"Vatica, City of Rains."
Mac looked up at the boiling black and purple clouds rolling across the leaden sky towards the inhabited part of the city.
"City of the Dammed 's more like it."
She muttered as she walked past yet another burned out house, though this one had a level of destruction the others lacked. The steel edging around the windows was bent and twisted outwards; the second story no longer existed and the architecture suggested a third should have been there.
*Probably some High Family pissed off one of the local Gang Lords, enter the Peddlers, and exit the house*
"Nice amount of shrapnel flying around."
Mac murmured, entering the doorway. She silently commended whatever young up-start had thrown the 'drink', or whatever it was, 'drinks' didn't usually cause this much damage. She noted the trash spread around the bottom floor and the tattered remains, human bones with strips of cloth still hanging from them.
"Rats!"
She snarled in disgust and spat.
"Must be getting desperate to be scoutin' so far from home."
Mac looked back the way she had come, the devastation from the Religious Wars four years before stretched out for kilometres. Burned and bombed houses, churches, and Guilds, buildings with shattered windows and doors, if they were standing at all. No spear of green broke the desolation of the landscape and none would for centuries to come, the Fighters for the New Religion had seen to that, it was either them or the Luddites, it still hadn't been decided who detonated the last bomb, the one that had ended the Wars and taken out half the City while it was at it. And with every piece of garbage that had ever held a grenade claiming they 'did it' it probably never would. In one blast they had wiped out the entire ecosystem- the protists, the bacteria, the animals, the plants, and, in the end, the humans.
*Though there wasn't many left by then* Mac thought sardonically.
*No, as soon as things started getting heavy out here they ran for the city, like rats from a sinking ship*
Rats.
*No*
Mac corrected her earlier thought,
*Not all the animals died*
Mac looked down at the bones scattered across the ground at her feet.
*More's the pity*
Mac looked up at the boiling black and purple clouds rolling across the leaden sky towards the inhabited part of the city.
"City of the Dammed 's more like it."
She muttered as she walked past yet another burned out house, though this one had a level of destruction the others lacked. The steel edging around the windows was bent and twisted outwards; the second story no longer existed and the architecture suggested a third should have been there.
*Probably some High Family pissed off one of the local Gang Lords, enter the Peddlers, and exit the house*
"Nice amount of shrapnel flying around."
Mac murmured, entering the doorway. She silently commended whatever young up-start had thrown the 'drink', or whatever it was, 'drinks' didn't usually cause this much damage. She noted the trash spread around the bottom floor and the tattered remains, human bones with strips of cloth still hanging from them.
"Rats!"
She snarled in disgust and spat.
"Must be getting desperate to be scoutin' so far from home."
Mac looked back the way she had come, the devastation from the Religious Wars four years before stretched out for kilometres. Burned and bombed houses, churches, and Guilds, buildings with shattered windows and doors, if they were standing at all. No spear of green broke the desolation of the landscape and none would for centuries to come, the Fighters for the New Religion had seen to that, it was either them or the Luddites, it still hadn't been decided who detonated the last bomb, the one that had ended the Wars and taken out half the City while it was at it. And with every piece of garbage that had ever held a grenade claiming they 'did it' it probably never would. In one blast they had wiped out the entire ecosystem- the protists, the bacteria, the animals, the plants, and, in the end, the humans.
*Though there wasn't many left by then* Mac thought sardonically.
*No, as soon as things started getting heavy out here they ran for the city, like rats from a sinking ship*
Rats.
*No*
Mac corrected her earlier thought,
*Not all the animals died*
Mac looked down at the bones scattered across the ground at her feet.
*More's the pity*
