Binary

Chapter One: Family

The twin suns poured their heat down onto the small, quiet, town on a ridge. Right on the cliff's edge stood an old, crumbling abbey, one of the oldest buildings in the town of Edgestone. The stucco on its walls was crumbling, and the roof was in poor condition. The bell in the tower was old and rusted, but it still rang daily to let the farmers and ranchers know the time, as well as to remind them of the weekly church services they were missing. The structure was home to a small group of Charlotte's Devoted, and a few orphans who had lost their parents in the Animas-Cirean war.

The rest of Edgestone sat clustered around the east side of the abbey walls. It was a collection of adobe houses with flat wooden roofs, joined by unpaved dirt roads, and with wooden porches to keep the heat of the twin suns away. There was a fountain in the center of town that hadn't had water in it for years. In the same plaza, a flag sat idly on a long metal pole. It had at one point been a deep black color, ringed with red, and with a constellation of stars traced on its face, proudly declaring this tiny desert town to be the edge of the Kingdom of Starlust. The suns had dulled the color from it to a grey.

All around the town on the ridge grew short, gnarled, desert pinions and junipers. The ground was broken occasionally by sandstone, gypsum, and limestone boulders. Over the ridge behind the abbey was a fifty-foot drop to the sandy floor of the Great Desert. Nothing grew there, and the dunes stretched onto the horizon, making even the harsh, sparsely forested, plateau seem lush and green in comparison.

The desert wind would sometimes blow sand over the dunes in the distance, kicking up storms that would reveal the ruins of fallen skyscrapers and buildings, remnants of the Elder Days. You don sit at the ridge's edge and see for miles. Sometimes one could see a tower laying on its side out there, or the broken roof of some structure poking out of the dirt. Or the top fin of an old starship, if one believed in such things.

Into this town rode a quiet group of four, with their hoods drawn and their light, matching, red cloaks gathered around them. They stopped at the stables that sat at the far end, and the stable boy ran out to take care of their horses. He wasted no time, after casting a glance at their cloaks. He knew expensive garb when he saw it.

The woman at the head of the group threw her hood back, exposing her face to the harsh sunlight, and looked around the town. Her red cloak was fastened with a broach that the stable boy knew immediately. It was a brass ring with three lines running through it, signifying her as a ranking officer and most likely the captain of the small group. She handed him her reigns without a word, and he bowed to her awkwardly.

"What a town," said one of her companions, a young man with a light beard, as he looked around, "just because humans can live anywhere doesn't mean we should..."

"Why would anyone choose to lead such a difficult existence..." a younger woman in the left of the formation wondered aloud. She had a distant, calculating look in her eyes that was easily mistaken for a scowl.

"Don't be rude," muttered the leader, "and don't let your guard down, he could be expecting us."

The last of the troop was a much younger woman, hardly an adult, but she looked up at her commanding officer.

"Do you really think it could be a trap, Arien? Even after all these years?"

"If there's one thing I remember about Uncle Darius, it's that he knows how to catch you off guard," answered the leader. The four of them looked around furtively, and one by one began removing their hoods.