World In Turmoil

39: Rennand Yallenteno

His hands held the cold metal console in a tight grip, as he watched cold orange lights flash across a dashboard that glared back at him. The sound of grinding gears below him, and the scintillating crunch of cracked kelcecrete under the mech's metallic stride, gave his soul a strange satisfaction as he rose from that dark basement.

A lone hound trailing after him. Dark pelt hiding it in the dark shadows of the steep stairway.

Slowly, each jolt of motion sending stinging pain through his scorched leg, Rennand Yalenteno greeted the dawning day. Night had come and gone, and now the sun shone. Brighter than he had ever seen it before.

As the shocking sunlight slowly softened upon his tired eyes, he saw the ruin of a home crumbling to dust in the searing light.

The mech finally ascended the long staircase, and set itself firmly upon cold ashen ground, tinted with a black composition of softly glowing embers, and brick rubble.

He dared not to look any further.
He couldn't bring himself to.
Yet, he could not resist the yearning pinch to look upon his long lost world.

His eyes, pained, rolled upwards towards a vast and stretching scene. A world left as ashen as the ground at his feet. The distant mountains stained black by the remains of furnaced forests.

Ashes and burned soil.

Even the fields that rolled around him were mere cold brown piles of soot and cinders.

The blind spot in his vision, was that great metropolis he dared to even acknowledge

Still, at the very center the great spire stood and as he watched from the corner of his eye, a small shard of purple form sheared off and fell with a silent grace towards the shattered ruin of a city, it's collision sending a faint rumble through the barren blaze-stripped earth that was his home.

But, to the far far north. Along the great valley, rolled an approaching dust cloud. Not a dust cloud kicked up by natural means, but by small specks of blue glinting metal that rolled old wheels towards their old homes.

The Protectorate.

They were coming to help...

Were they...?
Coming to finish the job?
Or to save what could be saved?

Slowly, Ren's eyes closed as his mind worked itself into a fit not worth describing. The people he had trusted were coming, yet they had already come.

The Last Stand had destroyed this civilization, yet now the petty Protectorate wished to do what?
To do what?
To clean up what was left of their failure?
To fulfill their half-hearted duty. To... make more die?... or to try to let some live...

His hands crept slowly down to his legs, and rubbed against them for warmth and to remember old comforts, but his baked flesh greeted him again with a sharp screaming jolt of pain that sent a tear streaming from both his eyes. Yet, he had grown accustomed to this unreasonable feeling of morbid stabbing turmoil and refused to pull his hand away.

He sat there, moving his hand across the blackened seared flesh that was the scar of his hero's failure. The jolting pain cascading through his entire existence. 

His head ached. His mind swam. This strange spell of dizziness kept coming and going. His thoughts were stable for one moment, then gone the next. Like he was two people at once.

He felt so so so different from before. From mere hours ago.

...When had this all started...?

...Last night...?

Or was this already the next week of a siege...

It. It had to be last night... Yesterday evening... How long had he slept at the bottom of the basement stairs?

He had undoubtedly hit his head... twice now surely.

Recalling the small rock that had been his pillow the first time around, his right hand rose up and touched the small dent to the right of his forehead. The blood had coagulated into a hard shield by now. His body trying to keep itself safe. Despite his own efforts.

He couldn't trust himself.
He was sure of this.
Or could he?

"...Ugh..."

His eyes again turned to the city ruins. Letting his mind wander, Sara came to mind.

That girl... she was gone now too.

Yes he had forgotten for a short time. But now. Now it seemed to come to him so naturally. As if he could go talk to her right now. To ask for comfort. To get reassurance...

That was impossible now.

Even his family had forsaken him. He was left here. Standing in this old crusted dirt surrounded by... 

He stopped himself, he had thought too much on this situation already. He needed medical assistance. And... logically, it was either that protectorate convoy, or the ruins of the Gersanto Hospital that would help him.

A glint of blue metal caught his eyes. Not just any old glare. But the glare of a window. Like a pure reflection of the sun, a beam pierced his sight, and showed like a beacon the location of a small ship. Sat, quietly on top of the husk of a building in the middle of the city.

Was that...?
His father?
Their old ship...?

Was he hallucinating? It was possible... Though if that really was the ship he had heard of in his father's old stories why would it land there?  He couldn't be sure. But.

Maybe they thought I went looking for Sara...

He... he had to go.

Before his mind truly left him.

The mech, resumed it's march, towards that ruin of a city.