They came from the West, Xodoz and Kol’Vaar, riders of the Elysium coast. Children of sea wind and black iron. Not merely men, but Ur Atlanteans, the blooded firstborn of their lineage. Taller, harder, keener—more. Steel rang beneath them.

Their armor gleamed dully in the haze of distant firestorms. Not bronze, not iron, but the true gift of Elysium: steel. They were wrapped in it like gods in thunder—chain and plate, perfectly tempered, fitted to muscle and movement. The world had no name for such forging until the Elysian forges named it. The world had no counter for it still. Except Mu. But that was heresy, and they would not speak of Mu here.

Xodoz led—black-haired, amber-eyed, steel in hand. A mountain carved from sun-burnished wrath. His helm was etched with the wings of the sky serpent and the three stars of the Western House. His spear, long as a man was tall, bore the mark of the Leviathan War, when he slew one of the last sea dragons from atop a coral cliff.

Kol’Vaar followed, a shadow beside fire. His armor smoked faintly with hidden runes. Beneath the plates, he wore the Kolshatra—the staff of fire—steel-cored and coiled with mechanisms unknown to men of this age. It was crafted by the king’s one-eyed engineer and the laughing alchemist of the Crimson Halls. Both mad. Both brilliant. And they brought it because spear and sword might not be enough.

–

They rode across the dead lands east of the central grasslands, through a place the farmers now called Godfall. Once fertile, the fields had blackened. Wind no longer stirred the high grass. Trees bore fruit that pulsed with light and screamed when picked. Villages were abandoned. Cattle were gone. Women had vanished. One shepherd boy had been found hanging high in a tree, twisted backward, eyes open, teeth all removed—but no blood spilled.

The elders whispered of a beast. Some spoke of a griffin. Some of a were-ape. Others of a winged god with a face of burning glass and a voice like thunder. All agreed on one thing: it came from the sky, and it left only ash and silence.

“This is no curse,” Kol’Vaar muttered, eyeing the scorched stone circle they passed.

“No,” said Xodoz. “This is a visitation.”

–

They camped on the edge of a ruined altar ground, long since abandoned to the weeds. The stars above were wrong—too many, too bright. And then, a hum. A sound not made by throat nor claw, but something deeper. A thrumming note, low and constant, as if the sky itself was a machine winding up.

Kol’Vaar reached for the safety catch on the Kolshatra.

And so they waited in the dark. But for three days and three nights, nothing came.

Then—the terror.

–

They were already awake when the screaming began. Xodoz rose with a hand on his sword. Kol’Vaar was faster, already armoring his breastplate with a hiss of magnet seals. As the scream twisted through the trees—a long, animal cry—but no animal made it. Too ragged. Too intelligent.

Then came the thunder. Not sky thunder. Not storm thunder. But machine thunder. A howl of bent lightning, layered over a bone-saw hum.

From the hill to the east, a sick light flared—green and unclean.

The two Atlanteans leapt onto their steeds and rode hard through the line of tall trees. Hooves pounded like drums of war. Steel shimmered beneath them as they raced, both armed with blades, hair snapping like banners in the wind of their momentum.

As they broke through the last line of ash trees, the world changed.

A clearing—vast and raw.

And above it—the Thing.

A shield-shaped object hung in the sky like a silver wound, glowing with green light so intense it seared the eyes. Arcs of emerald lightning licked the air below. And from the crumbling village beneath, two forms were pulled upward into the glow—an old man clutching a girl, both screaming, limbs flailing in air that no longer obeyed gravity.

“By the moons,” hissed Kol’Vaar. “That’s no beast.”

He armed the Kolshatra mid-gallop—an impossible act for a lesser man—and fired. The blast cracked like thunder fed through a furnace. The shot punched into the underbelly of the disc, hammering the green core with burning Elysian fury. There was a ripple. Then a roar.

The girl and the old man dropped, falling into a hay pile below, as another bolt from Kol’Vaar’s staff slammed into the vessel’s rotating ring.

Xodoz snarled and gave chase.

Still riding, he drew the long spear from across his back, locked its haft into the notch behind his thigh, and shouldered it with the grace of a hunter born. With a sharp breath, he braced, aimed, and fired.

A thunderclap followed.

The spear coughed smoke as its internal powder kicked the slug forward with brutal force, slamming into the vessel’s spinning ring. He reloaded by feel—fast, mechanical, near-instinct—working the breech and slamming the next charge home without ever slowing his mount.

The disc stammered in the sky. Lightning crawled up its sides like vines of green flame. For a moment, it wobbled—spinning too fast. Then something inside ruptured, and the Thing came down like a broken promise.

It slammed into the cliffs beyond, grinding a deep wound into the earth—two stadia wide and across the nearby cliff face.

–

Kol’Vaar reached the wreck first. The air shimmered with static and the smell of metal blood.

The hatch hissed.

From it stumbled a thing—thin, on fire, screaming. A long-limbed figure with glistening black eyes and a head swollen like a priest’s tumor. Its skin boiled. It squealed like a burned rat, arms flailing for mercy—or threat.

Xodoz, unmerciful, struck first. A boot crushed bone. Kol’Vaar followed, spearing it through the head.

It twitched once—then was still.

Behind them, villagers emerged, wide-eyed and shaking. They pulled the girl and the old man from the haystack, alive but fainting. Others gathered by the wreckage. Some wept. Others merely stared at what lay inside.

More figures. Thin. Alien. Unfamiliar.

None were of Atlantis. None had ever been seen before. And none of them spoke a single word the world had ever known.

–

And so, for generations, the tale endured—of our people’s great victory, our triumph in the Great Interstellar War of the Central Elysian Plateau.

We know that something is out there amidst the cold celestial vaults, watching us still, perhaps with envious, black, insectoid eyes.

But let any Lemurian scraphandler or gap-toothed tinker from the rust-slicked realms of the Pictlands boast they invented flight, or claim to have discovered its secrets.

Quaint concepts.

We Atlanteans? We confiscated that wisdom. Ripped it from the gods-damned sky itself.

And they’re not getting it back. Not now. Not ever.

So saithe our bold Atlantean Sky Force, and the Disks of War they now command.