The Lucian Chronicles Book 1 The Inception

Chapter 1

It was in the one hundred and thirty second year of the new Empire in the port city of Arkaley that a massive earthquake strokes the city at around midday.  The violent shaking sent the people that survived there collapsing homes and business rushing to crowed on to the open spaces of docks and beaches and what they thought was safety.

Then these people watched at first in amazement as the ocean retreated and the sea floor was exposed and so into the light of day came lost ships and ruins of the ancients' but as the people gazed at this site a growing fear filled them and some feeling a threat started to move away from this marvel but then with at first little or no sound the sea returned in a roar that drowned the screams of the crowds that had just moments before stood thinking themselves fortunate to have serviced the earth moving and then to witness the ocean retreat to show them the marvels of the deep, now they fled in a surge from the ocean that had returned to not only reclaim what it had given up but to take even more as it swept throw the broken streets and buildings pushing over what had been weakened by the earth quake. 

Then as if it had grown bored with it all the water turned and raced back to the sea, carrying away with it many and more.  The survivors and in their arrogance asked what now and they were answered with fire.  The fires started by fallen lamps, ovens and stoves not drown by the water and broken open by the ground shaking raged in the city, with only a few of the strongest of the empires stone building serviced and only the buildings or the gutted shells of the buildings from the times of the ancients stood undamaged for their crafted artificial stone could only be damaged by the most powerful of energies. 

As with all things human there followed with most of the so-called good human men and woman of Arkaley resorting to looting, robbing, raping, killing, cannibalism and human and visitor sacrifices one could understand why a great number of people quite what seemed to have become the cursed city of Arkaley.

However not all, in Arkaley gave up and just off the great coastal road of the ancients was the temple of the workmen.  The temple was one of the few buildings in the city that had been built by the ancients and later expanded by the Elders and because of it the few others like it that were around and the good harbor was one of the chief reasons that the city of Arkaley had grown and for a long time prospered.  The temple having been built of the wonders stone of the ancients had withstood the great fire, the flood and the earth shaking.

For a building of the ancients it was not a large one, it was only a single story the elders had expanded it with lesser stones than the Elders but still far stronger than any natural stone and then later common men had used common materials to expanded it even more but always at its holy core were written in the Ancient speak and translated by the elders and then passed down over the years the words Rest Stop so that inside this holy building that clearly the ancients had built to inspire and to remind workers to stop resting and to get back to work was set many a holy alter but the most often visited and use was the one to the great martyr Jezeuse.

On day a very tired, dirty, starving and discouraged priest was setting in the dust on the steps outside the holy building, looked up at the sound of approaching feet, and if he had had the strength he would of felt fear that it was more looters but he could only bring himself to look up expecting that at last death had come to claim him as it had done with all the others of his order, instead he felt something that he had not known for a long time, it was hope for he saw not a mob come to kill him but instead it was a family coming down the dusty broken street and they were caring what could only be offerings.

The priest much neglected stomach growled in protest and the man found new passion and jumped to his feet, he quickly dusted off his stain robes and found a discarded stick to use as his croft and envisaged food.