Introduction

By the year of our LORD 2224 humanity had become a Type II civilization on the Kardashev Scale.  With the activation of the Ohr-Ein-Sof Dyson Grid – a network of solar satellites with the promise of energy for all – they had at last put an end to the system-wide war for resources that had been raging for twenty years.

With energy eternal, Mankind would stand unified in the undying warmth of the sun, at peace for the first time since the dawn of civilization. There they would dream of the world to come – a world beyond all the pain and suffering that was the human condition. By this dream and virtue, we had at last achieved our return to Eden.

By the year of our LORD 2239 that dream and the world it lived in had ended. Fire rained from the sky as biblically foretold, and great beasts were set free from chthonic prisons to strike Mankind down, bringing with them the returned nightmare of pestilence, famine, war, and death. Seemingly without cause or warning the Eden humanity had built for themselves became nothing short of Hell on Earth.

Two-hundred years have passed since humanity's second expulsion from Paradise and, despite their unguided descent into the bowels of Hell, they marched on – struggling tooth and nail to survive in a time known as the Eschaton - the days after Armageddon.

(Eschaton) /ˈɛskətɒn/ The final event in the divine plan; the end of the world.

Part I: Tribulation

“So, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains…” – Mathew 24: 15-16

 I.           

The Megacity

The streets of the Lower Outer-City were umbrageous and dank. They were far from the massive heating-pipes that spread out like roots throughout the districts above, a fact that made those ruinous corridors of rust and pitted cement bitter in every sense of the word. That bitterness was felt in the air and seen at the wayside in the form of lost and forgotten souls huddled for warmth at every corner and crossway.

They were castoffs and vagabonds, either dead or dying, forbidden from all hospitality of the Inner-City. Too poor and weak to leave, they were left to pickle in the district’s sour fog. The scent of death and despair permeated through those forlorn streets, a morbidity unconcealed by the perpetual toxic haze inflicted upon them from the industrial district above.

A figured strode among them, stooped forward beneath a patched and tattered cloak. The rancidity burned his lungs with each breath as he crept through the streetscape under flickering streetlamps with quick-footed but directed steps. Vagari was his name, or rather it was the one he offered, and the name people had come to know him by for the last two-hundred years.

That was how long it had been since the world ended, since demons rose and great unfathomable beings descended from the sky, bringing Hell and mutation with them. It all truth, there was no true escape from the misery of that frigid ghetto – not even in the world beyond. That once living world was now only an undead thing whose groves ripened only with disease, and whose cities were populated only by ghosts and monsters. Hellacious horrors and the malformed survivors they preyed upon defined the world beyond those walls.

Vagari was neither of these things – not predator or prey, of demon stock or mutant born. Exactly what he was, however, was a mystery even to himself. Most knew him as a scavenger from across the Eastern Wastes, one who moseyed into town every two or three years to sell his arcane knowledge of the old world and offer what help he could to the castaways trapped there. But today he was something different, he was a man on a mission.

Twenty-eight years of scouring the wastes was finally about to pay off. The object of all those years of prospect and inquiry, a book known to him as ‘The Libro ex Portarum’ had been recovered at long last and was now waiting for him at a local peculiarity shop: Alto’s Oddities.

Quite literally a hole-in-the-wall joint, Alto’s Oddities served as Vagari’s home-away-from-home during his infrequent visits to the Megacity, and one that very much lived up to its name. As so dubbed, it dealt with all manners of odd things and rarities dug up from the ruins of the Old World: priceless curios ranging from lost media and entertainment; books and toys for the kids; to baubles, trinkets, and jewelry for the spouse. At least, these were the wares he advertised and kept at the forefront of his store.

For the more discerning customer he dealt in a much wider variety of strange things: lost or forbidden technology, encrypted data-disks of dead government secrets, things occult, things otherworldly and everything in between. At one time he even played host to a demon caught out in the waste, something Vagari had adamantly warned against, but Alto was convinced it was his next big break. Naturally, things ended badly for all involved, not by monstrous means surprisingly, but by the legality of it – a fine the shop’s proprietor was still paying off.

Somehow that was a fond memory, Vagari thought with a smile as he stood just outside his destination – a ramshackle building growing out of a wall like a tumor of mottled scrap and human ingenuity. It was dying just like everything else in the Lower Outer-City, but near constant repair kept it dying slowly. It was a dedication rarely seen in the world, one that said, ‘This place is loved’. That love was plain to see in the hand-painted sign above the door that carried the shop’s name and a crude drawing of a toadish man giving a thumbs-up.

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Vagari took one last breath of the acrid air and held it as he lingered outside the door for a moment as if turning the handle would make it all a dream and vanish that long-sought tome from reality. He let the moment of dread go with the breath, then turned the handle and went inside, closing the door behind him.

If the door striking the bell hadn’t alerted Alto to his customer, the sharp creaking of misshapen hinges surely had. A lifetime ago, Vagari had made a deal with the shop’s original owner, Mainio Aalto, a professor in anthropology and a hobbyist in the occult. Vagari had seen something in him and dared to speak of things he had never spoken of to anyone before. Together they made the promise to find a way to fix the world, one Aalto had kept to the end of his days.

Luckily that something Vagari had seen seemed to have been something genetic with their deal faithfully being passed on through the generations. Mainio’s grandson, Alto II, and his aptly named daughter, Soprano, dutifully carried on their forefather’s legacy. In doing so, they had long since grown passed being valued accessories to that promise and into an example of it fulfilled - what Vagari dared declare as family. His only complaint with it all was that in all the time that spanned four generations, not one of them thought to oil the door.

“Hail, Alto!” Vagari called out over his shoulder as he secured their meeting. Unnaturally long fingers turned the deadbolt with a dexterous flick before disappearing back under a patched and tattered cloak. “I got here as soon as I could – as soon as I got your letter. I had just gotten back to Eastend, hadn’t even sat down yet before it arrived. Sold my salvage right then and there and left immediately. Didn’t even get to tend my garden! Promptly ran into a storm…”

Vagari strode forward, walking with an ever-present hunch that hid more than his true height. The why of it was no mystery to the shop’s residents, but a façade he kept up so not to strike his head upon the cluttered mess of items hanging from the ceiling. “I can’t believe you found it,” Vagari admitted, stopping before the front desk to tap gingerly at the bell there. He chimed it thrice. “It’s been sixteen years since your father was lost looking for it… Twenty, chasing every rumor, every possible lead we could. A chase that’s finally over, thanks to you. He would be so proud of you. I know I am.”

Instead of the warm familiar greeting he had grown accustomed to, all Vagari was greeted with was silence. That dread he had experienced at the door welled up inside him again as he scanned the still room before him. Nothing seemed out of place beyond that stillness – a cold stagnancy entirely discordant with his memories of that place.

Vagari called out again and again he gained no reply. Where was he? He wondered, agonizing with that dread each step of the way. Where was the impossibly cheery man who could sell you your own boots? There was no way Alto would have left his shop unlocked – especially after his discovery – so he had to be there. Vagari reached out and wrapped his fingers around the edge of the counter. He leaned over and saw his dread made manifest.

Alto was dead. His body was huddled up against the counter; obvious signs of torture marring every inch of it. In the end it wasn’t the torture that killed him, but by some blunt thing obliterating his skull, leaving nothing of the face he knew. Vagari hissed out a curse as he drew back his hands, leaving long channels in the countertop as he did.

Alto was dead, and he had been for some time it appeared – maybe even since he had sent the letter. But why? Why would anyone do such a thing? The book, it had to be. Someone had learned it was in his possession and killed him for it. But how? The letter was hand delivered and sealed when Vagari received it. No one would have even looked for one; the Central Communications Network had been the norm since before the world ended. A handwritten letter was all but unheard of.

The how of it was quickly pushed out of mind and replaced with a name – Soprano – and snakes of anxiety writhing around it. She had to be about fourteen now, Vagari thought sadly, maybe a bit older, but still so very young – too young for such cruelties. He had to find her and quick. Vagari made to vault the counter but paused with a wave of that cold dread washing over him.

Vagari didn’t know if he was afraid to see her in the same state as her father or what, but that dread bloomed into an intense fear that froze his bones on the spot. It felt wrong, alien even, as if it were implanted from somewhere else and not born within him. He stepped back and sighed mournfully. “No…” Vagari uttered to himself, “if it’s been this long...” He shook his head and reached into his cloak, behind his back, and pulled out a glistening orb the color of corroding bronze. “Search the house and find her…” Vagari whispered to it, pausing a moment before adding, “Find the book.”

The orb quivered in the palm of his hand before splitting down the center at the behest of a set of sharp needle-like claws. A pale insectoid thing crawled forth, its shell quickly hardening to the same bronze its egg had been. It was reminiscent of a cicada in its shape and form, but with the scissoring mandibles of a predatory wasp, and mantid-like claws. Vagari watched anxiously as the drone took flight into the dark confines of the shop – expecting the very worst.

He waited with bated breath until the drone returned carrying something between its jaws. Vagari took it and found it to be a note, seemingly confirming his fears. It was hastily written, painted really, in blood and with shaking hands. Vagari’s heart sank at the sight of it, but he had to be sure. “Drawn in her blood…” He noted to himself after a quick taste of the paper with a long serpentine tongue sheathed within his human one. Vagari let out a stuttered breath as he held the note up to the light and read what might very well be the final words of the only family he had left.

‘They found us,’ it read directly. ‘Got dad. But not me. I have the book. They’re still looking. Above – not below. I’m scared, Vagari… Find me, you-know-where.’

Vagari set the note down and stared down at it, through it, to the body hidden just beyond. “Your daughter escaped, Alto…” Vagari announced with a struggled smile – some of that weighty dread lifted from his shoulders. But it was small consolation to the dead. She was alive, but for how long? How long could the girl run? How far was far enough? Vagari shook his head and steeled himself, repeating those lettered words in his mind – ‘You-know-where…’

He did, and hopefully it was the answer to those dogging questions – home, his home. Soprano was headed across the Eastern Wastes, far to the frontier, to Eastend – back the way he came. Vagari looked to the drone waiting patiently for its next command and gave it to it. “Clean… clean this up,” Vagari ordered in a pained stutter, the finality of the dark situation seeping into his words. “We don’t want her to see… him when she gets back.”

Vagari made his way to the door and opened it but paused before going through. He looked back over his shoulder and uttered an apology to the dead. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, Alto,” he said softly. “But I will make this right… I will bring her home and we’ll finish what we started.”

For a moment longer Vagari stared into the shadowy depths of the shop, into that once familiar place that always conjured warm memories. In that instance he found none. The coldness from beyond had finally seeped in. He stared into the darkness, that infiltrating dread dampening his brow, and it stared back at him. Vagari looked away, stepped out, and shut the door.