The sky had filled with black boiling clouds. The travelers looked up at the ominous weather intermittently, each housing their own private thoughts, and hurried along. Still no potable water, and this misfortune was now beginning to affect the horses.

The party had decided to walk and lead the animals to spare them. The mood was as dark as the sky overhead. A strong south-westerly had begun to blow, whipping stinging sand into half-obscured faces. It would be an unsettling and uncomfortable day without conversation.

The first heavy droplet hit Jhary on the hand. He could see an array of similar spotting on the dry and frigid sands about him.

"This is not good." He shouted with effort to his companions above the howling winds, his horse shying and pulling hard at the leather reigns in his other hand.

Looking at the offering from the heavens Jhary quailed. The droplet was not as clear as normal rain presented, it was a brownish color and ran down his palm like cold tea. He knew enough of science to be afraid.

"Black Rain!" Jhary shouted above the din of the oncoming storm. "Shit! We have to get out of here and find some cover!" Kario and Aurianne crowded about the bard. Beauty's muzzle at Aurianne's knee.

"What's happening?" Aurianne questioned, pulling the cloth wrap from her face momentarily, her blue-gray eyes earnestly seeking Jhary's warm brown ones.

"This stuff is black rain, it's nuclear fallout. If we don't get to some cover fast and we soak this stuff up we are gonna be very sick." He omitted the idea they would possibly die. However, the bard felt bilious already. On one hand, he was glad the heavens were cleansing themselves. On the other, he cursed his luck for being caught out in the open exposed to this rain of black death.

"Mount up and ride! We need to find cover and swiftly!" Jhary shouted to the wind, shielding his handsome face as best he might from the increasing droplets of poison rain that at first fell begrudgingly as if to tease the hungry sand, as they always do in arid places. The trio rode fast and the isolated heavy droplets began to increase in quantity.

Kario held on to Aurianne's slim waist, eyes affixed on the water alighting on the back of his hands. It beaded like oil, so familiar to his eyes. Then the familiarity struck him it was not unlike the waters below Nethrizil, oily, inky blackness. The representations of it also frozen into the hilt of his blade. To Kario it was not to be feared, but simply something of home. He felt very confused at the alarm of his companions.

In desperation, Jhary decided to break his rule. The thunderous skies would surely deluge soon and he had no desire to be soaked in the radioactive runoff. He had seen enough of that terror in the immediate months after the first war. He had spied in the distance among a copse of stark trees, the lone hut of a possible subhuman. It was an oddity as it was standing alone for the creatures usually preferred to live in numbers.

"Over there!" He pointed as his horse raced forward, Jhary low over its shoulder jolting in the saddle, dark mane streaming across his face.

Aurianne on the powerful Isabou followed, reaching the corrugated iron and wood structure first. She dismounted swiftly in one fluid leap, Kario following in close suit. Jhary only seconds behind.

Aurianne did not hesitate, bow unslung from her back, shaft poised, she pressed into the dry and seemingly deserted space, eyes searching for threat. The two men behind her weapons were also drawn. All that could be heard was the rain spotting heavily on the dry tin above. Even beauty did not growl, for the hut was deserted.

"Pull the horses inside as much as we can. We can't be exposed to this." Jhary urged.

It was cramped inside the dusty and very disused shed. This shelter had not been crafted by subhuman hands after all but was instead a large pump shed. The metal behemoth of the pump still remained, large pipes plunging into the subterranean depths far below. The floor was coated with a fine dust that held the consistency of chalk.

Isabou erupted in a gargantuan sneeze as she sniffed at the dust that coated the floor. Not moments later the skies also erupted in a black deluge.

During its noisome onset, Jhary's horse shied and half reared, eyes rolling, further alarming itself as its head collided with the tin roof and the rain began to pelt the iron above. The three travelers had to reposition themselves out of reach of the mare's flailing hooves. Jhary struggled to get the frightened animal under control. It was obviously unused to being this confined.

Luckily Isabou stayed calm with Aurianne's gentle coaxing. However, Jhary's half-wild mare pulled the reins through his hands and pirouetted on her haunches making a bold bid for freedom. "Nooo!" Jhary shouted, however, the frightened mare was already way beyond any chance of redemption. She sped across the open sands slick with the rain of death.

Jhary sighed as he nursed his aching fingers. The only good to be had was at least he had managed to keep his guitar.

"Well it has rained finally." Jhary started trying to fill the void he felt at his mount's exit. The trio watched the brim of water falling down the doorway, almost forming a solid sheet as it cascaded off the iron. "That means at least we should see sun again and some kind of regular weather shortly."

The idea of that cheered Aurianne, though she was struggling to understand Jhary's fear of this dirty rain.

"We can get the horses water." She remarked hopefully.

"No." Jhary cut her off. "You have heard the saying, all that water and not a drop to drink? I guess it's supposed to apply to being cast adrift at sea, but equally applicable to here, right now."

"I...."

"We get soaked in this or drink it we will most likely die. I grant you that mare will be dying or dead tomorrow. This stuff is full of radiation, it's been leached from the upper atmosphere, that was why we had the dark cloud cover for all these weeks. It's bad enough we got the little on us we did. We might be very ill tomorrow. I hope not, but it's a real possibility. The good news is we have found shelter, the weather should now begin to regulate, and though this stuff is pure poison it does break down very swiftly."

Aurianne did not know what to say.

*****

The remainder of the afternoon they waited. The rain was heavy and at last, seemed to run clear. Isabou fidgeted, wishing to drink, she could smell the water and desired to venture from the confines of the open-sided shed. The large mare stamped her hooves, tossed her head, and shook her mane. It took Aurianne much coaxing to just keep the large animal in the shelter.

Thankfully Beauty just sat, she seemed in no hurry to attempt to rush back outside. Inaction and the wet had worked in tandem to make the travelers cold. Though there was some wood to burn, with the horse in the shelter a fire though a welcome comfort was not an option.

Jhary was insistent that even after the storm had abated the animals should not be allowed outside. Aurianne found herself wishing she understood this frightening radiation more. Her mother had sought to shelter her from such horrors. She was unsure if ignorance did amount to bliss.

As it grew dark the trio squatted. It was an uncomfortable rest. They had not much else to do but calm the restless horse and talk amongst themselves. Aurianne and Jhary had wisely split the supplies between the two sets of saddlebags and they ate the remainder of the hard bread and cured meat, drinking the diminishing water.

"We are very close to the destination now." Jhary announced. "This is a pump shed. It drew its water from the large river we will soon cross. I'd say the Bridge is less than a days walk from here."

"We should go at first light." Kario ventured. It was very uncomfortable here in the confined space, and they would not be able to sleep this night.

"I'd like to but, I confess I am scared."

"Scared?" Aurianne looked at Jhary quizzically.

"Well yes, the rain has gone, but the puddles on the ground, the grass and foliage has all absorbed the poison. If Isabou should even try to eat..."

"Oh." Aurianne acknowledged worriedly, beginning to at last understand.

Kario stood stretching his lithe frame and gazed at his companions. Beauty whined as if to offer him some kind of caution. His dark eyes appraised the golden-eyed hound and he began to speak. He took the dagger from the folds of his robe holding it up in the doorway, the bejeweled pommel caught the last of the ebbing light.

"I do not understand what it is you are afraid of. Look closely if you may."

Jhary and Aurianne peered at the beautifully crafted weapon.

"I confess," said Jhary, "It is beautifully made. Though I am still unsure what the gems are, exactly."

"Look closer." Kario invited.

Aurianne for once felt very removed from the tangent of this conversation. Kario had always seemed a trifle odd to her, but this evening she had no idea what he was trying to illustrate. Kario pressed his precious weapon into Jhary's tentative grasp, urging him to look closer. There was no more to be felt but the weight of the metal and the residual warmth of its owner's hands.

"It is beautiful." Jhary repeated. He too, was unsure of what he was expected to see.

"This rain you speak of. It is of my world, do you not see it imprisoned in the gems?"

The bard squinted in the dying light, and a wash of recognition and fear seized him. Indeed each bauble no matter its size or shape was as an encapsulated droplet of the black rain. He looked up and glanced at Kario with meaning. "What are you trying to tell us?"

"This rain you fear is of my world. The waters of Nethris."

"Your world?" Aurianne interrupted trying to understand. There was only one world, this one, and right now it was far from ideal. Still, she longed to understand.

"The one you spoke of with the mythical creatures... that humans just had to dream about to make them real?"

"Yes that world, my world. I know it's hard to explain." The usually cool Kario seemed somewhat flustered. The eyes of both his companions were on him and if he was not mistaken the eyes of the hound also.

"I was not born here, and I know you won't believe me." The dark man offered almost apologetically. "My mother is of the under earth, the Nethris. My father... I do not know, though I am told he was a mortal from this place." Kario shook his raven mane and bit his lower lip in consternation. "That's why I have powers, I am part her, and part him. Vulnerable in certain ways, and in others not."

"You should get some rest." Jhary countered handing back the sharp dagger. He was so uncomfortable with this conversation that he would not allow it to continue. Maybe he did not want these answers after all.

"I am unafraid of this black rain. It is of my world."

"Radiation is of no one's world." Jhary tried again to close the disturbing conversation. "You are sick, try and rest."

Kario sighed and said no more.

Aurianne was very unsure of what she had just heard. Though during the sleepless night to follow, distant memories came back to haunt her. She was feverishly trying to recall the magnificent blade stowed beneath her mother's bed. Supposedly her own fathers. She now wished she had paid it more heed. The gems on it were they not a mirror image of the one Kario owned?

Stolen novel; please report.

Her enemy Aran had termed the magnificent sword Blacksteel, and had wielded it with uncanny ferocity and skill. It had even thwarted her well-aimed arrow that sought his breast. Freakish accident, or magic? Then there was the matter of the dream, or was it some sleeping reality? A man not unlike that in the feature of Kario, a man who had claimed to be her father. A man she had not believed, who had announced words she had never forgotten.

Proud and arrogant he had belittled her and spoke of her vengeance and ineffectiveness. His words burned her still. Though she was an ever-practical soul she was beginning to believe. She didn't feel the vaguest illness from the rain, yes she was tired and would have loved a good rest. However, she was not totally convinced that this was radiation at work.

*****

It had become apparent to Aran there would be only one means of escape. Something at twenty-four he really had not needed to consider, especially with the way he lived. A loving relationship. He was not sure where to begin, but he understood watching Dahlia that she pined for the man she had lost. She looked for the void in her life to be filled, being far too young to be a celibate widow, one who lived on the scraps of her powerful husband's memory.

Aran had little understanding of the machinations of a woman's mind. A Japanese woman's mind seemed even more mysterious. Her eyes told him nothing, her every stylized gesture unreadable. However on occasion, he would sense her longings, and Dahlia would be open to him momentarily. He sought to capitalize on this, striving to only mimic love, to fool her that he may see a way to freedom.

The tall and well-made warrior knew most women found him attractive, just as they had his brother. They had both been bestowed with ample handsome gifts, ones that war had not diminished like many other men. Aran had never really had to work to find a mate, he simply saw and desired, or took and overpowered the woman. However, this was not so straightforward with Dahlia.

She was alluring to him. He was drawn by her diminutive stature and exotic features. However, he struggled to understand her culture, and the reasoning behind her actions. She was like a puzzle that had missing pieces and often confounded him. Today had been no exception, sometimes he felt he was winning, and other times he felt relegated to a similar fate of the stunted bonsai trees that Dahlia so lovingly clipped and shaped in tiny hands.

For a moment Aran felt he might be getting somewhere, he had closed his eyes and let Dahlia's hands wander where they will. She sat behind him this afternoon, rhythmically braiding and re-braiding his hair. He could feel the warmth and softness of her at his back. Her sweet little breaths on his neck. This closeness was not altogether unpleasant. At intervals, he felt her lips brush his neck and shoulders with a soft array of kisses. She had not spoken to him at all but merely caressed. Aran so wished his hands were not tightly manacled to the ring in the floor before him.

Deep within the compound, there was little intrusion from the outside world. Often Aran struggled to know the real hour here. If it were not for regular meals and activities he was unsure if he could do so.

As they sat in this quiet repose there were vague sounds of unrest coming from the distant hallways of the compound. Aran raised his head, noticing the discord long before Dahlia did. She did not look up until the presence of one of her bearded henchmen caused her to cease her slow caress of Aran's now very lengthy tresses.

"The black rain has started." The gray-bearded man announced.

Dahlia let out a muffled cry of anguish. Aran craned his neck to better observe her distress, however he could see little of the woman behind him. She seemed always to be acutely aware of her own modesty.

"Koemi, Kokoa!" She cried.

"All safe, they are inside." The man announced seemingly unaffected by this event. "The animals are undercover, and everyone is accounted for."

For some reason Aran could not fathom Dahlia began to cry. The man retreated while Aran bore her mysterious grief against his impassive back.

To the strains of Dahlia's ragged weeping Aran was trying to think. His brother Sven had spoken of the black rain. He could remember its occurrence vaguely, shortly after the war. It was as he recalled what had created the subhuman ones. The hideous deformities, the death. Perhaps Dahlia had the right to weep, black rain was a terrible thing.

*****

The inhabitants of the valley had also observed the approaching storm. Though Sven was on the outer he did not refrain from speaking, it was in everyone's best interests for the group to survive, not just his immediate family.

Though Bennett's existence complicated matters for him. When he had noticed the storm earlier that day he had made mention of his concern to his leader, who fortunately had agreed that advance action needed to be taken. Many there could vividly recall the fallout following that first skirmish. The terror and confusion, the death and fear were burned into living memory.

The well opening was covered, a crudely constructed corral was erected inside the cave, and the few remaining goats were herded inside. Bleating loudly in their confined confusion. Anything of value was either pulled beneath the overhang or into the shipping containers. They would be ready to sit the poisonous rain out.

In Gareth's absence, life had gotten complicated for Maya. Her new man was strict and not so handsome. It was harder to lose herself in service to him than the one she had adored previously. However Aran had been long gone, and Maya's hope of seeing him again was almost as faded as the artifacts of society that lay about the campsite, color drained and blistered in seasons of endless heat.

Now Gareth too had been absent a good length of time, and Maya did not know what to do. She was often fearful that one of the other men would seize her and do with her as they wished. She often had to avoid Todd as it was. Not that he was so terrible, at least not in the way Pig was. But she was afraid that when Gareth returned he would beat her for being as he said a 'whore.' Maya was not a whore. All she craved was devotion to one man, sadly though not to the man she had been allotted.

She would often talk to Raissa about this, the two women had become close. Raissa could commiserate, after all, she too had had the misfortune to be assigned to a man she felt little love for, and to bear his child. Though she had given up on the one she had loved so very long ago.

The two women sat playing with and holding Eirik. The child had grown markedly and had lived almost a full year. He bore little resemblance to the fragile infant that cried and cried. He was big and sturdy, a direct effigy of his broad-chested father.

The two women giggled and smiled at the little one's antics as he tried to grasp the hawk feather that his mother held aloft, letting it fall into his awkwardly grasping chubby hands. The men were by the central fire conferring in low murmurs, the rain had troubled them in ways the women could not grasp.

The sky pealed with lightning and the first of the deluge began to fall. Maya was giggling in her childlike way at the baby. Raissa cast about to see Lucy sitting alone and quiet on the periphery close to the cave mouth. She pressed the infant into Maya's lap and went to sit by the lone woman.

"You okay?" Raissa touched the heavy-set woman on the back as she joined her.

"Yeah." Lucy replied bravely. "I hope he's all right out there."

"He will be Lucy, he's a survivor. They will be back soon I know it."

"I hope so." The big woman sighed forlornly.

Renard had not languished in hopelessness as he watched the tribe's morale dwindle along with their numbers and resources. Unbeknownst to the warriors he had been busy formulating an escape. He didn't rightly know the whens or hows of his plan, but he was leaving soon.

After much urging Lissa had finally capitulated; seeing her two friends' frailty growing worse by the day, and though she could not locate any keys to the miscellany of padlocks on their chains; she did retrieve a hard pin that she hoped Renard may use as a lock pick.

Being chained in the rear of the large cave close to both Darius and Carlos was somewhat of a boon, as the three men could confer. Mostly with looks and gestures and the occasional whisper while remaining unnoticed.

Renard had no idea how to pick a lock, he had never had cause to. However, both Darius being a smith, worked with locks, and Carlos especially with his urban bad-boy upbringing did. The men had an abundance of time. They would wait until an opportunity presented.

There were not many men left here to chase them, especially if they split up and ran for it. It was not much of a hope, but it was better than waiting about to be used as a hostage or tortured for sport, all of them had agreed. Renard was prepared to die this time rather than be a pawn in some terrible bargain with his parents. He knew that was the only reason he yet drew breath. Likewise, Darius seemed to have no fear, and Carlos, well he had suffered enough.

To begin with, Renard had planned to just take Darius, he was big and strong and if they made his father's farmlands he would be a great asset to the settlement. A smith could find good work anywhere.

It would be a hard week out there in the bitter cold on foot, but he felt they had a good chance of making it. If Lissa could manage to stow away a few supplies on the edge of the camp as she had promised. However Renard was not a cruel or bad man, and Carlos had done nothing wrong, so he decided that three would be a lot better than two in any escape attempt. As all the men could fight.

Renard really wished to rescue the girls, resignedly he knew he couldn't. That bothered him, as he still had very strong feelings for Lissa. He had no idea if the feelings were mutual, and as things stood he could not really offer her anything. Yet he ached to, in another more peaceful time, he already would have. However, if they could all be freed in some happily ever after... He hoped that sometime in the future he could further know the beautiful redhead, and reveal to her his heart.

Not only that, he too fretted for the safety of the other two girls Sarah and Kate, he was afraid that soon if he did not escape to mount a rescue he may be too late. They were pallid and thin and he was sure they had pneumonia. They needed warmth, rest, nutritious food, and medical care to recover. Not the scraps that were here.

Unfortunately, Lissa too would have to remain behind. There was no way she would be able to make the march for home. He didn't even know if the men could, but they had to try. He would get to safety, gather his father's men at arms, and mount a rescue expedition.

The escape plan was exactly what Carlos needed to focus on getting well and bolster his spirits. He had furtively shown the other men just how swiftly he could open all the locks on their chains. His skill and speed were impressive, they would be prisoners no more. Now all they had to do was bide their time and wait for the opportunity, none knew in what form it would come. However, the idea that freedom could be had was very welcome.