the third novel in the works

I have yet again another novel that fell to the wayside, this one stretched for a couple of chapters before it was lost. It was yet another long night in the army. I was on command of quarters and needed something to do.

The pines needles crunch softly under foot. The damp earth left in the wake of the storm fill my nostrils. Was this what peace felt like? I wasn't for sure on the matter myself, But it was what I imagined when my mind retreated into itself to shut out the horrors of world. My mind snapped back to reality and I tasted what the true world was once again. The thick and dark with the slow death and decay of the world. I sat atop the skeletal heap of rubble taking in what one would only think hell would look like. Below the horizon the dim globe of what once was the radiant sun sank slowly below the scabbed scenery. A great city reduced to ruins, whose names long forgotten, spread before me. Tiny specks in the distance moved through the wreckage, a pack of feral dogs looking for less fortunate prey.

I had nothing,no one to call mine, no home within the shell of the civilized world that everyday consumed itself. But yet in my mind images of the grove of pines,the sweet aroma of rain and earth haunting me, chasing away the horrors from every moment I take to rest my eyes and draining the infection of reality from my body. I unfurled my crude map from my bag, populated with the symbols of the hazardous land. I was fortunate enough to find it on a fallen man who found himself prey to the feral packs. I began scrawling to show where I was and what I saw, there was only destruction and decay recorded. No signs of rebirth were found in the lines I drew, only what was know but not seen. My day was done and with the falling of the sun I would have to retreat to safer grounds. I had picked up tattered gear and trinkets in my days travel but not enough to amount to dinner for my weary body. It was no matter though, the hunger inside me would not my filled by food. Only the pristine illusion of the pines and smell of the earth would sate me in the slightest. The aura of something special within the thought, so familiar to me but so buried in the dark of my mind, It was maddening. My head began to throb, the scars on my scalp sizzled with pin pricks of pain. I focused too hard on the things that had been ripped from my mind leaving the maddening pines behind and all other thing dark inside.

I began picking my way through the shards of the city down into its depths. I scanned the street where rusted husks of machines and twisted steely vines had landed leaving a labyrinth. I picked my path through the steely snags and found the lightly lit landing of the underground. This was the rough refuge of all the dwellers of the ruins. The stone stair slowly descended into deep bowels of one of the few trading stations left in the world. I was back again to what would be a home were I to claim it. The stations tiers were divided up into quarters, Near the entrance was the merchants markets where you could trade your wares. The next was the tavern district where you could buy your belly full as well as you bed. The next was the labor guilds who took care of the whole place and issued out jobs. The final quarter was the slave quarter where bodies could be bought and sold. That quarter I dared not go. There were three tiers in total the first was merchants and tradesmen, the second was the wealthy and the third was machine works. The lower two I had never visited myself but heard tales of the extravagance of the hedonist lifestyle of the wealthy and the grandeur of the machine works. All things in the station had their price and all things could be bought and sold. The rich would buy bodies for their twisted pleasures, the guilds would buy parts and pieces to manufacture wares and to repair the machine works and everyone else would banter and barter to stay alive. Then there was me, coming and going as I pleased, deciding weather the world inside was more dangerous then outside. Bringing bits back to fill my pocket and let me lay my head.

I came into the crush of the station at the high point of bartering. People dancing around each other to make it to the next stall. I knew the pulse of the area, the electricity of its people and how they moved. I knew where to take trinkets and where to take gear. I made my way through the crowds with my head down and ignoring everyone but who I was looking for. The hair on my neck pricked up as I felt thousands of body move and thousands of voices stop at once. I raised my head to see what had caused the pin drop silence, at first it was soft in the distance and then I heard it. The perfect rhythm drumming across the silence. Left, one, two, left, foot fall of boots so close to sounding like one it made it all the more frightening with the silence. Polished black with brass buttons, moving like lines on paper, the black guard moved through the parted crowds. It wasn’t the polished black that caught my eye but rather a blooming flower sprouting from the center moving within the cold darkness around her. She floated along with the mechanical movements of the ranks. Frocked in fine fabrics and glittering jewels with waterfalls of dark hair framing her smooth and soft features sculpted from creamy flesh. MY head split wide open in a thunderclap of pain. Memories began to flash through my head, ripping ragged ravines in their wake. I weakened and fell into darkness.