Byron stared out the round ships porthole at the gas giant beyond, its ring illuminated by the blue sun. It looked almost like something out of science fiction, one of the old serials from the twentieth century.
Of course, in those serials everyone had enough to eat.
Frederic sat down beside him. “Rough music abroad tonight.”
Byron frowned [...]
The dillapidated walls that surrounded him shook with the rage of the passing army, their rhythmic chanting shaking him to his core. A glance out of the window showed that now elite mecha suits were passing, white ceramics and metal adorning the outside of their robotic skeletons, their helmeted riders chanting in time with the [...]
Darkness prevailed that day.
It didn’t look like it at the time, of course. That’s why we all celebrated. The vile Endokrin hordes were condemned back to the pits of hell where they belonged, and we had obtained a powerful new ally.
That was until we found out just why the Endokrin forces were fighting the Elfin [...]
One
The earth was a fertile, ruddy brown. It was pungent with fertility and pregnant promise. A smile cracked his mouth. This was good land on which he could grow many crops and raise all the pigs he needed.
He strode out from the copse and looked at the vast numbers of caravans stretching across the plains [...]
Cities rose and fell over the course of its life, whole civilizations climbed to the lofty heights of power and then succumbed to inefficiency and pride. They crumbled to barbarism, and new cities rose in their places, finally consolidated as massive empires which fell again.
It found it amusing to watch them rise and fall, as [...]
Auburn flames rent the sky as the city fell, great towers succumbing beneath the orbiting might.
And no-one even knew an intelligence was behind the attacks until it was too late. Large asteroids on a near-miss course, winding up in low earth orbit, smashing communications satellites as they ploughed through. Their gravitational masses hauled tides out [...]
Reality shattered, the air between the portal breaking like glass. Jored Stormslayer looked up in horror, for now it seemed he was indeed too late.
The portal, located deep beneath the surface of the world where the very ground burned to the touch, was as wide as a house and as tall as a tower, and [...]
It’s not like I need a reason, is it?
Other people seem to. Or at least, they manufacture them. Honour, freedom, altruism, justice, I could go on. There are plenty of reasons to fight, and humans are perfectly capable of inventing new ones.
So that’s it. I’m not fighting for a reason or an ideology, I fight [...]
The golden skies were rent that day, torn in twain by blackness, a tear in the fabric of reality high in the atmosphere. It spread quickly, devouring the sky from horizon to horizon and enveloping the world, replacing the warmth and kindness of the nation of Askarrion with a dark world from another plane, populated [...]
Airan scowled into the green boiling clouds overhead. Those clouds that would choke her as soon as she removed her helmet, those clouds that forced her into this fish-globe.
The humans had acted as though they were granting them a kindness when they landed and handed out the bowls, the breath masks, the chlorine scrubbers. Here [...]