(Ranger station on Quandary Peak Colorado. Approximately 12,000 feet above sea level)
This is an automated message: This message was recorded on July 11th, 2026, uploaded to every EarthLink storage and communications satellite, and set to repeat until disaster recovery activities are complete. On July 1st, several geological monitoring stations noticed a sudden and drastic increase in global sea levels. The increase was ascribed within 24 hours to an extreme influx of fresh water somehow added to the Pacific Ocean. By July 3rd, the salinity of the world’s major oceans was altered enough that polar ice caps began to melt. Twelve hours afterward, the states of Florida, California and Delaware were completely submerged. Major U.S. cities including New York, Philadelphia, Houston, and Washington, D.C. were entirely underwater. In the first seventy-two hours, an estimated two billion people were lost to the sudden change of the coastlines. Over the next seventy-two hours, the rising water levels and reduction of land mass ignited a critical overcompensation of the planet’s evaporation weather cycle, triggering severe thunderstorms around the globe. As of the time of this recording, any land below what used to be seven thousand feet in elevation is now immersed and experts see no sign of it stopping. It is recommended that anyone listening to this message get to high ground immediately. Additional measures must be taken to ensure family members can escape the torrential rains and shelter indoors when possible. All wired and cellular communications are disrupted. Once this global crisis ends, all emergency services will be listening for emergency radio transmissions on VHF channel sixteen at one hundred fifty-six-point eight Megahertz. May GOD have mercy on our souls.
As I looked out the window at the unending downpour and what must now be the new, ever encroaching coastline, I knew there would be no recovery services. The message being repeated was over two weeks old now and never wavered, never changed. I was sure at this point that the number of survivors on the planet was too few to fill a small town, much less commit to massive recovery and repair. Aside from possibly Chinese monks in a mountain monastery, there was no way any large groups of people had made it this long. Apocalypses were supposed to be quick events, followed by small clusters of survivors fighting for food, and usually against zombies. There was no food now, no ability to grow food, no places to scavenge for supplies; there was just water. Endless water. Turning off my battery-operated lamp to conserve power, I had no idea what I would do tomorrow aside from continuing to await my impending fate. The humid air was extremely uncomfortable to breathe, and I could feel the water running down my sinuses, surely entering the lungs. As I watched the lightning play over the choppy water outside, I thought back to the world’s first flood. As I had not remembered any news prior to this event of someone being ridiculed for building an ark, and God had not spoken to me directly, it meant this time there was no ark, no one to save pairs of animals, and no one to perpetuate mankind. Drifting off to sleep, I could only mull over the last bit of the recorded message.
Looks like we didn’t deserve God’s mercy this time.
Chapter One
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Waking up was a surprise. Not that I was surprised awake, I was surprised that I woke at all. Surrounded in darkness, it took a little time to realize there was no sound of rain and the air was much drier than it was when I fell asleep. Reaching out to turn on my portable lamp I felt nothing but air as far as I could reach. I sat up in the dark. What the hell happened to my lamp? I started to feel all the way around what seemed to be the surface I was lying on. What the actual fuck? As I was working a full circuit around the rough platform I was on, I could hear what I was sure were footsteps. Footsteps meant feet, and suggested I was somewhere other than my isolated ranger station.
“Hello?” I called out to the darkness, then heard the steps come to a stop. “Anyone there? My name is Adam, and I think I might be a little lost.”
A few seconds later, whoever owned those feet shot a laser into my eyes. Well, it felt like a laser, and after a minute or so of migraine-inducing eye pain, I could start to see what looked like a security guard with a flashlight. Holding my hand over my eyes caused the guard to drop the light a bit, backing out the ice picks from the front of my brain enough to comprehend what I was seeing. What the…? Holding the most painful flashlight ever designed was a dog person. Tall, pointed ears sat on the top of his head, which had a full muzzle. Fur covered the visible parts of his otherwise human-looking body.
He growled, “This is a museum, and it’s after normal after hours. Not sure how you got here, but I know you are not supposed to be here. Let me assist you in being somewhere else.”
After what seemed like a century of the two of us staring at each other, I was starting to feel the bulk of my ability to think return and I replied with what I was sure was a genius level of conversation.
“You are a dog man?” Then I thought that might be demeaning. “…Or Uhhh, wolf?” werewolf, maybe? It would probably go poorly if I went with Knoll or Kobold, and I was sure that the Adlet was an obscure enough myth that it would be a real longshot.
With the question left hanging as I searched my mind, he looked at me with what I could clearly tell was disgust and sighed, “I’m a jackal. And why is it every knight I have ever met is an asshole?”
I blinked, clearly imagining that the canine man was speaking to me like I was the strange one. Everything about this situation indicated I was hallucinating or in a dream, except one generally didn’t question oddities like a talking man-beast in a dream or hallucination, right? Besides, it sure felt like reality. The guard just shook his furry head and started to walk away, clearing expecting me to follow him. Huh, he even had a tail.
“Hey- wait- please, I could use some information.”
He looked back for just a second while continuing to walk away, “It sounds like you could use a whole hell of a lot more than that.”
Okay, that was fair. I scrambled to follow him and jumped down from what I could now see, which looked like an altar of raised stone behind a roped area.
“Ah, sorry. Listen, I had no intention of insulting you earlier. I am just trying to figure out where I am.”
The guard came to a halt at that, allowing me to catch up as he turned to face me.
“First of all,” he said while holding up a very human finger, “you’re in my museum after hours and shouldn’t be.” He held up another finger. “Secondly, you should know that you’re in Styga because everyone here is a jackal.”
I blinked at this nugget of news. “I am in a city called Stygia?” Heh, was I going to run into any rogue barbarians?
Shaking his head like I was the dumbest non-jackal in existence, he sighed, “You are currently on the world of Styga, not Stygia. I’ve never heard of a Stygia.”
Score. I now knew which country I was in and what planet I was no longer on because, pretty sure if there was a country called Stygia full of jackal people, it would have made the news at least once, right?
While I was processing this epiphany, the man-animal resumed walking. “Come along, Knight Adam, I can direct you to a way station so you can get yourself straight. This must be the first time a knight ever ended up somewhere other than intended or didn’t know where they were when they got there.”
Seriously, what was with this knight business? Since he was not only NOT shooting me, but it also sounded like he was going to help me out, I decided that staying quiet and following him would be the best course of action.