I'm going to say right off the bat that I don't have the greatest work ethic when it comes to writing consistently, so this might end at any time, but if you guys support this, I'll continue it for as long as possible. This piece right here is more exposition than actual plot, I'm getting to the real meat of the story if I can get through this.

This is the intro of The Dream Bearer.

The sun retires from its daily guard over the Earth and retreats behind the edge of the Earth. The sun takes with it, the deep orange aura that warmed the cool violet air of that once-hot New Mexico day. The earth's beasts take refuge in the blanket of growing darkness, their burrows, and their lairs, now packed with their tired owners. The hunt and the forage give way to truce, truce in its ultimate form. Across the land, men subside in their daytime activity, leaving their farms, their shops, their offices, to retreat to their beds, letting their worried thoughts give way to the murky euphoria of dreams. The towns and cities that speckle the landscape grow quiet and dark, and the lights of civilization drowse into a dark silence. Orange fades. Violet deepens. Stars shine. Sun rests with Beast. Beast rests with Man. Man rests with Machine. Night begins.

The night reigns for hours, hours taken for granted by all who share in its cool embrace. And the late agents of the night finally reside, brining about the apex of silence. The howls of sirens pierce the air without warning, halt and are replaced by the deafening roar of demons. Where there was once night, day suddenly dominated, brought by four massive suns. The earth screams and burns beneath their onslaught, taking Beast, Man and Machine with it. A super-sonic shockwave rips through the desert, and the mesas, ground with impeccable precision by millions of years of wind and rain, are violently mutilated by one single, instant act. The fireballs flare with unmatched ferocity, immediately blinding all who attempt to glimpse at their glory. All scream. All die. All disintegrate in the fury of the inferno. Day begins.

Almost as instantly as they begin, the suns cease, and melt into the smoke they birth. There are no fires, for all the Earth is so thoroughly charred that nothing remains to hold flame. There are no stars, for the fire's rauaging siege leaves the sky pregnant with smoke, blotting out all above it. Silence returns. Darkness returns. Black comes to dominate its newfound kingdom. Night begins.

In time, the smoke subsides and the eternal waltz of the sun and the stars resumes, with no audience to applaud them. The remnants of so many houses and so many buildings are left undisturbed by their former occupants, but are occasionally touched by the wind, the lone wanderer of an earth devoid of children. The wind courses through poison air for months. The poison loiters in the aftermath of Armageddon, before in one quiet, gradual sigh, subsides as well. Sun and stars play their game for a stumbling wind.

Dormant life looks at the earth it abandoned, touches it experimentally, and finally creeps out into the sun, gazing dumbly at the blank slate set out before them. In time, life shakes itself out of its stupor and begins rebuilding. From the twisted metal and concrete of the old world, the new world is forged. The living resume their love, the living resume their expansion, and civilization begins anew. Silence peacefully hands its crown and throne back to their rightful heirs.




Several decades, later, a man is trudging along a dusty, broken highway. He is hot, tired, and hungry. Every effortful shuffle of his feet kicks up dust behind him. He is a thin, tall man of middle age, with a long, pale, sorrowful face, barely shaded by his short cropped white hair. His tattered rags had long been discarded, dissected into gauze for his wounds, leaving him only with his sandals and pants, which are so severely ripped that they only provide sufficient cover as far as his knees. It takes one miserable gaze into the long and winding road before he collapses. He can only wheeze and blink as he loses his grip on consciousness.

Death spares the man, interrupted by the slap of a stranger's hand. The debilitating weakness of early waking holds the pale man on the ground before he can gain the strength to tilt his head up to the owner of the hand. The sun eclipses his savior, making him difficult to look at. The mysterious outline speaks. And when it speaks, it speaks in a deep, smooth, earthy drawl, warm and comforting, but brimming with authority.

"Nice to see you awake, stranger."

The hand retreats back into its frame and returns to the man on the ground, carrying a small flask of water. The hand tips the flask towards the man's grounded face, and he greedily laps it up. When the silhouette decides that the man has had his fill, it lifts the thin man's arm over a set of strong shoulders with one hand, and with the other, keeps the day's catch upright. The two head off down the road. He lazily blinks out of his sleep and focuses on his rescuer: a large, imposing man with a thick, muscle-bound frame, wrapped in tan, sun-baked skin. Over that, he wears a leather jacket on top of a dirty tank-top, with jeans covering his legs, patchwork leather boots covering his feet and a wide-brimmed, sand-colored hat covering the head. A hunting knife is latched to his hip and a rifle is slung across his back.

The mysterious helper matches the wanderer's gaze with his own, coming from a strong, worn, dark-eyed face, and raises him one question.

"Where ya' from, cause yain't from around here, know that much. Name's Dawson."

In seconds the wanderer spurs his mouth into motion and his throat into sound.

"Name's Abe. I'm from out east."

"Out east? How far out east?"

"Let me tell you about it."