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Time for something a little different.
I needed a break from writing The Undiscovered Journey. Originally, I just put down a few ideas and ran with it for an entire afternoon. I wasn't going to make it a story at all. It was really aimed at getting the creative energy flowing so I could go and attack Journey with renewed vigor. But shheesh, it's turned out to be half decent!
The story is set some 600 years into the future. The Earth is badly damaged and has become one massive desert. Most life has been wiped from the face of the ill-fated planet. The fate of one city, now in ruins, begins the story and we find somebody there we'll all recognise. A least, somebody in the family.
What I'll do here I don't yet know. It's the story that wasn't meant to be one, but is. Maybe I'll come back to it for further inspiration to inject into Journey. Maybe I'll come back to it because I can't sleep at night. Either way, let me know what you all think and time will tell.
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EXISTENCE
The shimmering heat made clear vision all but impossible. The landscape seemed alive with movement, every surface dancing within a quicksilver blanket that caught odd reflections off whatever lay nearby. Crumbling buildings, once grand, decayed under the onslaught of a superheated sun, which sat amid an almost yellow sky, tinged with only the faintest blue. A wind twirled spinning funnels of yellow dust along broken streets, their movement seeming at odds with the otherwise silent scene, their passage driven, and shaped, by the unseen hands of a harried atmosphere.
Drifts of lifeless sand, gritty, and flint edged, enveloped large portions of the city. Built for another age, another time, the crumbling metropolis could do nothing but let the smaller drifts join with others, and form large dunes that marched slowly across the alien landscape, forever smothering the works of those who had built the city long ago.
Life had once thrived, millions of humans calling the city home, the climate quite cool, and the landscape green with rain-driven benevolence. Yet, this planet sat within the confounding and endless reaches of the universe, a small speck against the limitless galaxies that sparkled in the dark void of space. The people of this planet, had once theorized they may be the only intelligent beings throughout this whole universe, never having made known contact with another intelligent entity.
Deep-rooted intelligence, borne of the universe itself could have told them, as could simple common sense, that nothing is forever. The universe changes, no corner is forgotten, nothing is left to stand the tests of time unchanged. Sooner or later, the history books are wiped clean, and begun again, a new story unfolding within their pages.
The history book that contained this particular planet's story hung complete by a thread, the clock ticking irrepressibly forward to the day it slipped from all knowledge, its pages only having room to describe how it would surely end.
The casual observer might dismiss the planet as dead, lifeless, and waiting only to be crushed by the immense forces that wrung out from the sputtering star at the centre if it's solar system. But a closer look would reveal something astonishing, something that lay testimony to the ability of life to exist where, at first, it might appear impossible. For life clung to the dying world still, it's inhabitants plying every scrap of gained knowledge they possessed to survive.
Harsh lessons had been learned, but all too late. Wars had ravaged the planet. Cancerous weapons were bought to bear all too frequently, tipping the fine balance of their planet's health toward ruin. People had multiplied beyond the small blue planet's ability to sustain them. And so the people fought. Fought for dominance, fought for food, water, and the ability to exist. Millions died, and this might well have been the end for the people of this world, except, the universe had a final lesson for them to learn.
Nobody really ever knew from where it came. Some theorized, others guessed, but ultimately, its presence was missed until the cobalt-blue sky betrayed its unerring path. From deep space came an asteroid, almost half the size of the blue planet's moon, sent forth by yet another history book closing its pages elsewhere within the endless universe. So intent had the humans been on their dominance over each other, on what they had thought was their fight for survival, they had left their own deep space sensors untouched for decades. When they finally did look, amid their forgotten and dusty labs, and the realization hit that they were all in deadly peril, only then did they decide to work together. Had they decided to do this earlier hope may have existed, but as it was they were far too late.
The asteroid hit their already battle-scarred planet in the year of their own calendar 2644. That stroke pushed the humans within a hair's breadth of life's precipice, along with the majority of other life forms, in all their majesty, calling the planet home. Darkness enveloped the world for decades, driving the humans underground, and causing catastrophic losses amongst all plant life left to battle for survival on the planet's surface. The planet itself was scarred badly, it's oceans vaporized and ejected into space, its moon thrust into a wildly different orbit, and its spin on its long-established axis wrenched a full ninety degrees.
An immense cold gripped the planet's surface as the dust cloud reigned supreme in the vastly altered atmosphere, making it unliveable for previous inhabitants. The humans hung by a thread in their underground cities, but survived. Very little else survived with them.
Eventually, the dust in the atmosphere thinned, and the light of the sun began to shine through. Soon though, scholars noted how the sun now appeared much larger in the sky than it had before, concluding with trembling consternation that the planet's orbit around the sun had changed dramatically. The dust in the sky cleared, and the splendour of the night sky returned, yet the blue day-time colour they all yearned for only returned as a shade of its former self.
The gripping cold left, only to be replaced by a ravenous heat that blasted over the surface in superheated storms, tearing and ripping at what remained with violent fury. The humans again weathered this with a stoic grip on the little that remained of the lives and loves they once knew. Yet the cost was a further dwindling in their numbers, their resources too scant to keep more alive.
Years passed in subterranean sequestration, eking out a bare living, doing nothing but surviving for better days. None knew if better days would come, and some despaired, but eventually, they did come, of a sort. The storms lessened, the winds no longer stripping flesh from the bone if unprotected. Eventually, the surface became intermittently still, and the humans could venture forth across the surface of their beloved planet once more. The storms were still frequent however, and they kept a wary eye to the horizon for the tell tale signs of their return.
The humans quickly learned that their world had become a desert, a mere cracked shadow of what it once was. Yet, true to form, they refused to give up on themselves, and began to explore their forever-changed world to see what could be salvaged. They tapped underground water, grew simple crops, and farmed the animals they had managed to keep alive along with them. But it soon emerged their situation was hopeless, their planet all but dead.
Factions formed within the survivors, and the ugly head of violence returned. Strong-willed individuals fought to control the rising tempers, but although they moved mountains to keep the peace, splits in the communities occurred and the various factions separated. Separate underground strongholds became established, and the peace began to crack and fade with rising resentment amongst the 'clans' as they came to be known.
Amongst all this, a small group of gifted men and women put aside their differences, and once again worked together, throwing themselves against the task of escaping their dying planet. They knew, with bitterness in their hearts, that if they did not succeed, mankind would wink out in a final battle, as if they had never been.
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The ancient streetscape burned with the late afternoon heat, the once-smooth asphalt now cracked into a patchwork of decay, and too hot to touch with unprotected feet. A hot breeze blew gently off the dune sea surrounding the once-magnificent city, and caused sand to cascade from the ancient walls on either side of the street in streaking cascades of dry, lifeless, flinted curtains. The flaming sun now hung low in the yellowed sky, but still held a forceful heat for those daring to venture out into its descending brilliance.
Long locks of lightly waved night-black hair blew in the heated wind, unkempt, but holding a deep lustre that seemed drastically out of place amid the forlorn decaying streetscape. Deep-green eyes searched the shadows from behind the sheltering lenses of almost mirror-like sunglasses, appearing to will some indescribable intent from the slowly cooling bricks and battered ancient buildings. A smooth hand came up to adjust the sunglasses, and to tame a long, gently animated black stand that had fallen across a face of striking refinement.
Lauranna Croft, yet to reach twenty years of age, leaned her back against the shaded side of a long-ago-built redbrick wall, the radiant heat within permeating the deepest reaches of her body. She stilled, and waited, her eyes glued to the stark contrasts of the sunlit street opening out before her, and the shaded alcoves contained along its length. Her black, calf-high leather boots crackled against the sharp-edged grit at her feet as she adjusted her weight, her long, aerobic legs moving slightly, yet silently, as a more comfortable equilibrium was found.
Equally black leather strapping criss-crossed its way up each of her legs, ending at mid thigh where they were riveted to a thicker cross-strap to hold them in place. Each piece was moulded to fit her legs perfectly, leaving no lengths looping off her to catch on surrounding terrain. A supple, short, brown leather skirt left only a thin line of skin before it took over from where the strap leg bracers left off, and rose to her slim waist.
A brown leather vest with dangerously low plunging neckline outfitted her upper body, and included yet more black leather laces that tightened and adjusted the garment to fit. The vest extended only to the bottom of her ribcage, leaving her flat and tanned midriff open to the elements. Her wrists and forearms were encased in heavy black leather bracers, and her upper arms and shoulders unencumbered, revealing work-strengthened arms that sweated slightly in the heat of the dwindling afternoon.
Heat was her constant companion, as it was for every living soul scratching out an existence within the ruined city. Modesty, once an overruling element in the lives of people, those who'd raised the city from the bare earth, had to be forgotten. The fierce, and unrelenting sun had to be respected, and life shaped around its sheer dominant power. All clothing worn by the clans now showed plenty of skin, even her own brief vest had diamond shaped holes cut through the leather in places to keep her as cool as possible when she invariably sweated. Cotton was extremely rare, yet a few full-length cotton robes did exist for those daring to travel within the dune sea, an event rarely undertaken.
Lauranna's eyes narrowed as movement caught her eye, movement unexplained by the heat shimmer, or by the falling streams of sand as they became caught within wind gusts that spiralled through the ruins on missions of escape. Slowly, with deliberate stealth, she arched her back away from the wall as if she were a gymnast executing a long-practiced routine. Something, amid the heat and dust, was not as it should be, and tingled at the edges of her perception like a barely visible ghost. Incrementally, Lauranna crouched, with slow and smooth movements, until the hem of her leather skirt brushed against her sturdy lace-up boots. Then she stilled again to wait.
Shadow was her only cover, and she had no idea if she'd been seen, or was now being hunted or stalked by some unknown entity. Movement caught her eye again, as if a dark shadow had silently flowed from one shaded alcove to the next amid the distortions of the heat shimmer. Cold pinpricks raced across her uncovered midriff as the movement occurred yet again, subtle, and in the distance still, but closer than it had been before. Indistinct, Lauranna could make out neither shape nor form, friend or foe in the apparition.
Nothing had survived the impact, she knew, except a small number of humans who'd managed to live underground, until conditions aboveground became hospitable enough for them to leave their dark homes. The only life, the only intelligence on the surface was what they had bought aboveground with them. They had no knowledge of other survivors, no knowledge if other people still clung to life elsewhere on the planet, but hoped with a burning fury that they did.
Since the splitting of the clans, some fifty years past, relations between most had become tenuous at best. Some had plotted to destroy others, some wished to enslave others, some wanted war, and some simply dwindled to a few ragged, hopeless remains. Lauranna's clan, simply called 'Destiny', still numbered three hundred, and had not allowed themselves to fall into the dark pits of despair that so ravaged other clans, tearing out their human souls and turning them into maddened beasts.
Clan Jupiter lived on the other side of the vast ruined city. They numbered only around two hundred souls, but had also staved off the maddening drive to become rabid, and also tried their utmost to keep a modicum of peace and culture alive within their community. Two years past they had been approached by clan Destiny for an alliance, and were deeply suspicious when first contact had been made. Since that time however, both clans had seen the decay apparent in the others around the city, and had worked hard, put aside differences, and let bygones be bygones, for the benefit of survival. Their ties were still not strong however, and shades of past suspicions remained, but at least clans Destiny and Jupiter had begun the process of healing. Then the attacks had begun.
Driven by clan Chaos, the largest of the clans, containing some two thousand souls, the 'cleansing' had begun, whereby any clan not aligned with Chaos would be wiped from the face of the crippled Earth. Chaos had their stronghold at the very heart of the ruined city, within vast structures from the previous world that had survived the impact, and the subsequent hellstorm. Currently, they warred with other clans closer to their borders. Jupiter and Destiny were both situated on the outskirts of the city, at opposite ends, and somewhat removed from the carnage, but both knew that only time was between them and another war that would end their existence.
Lauranna let a breath slowly escape her lips, the soft sound as it exited seeming amplified in the quiet, apocalyptic landscape. Was this some clandestine attack, she thought, come to invade the sanctity that clan Destiny worked so hard to keep? Perhaps, but all such incursions so far had been brutal, uncomplicated, and seen plainly marching toward them from afar, not skulking amid the shadows as was happening right now. No, she decided, this was something else.
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