Excerpt: Ashen Moon

The sun hung low in the sky, and the light shone almost bloody across the landscape. The only shadows withered beneath crumbling stones and behind the shafts of ancient, rotting arrows still grimly erected in the remains of what had once been bones, but now turned to dust at the slightest whisper of wind.

The wind didn’t sing anymore. For more than five thousand years, it had not so much as whispered in the desolate wasteland. The only reminder that the barren desert had once held life was the cathedral-like palace, looming in the distance like an extinct volcano.

What had once been a city of the Gods now was a city of ravens and other carrion-eaters. Creatures of Death.

Approximately half a league away, one patch of earth remained untouched by the scorching rays of the sun. No trees or flowers grew in the soil, but patches of mushrooms grew in the shadows cast by a block of white marble. Several carnivorous plants grew in the sun, and even a few tufts of grass were breaking earth, but none grew more than ten feet from the stone.

A sudden flash of fire erupted from the stone’s surface, leaving no trace of ash or soot, but an afterglow bright enough to be seen for up to two leagues away, even with the sun’s blinding rays. A young man—nineteen, maybe almost twenty—stepped down from the stone as though nothing had happened, then paused to shield his eyes from the sun with his left hand.

A simple stone ring adorned his right middle finger, but for all its simplicity, it was impossible to describe. At first glance, it seemed blue, but then seemed to be made of sandstone, and upon a third inspection, may have been carved from turquoise. But other than the ring, nothing about him seemed important.

His waist-length black hair was tied back with a simple leather cord at the nape of his neck, and his skin was sun-darkened from countless hours toiling in the heat. Even his clothes were plain: he wore simple doeskin boots, his baggy black breeches were held up by a spare string from a longbow, and his equally dark shirt was also several sizes too large.

He carried no bow or dagger, but as he crossed the soft soil, it became clear that he was not worried about his safety. One plant leaned towards him hungrily, but halfway through, it seemed to change its mind and instead arched as far away as its roots would allow.

Almost as soon as he left the ring of grass and mushrooms, the tip of the sun touched the horizon, and the sky bled shades of crimson and violet. The few shadows across the field deepened to a dark maroon in the twilight, and the dying sun painted the scenery red.

He made his way across the field at a moderate pace, stopping here and there to side-step any bone fragments that somehow survived the centuries. The arrows didn’t matter, though. They only served as a memory to the war; not the lives that had been lost.