JubalBarca

Part One Captain Hannel Wekker surveyed the narrow valley that was laid out before him. A few steaming piles of battered iron scrap lay around the sides, a few more blue-uniformed corpses were piled along the valley floor. Other than that, the landscape hadn't much changed since dusk yesterday. Or last week, for that matter. Ten days now they'd been coming. All day, every day. Blue coated soldiers, heavy dull metal cannon, and machines. Some tried to walk, others tried to drive, all of them were lying in twisted wrecks along Wekker's valley. That said, the russet-coated defenders hadn't fared well either. "How many have we got left? Verton?

In a tavern, In a an alley, In a town somewhere, There's a man chained up behind a wall that isn't there. His mind is hidden in a storm of sleet… In a backroom, In a rat-trap, In a backwards street, There's a man lying there in chains. Behind a glass brick wall, A façade of ice, If he wants to stay alive he knows he has to pay the price, But the sad thing is… I know that man's in pain. And he dreams of… A castle, On a mountain On a great back crag, Where the dragons and the gryphons all just started taking scag, Because the knights are dead and gone, In the castle, In the tower, In an unlit cell where

The fresh and rosy-fingered dawn caught me; I was ensnared by the beauty of the light. The cold light of dawn that lit my weary face Turned thine to a miracle of elegance and grace The beauty of the sun, and the envy of the night. Was it thy grace that sent my head thus whirling? The ochre locks of thy hair so free Thy voice that into mine head crept The thoughts I had; the times I wept Are still turning in my mind, and drawing me to thee. Upon my face dwells no such noble visage; Outwardly I am unlovely to behold Although we two may think as one When I leave thee, from your mind I am gone But in mine thou stay, more fair than

Prologue – The City The soot-covered gates swung inwards as he walked into the City, the old pearly façade clearly a thing of the past. On the stony, rutted road, he strode through streets that had lost all light generations ago. The faces, all the pale and translucent faces, were dull and fearful. Occasionally, a larger being would stumble past him, shambling in full consciousness of a lost glory. The slight mist around his footsteps, grey where it had once been white, thickened as he carried on into the City. He looked past the high concrete towers, towers that shaded out what had once been towering spires, palatial residences,