1 Chapter 1 Not so bad...Maybe?

15:02, 03, Feb, 2017 - location unknown 

Pain. White hot searing pain, it's the first thing I can remember of how I got here. Wherever here actually is. As a human being, I believe everyone has encountered some form of pain or suffering only the specifics of what causes the trauma changes. 

Life is hard so people either live with it or give up, and it only gets harder the more one is confronted by the darkness of the human Psyche.

That's why so many people try to find ways to escape the day to day with an understanding of always needing more, or trying to reduce that need with "getting away from it all". 

Everyone has things that make them happy or if you have a chemical imbalance, things become at least tolerable.

Me, I've always been the kid with his nose in a book. Always dreaming of going on adventures or living vicariously through Movies, Anime, comics and books. 

Like the series about that One Ring, or making a discovery of an ancient artefact and fighting off the Dickheads of the world who would do terrible things with it, like Mr Ford in his whip-slinging days, or like the HongKong action movie heroes helping the defenceless. 

As a kid it made me want to learn a few martial arts. I trained religiously in Kenpo, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Heck I even joined the Canadian Armed Forces during university. Thinking it would help get closer to My fictional heroes, the military taught specialized versions of Muay Boran, and the various forms of Silat after seven gruelling years turns out, I was right that it gave Me the tools to train a strong mind and forge My body into what it is today. The only thing they don't tell you is the extent of how absolutely horrible people can be to one another.

I at least can say my time with Special Forces was a way to put some good in the world, I'm not sure what's going to happen to me now that I've lost contact with my unit. But I've fought a lot of Shitbags, And I never thought I'd get the chance to experience a true adventure into the unknown, Thank Fuck for Training cause' it seems I was so incredibly wrong.

Somewhere under two Suns 

Sgt. Dorian Alphonse Delaney

________________________________________________________________________________________

Soft light beat down on my collapsed pile of a body, I was lying in a ring of grey soot and ash, a cloud of steam coming off of it in a steady plume. Cloaked in Black with my rucksack strapped to my back, I began to regain consciousness, My whole body was straining and pulling in on itself taught like a tightly wound rubber band. The veins in my neck protruding and with a final flush of colour across my pale sweaty skin, I heard a bone jarring snap and saw a flash of bright light emanated from my body, the steam and the tension dissipates from my form. With a stretch as I get to my feet, I hear a few loud popping noises from my joints. 

It hurt. A lot. I cried out. 

"Aarrgg!" 

What the Hell was that! First I get tossed into the ocean by a freak weather system, lose my rifle, on the verge of death, I get swept by the current onto a small frozen island with a dull glow coming from a small cave. Only to pass out just as I enter the cave mouth. Fuck the Arctic Circle! Eh, I can't wait to leav... EH? Where the hell am I? open sky and...!? I fall on my ass while my mouth stops moving. 

"...ttt, tt, ooo, Two Fucking suns!"

I am fucked, who said a training exercise would end up with me on a planet in a galaxy far far away... ah? no one, abso-fucking-lutely no one! Where the Fuck am I? I have to be hallucinating, or been drugged right?

Ok. Just breathe, observe, think, plan. Follow training.

I cross my legs and check the state of my body, it does feel weird, like it's been supercharged with a couple of nitro boosters as if I'm being pumped full of energy with each breath, I've never felt so great in all my life. My senses are coming back to me but they feel too sensitive. The light and colours of things feel too bright like someone messed with the saturation in the editing process, but it could just be that there's two, damn it, two Suns in the sky!...ugh do not panic, yet, just breathe.

My clothes feel cloying on my skin, I hear the running of a river and the wind rustling grass loud in my ears, the air smells too fresh, too clean, I can taste the moisture in the air sweet and refreshing.

Just breathe.

Fucking old ass Zodiac, I'd been requesting for a new boat. I hope the team's ok, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's tether broke when that wave hit.

Stop. 

Worrying won't help, as far as I can tell I'm all alone.

Just Keep Breathing.

I close my eyes and focus on the sound of my breaths, I need to calm my self. As I begin to regain control Five, Ten, Thirty minutes, pass by as I use a breathing control technique. With each breath I feel a surge of energy rise and fall circulating within my body until i finally calm, adjust, and acclimate to my overly heightened senses, the noises fade into the background and my clothes begin to feel normal on my skin. The air still smells and tastes nice and each breath cause more energy to course through me, but I won't complain.

I open my eyes and light isn't as bright but the colours of everything seem to be more robust and full of life. 

Looking around, I'm sitting on a large round stone platform in what seems to be an opened roofed stone Cathedral with some type of Cuneiform style engravings covering everything. It's big, about 15 meters high and another 20 meters long, the Cuneiform carvings are in sprawling intricate patterns all throughout the stonework and up the columns of the wall that is still standing. There was some sort of matching column or archway to the back of where I'm standing but it is blackened and crumbled over like a sombre broken sand castle.

Half of the Cathedral has collapsed, leaving the platform buttressed by a long L shape of the still standing wall. the broken portion is strewn about in an open field with what seems to be a stone path worked into the ground, it follows a winding river upstream. Looking out at the scenery, I'm in one end of a wide valley, Judging by the trees I can see in the distance, the valley is surrounded by forested mountains.

My breath catches in my throat, Beautiful, breathtaking scenery, I pause and watch as puffy white clouds move across the sky, causing the twin suns to cascade twinkling light beams across the peaks covered in lush bright Jades and dark green emeralds of the mixed coniferous forest.  

The Ancient city of Petra wouldn't even hold a candle to the Towering might of the Broken City in the mountain.

Built on five levels into the Giant mountain, each level looked to be carved deeper into the mountain and separated by two hundred meter high walls with a crystal clear river crossing atop the walls like a flowing strip of light, the water feeding into the levels below Roman like aqueducts. Interspersed water falls reflect light, giving the entire city a clear almost magical luminosity, only to be contrasted by the parts of the Upper-level walls that are scarred and gouged out, the bare stone in places looks blackened and burned, water cascading haphazardly onto the intricately carved and damaged buildings below. Lush greenery seems to have swallowed the walls and buildings reclaiming the massive city as its own, causing the giant city to look as if it grew from the mountain itself. A thing of ancient beauty, a true testament to engineering to rival MT.Everest. At the very top of the City is a tall blackened spire cutting through the clouds as if it grew to form the peak of this City the size of a Mountain.

I now know for a fact I'm not hallucinating or being drugged anymore. My mind could never imagine such a hauntingly beautiful place.

I don't know how I got here. But I do know I will try to enjoy myself and maybe find some happiness along the way.

I look to the Broken City's Spire and feel an instinctual pull, an unquenchable desire to explore, to understand and know. I need to go there and find out just what kind of place I'm in, and maybe how I got here.