Harbinger: The Downfall - Book One (43 page)

Visions and flashes of lives flew through his head, he lived a thousand lives, loved as a parent, a child, or unrequited. He hated deeply, killed, and worse. He knew the joys and terrors of the human soul, heart, and mind. Knew the pain of the body, from being tortured to the miracles of the body and birth. Beyond it all, he felt the driving urge to continue, to push forward, never to give up, no matter the cost.

The vision shifted again to ages of greatness, buildings as tall as mountains, ships the size of islands, ages when man had built things to challenge the world around and best it. He had succeeded, but man was Nature’s beast also, so he created other things that the Gods used. They used man’s darker side to destroy humanity. The air itself burst, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Fire flew though the sky, the air itself became poison to breathe, the land turned septic and killed human or beast without discretion. Man was destroyed using his own tools, which indirectly were Nature’s tools, for the created man was nothing more than the tool of the Gods.

It shifted again to great flows of ice, creeping forward and covering oceans and mountains, cutting valleys deep and hills flat, crushing cities and destroying animals’ homes and food. It shifted again and again. Every time showing man being destroyed, animals wiped from the face of the planet. Each time, it was the oceans that saved humankind from extinction. They were too vast to freeze, too immense to poison, too deep to burn.

It flashed for the last time. It was the present, or maybe shortly in the future. The Talisman was in the dim dawn sky. The full moon was freakishly large in the sky to the north, when it belonged in the south this time of year. Behind the Talisman were a hundred or more pieces of rock, looming closer, growing in size, as if it were pulling them closer. He knew now. The oceans would not save man this time. The dead would hunt them, the insects would devour them, the demons would enslave them, or the meteors from the sky would destroy everything. Then they would move on. Once the world could no longer hold together, it would shatter and the magics that the Talisman brought would seek another world. The insects would burrow into the rocks that flew through the heavens and sleep until they found another world. The demons would wait until the portals were opened again. The dead would be reborn from another race.

How could he stop it? He lurched back to the present. The demons were a score of yards in front of him. The dead staggered towards him, interspersed with the bugs, a natural alliance in his mind. He would not give up. He had felt the hope of an entire race, from when it first spoke to its dying day when it was silenced. He would move forward.

He focused on the Spire, and opened himself. He knew who he was now; he remembered more than he ever had before. He had lived for more years than he should have, but had been robbed of his memories, for that was what gave him power. The knowledge he had collected. He felt the Highest Spire open itself to him. Each door was known to him, what lay behind it, how to change that, how to direct magics that fed from the core of this planet to the sky above through this tower of destiny. He stepped sideways to avoid the immense claws of a demon reaching for him, and he was a half-mile away and in the midst of thousands of demons. He could not see the Spire with his eyes, but his mind saw it as if it were his own hand at the end of his arm. He reached out with his mind and felt for the door he wanted, and stepped through.

He stood in a room that was empty except for a stone table that rose from the floor in the center. Four windows looked out into gray nothingness, one at each cardinal point. He needed to plan. He was no hero. He would not be the one who would stop this, but he was a good judge of character and would find those who could. He drew a deep breath of stale air and tried to figure out where to start. Not where, but when. He had many stops to make, many people to see and many events to begin if the world, many worlds, were to be saved.

End of Book One of the Harbinger Series

Calendar

The basic calendar is a lunar calendar. There are thirteen months in each year. There are twenty-eight days in each month. There is a new moon on the first day of every month. The first day of spring is on the Equinox.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Travis I. Sivart writes Steampunk, Social DIY, Science Fiction, Medieval Fantasy, Young Adult, Speculative Fiction, Horror, and more in the forms of poetry, short stories in more than a dozen anthologies, full length novels, as well as editorials on manners, pipe smoking, and medieval re-enactment.

Travis I. Sivart lives in a state of constant flux between Richmond, VA and Washington, DC with his son and cats. He is not just an author but also father, public speaker, cook, pipe smoker, cat & squirrel lover, and so much more. Travis I. Sivart is a Jack-Of-All-Trades. He has worked in mundane jobs such as restaurants, retail, construction, DMV, Notary, tech help, and more as well as more exotic trades such as; singing pirate, exorcist and paranormal researcher, Duke, cigar and pipe connoisseur, master of dungeons, internet radio host, a knight, therapist, minister, and has degrees in religion and metaphysics.

You can find Travis on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and other fine literary retailers or at his website at TravisISivart.com.

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