The Alia

"The Alia" and concerns a future world where technology has become the "new" magic.The following post is a small extract from a fiction book I have started writing. This book is called Please fell free to give feedback, but do not expect this for a long time as I only write when I have time. Of course, if there is a publisher that decides to take this up, the added addition of a contract would speed this up.



Chapter 1
Despair's Last Journey


The lurking darkness which the torch could hardly hold back from swallowing them, they came to a clear understanding of the problem. (Darkness and Dawn, George A England).


The night seemed to berate them as they walked. The torrent beat about their heads and shoulders drowning the memories of the day. What little day there was seemed lost in the deep gloom that had hung menacing, day and night, for the last week.
Would they be better or worse without the canopy above them? The late autumn leaves hanging brown and lifeless on skeletal twigs. What little gloom that fell was cast from their lanterns. The moon should have waxed full, but the sky blotted out its presence in a pregnant deluge set to wash the stains of the earth into the distant sea.
The path was slippery. Decayed vegetation mixed with thick red mud first let slip pushing their boots away and then only to hold them tight. Grasping longingly and holding them, pulling them down to their ankles. With each step they had to give pause. With each pause they would sink ankle deep into the mire. Each step sloshing red puddles like the blood of the earth. Each step sucking more and more of their strength and will, washing away the little hope that they had felt as they started their journey and leaving them drained.
How long have they been walking? The time seemed interminable even with the brief intercession of filtered light between the patchwork canopies. Other than their own grudging steps and the constant pounding of the rain little could be heard.
Young oak saplings grew next to and across the path. Few people travel these days. There are visitors, but people don’t leave their villages any more. They walked in single file. Young saplings whipped across their legs as they walked pulling at their leggings. It was as if the forest itself was trying to stop them. People must have travelled once, in the distant past and they remembered the occasional vagrant or peddler. It had been so many years.
Then the Alia started to come more frequently.
The path twisted between the low sloping hills. Where they were the forest and the pounding of the torrent worked to drown out the thundering rapids below. The path twisted across the slope writhing like a large snake caught in its death throes with a broken back. The large black granite boulders that protruded around them caused the path to change levels going up and down between the thick oak trunks.
From time to time gaunt grey towers rose between the trunks of the oaks. Lumps of cracked and decaying concrete stood interspersed between the forests. Sharp red grasping tendrils of iron reached from them seeking to catch those who passed by.
There were seven of them. Fatigue crept on them. They all want to stop.
But they kept moving. They had to now. What little choice had remained was banished when they supported Magnus.
Magnus lead. He was only twenty, but he had started training to be a Magi, one of the Cyber Mages. It was said that he was particularly skilled. How far he could’ve gone now left a mystery. He was a young man with eyes that radiated time well past his age.
It seemed as if there was a time before the Alia, far back in the distant recesses of one’s memory. Even those memories where fading. Just as the concrete pillars decayed so to the memories of the time before disappeared lost from consciousness.
They moved in sequence, heads hung low stepping on each other’s footprints. The damp soaked deep into their boots. Rain soaked through their clothes seeping into everything. Their feet were swollen and blistered with the constant rubbing and the unswerving damp.
The Cyber Mages used to keep order. But like all things, their time is fading. Now it seems the Alia may rise.
The lamp was a small translucent blue crystalline cylinder. Magnus had created it shortly before they had all fled. There were many villages without mages these days. Lamp was created through nanomancy. Magnus knew the term; it spent many years learning the art. Like most people, the meaning of the word was lost to other times. He knew he could create the source that would result in objects such as the lamp. They would form from the inside out until they were whole. There was no explaining it; it’s just how it is. At least, that’s what they had been told.
The blue light of the lamp cast eerie shadows as it pierced the stygian night. The light played and danced across the thick mossen trunks of the trees as sheets of water sought to quench it is radiance. It used vortex energy and would continue to shine until extinguished. Magnus and the others did not know what this was either. They knew the value of the light as it reflected catching the radiance on the path from the glow.
A crack rebounded through the night air as the sky blazed azure capturing the dark in a momentary silhouette. Its essence turned inside out. The flash danced in the puddles left by the footprints and vanished. The faces of the seven turned momentarily from a ghostly solemn grey of the lamplight to a hollowed cast of daylight.
Cybele cried out, “We need to stop”.
“You know we are too close”, retorted Senex.
“It matters little if we stay here. The storm is getting worse”. Cybele was a huntress. Her tall lithe figure radiated command. Her mono-blade hung at her side, its hum silenced as they fled. “I would rather die fighting then in the ravine”.
“The grey towers are not safe” cried Senex, his voice damped by the storm.
“No place is safe, any longer”. Magnus raised a hand to stop the party. He pointed.
Senex stared in disbelief. His long white hair hung limply about his shoulders and onto his wiry back. He was old, older then any of them knew. Beyond what even he could remember. “It can not be”, he howled as the night ripped the words from his lips, dragging them into the night.



Chapter 2
Descent into Wisdom


By day, the fierce heat pressed its intolerable burden on the quivering air; and no living creature moved, on the dumb, swooning earth, but tiny jerboas scuttling through the parched bushes, or lizards vanishing in the clefts of the rock. By night the jackals prowled and barked in the distance, and the lion made the black ravines echo with his hollow roaring, while a bitter, blighting chill followed the fever of the day.
(The Story of the Other Wise Man, Henry van Dyke).