the Ruined World
an excerpt

Prologue

        Once, it had been a city- a city so vast that it had covered nearly the whole of the world, if the stories were true. Now, jagged teeth of metal erupted from broken concrete to scrape at the sky, all twisted girders and broken glass, for more miles than Gareth could see as he made his way through the fields of fallen steel. A light dusting of snow refused to settle to the ground but danced around his knees, catching the molten light of the sun as it set in the west, throwing shafts of gold and orange through the ruins.
        Gareth had once heard an old Romai scavenger claim that he'd traveled all the way to the heart of the city, where the ground still shook from the raging of terrible machines caught in the grip of the Madness all these centuries after the fall. Gareth had no desire to run into the Romai tonight though, or to venture so deeply into the ruins. He adjusted the weight on his back and continued on, opening his senses to the history that lay beneath his feet as the sky turned to ruby, then cobalt, and then on towards jet. A handful of of ragged clouds hung stubbornly in the late November twilight, their outlines aflame against the darkening sky

        The ghosts of the place began to stir, a gentle motion, the way that the snow eddied around his legs, he could feel the memory of a hundred thousand deaths around him. There was a great power here,lying dormant, whispering invisibly. Gareth straightened and tugged at the straps that held the large pack on his back. It was not so heavy as it looked, but delicate, and he was gentle as he unrolled the cloth and spread it across the old ruined macadam.
        Soon the sun was nothing but a stain on the horizon, obscured by the towering ruins, leaving only the pale light of the moon for Gareth to work by. He moved slowly, methodically, holding each object as much in his mind as in his hands as he began to remove row upon row of bones from the bundle, each carefully bleached and preserved, arranging them upon the empty ground in front of him.