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 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: Theophany
“These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” – Rev 22:6
I.
The Glass Plains – 2474
Gold shafts of sunlight cut through the darkness of the skeletal silhouettes that made up the long dead city. The ghostly cries of night-birds rising in their roosts echoed out through those hollow bones of steel and ruin. The wind howled, crying out like all the lost souls who died there when the world ended two hundred years ago. It was a foreboding place, one twice ruined – once when the world fell to monsters, and then once more when the massive ship crashed four years ago.
The Verdant City was what people had called it, but there was nothing verdant about it now. No one knew why the ship fell, but it had with devastating effect. Nothing had survived its final descent. All that remained now were the wire frames of buildings and glassed earth – granting the city it’s new name: The Glass Plains.
Before the city’s second death, it had been shunned by all but the bravest of souls, and now wasn’t any different. The titanic ship’s fall hadn’t made it any safer to travel, but instead made a no-mans-land for vultures to fight over. Piety was one of those vultures, a scavenger come to pick clean the bones of the crashed ship. However, her crew was small, and no match for the warring merchant lords who had carved up the surrounding territory.
Under any other circumstances Piety would have written the ship off as a lost cause, a feast for bigger beasts than her, but she had recently come into information that could change that. Supposedly there was a hidden entrance, a path that would lead into the very core of the ship. That meant, while the merchant guilds fought for scraps as they spent weeks cutting through each bulkhead and door, she could sneak in and steal the choicest meat right off their plates.
The reward would mean an escape from the outer-city slums. With a claim on the innermost salvage, her crew could buy their way into the Uppercity, away from the smog and rot of the world below. That was, if it were true. And that was what she was there to find out. Before she rallied up her crew for a deep dive, she would scout it out herself and see if there were any truth to the matter.
Piety wasn’t so brave or foolish to go completely alone however. Close above her was a drone, a quadcopter keeping a close eye on her and her surroundings. The name behind the watchful eye in the sky was Reverence, her twin brother and the only other true permanence in her crew. While she and her crew worked sites, it was his job to run the technical side of things, which he excelled at.
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“Temperature is still dropping,” announced a solemn voice over the radio. Piety turned on her open-mic and sighed, saying in reply, “Means we’re getting close. The broker said one of the signs was a drop in temperature.”
“It’s also a sign of demonic presence,” Reverence reminded her. “Keep an eye open and watch your back.”
“I thought that’s what I have you here for, Rev?” Piety said with a chortle as she adjusted the cords of her NCI, her neural-control-interface. The NCI was connected to a pair of goggles that allowed her to see all sorts of worldly data displayed on a HUD right before her eyes. They even had an uplink to the drone following her, letting her see the area from a bird’s view. What they were telling her now was both encouraging and worrisome.
The temperature was dropping rapidly, sitting now at a freezing temperature of twenty degrees. It wasn’t a comforting sign at all, but if her intel was correct, meant she was drawing near her hidden entrance. The ship itself was colossal, towering above her as she crept along its length, very nearly blocking out the cityscape behind it. She was somewhere near the middle of it now, on the port side. Piety was surprised she hadn’t run into any other crews, even from a distance. It seemed they avoided the area – which was good for her. She didn’t need the distraction of a fire fight if they caught her poaching their claim.
It was amazing how much of the massive ship survived the fall without so much as a dent on it. Piety wouldn’t be surprised if it could still fly. And then she saw it, holes in the hull, ragged gashes that looked like something had taken a bite out of it. Most of them didn’t make it past the thick layers of steel that made up the ship’s outer hull, but one in the center seemed to have pierced into a duct of some kind. It was her hidden entrance; it had to be.
Piety shivered as she drew near the gash, part from the cold, part from the excitement coursing through her. It was real, the info panned out. “Do you see this, Rev?” Piety asked, struggling to mask her excitement.
“Seen and marked,” Reverence replied, as stoic as always. “Though I wonder what possibly could have done such a thing. It must have been massive, whatever it was.”
“An Archfiend perhaps?” Piety idlily wondered. “Doesn’t look like it took fire. Looks like something tore into it.”
“Comforting,” Rev uttered with a sigh. “Well, you’ve found your entrance. You should head back for now.”
“No way!” exclaimed Piety, peeking her head into the hole. “I’m going in. Gotta see how far this goes.”
“I won’t be able to keep an eye on you in there,” Reverence cautioned. “We might lose contact. It’s not worth the risk.”
That was where he was wrong. Escaping the hellhole that was the LOC was well worth the risk of her life, his, and their entire crews. It wasn’t just about breaking the chains of poverty but escaping a past that had haunted them since the day they were born.
Reverence and Piety were the sole survivors of a ritual gone wrong. Born into a sect of the Cult of Yaldabaoth, worshipers of a dark god, they were to take part in the summoning of a demon upon their thirteenth birthday, but something went terribly wrong. The ritual wasn’t how their parents had painted it, they weren’t to take part in it as members of the cult. No, they where the ritual, sacrifices to be made.
Piety’s memory of the ritual was fragmented at best. Both had been drugged and bound. She could remember seeing her brother on the altar, the fear in his eyes as they drew near with the knife. Then, nothing. They were all dead and he was dragging her to safety. But safety was never found. To this day, the cult was still after them. Whether it was to pull them back into the fold or finish the ghastly ritual they had started, neither knew for sure. They just kept running, year after year.
Piety was tired of running, tired of the dogged pursuit, of living in fear with one eye always cast over her shoulder. They could hardly stay in one place for a year before having to pack up and change locations. But the salvage here would change that. The rights alone would sell for enough to get them access to the upper levels of the Megacity. Actively working the site would take time, but there was no doubt in her mind that it would set them up for life. But that was neither here nor there. There was one thing she had to do first, and that was to follow her white rabbit to the end of the tunnel and see if she ended up in Wonderland.
Piety stared deep into the wound before her, sliding her hand down the jagged edges before turning her gaze up to the drone. “I’m going in, Rev,” she announced with a smirk. “See you when I see you.”