Wylantern

They shot at her as she fell from the roof of the 80 story building in downtown New Tokyo. Her hair fluttered in the wind and she relaxed her mind. She was ready for death; there was nothing here for her. She waited for the sweet cold unknown. The ground rushed up to greet her in a stony embrace and she could hear ricochets of falling bullets as she hit the cement pavement with a sickening crack. * * * Denise, a nurse, combed the patient's hair. Without warning she sat bolt upright, startling her. Her eyes shot open and looked around, confused. Medical equipment beeped and hummed and the bright ceiling lights forced her to look around wit

PATHS OF ICE AND SNOW I awoke to the feel of freezing snow and ice on my face, and my mouth, open as I slept, had frozen open. I concentrated on my jaw, and saw the dark black knots of Order that represented the ice. With my mind's eye, I kneaded and worked the atrophied muscles until I could close my mouth slowly. Then, as the feeling returned to my face I opened and closed my mouth more and more, faster and faster until I couldn't feel the icy cold in my jaw anymore. I looked over to where the gelding was standing. It seemed he too had been subjected to the same unnatural freezing as my mouth and jaw, and I worked the same Patterns on hi

CHAPTER ONE: LONG ROADS LEAD EVERYWHERE It rained fiercely, the drops splattering my face, and running in rivulets down my weather-treated leather hood. My woolen socks, wet with the mist that hugged the earth, clung to my feet in my heavy leather boots. I was wet, no, not just wet, soaked. Moreover, I would pay for it later with a cold. My horse, a large brown gelding, plodded along the road towards the town of Hostenberg, nine leagues down the rutted road; squishing mud that was once and yet would be a road. The suns were setting, causing the sky to, like them, catch fire, crimson, rose, purple, and blue, perfect in its child-like simpli

2 February 2058 South-East of Old Paris Van Galin climbed the stairs in the derelict building, striding up the stairs soundlessly but for the quiet swishing of his black clerics' habit. His white collar, with its tiny silver cross stitched to it, constricted his throat and made his breathing even more labored after his exhaustion. On top of that was the face mask with its dust filter that he had strapped to his face to fight off the fine desert dust. He absentmindedly patted the sidearm and molecule-knife at his hip. The computer in his car networked with his earpiece fed him up-to-the-minute information as he proceeded through the old bu

It was dark, and a cool breeze blew in from the harbour. Near to dawn and fishing trawlers were just beginning to exit the quite quay. The water lapped at and played with the breakwater's rocks as if to taunt them and tempt the rocks into a moment of weakness when the awesome destructive power of the waves could be brought to the fore to obliterate the quay, and the beach, and the town. The earth clung to the mist like a security blanket, as if its vapours alone could ward off the darkness of the night. Streetlamps, with their light diffused and their heads hidden in fog pulsed their unloving heartbeat of illumination and warmly comforted the