Eon

Chapter 15

There was a loud crack of receding timber followed by the roaring of flames.

All around was the dying of structures which had stood for decades before, stubborn frames which clung to their existence like a cancer. They rose above the ground eagerly, running from the flames, but it was useless and soon the fire found them and ate them and then they were no more. The air had been replaced with thick smoke, black and disgusting, the sins of a race culminating into relaity. The smoke was so dominant one could not breath.

Below the frames and the smoke was the embers of a dead city. The tiny sparks floated all around, swaying in clouds of bright fury and disintegrating wood and canvas. Ashes caked the ground, pilfering the ruins with no remorse. The snow-white ash was the last remnant of what had once existed before, of a time of love and happiness, reduced to decaying masses. The crackling of embers and the screaming of animals were the only things heard now for all other things had died.

In the midsts of this terrible scene are the Casks. They walked around slowly, statues animated, their glowing armor and sinister rifles parsing through the smoky haze. They wore their masks and their glowing eyes shifted yellow. The aliens picked through the rubble, every once in awhile turning to each other silently, communicating through private com-links embedded within their technologies. Even their strange trumpet-noses were hidden, making them seem as if they were composed entirely of metal which the ash could not touch.

There was a sudden bellow as the remnants of Far-Sky's great wall receded into Eon. The Casks simultaneously turned to the disturbance but then ignored it as they went back to sifting through corpses which littered the ground.

A particularly large Cask entered the miasma and went up to one of his kind. A sharp pinging noise sounded from within the suit of the alien.

"We will not find anything more," the large Cask said. "Our work here is done."

"There may be some hiding," the other inquired.

"Then they will die with their city. Come. Survivors hide in the plains with their nomads. The High Council want us to reconvene at the forest-line. Let's finish the job."

Both Casks nodded at the same time. The pinging sounded again and then the aliens were once again simple reapers surveying the land. They stepped over the corpses of little children and mothers clutching babies for the Casks held no sympathy for the dead and did not bury anything, not even their own. A building fell behind the aliens and a cloud of flames burst upward into the night's sky. The flame was like a phoenix stretching outward, the tips of its wings stretching far.

One by one the Casks left the remains of Far-Sky. They marched towards the plains, methodically. On the outskirts of the city strange trees had been erected, iron tendrils swaying at odd directions. Woven into these terrible trees were the Cheson, thousands upon thousands of bodies strung up and left to rot in the flame and black. Men, women, and children. Elderly and the young. They were dead, beyond dead for their souls were damned and they would not find peace in this life or the next.

***

Maleen awoke to the cooing of a bird. She convulsed sharply as a nightmare passed away. She began to breathe heavily, searching here and there for some imaginary thing, and then shook her head sharply in order to focus, to remind herself of the task at hand. She knew the next days ahead would be key, a final verdict upon her people.

The cleric emerged outside, blinking as the sun blinded her. She rose her hand to block out the shifting rays and then looked out to the Huron village. The establishment was in a state of controlled chaos as the Cheson ran here and there, some shouting to one another while others focused on their manual work. They were moving large crates and canvas-packages across the plains and they were deconstructing the tents that they called home. Soon there would be no trace of the village and the Cheson would be gone, fleeing to the north.