This choice: Land safely, albeit roughly, in the desert • Go Back... With finesse developed over years of training, not to mention the recent practice of navigating a twisting rip in space-time, you slip through the hot winds of the first planet, ship charred but undamaged. Eagerly you scan the arid terrain looking for a tempting place to set your ship down.
In the distance straddled by a rim of sheer cliffs nothing short of a lizard might scale, you see a monolithic shape appear through the clouds. The statue of a proud, female warrior, stares at you, eye level despite your altitude. You pull up on the stick breaking the cloud barrier. Even then you see the point of her upraised broad sword piercing through the white. 'What kind of crazy, feminist-ruled planet did I choose, anyway?'
Once you're sure you've passed it, you bring the ship down through the clouds and bank around for another look. This time you fly lower and closer easing back on the throttle so you can make a prolonged study. 'Best to understand the locals,' you think, 'before deciding where to park for an extended stay.'
Upon taking a closer look at the statue you see its assembled of great sand-stone bricks, but none of it made any sense. For all the mechanical ingenuity it must have taken to stack them so high, this race was surely lacking in artistic skill. All of the figure was crudely chipped and carved into shape, leaving only jagged edges, even across what should have been the smooth swell of her hip. "How could a race advanced enough to assemble such a statue, not be able to do a better job of sculpting it?" you can't help but ask aloud.
You wonder what they used for mortar to keep such giant bricks together and sidle the plane closer to the statue. Squinting shows you nothing more than a faint red line so you reach for a pair of digital binoculars. A moment later you drop the expensive device to the floor of the cockpit where it shatters. Above, your face remains rigid with fear, its hues practically bleached.
'Bones.... Thousands of them...' The skulls were unmistakable. They used people for their mortar and if what you just saw was a fair picture of the rest of the statue, then entire nations must have been sacrificed in its erection. For a moment you couldn't help but wondor what it would have felt like, seeing that stone coming down on you. What it would have felt like to be ground into a paste of blood and bone to mix with that of your kinsmen who'd be similarly popping, gushing their insides all around you. And, all for what? The glory of some tribe of Amazons who held to the misguided idea that women can be warriors.
You swerve the ship away from the statue and simultaneously cast your gaze downward, eager for any distraction from your gross imaginings. Near the feet of the stone giantess you see what appear to be human or humanoid habitations. One, sitting at the crest of the cliffs, directly between the statues outfacing big toes is a temple of sorts surrounded by obelisks and populated by robed figures. Far below this at the base of the sheer cliffs is a scattered village of primitive-looking yurts. The people here are clothed in rags or nothing at all.
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