Chapter 1: The Drifter

After the Greenspark fire fell from the sky, it left the world in smoldering ruins. The coals burnt out and the world went cold. A barren wasteland of broken stone buildings, scorched shells and blackened skeletons was left behind. Technology and civilization had been destroyed. Of the survivors, everyone on the face of the earth was scorched, if not in body, than in mind. No one knew where the fire had come from, why it had fallen, or what they were living to gain.

Among the survivors was a man known only as Drifter, for the wide area he ranged over and his solitary habits. Rumors told that the Greenspark had destroyed his family when it fell, that he lived for vengeance upon whatever had caused their fall, that he was seeking death or simply that the scorch in his mind was driving him across the world purposelessly. Drifter himself told nothing and never camped among men.

One evening, as the reddish sun set behind the broken skyline of the horizon, Drifter sat beside a small fire on the crumbling ruins of great stone steps. They had once led up to a structure of white marble and vast slabs of dove-gray stone. It stood proud and tall on top of the low hill, a palace full of curious and expensive items. Now it lay broken, smashed as if a giant foot had crushed the palace beneath its heel.

In a nest of pebbles and step-corners, Drifter’s fire burned, made of twigs and dry moss. He sat hunched over it, hood shading his face while his eyes gleamed oddly in the light of the coals. His dark grayish-blue cape was ragged on the edge from long use and travel, matching the worn dirt-colored uniform he wore underneath.

It had not been his originally. He was no soldier and never had been. But when Drifter needed a new set of clothes, he took whatever he could get and those who provided them never complained. Stiff, cold bodies do not have much chance of complaining.

The firelight gleamed off of a pair of metallic capsules tucked in Drifter’s belt and the golden goblet he held carelessly between the fingers of one hand. After taking another sip of the caustic wine within, he reached down with his other hand and began rolling up the left leg of his pants. Underneath, a scar ran from just below the knee, almost to his ankle. Blackened and hard like melted plastic, it covered his whole shin. Carefully, he tipped most of the cool wine onto the scar. His eyes slid shut as the alcohol trickled in.

When his gaze cleared, he was looking into a pair of feral, gleaming eyes just outside of the fire’s light. Deep, ragged breathing came to him through the dark air. Drifter took the last drops of wine and let them spill out onto the step beside him. The liquid flowed like dark blood through the dust, dripping off the hard stone.

“Breath of night, light’s own bane, men they fight, truth disdain.” Drifter’s voice was low and rough like the broken gravel his fire sat in. And like the gravel, it held a spark of unexpected fire hidden within it.

The eyes approached after this invocation, a form gliding into the firelight. Something like a large, heavy mastiff with clawed, webbed feet and bulging eyes. Its breath sounded like low growling, thick and resonant. Keeping his eyes on its face, Drifter reached towards something lying beside the fire. It was a gristly chunk of roast meat, formerly skewered on a long knife. Gently, he held it out towards the creature. With a snuffle, the creature opened its fearsome jaws and took the meat, before disappearing into the darkness.

Drifter watched it go with no sign of emotion. Picking up the goblet from the ground, he chucked it over his shoulder into the heap of rubble it had come from. The empty bottle which had contained wine followed it, shattering on the hard marble edges.

Standing up, he moved towards a car parked on the lowest, widest step before the pavement. It was dark gray, angular, bearing no mark of make or number on its scuffed sides. Drifter’s walk had a slight limp to it, due to the unhealed wound on his left leg. It was an old limp, with no sign of frustration or uncertainty to it. He could have moved just as fast with it as most men who went without.

The door of the car opened with a soft creaking sound while the interior stayed dark. Drifter disappeared inside.

--

At one time, the city was called Gylestown. With technology and history, it outgrew its name, spreading to cover two-thirds of the continent and be renamed Civitas Apex. The Crown City. Peak of Civilization.

Now the reddish sun rose on a vast plain of ruins and abandoned structures. Arches gaped blankly, filled with deep shadow. Pillars stood with blackened ends, walls bulged precariously and steps were crumbling. Puddles glimmered in the dust and icicles hung from the window ledges, all made of glass from doors and windows. The sun struck through them in shades of orange and crimson. Between these buildings, wrecked or standing, were the empty streets of the once bustling metropolis. The sun beat down on them, sending queer illusions of heat and water skimming over the pavement. Here and there, the burnt shells of vehicles stood beside the road. Sometimes they were too blackened and melted for looters to bother with. Others were torn apart in a spill of garbage and cotton threads.

One car moved wraith-like across the desolate scene, driven by the man, who was driven by the scorch. Drifter sat in the driver’s seat with no expression on his face and no movement except what it took to pilot the vehicle. Shadows fell in stripes across him, sliding over the hood, across the dash and then off the car as if made of plastic tape. The light between was dimmed by the tinted window, keeping stray beams from blinding the driver.

The sun was almost half-way across the sky when Drifter noted a small movement on the road ahead of him. Slowing the car to a creep, he took the situation in with a flashing dart of his gaze. A man was laying half in the road, having just crawled from the hell of a house and collapsed. He was dressed in rags, a patchwork quilt drawn over his shoulders. One hand was outstretched in a pleading gesture towards the oncoming car. No other movements, no odd colors or shapes proclaimed the presence of other people nearby. The man had not been shot, stabbed or beaten, so far as Drifter could tell. He was so emaciated as to suggest that he was starving to death.

The car pulled to a stop a few yards away. Drifter stepped out, purloined military boots crunching on bits of gravel on top of the road. A few steps and he was standing beside the ragged figure. But though only a moment had passed since he saw the movement, the man was already dead. Drifter reached down to make sure, shaking his head once in affirmation.

When he started driving again, there was a patchwork quilt on the seat beside him.

The sun set that evening into a bank of haze. It was not a warm sun anymore, even when it shone. With the rays blocked, an icy wind sprang up across the ruined city. Drifter’s headlights cut the night, dimmed to prevent them alerting the wrong sort of person.

He had just driven out of a narrow avenue between two leaning buildings when, for the second time that day, he noticed a movement in front of him. This time, it was a slight vibration. Someone shrinking back into the shadows, in the corner of a brick wall. The headlights illuminated the figure a second later. A woman, dressed in nothing but a sleeveless shirt and jeans so ripped they were little more than shorts. She had straight, dark hair falling around a narrow face. Her gaze was blank as she cuddled in the corner, hugging herself. Even from a distance, Drifter could see that she was shivering. His hand closed on the soft folds of the patchwork quilt beside him. It passed through his mind how comforting it would feel across his legs on a chilly night.

The woman was not looking at him as he stepped out of the car. She was staring straight ahead, skin white and prickling with the cold. Her lips were a purple shade, like the twilight sky. As he approached, Drifter noticed that the lips were moving. Soft, shivery words came out between them;

“It-it is not cold. It i-is not c-cold.”

Even when Drifter stood beside her, she did not look up or stop this monotonous litany. She was so lost in a world of denial that she would freeze before admitting that the world was cold.

The faded blanket fell to drape across her lap. Drifter turned and walked away, not looking back to see the icy fingers coil into the fabric and pull it over the white shoulders.

He drove through most of the night, ever alert for signs of trouble on the road ahead. Too many people together in an area often meant problems for a lone stranger. Almost everyone was willing to grab what another man had if they thought that they could do it without repercussions. The smallest of injuries could mean death if untreated. With little vegetation and few surviving manufactured medicines, there was a dwindling amount of methods for treating a wound, other than water, bandages or mud. Even alcohol took plant sugars to make.

Food was almost as difficult to procure. Not many plants had come back after the Greenspark, not in Apex, even those known for being able to survive normal wildfires. And the small domestic animals, pets, that were often kept in a city, had either died off or gone feral. The survivors had become…odd. Mutated or adapted to the circumstances in abnormal ways. Such as the Chardogs, like the one Drifter had fed the night before. Clawed and fanged, unlike domestic dogs of any species, with giant, bulging eyes and a taste for things their owners would never have allowed. Roaming the city at night, seeking companionship with wraiths and eating human flesh, to mention only a few.

Rats, on the other hand, had hardly changed throughout the disaster. They increased on the bits and scraps left behind for them to prey upon. If a man dared, they could make a meal, but they were not affected by the plagues and contaminates they often carried. A person could not tell what the rat had been eating until he ate one himself.

But there was one place in this section of the ruined city that Drifter knew of where a small group of people had come together. Ones who were not normally dangerous and had even managed to plant a small field of eatables from seeds found in the wreckage. It was the next stop in his wanderings. He would reach it in the morning.

When the road blurred before his eyes, Drifter pulled to the side and shut off the car’s engine. The doors were already locked securely. Reaching over, he opened the glove compartment and took out a pocket-sized book bound in stout paper, only a little frayed around the edges. Using just the dash lights to read, he opened it in the middle and cruised slowly through a few pages. All the time his lips moved as if memorizing something, and he used a finger to scan down the lines. When he was done for the night, he put the book away carefully, still mouthing words it had contained. Pulling his cloak around him, he lay full length along the bench seat and fell into a light doze, feet propped up in one window and head in the other.

The dawn found him driving again, taking a route through a tunnel-like underpass which echoed and glared eerily around him. The walls were marked with messages in various forms of paint, including the dark red-brown of blood. A torn blanket on the ground showed where a human form had spent the night at some point, but nothing remained to indicate what had happened to them. The rags were not worth stopping to pick up.

Leaving the tunnel behind, Drifter came out at a crossroads. Straight ahead of him was a wide alley between mostly ruined buildings. Stretching across the alley was the burnt hulk of a semi-truck trailer. It left a gap at one side just large enough for someone to walk through. A car could not fit without tearing itself up on the jagged steel frame.

Stolen story; please report.

Drifter pulled to a stop parallel the trailer and drew a slow breath. He disliked coming into contact with so many people at a time. It was like a mental assault which had to be held at bay until he was far away.

But they might have one of two things he needed. Feeling the cylinders at his belt, he got out of the car, keys slipping into a buttoned pocket of his uniform. There were no guards at the narrow space between broken wall and truck’s trailer. He stepped through without a challenge to find himself looking into Apex Haven.

The long alley, a section of crossroads, and another alley like it beyond had all been converted into a sort of open market and village. Fabrics that had once been bright were stretched over the alley on each side, making awnings to cast shade on the pavement beneath. Under them, the ruined building fronts had been formed into homes, booths and workshops. Scavenged scraps of civilization were put to use, often in ways that had never been intended.

A row of blenders held various potions being brewed, showing in every morbid color through the glass containers. Half-burnt steel lockers were tipped up and used as storage containers for fruit and vegetables. The bed of a pickup truck sat in the middle of the crossroads, filled with earth and seeded with herbs which were growing in lush profusion. A clothesline held the skins of dead Chardogs, stretched to dry into usable animal hides. A portable cement mixer had been fit with a piece of metal on top of the barrel and a foot-powered pedal on the bottom, making it into a pottery wheel.

Everything was a little dirty, rundown and scrappy. Especially the denizens, who were at work all up and down the street. There were perhaps two dozen in sight, men and woman dressed in what they could put together from their past, all laboring to create a haven of safety and plenty against the cold outside world. It was hard work. Sometimes it seemed like they were failing by painful degrees. But somehow the community staggered on under its load of civilized pretensions.

Drifter looked at all the people and squinted. Too many, and this was perhaps half of the inhabitants. The other half would be out in the hidden field nearby, working it.

Quietly, he started walking down the village street, gazing at the wares displayed on each side. Food on racks, pure water in glass jars, herbal medicines in tins…all in tiny amounts, for a heavy price. He still had not found what he was looking for when a hand descended on his arm.

“Drifter.”

The loner looked up suddenly. A young man, worn beyond his years by work and worry, stood beside him, dressed in clothes that were obviously too small. A reddish burn scar ran down the outside of one arm. He had a tired face, but his eyes actually held a pittance of genuine welcome. Drifter stared down at the other man’s hand until it released him.

“Drifter, what brings you here?” The young man asked, stepping back a pace at his cold look.

Drifter knew that the people of Apex Haven would have allowed him to stay, if he had asked. Not that anyone there liked him personally; he never allowed that familiarity. But Apex Haven prided itself on allowing anyone to settle in their precincts, as long as they worked for their keep and caused no trouble. Drifter would have been welcomed quietly. He had no wish to settle there, and would have hurt anyone who tried to make him.

In answer to the young man’s question, the loner said, “I need to find some crystal fuel.”

He pulled out one of the cylinders, rattling it to show there were only a few bits left inside. A clear glass insert on the side allowed a small amount of blue light to trickle out.

Ryan, the young man, bit his lower lip in thought. After a moment he shook his head back and forth, “you’re lucky to have what’s in that capsule, Drifter. During the disaster--most of the fuel supplies exploded. Others were captured by gangs soon afterwards. We haven’t had crystal fuel for a year, ever since we burnt the last running the minivan to look for seeds.”

Drifter gave him a long, steady look, making Ryan step back again and hold up his hands in protest at the silent accusation.

“I’m telling you the truth. I wouldn’t lie about it to you. You’ve never been a trouble here, Drifter, and always paid for what you took. We have no crystal fuel, for our own use or for sale.”

“‘Truth; Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been; or shall be’.”

Drifter shrugged, tucking the cylinder away in his belt again. The one beside it had no cap, so it was open on top. Something made of thin bars of bronze-colored metal shaped in an oval was sticking up above the edge of the capsule.

“Is that a key of some sort?” Ryan pointed at it curiously. “It’s too big to be the key for your car.”

“Truth again,” Drifter remarked, moving his arm so that a fold of his cape hid the cylinders from view. “Which reminds me. I have one other thing to ask for. Years ago, I knew a man who lived in this area. Name was Chelsea. Dick Chelsea.”

He looked at the young man’s face for recognition and saw none. With a sigh, he turned away. “Goodbye, Ryan.”

Ryan jumped after him, remembering just in time not to touch him again. “Wait! I know someone who might remember your…the person you’re looking for. Ol’ George remembers a lot that is useful to us. He might know this Chelsea fellow.”

Drifter turned back, making a sign for him to lead on. “But be quick. I don’t enjoy lingering here.”

As they walked past the truck’s bed full of herbs, Ryan looked back at him curiously. “Surely it’s better than the streets? The rest of Apex is an apocalyptic ruin for miles around!”

“The rest of Apex has a lot less inhabitants because of it.”

As they went down the street, the inhabitants of Apex Haven stared at Drifter, some with curiosity or muttered greetings, many with suspicion. Drifter ignored them, all alike. Ryan cast a few glances back at him as they walked, compassionate but devoid of understanding.

Soon they reached a section of the alley where two semi-white pillars supported an overhanging roof of white marble, all mostly unharmed by the disaster. Underneath the overhang was a floor of cracked tiles. Some were missing, letting the hard-packed earth show beneath. Particles of soot danced across the floor in a light breeze. Dust adhered to the pillars on either side.

An old man sat in a wheelchair in the deepest patch of shade. One arm and the corresponding leg were missing. Scorch marks up his shoulder revealed the cause. They were black and hard, like the scar on Drifter’s leg. A direct hit.

“This is Ol’ George,” Ryan introduced them, “and George, this is Drifter. He comes from outside.”

The old man had tufts of white hair sticking out behind his ears and one on top of his otherwise bald head. His eyes were misty with all he had seen. Still, he had some work to do on his lap. A small string-winding machine, made of re-purposed parts. His one hand turned the crank even as he looked up and spoke.

“Drifter, ‘ey? You lookin’ to move in here, Drifter?”

“No.” The loner crouched beside him. “I’m looking for someone. He thought you might know where to find Dick.”

A thumb jerked at Ryan to indicate who the ‘he’ was.

“The man I’m looking for was called Dick Chelsea. He was an antiquarian, a collector of odd and ancient bits. Many of which he claimed had…strange powers. He used to live near this section of the city, before the disaster. Had a shop. You know of him?”

George was already bobbing his head slowly in thought. “Aye, Dick Chelsea. I recall that name. Tall, thin man with big spectacles, right?”

“That’s it.”

“Let me see…Dick…Dick…that’s right.” George stopped to slap his one hand on his knee, wincing and coughing afterwards before finally getting to the point. “Dick Chelsea moved out about a year before the Greenspark fell. Had an offer for a job teaching some fancy school on Terminal Point, in the Academy section of town. Don’t know if he survived the Greenspark. I hardly did!”

Drifter sighed again and stood up, “that far...?”

Ol’ George nodded. “Across most of the continent. Say, you want something from him?”

“I was hoping to have an artifact identified.” Drifter felt at the brass object thrust in his belt. “I don’t know of anyone else who would understand it--”

Ryan waved a hand in the air to get their attention. “What about that ‘magic’ lady? The sorceress. Remember her, George? Said she was going to check out ‘reports’ of a phantom in the Falel sector nearby.”

“Oh yeah! Did magic tricks for the kids. If they were tricks and not real magic. Huh. Came through here about two weeks ago, she did, all mysterious and quiet-like. Lookin’ for phantoms, too!”

Drifter’s eyes sparked with interest. “‘Magic lady’? Who is this?”

“She was a traveler from the outside, like you,” Ryan explained, a smile appearing on his tired face, “but she was…well, different than anyone I’ve met before.”

Ol’ George snickered and a tight smile crossed Drifter’s face briefly. The young man went on without noticing.

“She didn’t talk much. Just asked if we had seen phantoms or wraiths in this area. Ol’ George told her everything he knew on the subject--”

“Which is plenty!”

“Then she did a few conjuring tricks, or something, giving the kids a piece of candy each. Real candy! She seemed to know all about all sorts of things. Ancient relics, phantoms, the Greenspark...”

Drifter nodded impatiently, tiring of the narrative. “So you think she can identify old things? Strange old things?”

“I’m sure she can.”

“Then I’ll look for her first,” Drifter decided. “And try for Dick if I can’t find her, or she fails.”

Turning on his heel with a nod of thanks to Ol’ George, he began to walk away. Ryan fell into step beside him, saying nothing until they had reached the end of the alley, where the truck trailer was parked. Then he spoke with a grave face.

“What are you looking for, Drifter? There’s nothing out there that you can’t have in here, better. I know you aren’t really like those human rats out there, scrounging and stealing from their neighbors. I’ve seen you be so kind--”

The loner cut him off with a sharp look. “What am I looking for, Ryan?”

Ryan nodded.

“Tell whoever asks; ‘Eternity. Peace for all.’ And let them chew on that.”

He walked out between the wall and the melted trailer, leaving the young man behind him, looking puzzled and sad. Outside, the stark contrast between Apex Haven and the ruins of Civitas Apex was severe.

When the Greenspark had fallen, it not only burnt like no fire the city had ever seen before. It caused earthquakes where it fell in greater numbers, and sent odd interference like electromagnetic pulses through the air, destroying all electronic devices. All that were not specially shielded.

The ruby sun was climbing towards noon. Its rays crawled on the pavement and glimmered on broken slabs of stone. Shards of half-melted glass lay in the road, glittering. Drifter gazed up and down the crossroads, memory feeding him directions. The Falel section.

It had once held warehouses, factories, and living spaces for many of the accompanying workers. Drifter had been through it once or twice since the disaster. It was not a friendly sector of Apex. Except for Apex Haven, no sector was friendly, unless it was too empty to pose a threat.

Falel had a little more inhabitants than most sections. All of them tied up in, or terrorized by, the Falel gang.

It was also one of the few places that Drifter had personally seen a wraith. That, and on the broken Glass-Ebon Bridge, which used to span the Ebon river.

Phantoms were one of those things which had only appeared after the falling of the Greenspark. Many believed them to be ghosts, the spirits of people who had died violently in the disaster. Drifter thought otherwise. He knew what the vagrant spirits of people scorched to death by Greenspark fire would look like. It was imprinted on his imagination like a nightmare. And it was nothing like the phantoms.

As for this ‘sorceress’, Drifter thought that she was probably someone driven out of her mind by the scorch. It wasn’t hard to let go of sanity under those circumstances. He had come near it himself more than once. But if she had any knowledge of artifacts still left in her mind, he wanted to use it. The object in his belt might be the key to more than anyone on Earth imagined.

Opening the door of his car, he slipped into the seat. He had enough fuel remaining to get him to the Falel section…with luck, enough to get out of it again afterwards. Perhaps along the way he could find a spot, unseen by others, where at least a bit of crystal fuel was left.

The dark gray car pulled away from its parking place, engine humming low as it disappeared down a crossroad.