DUSKLIGHT ODYSSEY

Chapter 1

Ion's heavy boots kicked away the debris covering the entrance to the rubble which once scraped the sky. The whole structure was liable to collapse on his head, but Ion was tired—and almost as hungry—and a building crushing his bones would be preferable to the fate he would suffer should he see the sun rise.

He swung his great pack from off his shoulders and dropped his thick cloak onto the floor. He let out a sigh—the sigh of one who wished his troubles could be cast down so easily as his effects.

From his pack he pulled a hunk of grey meat loosely wrapped in rags, taken from the élaf he chanced upon last twilight. Ion knew well that a fire would be a mistake, and so the viscid meat slid down his gullet one ravenous bite at a time.

Satisfied as he would be, Ion slumped onto his cloak and forced himself into a dreamless rest that would grant him strength enough for the morrow. What occupied his long hours of the scorching day could hardly be called sleep. Ion felt every moment pass by slowly—an eternity, almost, alone inside his own head. He would open his eyes as soon as his limbs were strong enough to carry him again, and the looming sunlight draping the earth was wont to recede.

In his mimicry of sleep, Ion's mind wandered aimlessly. It wove through past and present—though a future he did or could not imagine. Places and faces past all pushed their way to the front of his thoughts before fading again.

He thought, for a moment, of the building wherein he lodged. A colorless heap ruined atop the horizon, scarred by whipping storms of dust, bent and broken by long, long years of neglect. A place of no import. Indeed, it never was. Whatever purpose it had served long ago held no weight in the hearts of whatever long-dead hands once built the place. The walls of this dreary monolith were home to neither man, woman, nor fond memory. Such was the case for most of what remained from before. Towering shrines, but to what? A thousand shattered windows, steel beams that reached into the sky, a hundred flights of stairs that led to nothing and never did. Nowhere in this lonely plain that was the world was there a home to be found. No love graced a single square meter of its shattered and forgotten form.

The state of man was much the same. Left behind to rot and wander and wander and rot, to breathe and walk and hide from the sun and its perils. To look and behold ghosts of the past with no wonder nor reverie, for there was nothing to be found which inspired warmth in his heart, only still pangs of something that was meant to be there but wasn't.

It was trouble enough to breathe. It was trouble enough to wander. Too much for most, who had long since stepped into the sun's piercing light and faced whatever comes after. On unending days of unrest such as this, Ion, too, felt the urge. To step out. To feel, for the first time, sunlight on his skin. And then to fade forever. One day his shadow would join the rest in haunting this barren hell. Ion did not find comfort in the thought, but neither was comfort to be found in the shelters of rust and stone wherein he laid each day, nor the icy winds of dark in which he wandered every night.

Ion felt tattered and frayed. Though young, he felt old. Hope was a distant word which held no meaning on an earth that was damned. Even still, Ion put one foot in front of the other. He swallowed whatever meat he found. He drank whatever dew the air formed. He was alive, though no voice answered him when he asked what purpose these performances held.

When the millennium of day was passed and the sun had crossed the breadth of the sky till all was cast in twilight's amethyst hews, Ion opened his eyes and sat up, taking a moment to wet his parched lips and clear his sapless throat. His back ached, and he was loathe to set his pack upon it. So, too, was he mired by the thought of setting himself upon his bruised feet. But his thirst bade him up.

Silhouettes of ancient civilization blackened the skyline against the firmament.

Ion trudged through the desert floor, a trail of upset dust following as he went. The ruined streets he trod twisted and turned, a concrete maze. Ion watched the dark ground beneath him for jutting steel and jagged rocks primed to impale.