Cloud Fire - The Sentinel Project

A Boy on The Ice

The day was far from beautiful, coupling it's reality, of which was common knowledge to all. Storm clouds littered the sky, with gentle rainfall, descending into a dense fog. It was time for all men and women to fight. That, or die.
The pine forrest was seethen in curling roots and dark, muddy soil where worms and insects scurried hurryingly. And there in the muck, a black boot heavily set it's foot. Slowly, the man raised his vision toward the horizon, above the misty tree line.

From the dusken sky beyond, into the bleak undergrowth a bright light shot through. It's white scattered all shadows into oblivion, leaving all eyes momentarily blinded. Like newborns first seeing the light of day, the soldiers shielded their eyes until it faded. Then, as it did, the sound followed.

A deafening crash struck through the woods, like the thundering clap of some unknown god returning at last. Through every hollowed trunk it echoed, shuddering the wood and shaking the ground. And there in the sky beyond, a beam of red light parted the clouds.

How it could be described was hard to say. It was alien. Unlike anything the soldiers had ever seen. A cylinder of pure energy. Powerful, as it disrupted the oxygen, forcing the air around it to shiver and boil. And the clouds at its peak, threw themselves aside as it purged through them violently. A circular elevator of bright red lightening.

Slowly at first it began. As the rumbling thunder continued, the clouds and sky itself began to turn the same colour. As if the heavens had changed into a sea of blood, the blue shivered and turned in crimson waves. Horror set itself in their eyes as it spread. Faster and faster, until it threw itself over them. The rippling waves, there was no other way to describe it. The sky itself was on fire.

Through the trees, a harsh wind came. Stronger and stronger it blew, picking up faster than they could retaliate to its own beginning. A bright light seeped in through the distance. Through the space between the trees, they could not look away. But no sooner than they saw it, it became too late.

Like hell, it came without further warning. An inferno unlike anything ever before seen. As if the sun had fallen onto the earth and began to purge the world, it devoured them. The wall of flames ripped through the trees and tore through the soldiers completely. There was nothing. No forrest. No soil. No people. No life. Only fire. Only death. And the life of the surface of the world itself... was gone.

300 years later
Present day

A gentle fall of grey and ashen snow floated downward, wetting and freezing to become one with the fields of ice. In the fading sunset light, a scent of fire and smoke bit in splinters at ones nose and tongue. The city behind them was burning. The city to which they would never return.

Encased by layers of fog, the young boy paced with a weak limp. He seemed desperate. Leaving behind him a trail of bloody steps, printed across the ice by his bare feet. His hair was a wet and tangled mess of black, hanging just over his eyes of different colour. One of hazel. The other of blue. He was clothed in a torn and burned long jacket, dark grey in colour, and shorts of the same. With every step his breath wheezed and struggled, yet still he did not faulter. Whatever he was running from, it was surely a fate worse than death.

Upon his back, he carried a younger girl. She was clothed in expensive, pink robes, soaked in blood at its tips. The blood of her father. Her father, the coward, King Hahn of East Heron. Hated from afar. And was now dead.
The girls hair whisped in the wind, a light blond. Her skin was pale in the cold as her face pressed tightly against the back of the boys neck. On her feet she wore a pair of oversized boots. They didn't seem to be hers. Fearfully, the boy glared ahead. Desperate to escape, his hobble quickenned into an unsteady stride, dragging his bad leg still behind him.