Prescience
The city was a shattered hulk; desolate, cold, and
ruinous. The darkness that enveloped it was broken intermittently
by the harsh glow of fires burning in the night. There was
no living thing to be seen on the deserted streets, save one man.
He was garbed in a flowing trench coat, and a sword was slung across
his back. Had he been in a lighter mood, the figure would have
realized how much of a cliché he was at the moment, walking in a
shattered city with a sword across his back. Had he realized it,
he would have known that he was the archetypal post-apocalyptic
hero. He walked with purpose. He was a man on a
Mission. What that Mission might be, he was not too sure, but he
was pretty certain that it did not involve him being in any deserted
city. That thought alone drove him to walk, seeking to leave the
flattened metropolis behind him.
There was a sudden noise, the shifting of rubble off
to the side of the road. The man stopped and unsheathed his
sword. Experience had taught him to not believe in coincidental
rubble shifting. He was soon proven correct by a low, guttural
snarl. Peering into the darkness, he could discern two hideous,
glowing eyes. They were red eyes, of course; the type of eyes reserved
by horror movies for vampires, lycanthropes, and the like. The
man’s pulse quickened. He knew that the eyes did not belong to
any of those fantastical creatures, but to something much more
realistic and much, much more dangerous. They were the eyes of a
human: a rag-clothed, crazed human who was quite homicidal and
was not above brutally slaughtering any other life form that happened
to cross his path.
The sword-toting man dodged nimbly to one side as
the crazed man leapt at him from the shadows. A swift kick to the
hindquarters sent the derelict skidding across the ground. He
recovered swiftly and turned to face the intruder, his face contorted
not only by mindless rage, but also by the Status Effect. He
circled the clichéd man, looking for a weakness or opening in
the man’s defenses. With an inhuman snarl, he leapt again, this
time coming in low and fast. He succeeded in latching on to the
other’s leg, and opened his mouth to bite. That, however, was as
far as he got before four feet of metal crashed through his skull and
pinned him to the ground by his head. The one left living shook
the other’s limp arms off of his leg and removed his sword from the
other’s shattered skull. “Too easy,” he muttered to himself as he
resumed his lonely walk.
The appearance of several Status Effects in front of
him served to stop his walk yet again. “Perhaps I spoke too
soon,” he mused, unsheathing his sword again and taking a defensive
stance. The world suddenly shifted, ripped in two, and was
consumed by darkness.
Riley awoke in bed, staring at the ceiling. It
was still dark, and the clock on his nightstand proclaimed the time to
be 2:00 am. He sat up and stared at the foot of his bed, noticing
for the first time that the chest there was glowing with a soft blue
light. “Oh come on!” he
exclaimed to nobody in particular (Scotty was, of course, listening,
but could do little but give a sympathetic growl from his position on
the chest). Riley was about to get up and examine the chest, but
was suddenly gripped by the acute urge to fall asleep again. His
body went limp, and he began to dream again.
The swordsman was clearly in trouble. While he
had managed to take down a fair number of his assailants, there were
still a good many to be dealt with, and they were beginning to
overpower him. Soon they would infect him, and he would become
one of them, a victim of the Status Effect. He mustered himself
for one final assault, a maneuver of such proportions that it would
hopefully end the battle for all of them, permanently. He reached
into a pocket of his coat and withdrew a grenade, one that would quite
literally level the battleground. It would take him with it, but
given the choice between mindless torment and death, the decision was
not very hard for him to make. He would not allow himself to
become one of them, even if it meant his own destruction. That
was the right thing to do. These were the thoughts running
through his head as he managed to clear a bit of space around him by
swinging his sword in a large arc. He prepared to activate the
grenade, shutting his eyes first as he did not want to witness his own
end.
There was a loud thwack, followed by a series of
such sounds, followed by the sound of multiple carcasses hitting the
ground. The man opened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of
his former assailants lying upon the ground, their heads smashed to a
pulp. He looked around, searching for who could have done such a
thing, but stopped when he felt cold metal across his neck. He
chanced a peek downwards and saw that the object was a long metal rod
that was imprinted along the length of it with strange runes and
symbols. The staff suddenly withdrew, and he felt two arms clamp
around him tightly. A head of blue hair appeared next to his and
smiled at him. “Thought you needed some help.” He stared
back in amazement.
“You? But… but how?” He turned to make
sure of what it was he was seeing. Currently hugging him was a
blue-haired girl, one with a metal staff now pressing into his spine.
The girl smiled childishly. “I have a
staff. I hit things with it. Hard.”
“I left you a year ago!” he exclaimed. “You
were supposed to stay there. You were supposed to stay safe.”
“Well, there was a slight change of plans,” she
replied, shrugging.
“Oh, is that all? Just a change of
plans?” The man was clearly becoming annoyed. “You could
have been killed, following me like this!” he exclaimed.
The girl raised an eyebrow. “Funny, coming
from you. I did just save your life, after all.”
The man sighed. “Hmph, you have a point, I
suppose.” He shouldered his sword and resumed walking.
“Well,” he continued, “as long as you’re here now, you may as well come
with me.”
The girl grinned; she had won the argument.
She hurried to catch up with him, voicing a question as she did
so. “Where exactly are you headed?”
This time it was the man’s turn to smile. “Out
of this wasteland, for starters.”
“And after that?” the girl persisted.
He stopped walking and turned to face her,
shrugging. “I’m not altogether sure. Wherever I end up, I
suppose.” He started walking again, and the girl stood still for
a moment before following him.
“Sounds good to me.”
So was it worth the wait? I'll
have you know that I had started writing about three different stories
before finally settling on this one. Do you know how
disheartening it is to realize that you've just deleted two pages of
story that you once thought was quality but now realized was total
crap? It's no picnic, I can tell you that. In any event,
don' t get too excited over this update (if you're even reading this),
because I'm not sure what the next step is going to be. Of
course, that's pretty much normal for me, isn't it?
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