The last city, Earth.
the year 67899
Prologue:
Thousands of years ago, the people prospered and spread into the unknown space. Mars, Venus, and the moon were taken over by the ongoing prosperity of humans. The solar system we know of was flooded with life.
But darkness has rose more faster.
The Darkness was the force that bound the life of the worlds beyond us.
The species there has been prospering too.
Fast.
Too fast.
The humans, known as the Light. Had to bond together to fight it off.
But it overwhelmed us and the entire population of us humans had to escape back to Earth.
There, they built the Last City.
Now, we are counting every day it stands.
Guide to all the characters mentioned in this book:
Ghost:
What they do: Ghost are the avatars of the guardians that live in the Last City. They match your emotions, and know everything about your past.
Abilities:Can hack into computers and other plasma devices, can fly, teleport, and search for certain things using a infrared, touch, light, magnification, size, species, and plasma sensor.
Weapons: No abilities to combat.
Guardian:
A person that guards the Last City and eliminates the Darkness on missions on different planets.
What they do: Eliminate the Darkness and protect the Last City.
Abilities: Whatever a normal person can do.
Weapons: Can wield Weapons of any kind and can use magic.
The Darkness:
The Darkness is divided among four legions: The Fallen, The Hive, The Vex, and The Calab.
The Fallen contain two species and one type of robot:
Dregs: Armed with a plasma bolt that shoots in a beam, bad eyesight, yet their hearing is quite well.
Vandals: Vandals use a bolt that is so compressed, it bursts when it hits it's target, Vandals Are fast, though lack the energy to use their speed.
Shanks:
Shanks are the only type of robot that is in the fallen legion. They use a mechanism similar to flintlocks but the flint is replaced by a bolt of compressed plasma, which allows it's solid form. That strikes against another substance called Neophlayte. Neophlayte causes a burst of energy enough to let loose four bolts at a time through a shank's eye. Shanks can also fly.
The Hive:
The Hive is divided
Chapter 1:
Valley of remembrance, Earth
Ghost
A lone Ghost flew over the barren landscape, shooting beams of light onto the rusty cars that littered the valley floor.
It scanned it's surroundings and flew over to a crevice.
There, wedged between two cars, was a body.
The ghost's single optic swept over the person.
Scanning for signs of life.
It then zapped the unmoving human with a beam that encased his whole entire body.
And the person came to life.
Chapter 2:
Valley of Remembrance, Earth
Halt
One of the two things that Halt remembered when he woke up was his name.
He also remembered explosions and lasers firing before he blacked out.
He was swimming in the dark currents again; how long has he been in here? Halt wondered, he was conscious of the currents whisked him along through the darkness, but Halt was confused. How did he get here, and why?
Suddenly, a blue, swirling doorway appeared in front of him. Sucking the currents and Halt into the whirlpool. He desperately cried out, but no sound came out of his mouth.
Clawing uselessly at the darkness around him, he got sucked into the swirling vortex.
"Guardian, guardian! Wake up!" Halt's mind had trouble catching up.
His vision was bright.
When his eyes adjusted to the light, Halt found himself propped up by a rock and some sort of machine that looked like a three dimensional star. It had a single blue eye that scanned Halt up and down. "ok, I'm going to start this slow," said the robot, "You've been, well, dead. For a really long time."
Halt couldn't believe what the robot just said. "What?" He demanded, "what do you mean?"
The robot beeped,"Be patient," it said."Okay, so all you need to know is that this is not a safe place to talk."
Halt was confused,"what's so dangerous?" He asked, scanning the place.
The robot let out a series of beeps,"you are going to be a hard one," it said."Let's just get out of here."
By that statement, it disappeared, in a flash of blue light.
Chapter 3
Space, destination: The Last City, Earth
Ryan
A sleek, black, ship tore through the warp tunnel,
it's rocket flared with a heat so intense, the triangular ship behind it was smoking.
Ryan sat in the triangle ship, manning a joystick that was bucking furiously, trying to escape Ryan's sweaty hands.
Ryan exhaled, and spoke into the radio, "veer left! My ship is going to melt!"
The radio crackled with static and another voice responded, "Ah! Don't worry! Your X4 Phantom will hold well!"
Ryan scowled, Ben was impossible. He was about to protest when the ship in front of him veered left.
Ryan's ship stopped steaming.
By the time Ryan got to the Last City, he was exhausted.
The warp had taken entirely 20 minutes and Ryan had been holding the stick for longer than he had in his life.
As he descended into the Ship Right, he saw a legion of Arcadias leaving the vast Hangar. Another mission? He thought. There's, like twelve legions all leaving the Ship Right every day now! Ryan landed the ship on a platform and bolted it. Then he climbed jumped down from the platform and landed a drop of 30 feet without a single noise.
Thanks to the Enegrams that he wore.
Ryan walked along the railing, he had a conversation with The Speaker and he didn't want to flunk it.
Ryan hurried back to the Titan Iromita. There, he put on his new Armor and strapped a gleaming pulse rifle to his back.
Then He set off to find The Speaker.
Ryan found the Speaker overlooking the city, from the back, he looked like he never existed. He blended into the background so well Ryan almost doubled back when The Speaker said, "Ryan."
Ryan jumped, he turned and saw the background shift.
A man appeared from the center of the balcony and beckoned for Ryan to sit down in one of the chairs that were surrounding a table.
The Speaker wore his mask, as usual, and had a cape, a fusion rifle on his back, and gloves on his hands.
"Well Ryan," The Speaker said. "let's talk about why you destroyed Titan, one of our most important moons."
Chapter 4
Valley of Remembrance, Earth
Halt
When the robot disappeared, Halt was suddenly afraid.
Yes, he was annoyed, but the robot said that this place was dangerous.
Halt began to panic.
He stood up, shouting. "Hello? Hello?"
Halt scanned the terrain.
He was about to explore when a voice projected out of nowhere. "I'm still here, don't worry."
Halt jumped, He was relieved, then angry. "Where have you been?" He demanded. "I was terrified!"
The robot was visible again in a flash of blue light. "Sorry," it said. "We, Ghosts need to do that to contact with the far worlds."
Halt was utterly confused."I don't understand," he said. "what do you mean ' the far worlds.'"
The Ghost looked annoyed, if robots could do that. "I said that this place is dangerous! Now let's go!"
Halt shrugged, then followed the Ghost as it zipped between the rusty cars.
Halt was almost dead when they reached the old warehouse. He had been sprinting to keep up to the Ghost as it flew over the rough and uneven land.
The Ghost stopped at the Warehouse. "I sense the Fallen in here," it said. "I also sense something...like...mechanical."
The Ghost scanned it's surroundings with a ray of blue light. "duck!" It suddenly shouted.
Halt was confused. The Ghost just said he sensed something in existence called "The Fallen."
Why had he suddenly mentioned a species that had existed thousands of years ago?
Halt was only a split second late when he registered that the Ghost meant to duck behind the crates he was behind.
A jaw-rattling BOOM! blasted through the air and Halt was knocked off his feet.
The Ghost spun round and blasted a jet of light at a crumpled old tank.
The light raced across the surface of the tank and the tank, rusty and billions of years old, started to move forward.
Chapter 5
The Pits of Descomilation
Eris
Eris raced to another pillar and quickly jammed another case of ammo into her Hand Cannon.
She swung around the pillar and shot off a round at the endless mob of Knights.
The Knights' screeches echoed across the vast chamber, wanting Eris to surrender.
Eris knew she would be defeated. She already was, Eris rolled and leaped off a ridge as a dozen grenades were lobbed over the only barrier between her and the army of Knights.
She could feel the vibrations of the explosion caused by the grenades as she rolled, absorbing the impact of the fall.
Eris was in an entirely different place.
She was in a gigantic maze.
The walls of the maze were made of pure darkness.
Eris could feel it.
It was affecting her.
It was killing her.
Eris fell to her knees, her head spinning. She was aware that a whole Legion of Thralls were charging towards her, screeching, claws honed to a deadly edge.
Eris raced into the maze, smashing right and left with her fist, encased in deadly blue energy. Racing blindly through the maze, she stumbled upon a chasm that stretched a about a mile across.
Eris was trapped.
With the chasm ahead of her and the Thralls behind, she could only find another way out or face death.
Eris though furiously about the training she endured for an ordeal of 40 years. She remembered her teacher's words, always push the limits farther and break out of the walls that surround you.
Eris knew what to do.
She started to climb pure darkness.
The tank that the ghost cast to life rumbled forward as a heavy coat of dust blew off it. It sent a shower of sparks into the air as it's rusty hinges started to move again.
Halt could barely believe that this tank could actually work. He scrambled behind the crates as the tank roared past him.
The ghost was sending rays of light onto everything mechanical in the clearing. Tanks, cars, and trucks all started up in a brilliant flash of light, sending sheets of dust on Halt and the Ghost.
Halt looked up at the Ghost and it regarded Halt with an optic. "Take this." It said, a web of light formed in front of Halt and a shotgun appeared in front of Halt.
Halt picked it up and found his hands skimming across the shotgun, pulling levers and flipping switches.
The Ghost looked at Halt, "So you do have some memory left," it said. "let's see your aiming skills."
Halt decided to ask questions later, he jumped up from behind the barrels and spotted a dozen strange, bug-like creatures that were shooting the Ghost with bolts of green light. Halt leveled the shotgun so it was pointed a few centimeters above one of the creatures, and pulled the trigger. A bright orange flash exploded outwards from the shotgun and detonated in a flash of fire and light. By the time the fire died, which was about ten seconds, the group of those nasty creatures were reduced down to three of them. As they tried to flee, all of the tanks fired and the tank shells exploded in front of them and in the back.
The remaining of the creatures melted into darkness.
The Ghost spun a barrel roll in midair. "yipee," It said, sounding not so happy."let's go."
Halt followed the Ghost through the abandoned warehouse, his fingers clutching the shotgun as if it was his life.
It is my life. Halt thought grimly, I'm depending on it.
Halt wanted to ask the Ghost where they were going but he was afraid he had to "contact with the far worlds" to do that again.
Finally, He could hold it no longer.
"Where are we going?" Halt asked.
The Ghost said nothing, then clicked. "I'm detecting a ship in this….place...I may be wrong but…" it trailed off, leaving Halt to wonder if the Ghost was sure.
The pair arrived in a circular room with walls of iron and a...oh my gosh...Halt though as he neared it.
In the middle of the room, a pit that descended into the darkness below was glowing with a faint green light.
"The mark of the Hive," the Ghost said grimly. "The Hive is near."
Halt didn't even have to ask what the Hive was. What ever the Hive was though, Halt knew he would not like the Hive.
"So is this our destination?" Halt asked. "It doesn't look like it to me."
The Ghost hovered silently in the air for a while. Then said, "yes."
Halt frowned, he didn't see anything about the ship the Ghost he was talking about. "So what do we do now?" He asked.
The Ghost turned to face Halt. "We jump down," He said. "Or, at least you do."
Ryan was surprised, the speaker just accused of him for doing a crime that was fatal to all the guardians and people living in the Last City.
The Speaker sat silently staring at Ryan.
There was silence.
Silence.
Finally, the Speaker whispered, "do you deny this?"
Ryan was terrified by the one side of the story the Speaker saw. "It's not like that! I...was.."
The Speaker interrupted Ryan by raising his hand. "We know the truth and the truth holds firmly, we need you to confess."
Ryan bit his lip. "Look, the truth that you know is very convincing but there is another side that the darkness is covering! They want me dead!"
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