Chapter 1

Lady Morena once told children of the Last Sanctuary that humans of a life time past were the most feared creatures to roam the planet Earth. Her voice reached back and brought to life the faded memories when humans invaded all lands and all waters. She told of how the lion feared, and the shark feared, and the hawked feared. Every animal trembled at the thought of humans with their destructive weapons. Nothing could stop their march.

Until the humans found cursed lands. The roles switched unexpectedly. It invaded us.

"A sickness to start," Morena had explained. She recounted the deaths on her fingers by the thousands. The first, a pinkie finger, gone after the explorers' bodies rose to the surface of the ocean and others had found them, bringing disease to shore. They dropped dead before sunrise. The second, a ring finger, were people who came in contact with the infected. And ten fingers on... Dropped dead.

"Hells' Beasts next," she told with expressive gestures. A hand waved across her brow in relief, fists shook above her head in anger, sad eyes and fingers trailed down her cheeks--sorrow. She had used sorrow the most. Nothing else could be expressed after dragons flew over the land, casting fire from their mouths. When demon cats ad hellish birds spread their chaos it was all death and tears.

"Sanctuary is last," The surviving humans crawled from beneath the wreckage of the once empire and discovered a world unknown. Frightened by the new territories set by this new, strange land, they built the Last Sanctuary. It rose five stories in the sky, made of stone and mud. Only the surrounding canyon kept it and the last humans safe.

Lady Morena had told her tales with the most detail and enthusiasm. With her passing, only Ahnjil remembered them. Everyone else thought it myth and forgot the Lady's words. They turned to scavenge for dwindling supplies. Ahnjil turned to me.

"I didn't forget," she said, voice nearly gone. "Matilena, don't you forget."

Nodding, I grasped her hands. They felt cold and her grip matched the strength of her voice. Tears welled in the corners of my eyes. I will not cry. I swear I won't.

"Oh, my poor baby," Ahnjil whispered. She tried sitting up, but effort failed her. The blankets rustled as she gave way to weakness and collapsed onto the bed. Her red hair fanned across the white pillows, she truly resembled the holy heralds from above.

"It's not fair! So many people have died already! Why must you leave too?" My voice shook and the inward chant failed as tears spilled down my hot cheeks.

"That's how it is, darling."

My blood burned. "You're so calm. Glad to leave me, huh? Just like dad did!" I buried my face in the blankets. Ahnjil stoked my hair and hummed a familiar lullaby. She only made me feel worse, my stomach knotted up, even though the hate had been undone.

"I was lucky to find him,” Ahnjil managed to speak. "There are so few men now-a-days."


I tried wiping my eyes. "Luck has nothing to do with your looks...mom?"

Her light green eyes gazed at the ceiling. a slight smile in the corner of her mouth made her face gentle. "Mom?" I said again, shaking her. No luck. No hope. The world was without hope. I was without hope.

By the end of the night, I was without tears.


Chapter 2 May 20, 2061

A balcony looked over the Dining Area. Talva didn't bother glancing at the people below. She gazed right over them, to the window opposite of her, and through the glass she viewed the dangerous dip and rise of the terrain. A canyon stared back at her. Leaning against the balcony's rail, she squinted her eyes to see...

"Do you want to fall?" I asked.

Talva snapped away from the rail. She looked down the stairs to where I stood. "Matty, what are you doing dear?" The most recent Last Sanctuary Governess, Talva, smiled with an expert facade. Everything about her seemed fake, from her neat suit to the neat way she greeted people. Her blue eyes twinkled as I openly glared at her.

"I wanted to know if everything's going as planned." I tried smiling, but it turned into a grimace when I noticed her short, bobbed hair and towering stature.

She seemed to take delight in my disgust. "Everything's great. Running smoothly," she beamed.

Lies. It could never be great. In fact, it was hopeless.

"Well...that's a lie,"

I raised my eyebrows. She admits it?

"A fight broke out between a few ladies in the Irrigation Center. Thankfully, that was resolved." Talva chuckled so... neatly. She rose above the image of perfection. Her clothes were slightly tattered and discolored, but everyone expects that since new clothes were hard to produce when the looms on the third floor keep breaking down. People believed food to be more important anyway.

"Is there any news from the Atoll Colony?"

Talva's neat front wavered. Her fake smile slid off her face and she glanced at the giant window's pane. "No. Communications have been lost."

"They were the last of the men. We're all fucked!" I said, emphasizing my words with hate.

"We are not (ahem) fucked. Precautions were made before you were even born." She said her goodbyes and stomped away, muttering about a meeting with the Ladies.

I waited for her footsteps to stop echoing in the halls before I climbed the stairs. Standing where she did, I leaned against the rail and focused. Across the way a giant glare obscured the view of the canyon. The sun burned up everything outside, leaving the barren rock. A glimpse of white robed people sent a smile to my lips. Scavengers would be arriving soon, knapsacks slung across their backs and faces turned red from the intense heat. I turned from the view to go greet them at the Last Sanctuary's entrance. Then, paused.

Two black figures, more animal than human, jumped across the rock and disappeared behind a crag. They flashed by so quickly I thought that they could have been spots in my eyes. To be sure, I searched the scene for anything to move again.

"Hey!"

I jumped back from the rail with a guilty expression souring my face and I couldn't figure out why. Thoughts about invaders weren't against the rules...

"Do you want to fall?" Two women climbed the stairs. One expressed concern while the other took a moment to remove rice stuck on her cheek.

"No. Just enjoying the view…” I slid by them, trying to look as if I had somewhere to be. They watched me hurry down the steps, I could feel their eyes on my back as I turned the corner, probably thinking I might suddenly throw myself over the banister.

When they were sure I couldn't hear, one whispered, "She's as weird as they say."

My face burned with shame as I trudged down to the first floor, although the shame should be Ahnjil's for not teaching me a trade. She busied me with tales of the past instead. The Last Sanctuary had no positions for Historians, a need to know the today was more important than the need to know the yesterday. Sometimes I wonder why she kept me from learning how to care for plants or scavenge or how to build useful machines (which for some reason always break down a few days after fixing).

'Write down what you see' Ahnjil told me when she lived. I turned eight when her gentle words spoke those words, a sacred spell. 'Write down and remember, so that others will remember.' To her, life focused on remembering and less on living.

Something lightly tugged on my hair. "You lost in your thoughts again?" A Scavenger stood by me, her knapsack already overturned with its contents spilled onto the ground. "I swear, everyday you become more like her...Being lost in your thoughts, I mean."

I knew the Scavenger wasn't talking about my looks. My mother and I contrasted in looks. Her eyes shone bright just as mine flashed darkly. Ahnjil's red hair crowned her the queen of beauty and her sun-kissed skin added to the flare. I never tanned and my waving hair spilled over my shoulders a flat brown color. My bangs had not been cut since three weeks before her passing and they now hung right in my sight. "What do you think I should do with these?" I asked the scavenger besides me.

She shrugged. "Let them grow out. It'll make your face look awkward for a week or two...but who're you trying to impress?"

"Thanks, Quirnel," I replied with heavy sarcasm.

The Scavenger smiled brightly and drew off her hood, taking her wiry brown hair out of its bun and handing two burettes to me.

"What are these?" I eyed the burettes flowered gems with dislike.

"Part you hair to the side, like this, and clip your bangs so they stay out of your eyes...like this." Once Quirnel quit fussing she stepped back to admire her work, gasping while turning my chin. "I take back what I said. You are starting to resemble your mother."

"Is her mother a pig?"

Two more scavengers walked through the Last Sanctuary's entrance, sand swirling in after them and a rush of wind that could have knocked me off my feet if the door hadn't shut when it did. The one who spoke laugh like a crow, but had looks most would compare to my mother. The rest would say the scavenger had only charm in her face and there was nothing charming about her personality, a fierce woman with venomous words that struck hard and fast like the cobras hidden in the canyon crags.

"Mili that's unnecessary," Quirnel huffed, gathering her findings back into her bag.

The beauty huffed too. She put her hands on her hips and made an amusing look, tongue stuck out and eyes rolled upwards.

Her dark companion stifled most of her giggles. When one managed to escape, the girl's brown cheeks turned a rosy color, a blush lit up her eyes and she quickly hid them, looking at the stone ground. The scavenger was named Vaneii, a very timid girl with the darkest complexion of the Last Sanctuary.

"Laughing is unnecessary," said Mili, mocking Quirnel's voice.

Quirnel ignored them. "Here Matty, I thought you might want this since no one else in the sanctuary can read."

I took the book from her hands and blew the sand off its cover. Opening the pages made them crinkle and as my eyes swept across the pages a new story, a different place unfolded before me and the scavengers around me couldn't see it. "A story...and it's not about the invasion."

Mili glanced over Quirnel's shoulder and scrunched her beautiful little nose. "Who needs to read?"

"I would like to," The third and shyest scavenger whispered.

"Shut up, Vaneii," Mili hissed. "Anyway, Quirnel, is the book the best you found today? Over the ridge in the east I found a heap of clothing."

The announcement had Quirnel turning away from the book and its strange black markings that lined the paper in rows. Mili pulled out her treasures and Vaneii soon did the same. They started a debate over the best finds as I withdrew down the south hallway, cradling the newly found book in my arms and anticipating the read. I could no longer hear them when I made it to my favorite spot in the Sanctuary. The length of the corridor had been painted with the dark swirling colors of Earth before the invasion of Hell, the best place for an unwanted historian, and the quietest. clarify

In fine details the sun glowed off the sheen of hawks’ feathers and cats lurked behind the gloss of foliage, fish swam in chaotic strokes of blue and white while the doom approached. All of the animals had blank eyes, empty sockets. It struck with the feeling of dread, being empty, without anger, without joy, without hope. The truth of the world. Further down the scenes of destruction unfolded in darker tones and sharper images. Large eyes glowed red inside an underwater cave, massive bodies of scales and feathers filled the sky. Leopards shown to be as big as two story houses and wolves even more massive scourged the land. The beasts from hell were the ones to have eyes, sharp slits brimming with ferocity and a wild need for destruction.

I rested my head against the opposite wall to better admire the way the artist had depicted the entire destruction of the planet, wild, crazy, exaggerated shades of gray and black. To accentuate the splashes of red.


Chapter 3 May 22, 2061

Around my eighth birthday Ahnjil had led me to the painted corridor. I laughed upon seeing that the painter had forgotten to paint in the eyes of the animals. It turned out an intentional error. My mother smiled kindly as she listened to me assess the parts of unadorned wall. She knew what the artist portrayed by leaving the eyes blank and didn’t see it fitting to tell me then that those blank eyes stood for death, an unknown void, one that left holes in hearts.

Once more, I turned the corner and faced the lifeless eyes. My entirety burned with hate at the images of Hell’s beasts rising up from the cursed lands and tearing the world apart, making rivers and seas bleed onto the trembling earth, and the depressed sky cry fat tears onto fires struck up from their throats. They killed everything. In the most indirect way, they killed my mother. If the demon cats and birds never raided Earth then she would live.

I tried imaging how it could have been. Her fire-red hair stood out, a beacon in the thousands of people crashing against each other as they walked down a dark, stone path. Above her towered rows of glass planes and metal and…The picture shattered.

Closing my eyes, I tried again. Once more the fragmental colors fell apart, re-piecing themselves to show Ahnjil sitting on a bed with me in her lap, as if to say she could not exist anywhere else. Then, hate left and in its place sorrow returned. My fists unclenched and more tears flowed, sobs completing a chorus of helplessness, the feelings of losing things I wanted so much but couldn’t reach.

Someone echoed my cries. I fell quiet hearing the soft whimpers of another and spun around to see who might have stood in the hall with me. She huddled in the corner. Her sallow hands held her face as clear tears spilled through her bone-thin fingers. The woman swayed unsteadily and each moan she released was louder than the one before. Pale red hair matted her head. The locks seemed to fall out in clumps around her angular shoulders.

My throat closed up in fright. “Mom?” I choked out.

The sobs stopped, the woman huddled in the corner removed her hands from her face slowly, and raised her eyes to mine. Black, pitiless eyes. Ahnjil parted her raw, bleeding lips and her voice resounded off the walls, striking me with an invisible, inhuman force, “These tears burn in Hell.”

I staggered back against the painted wall, my vision shuttering as the ghost of my mother faded. First, the feet and stomach, then the arms and hair. Her black eyes lingered for an instant, flashing menacingly before she disappeared altogether. Two short breaths. Gone.

It took a while before the gears in my head started clicking, the grinding of metal in my ears shouting fear. I should be afraid. Fumbling for my footing, I ran as scared people did with fire at my heels and disregard for surroundings. Around the corner, passed the people at the Last Sanctuary entrance, and under the stairs. I ignored the person who opened the door, and pushed into the Mechanics Lab, metal clanking and buzzing in a sing-song greeting. In the middle of the room of scattered wires and useless blocks of dull aluminum stood a stout woman fussing over a table of brass scrapes and waving pieces in her assistants face.

“The Scavengers need to hurry with today’s search.” The stout woman pushed her magnifying spectacles up the bridge of her nose, shaking her head of silver curls. She shuffled to another table. On it splayed a box of wires and screws stripped of their threads. Picking up the box, she turned to ask her assistant something, but noticed me approaching still panic stricken and trembling. “Matty! What’s wrong dear?—Ugh. Lidianna, what have you been doing this whole time? Matty, Can you tell this excuse of an assistant that she needs to keep up with paperwork. She forgot to file the inventory of newly brought in parts!”

The lanky woman beside her sighed. “I did it yesterday. It was you who lost it in the monstrous pile of papers on your desk. Even after I told you I put it there.”

The stout woman tsked.

They didn’t seem to notice my fluttering heart or tears streaked down my face, or maybe they blamed the death of Ahnjil to my wild appearance. Whichever, I focused on helping them to get rid of the shock of seeing my mother, have dead with black eyes. We moved on to working on a huge, white box with a lid on the front instead of on top. Knobs on the head board clicked softly when turned. I read some of the fine print by the knobs aloud, ‘hot water’ and ‘normal wash’. The lanky assistant, Lidianna, asked me something, her voice rising and falling in my ears but I was too focused to understand what she said.

“Matty,”

I snapped to attention at the sound of my name, a breath of warning in the tone. “Yes, Lady Dacion?” I said, respectfully to the stout woman.

She pushed up her glasses. “Something’s been bothering you.”

I smiled, dispelling the creeping fear entangling my nerves. Ways to bring up seeing Ahnjil’s ghost sprung to mind, but as the imagined conversation came to close Dacion would think me weird. Like all the others. “Just escaping loneliness.” My voice stopped working at the end of my words as I tried holding back the wails.

“Well, then,” Dacion handed me a book. “Help Lidianna find parts on the marked pages.”

The assistant lead me in the direction of a third table where three workers sat, glancing our way but keeping to their individual tasks. I leafed through the pages to the ones marks by thin strips of paper. At least thirty diagrams littered the text and all needed for the particular project. “Lidianna, what are you trying to build?”

Her eyes swept over the table and back to the page, she picked up a few items, shuffling the scrapes, putting bad pieces and finding better ones. :A car,” she said, tossing a bolt into a bucket.

“oh.” A what?

“Damn it all!” Lady Dacion shouted from across the room, slamming down her tools. Bolts and screws hopped to the floor and rolled under the piles of scraped metal strewn about the title flooring. “It’s impossible!”

Lidianna rushed to help the stout woman find a solution.

I continued my job until Lady Dacion called me. She wiped her greasy hands on a red towel, sighing, “I need a break.” She pushed her spectacles back to the bridge of her nose and her eyes crossed as they focused on the remaining spots on the glass. Ignoring them the lady said, “Let’s go have ourselves some dinner.”


Dinner sounded good. I almost agreed with enthusiasm, but a Scavenger threw open the Mechanics Lab door and stumbled in, shaking with adrenaline, interrupting my reply. She threw of her hood. The machines rumbled to silence and the Mechanics halted their work, waiting for the woman to say something. “They’re coming!” The Scavengers eyes lit up in excitement.

“Who?” Lady Dacion asked, echoing the question of my thoughts.

“Survivors of the Atoll Colony!”

From outside the room, conversations began as quiet murmurings until a couple more Scavengers loudly exclaimed the rumors as truth, survivors of the Atoll Colony were making their way across the dangerous canyon. The Scavenger in the lab rushed out of the room to join her companions in news spreading. The women left their projects, sheets of metal, wrenches, bolts, all thrown aside to welcome the long awaited men of the Atoll Colony. I was pushed along, with an empty stomach.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.08.2011

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