Kane opened fire with his Sin-Eater again
âLakesh, weâve got trouble. I just hit Durga with an implosion grenade, and all it did was knock the wind out of him.â
The Sin-Eaterâs heavy slugs tore into sections of bared flesh, but no blood trickled from the scale-shorn meat. Durga lifted his head, golden eyes filled with fury and disdain for the human who simply would not die.
âKeep fighting, mammal,â Durga growled. âThe longer you survive, the more time you give your friends to make peace with their gods.â
âWhat makes you think youâll survive killing me?â Kane called back.
Durga laughed, rising to rest on the coiled trunk of his serpentine lower half. He hadnât recovered fully yet, but scales began to form over the flesh that had been scoured by the implosion grenade. âYou amuse me, Kane. Iâll name my first extermination camp after you.â
A Countrymanâs son by accident trod upon a Serpentâs tail, which turned and bit him so that he died. The father in a rage got his axe, and pursuing the Serpent, cut off part of its tail. So the Serpent in revenge began stinging several of the Farmerâs cattle and caused him severe loss. Well, the Farmer thought it best to make it up with the Serpent, and brought food and honey to the mouth of its lair, and said to it: âLetâs forget and forgive; perhaps you were right to punish my son, and take vengeance on my cattle, but surely I was right in trying to revenge him; now that we are both satisfied why should not we be friends again?â
âNo, no,â said the Serpent; âtake away your gifts; you can never forget the death of your son, nor I the loss of my tail.â
INJURIES MAY BE FORGIVEN, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.
âÃsopâs Fable
The Road to OutlandsâFrom Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermathâforever known as skydarkâreshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlandsâpoisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.
What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforcedâto atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the baronsâ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technologyâ¦a question to a keeper of the archivesâ¦a vague clue about alien mastersâand their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.
But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigidâs only link with her family was her motherâs red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grantâs clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, communityâthe very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the cruxâwhen Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldnât do. So the only way was outâway, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltvilleâs head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.