Zadown Posted April 19, 2007 Report Posted April 19, 2007 He was still trembling from terror. There'd been another traveller, as rare as that should be. Unless you listened to those Infinity Walkers, curse on their theories. He had not stared, of course, tried to act like a mindless automaton. But ... inside his cowering imagination he could feel countless nightmares hatch, of ripples and what they might do. No way to correct it of course, not on this side. The ancient pictography showed two sickle-shaped moons drifting towards the rising sun. Taking a deep breath of the odorless, body-temperature air, he stepped forward, towards the day before yesterday.
Zadown Posted April 19, 2007 Author Report Posted April 19, 2007 "Liches today, looks like. Fierce blizzards and bolts of ice, I presume." And the usual stench of a decaying, dead city. The warrior sighed, his glowing golden platemail making a soft sound, then he reached forward to bar the window. It clicked shut, completing the sphere of protective enchantments again. He continued, in a cultivated, musing voice. "They don't know when to give up." "They? They!?" A broken note of hysteria in her shrill voice, just the sort of weakness they did not need here, at the end of the world. Perhaps sixteen survivors was an unlucky number after all.
Zadown Posted April 19, 2007 Author Report Posted April 19, 2007 Even the fear was academic, theoretical. He refused to shut down the music to hear their approach, was almost happy to go through fictional fighting patterns where he executed every move with stark clarity, his opponents barely more than wax dolls reeling from his blows. Truth would have been uglier, the roles reversed - mind willing, body bloodied. Another tidal wave of unquiet, soul resonating with the dual melodies of anxiety and robotic trance, arms going through motions so worn they did not register in his memory any more, eyes trembling at the vague shadows. Fear transformed, fear ruled and twisted.
Zadown Posted April 24, 2007 Author Report Posted April 24, 2007 In the moment of dawn she had to cough, had to close her eyes as her body shook. She wasn't used to the local air - and when she opened her eyes and saw the city, there was something else she had trouble getting used to. The city opened before her, narrow towers of steel and glass and rust rising from the smog, sun glinting and sparkling on the newer ones, creating deep shadows behind the older ones. Air was still acrid, the noisy ancient mechs still made her head hurt - but she could see the grandness of it all, now.
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