Long ago stood the kingdom of Requiem, a land of men who could grow wings and scales, breathe fire, and take flight as dragons. Requiem ruled the sky. But Dies Irae, a tyrant leading an army of griffins, hunted Requiem's people, burned their forests, and shattered their temples. Requiem fell. This ancient land now lies in ruin, its halls crumbled, its cries silenced, its skeletons littering the burned earth. In the wilderness, a scattering of survivors lives in hiding. The griffins still hunt them, and every day promises death. Will Requiem's last children perish in exile... or once more become dragons and fly to war?

This is a short work I wrote in college. I had misplaced it for awhile and then recently found it again. Then I lost it again for a bit, but located it once more and decided to share it here. It details the first manned mission to Mars and the more or less colossal bungle that's made of it. This story makes reference to the old Viking probes, but not the Curiosity Rover because that hadn't been launched at the time this was written and I'm far too lazy to update this. After posting this I realized it also makes reference to Pluto as a planet, a title which has since been stripped from it. That will remain unchanged as well because I still like to think of Pluto as an underdog planet. Anyway this was an important early work for me in that I definitely felt it was the best thing I had ever written up to that point, and it probably was. It also had the distinction of getting rejected by my school's literary magazine 3 times! This includes one time where they strung me along for awhile sending me notes about how it was a finalist for consideration before it ultimately got rejected in favor of a story about a depressed college kid who thinks about sex and death a lot and eventually attempts suicide. I believe there were two other stories in the same edition with the exact same premise. I guess this just didn't fit the "tone" they were going for. But it's okay because now I present it here for the first time online. Hope you enjoy. P.S. What's the deal with my fascination with chickens? I don't know. They just crack me up for some reason.