World In Turmoil

15: Aberrations Of

Ren stumbled forward to the ruin of his home, he only had to cross the road now.

Crunching burned stalk husks and blackened grass under his half burned synthetic shoes, and taking a stride over the old wooden fence, he looked up.

Embers were still burning in the smouldering home. A harsh smoke billowing up from where a roof once resided. The smell of burnt wood wafting around in the cool of the late afternoon, the windows glazed over with soot.

The sun had just begun to set behind the eastern mountains.
Casting a calm sunbeam across the vast metropolis behind him. The sunlight catching the hanging smoke, making it dance with life.

He eyed the remains of the structure ahead of him with blank denial. Refusing to acknowledge that the place he had grown up in, had spent his whole life in. Was now gone.

He trudged towards the front porch, his burnt leg screaming in agony, occasionally being rubbed against the other leg. Then swerving around the side of the husk, he spotted the entrance to The Basement. It was a small kelcecrete bunker. Stronger than normal concrete, and more blast resistant than bedrock.

Slowly, legs weak like toothpicks under his weight, muscles stinging and aching. He made his way to the entrance, where his strength final gave out and he collapsed on the ground just outside. Hands planting firmly into the dirt, his knees digging in, his face angled towards the dropping sun.

Lying there, heaving and beginning to sob, the pure weight of the situation finally beginning to hit him.

Lying there, face in the dirt. Cheek planted firmly in the ground. He took the time to think to himself as he gazed with half closed eyes at the flaming sun beyond the mountain.

He was barely 21, and the evils of the universe had only ever been known to him through old tales, history lessons, pictures, movies, virtual experiences, and games.

But nothing... oh nothing. Amounted to the horrors of it, fully realised in the medium of reality.

Once safe. Now abandoned to the cosmos. Lonely, and hurt.
Injured. Betrayed.

Lost.

This was how it felt right? In real war?

"Yes..." he said in a tired whisper, the word just escaping his dry crusty lips.

A sort of silent prayer, slowly muttered itself from his lips.

"Creator. Save."

Time seemed to slow for awhile. The sun continuing to slowly drift down past the mountain, seemingly disinterested in the going's on below.

Ren's thoughts were hard to describe in any real language. Drifting, like a lost umbrella in a river, on a rainy dark night. He jumped from thought to thought. Train to train. Image to image.

A wind began to pickup from the south, slowly blowing the clouds of soot and ash away from the lonely city, that still glowed faintly in the late dusk.

Depression, changed to simple abandonment as his eyes closed, and the hopes of civilisation, the promise of betterment that the LSN had once been... faded from his mind.

His whole body slacked, and he lay. Like a wet newspaper. Splodged on the ground.

He gave into that dark and subversive evil. That want to surrender that haunts many.

The darkness of night began to close in, as the sun went below the mountain, and the skies were left as the last light source. The wind from the south had allowed thousands of eyes to shine down on him from space.

Stars upon stars popped into existence. Distant worlds, ignorant of the travesties below. Of the ravaged city that lay near him.

But in the depths of his mind, a tiny cog kept spinning.

Out of the glossy lens of his eye, he saw, rising out of the smouldering remains of Gersanto, a luminous purple mist. Glowing in the night sky. Something about it sent a tingle of tremendous uneasiness down his spine.

Like a primal instinct of danger. It sent the hair on his neck into standing positions, as if his own body knew what was there. But, refused to tell him.

There was a silent tremble in the earth. Ren put it up to another decimated city, somewhere in the distance, and closed his eyes again.
But the vibrations kept going.
And the purple mist now seemed to cling to his thoughts. Something was...

Off...

Suddenly, a great crackling woke him from his dase. Something underground suddenly shook the earth with terrible force. Deafening sounds of crumbling and cracking sprung forth from the direction of the ruined city. Huge displays of dirt being thrust into the air, rocks flying, ground being torn.

The whole city seemed to fold in on itself, and a gargantuan sinkhole began to form in the middle of it.

From that dark pit, rose the silhouette of a towering spire. In total silence, and with terrible speed it charged into the sky, until it nearly touched the stars.

There it rested. Single and strong. The purple mist's source now known.

Ren slowly began to register what he was seeing. Raising a hand to try and wave the hallucination away.

"Wha... the?" He said, now pushing against the cold earth, forcing himself up. Wheezing as he did so.

He leaned on one leg, taking a strong breath before pushing himself up, and over to the side of The Basement entrance.

Stumbling, he smacked into the small charred wooden post that was stuck into the ground next to it. It used to have a small painted sign on it. With the words, Ren's Workshop.
His ma had helped him paint it when he was younger...
A single tear rolled down his face, adding to the wetness of the past flood.

In the darkness, Ren turned, strained his eyes into slits.
Seeing only an approaching purple mist, and a towering spire.
Almost mechanical in its form.

Very real.