonfan.com
rhea@tass.org

http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and 
goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you 
talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be 
strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as 
you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare...There are no ORDINARY 
people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, 
arts, civilization--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the 
life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, 
snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."
--C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"