The city burned.

On more days than he cared to count, one part or another of Domino City remained alight. The flames touched the sky, lighting it brighter than the streetlights once had. Some people even said they could probably be seen from space, but of course, space was the least of everyone's concern. Why worry about something so trivial when the reality was so much more immediate - and terrible?

It had been one year, one month, and ten days since hell descended onto Earth, making its landing somewhere in the arts area of Domino City, though reports were still a bit confused on the exact location of Ground Zero, so to speak. Very few people who were near the epicenter of the event survived. Of those who did, very few were accounted for. Of those, even fewer were willing to talk about what they had seen.

And for once, he couldn't find it in him to blame them. He was counted among the survivors, though to this day, he was still less than fond of that designation. After all, in his short life to date, so many labels had been applied to him: son, brother, orphan, boy genius, World's Champion, billionaire inventor... Survivor was just another one, albeit one he was less enthused about.

After all, everyone in the world wanted to know what had happened to bring a monster like Zork into the world. Was it an accident? Had someone caused it? Was there a way to reverse it? Were they now forever stuck with an Evil Overlord the likes of which the world had never before seen?

How could he tell them what he had seen? To this day, he still wasn't completely certain. There had been a mass hallucination of Ancient Egypt which may or may not have been a game between the so-called Pharaoh and some sort of Ancient Evil, presumably Zork, and apparently the Pharaoh had lost. There was no eleventh hour rescue this time, and the entire world was plunged into darkness.

Except for the fire.

21 April 2008

This is the story I almost didn't write. I almost shelved it in order to concentrate on editing Amaranth: The Preterhumans Book 1 and work on Verdant: The Preterhumans Book 2. I decided to give it a shot on you guys, though. Enjoy!