Everything that had built him was now gone, his father, his mother, sisters, brothers and neighbors. Did he deserve to even keep his name? He wandered, eventually he found a field near one of the houses and looked up, he once loved stargazing. Was it all he had left?

Nate stared into the sky, the stars looked beautiful as they had for a long long time. Webs of constellations hung like morphing, moving, images, like a play for all to see. As the night went on Nate saw the migrant stars pass overhead. They were pinpricks of light of different colors, there were greens, grays, whites, blues, yellows, reds, oranges, purple, and black. Everyone knew the sky was the land of the gods, so they theorized that those migrant stars were the palaces of them. No one agreed on who owned which exact star, but when the most recent god ascended, he made a grand white palace in the sky.

Nate stared up at their opulence, their hanging halls in the sky, and he thought of how they looked down on the world and watched. They watched the Tzar commit atrocities, they watched as the Tzar’s land was turned to glass, they watched Nate’s family die, they sat by and if they did get involved they played a great game, one with every person a pawn. Nate thought of how wrong that all was, evil thrives when good men stand by or are lying dead in a ditch and Nate thought himself a good man, he had a good upbringing and good morals. Since the gods clearly condoned the affairs of the world from far away, then they needed to be dragged down and told through the language of pain what they caused.

Nate would remind them of when they were once human. The migrant stars weren’t all the stars there were, there were the static stars in the sky. Nate wondered if they were gods too, and if they were they were probably stronger, and the same judgment passed on the gods of his world would be passed on them as they had been watching longer and did even less.

He traced the constellations he remembered in the sky, the grass and the bugs of the earth rubbed against his skin, the wind blew over the land, his skin felt numb as the stars continued their celestial dance.

How would he gain the power needed to tear down the gods? They were gods and he was a man, but many of them were once men. If he could somehow be able to go toe to toe with a high ranking techlord then he could go toe to toe with the gods.

A roughshod song began to echo through his mind, and a plan and something else started to form. Something that would take on a life of its own. With that, Nate fulfilled his brother’s easy wish. He found some paper in the Queldan’s home and he wrote of the general political situation of the world. The church of the god of bone was sponsoring the local lords in their extermination efforts against the Wolenoughts to prevent them from joining with the banner armies. They provided purification equipment and volunteer personnel. There were also brewing uprisings in the southern lands, the people of those nations were held in by ruling castes for a very long time, and now that the world was changing with the technological advances and the increasing prevalence of dungeons, those countries were feeling the pressure of the coming future. With the fall of the Tzar and the chaos from that then those nations will probably ignite sooner than later. There was also the ongoing civil war in the Odez republic that Relnakel was getting many refugees from, he didn’t dare think how bad the crisis would get with the fall of the Tzar.

The world was also rapidly modernizing and automating, people fell from the sky, some with useless knowledge and some with great knowledge or fighting skill. Some of them were insane, asking where the closest dragons were and then sauntering off to kill them. With the knowledge the men from the sky brought with them they revolutionized their world.

There were also offices popping up of the MLA, FOLM and other tech-lord organizations; they were very interested in materials such as dungeon cores, certain blocks of stone from dungeons, and various adamantines; they were also a place where requests could be processed and items identified. The actual names made no sense, Magic Language Army, and the Fallen Order of Living Men both were quite out of place for their purposes as if they were named on a whim. They paid the people who got what they wanted with unimaginable things. New arms that worked better than the old ones all without having to dive, new eyes that could pinpoint flies from kilometers away, equipment and implants that could make one survive the lands of the Tzar. Why question them when one could profit?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Nate looked at the note he wrote. It was something small to leave for them, so he left it in the box he found his brother’s note in. With that he left, to return to his house to search for what was his. As he rooted around the rubble he found what he was looking for. An item that would become a family heirloom, his father’s helmet.

When his father went on his final hunt he left the helmet for his sons to share. He still had many things to tell them but not enough time to tell them, and the time wasn’t right. He said he didn’t exactly need it and that he would return, even if it took a long time. Nate still remembered the smile as his father left. Some things had to be done.

It was a collapsible helmet made out of some white patterned material, it had a face plate made out of semi transparent glass? It didn’t sound like glass when he tapped it. There were various components within the helmet too. Nate didn’t know what they did, but he was sure they had a use. When collapsed it turned into a collar guard, one that also protected the neck.

Nate considered whether to take the helmet with him, David did say to leave armor, but David and Wollum weren’t going to get good use out of it as they were dead. Nate decided to take it with him, he was the only remaining inheritor.

He also took the village’s ancient books; he wanted to understand what Zoyoalo was like, he also was just curious. What did David spend all his time on? He also could get them translated and reprinted for a profit. At least as a novelty they would be valuable. He could only carry so many so he selected the ones that seemed the most important.

With that he gathered the books, he wrapped them in waxed cloth to keep them from decaying. He collapsed the helmet and wore it as a collar guard. He also brought some things that were his, and his family’s. Such as a black and white photograph of everyone there, all his parents, brothers and sisters. His sister Orina was still just a baby in that photo.

With that he packed it all into a pack, the books, memoirs, a couple tools, and his and his dad’s Records. With that he started walking to one of the larger villages. They had a train station and he needed to return to the city. He needed to get his affairs in order.

There was a delay in the schedule of the train, it seemed more Wolenaughts had appeared to break themselves against Relnakel but in time he successfully returned to his second home, the city of a hundred hunts, Relnakel. The city had switched hands between the various states of the nation of Delbract, and the Tsardom of Novabel, but given Novabel was now a great field of glass, there would be no more switching. The architecture of the city was traditionally brick and other non-flammable materials as the city had been burned down many times in invasions and the people just decided to rebuild with brick. The old walls of the city had been expanded many times, and as the population grew people just built districts outside of the walls, though there still were open monitored zones because of wild things. If one of them appeared, it would be reported, hunters would be sent to the location and an artillery strike would be called to the location depending on severity, number, and other factors.

When Nate lived in Relnakel he was a country bumpkin who came to learn about technology, not someone who needed things like a historic building, a short commute, or a guarantee of safety. Finding his building he went in and made his way to his own room. Setting his bag down he sat down and quickly fell asleep, it had been a very long couple of days.

He was going to be ill, he had felt off during the day and now that he had finally had time to rest he would be sick for a day or two. Seeing this as my chance, I strung together the thin strands of dreams and I started to weave an introduction from me to him. I was there to support and help take the burden off of him, he might not be strong enough to fight the world but together we would be.

Nate was having dinner, across from him sat a prince. He felt he was the same age as Him, feelings were conveyed and not words, positive but shallow ones, like small talk. Eventually they stepped outside onto a street, the sky was a constant twilight and with the contrast to everything else, Nate realized it was all black silhouettes, looking at the prince before wakeness took him he saw the oil black prince wishing him well, as I knew this would not be the last time we would meet.

Nate felt terrible, just plain terrible. He woke up much later than normal with a fever, he was feeling a little nauseous and very tired. It seemed to be around noon, his roommate was knocking on his door Nate groaned and the other young man came in.

The other young man was average, black hair, slight tanning of the skin, round face. He was his roommate, a clerk at a government office.

“Nate, are you alright? Also the landlord is here to-”

Nate said “Please leave me alone, keep the door open.”

“Alright”

And so he did, dreams then overtook Nate once more as he drifted back to the land of dreams.