Description

The remnants of two civilized worlds, once separated by countless star systems, are brought together under a shared calamity. The Vagantem home world was lost forever, and its people forsaken. Stranded in the near empty cosmos for years, the Vagan people eventually found a habitable planet. This world, however, was already claimed. As they introduced themselves to mankind, the Vagantem soon understood the gravity of their arrival.

Times were unstable for humanity, long before the Vagantem arrived. The discovery of life and technology outside of their comprehension only sped up the inevitable. Earth’s governments quickly grew aggressive and paranoid, opting to fight, spy and vie for the closest seat next to their new friends from across the void. Soon enough, world war was rampant. The Vagantem had initially chosen to remain neutral and uninvolved with the battles, until the very planet was at stake.

The Vagantem interfered, and before anyone realized, Earth was a blasted and irradiated wasteland. Humanity had fallen, just as the Vagantem had. With limited time to act, the Vagan soon worked to cleanse and terraform this world they now inherited, into the beautiful likeness of their old home. The fleet remains divided and splintered, in orbit along with man’s lunar colony, reluctant to fulfill the promise and potential of what they had started below.

Unbeknownst to them, not all of humanity was extinguished. From the deepest cracks and shadows survivors have emerged and embraced this new world. It has been eleven years since the end and now, warlords and scavengers rule what they can.

Read An Excerpt From Chapter One

The sun seemed long dead and the darkness ran heavy, but Shane the restless remained vigilant, watching over his fellow survivors. He was a quiet man; tall, slender, and awake, with ebony iron skin. The group was settled in a decrepit hotel parking garage that had vines and roots breaking free from their old-world restraints. Though nature was reclaiming what was once hers, the ancient destruction was still apparent and still haunting. Shane watched the fire, losing himself in the laughing flames, until he heard subtle slashes and cracks, and then the squish of soaked flesh. He looked over and noticed one of his sleeping companions was twitching faintly.

“Gus!” The rest of the group started to rouse and wake while Shane ran to Gus’s seemingly possessed corpse. “Gus!” he yelled again as he grabbed him. The dying man’s stomach was dancing and jumping as if something alive was inside. Shane lifted his bloodied shirt, which revealed a tunnel into the man’s stomach. Ringed tails of pink flesh and orange filth whirled around outside the festering intrusion. A monstrous rat, like a demon the size of a house cat, crawled out of the corpse defensively, eyed Shane, and hissed. The smell made the survivors dizzy as they rushed to grab their limited gear and supplies and escape the horde that was soon to follow. They made for the streets and left the underworld—and Gus—for the rats to rule.

They made it above-ground just as the sun was birthed into the sky, and they stared out over the carnage of the old world, stubbornly resistant to the beauty of the new. They said nothing in remembrance of their fallen friend, not even a shared thought or feeling, and instead simply kept on. The group was hungry; it was time to hunt and scavenge.

They all moved to a bus parked outside, reinforced with metal plates and defended with spears. It had “The Magic School Bus” painted on the side in dark crimson paint—or blood. Carli, a young, beautiful, and pale ghost of a woman stepped in to store some of the bigger luggage. A pistol she had carried from the start of it all radiated with pride through its holster, despite the top layer of soot and rust. Claimed with a single bullet left in the chamber, it had never been used, but it had become an extension of her all the same over the years. Coldblood they called her from time to time, Carli the coldblood. The remaining two of the four-person group were Leonard the loud and Bastian the enlightened. Leonard was an angry, explosive, and dangerous dwarf with a coat of tattoos while Bastian was a giant beast of a man with a friendly touch and a soft, low voice. They separated into two groups—Shane with Carli and Bastian with Leonard—to hunt and scavenge the city ruins they had called home for the last few days.