Chapter 1

The Flies

I stumbled out of the airship into the city’s North End, its rusted roofs, torn chain-link fences and crumbling pavements still radiating the heat of the dying day. As usual, the continuum threshold that had poppedSorcerer out into earthly skies had ignited a thunderstorm, but the clouds were already blowing away to the south. As the sky cleared, waves of mist blew the fresh-blood smell of hot metal across the stained asphalt landscape. I was home.

Okay, I’d been away, I get it. A place called … a place … I scratched my head … Hardly Any Goth? Sounds like a doomed clothing store. But, whatever, I’d been there for ages … days and days that felt like years. I was yearning so hard to get home.

And what had I found in that place? Fog, night … danger … a mass of hostile creatures swirling around us like fog … winged figures in the distance, soaring into black canyons between mile-high cliffs … an alien voice calling, “Nashthinan Shwishfa!”

Hardly any … I remembered the name: R’lyhnygoth. More than just another place, it was a whole other planet.

Now I was home … but my head was buzzing. Why the hell would I want to come back tothis? I squinted at my world through a red haze.

AsSorcerer descended, the idea was that, when we touched down, we’d stay on board and not rush to get outside. Tobias would listen to the radio for updates.

Listen to the radio? “Tobias,” I’d said, “wewill be getting back into cell networks and, you know, thereis this thing called the internet …”

“The radio still works perfectly well,” Tobias said. “News is still news.” One way or another we’d make a plan. But the closer we got to the surface, the antsier I got. As we began to make out details on the surface – downtown Hamilton, the stadium and, in the barren North End, the derelict warehouse that served asSorcerer’s hangar – I felt rage radiating like summer heat from the city under us. I could relate to the feeling; as we got closer, I was getting angrier and angrier myself.

“Get me outta here.” I’d had it with this place and these people. I got louder and louder about my need to get off the ship – until finally, once the vessel landed, my fellow crew members couldn’t wait to get it moored and secured, open the doors and put me out along with the trash.

“I’m gone!” I yelled. No one tried to stop me, offer a word of caution or kick me in the ass (probably their first reflex). Through LOAD/EVAC, I exited into what seemed like a dark, stuffy basement, littered with weeds and broken cement. Hot drafts from the waning turbulence of the ship’s huge turbines