Pragnosis 1589 PGE

  The city was on fire, which was not a state of matter a city should generally be, unless of course we were discussing Kulzerdn the City of Flames of which this city definitely was not. Smoke rose from ruined houses blotting out the night sky and only the occasional far off scream stood out amongst the background crackling of flames. That was until another sound broke the relative silence as a nearby two story house collapsed, wood splintering and a small mushroom cloud of dust kicking up before slowly dispersing.

  About a minute later a single hand clumsily reached out of the side of the crater, fumbling around for dirt before it grasped the edge and it's owner pulled himself upwards coughing and spluttering as he slowly dragged himself out of the crater. Taking deep breaths he settled himself on the edge kicking his feet idly against the side.

  "I think I ruined my shirt," he said to himself. It was one of those bright flowered shirts with a truly vile color pallete. The kind that overdramatic people would clutch their eyes at bemoaning their newly acquired lack of sight. "I hope the owners had insurance," he said looking at the hole in the ground where the house used to be. "The last time I had a landing that bad I gave up drunk time-travel for good."

  Wiping the smoke from his face he made a makeshift mask by tearing off a strip of the rags that was once his beloved t-shirt. Happy, that the majority of dust was staying away from his nose and face he slid down the side of the crater, only stumbling slightly at the end before he walked towards the epicenter of the arrival. He raised an eyebrow as the smoke cleared enough to reveal something else laying in the dirt.

  "Y-y-y-our w----iinnnnin- sir," a harsh metallic voice assaulted his ear drums and he blinked twice, rubbing the dust out of his eyes, before he gazed once more at the ruined, twisted and broken carcass of the service robot back at the casino. The thing must have tagged along when he travelled back in time, and the River of Time wasn't a safe way of travelling for most. "Nin__three-seven requiring urgent repairs."

  "Sorry, friend I flunked out of engineering," he admitted, watching as the light from the yellow eyes faded into darkness. "Besides I have my own problems at the moment," he said gesturing to the burning city behind him, before he paused looking at his wrist where his watch had shattered. For some reason no timepiece had ever survived the River and now the very expensive fourth millenium technology was now coated in his blood. He frowned taking off the timepiece and discarding it, placing it next to the remains of the unfortunate service robot.

  "This feels strange," he remarked to himself. "What the ever-loving is going on here that can cause a time crash over two millenia into the future." Whatever it was it had decimated the town, the nearby fires raging showed no signs of stopping despite every nearby life having long extinguished and so he dragged himself out of the crater to survey the nearby lands. He unfortunately was not a student of history, his knowledge of this period was spotty at best. This should be around the time of the Undying Empire if his knowledge held up.

  "It should be one of the later periods of the Undying Empire," he muttered to himself. "I thought that all the burning and destruction would have ended by now. Glad to see that even in times of peace they are still keeping these skills sharp."

  He reached into his pockets before he frowned and then tapped the air in front of him, then swiped more urgently drawing and expelling his mana in a specific configuration, and then watching as it dispersed into the air.

  "Great my 4d pocket is fucked," he said, sighing. "I hope it's all in one place." The alternative was that it burst throwing his shit all through space time and possibly leading to many disastorous or humorous situations. "I should head back to around eight k and pick up a new one," he idly mused reaching into the air and attempting to part the continuum only for his hand to bounce back with the smell of burning metal and flesh. "Blocked."

  Shaking off the pain from his fingertips he looked around trying to sense the source of the blockage only for his senses to return a hazy feel. He reached again past the continuum struggling to enter the River. More and more mana slammed against the continuum and even the Strange Elements in his blood started to awake, pulsing in strange configurations until his fingertips pushed past the obstruction and then he was repulsed with a shockwave, stripping the skin from his fingertips.

  "Both past and future are blocked off," he remarked to himself. It was a rare case, but not an unknown one. For a moment he basked in the joys of indecision, just contemplating the myriad threads of possibility ahead of him, before he started walking down the a nearby street. Just as a good chef can't cook without food, he can't start to make a plan if he has absolutely no information. As a friend used to say "any news is good news when the alternative is ignorance". Unfortunately that unlucky friend died from knowing to much, so perhaps taking that saying with a pinch of salt was wiser.

  "Are you following me?" he asked after about thirty seconds of travel as he turned around to look at the entrance to a nearby alley. His sense for mana wasn't the greatest, but even he could sense the uncontrolled waves of mana coming from behind. He calmly watched as a huge golden fist, reached across the corner of the wall and something massive stepped out and into the streets.

  The new arrival was over three meters high and two wide, covered in gold colored armor that glinted in the sun, despite being nearly torn to shreds. Beneath the armor a faint black mist seemed to coalesce and it's face had been totally torn off and replaced by a collection of white wire.

  "A Golden Guard," he remarked to himself. "I've seen your kind in a museum and well that one time I tried...nevermind. Shouldn't you be off rescuing people and enforcing order. You really shouldn't let this sort of crap happen under your watch. Besides, you've got a little something here," he gestured vaguely towards his own face.

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  "...anks," the Golden Guard said after a while as it reached towards it's face brushing against the wires.

  "You're welcome," he said then paused as something slithered up through the hole in it's face. An ivory white segmented worm or snake with a large glass eye where it's head should be. It regarded him as it rose from the hole in the face and the neck or the Golden Guard snapped back ninety degrees, like the head was just a flowerpot and the white snake, a particularly repulsive flower.

  "That can't be standard issue," he remarked to himself as the snake seemed to lock into his form and without a word the Golden Guard raised a hand firing and in the next instant a white-hot laser landed on his head blasting it from his shoulders

  -0.5 seconds ago

  ...He ducked to the ground as a blast of pure mana nearly took his head off.

  "Ha, missed," he said reaching into his 4d pocket, before he paused as he remembered it's absence. "Well my inventory is fucking gone, so I guess I need a weapon. You wouldn't happen to have a spare one would you?" The response was another fatal blast.

  -0.5 seconds ago

  Dashing to the side he dashed through the rubble of a nearby building, bobbing and weaving through cover that seemed determined to explode at every turn before he dived through a window on the far side. He leaned against the wall, taking a peek back to reorient himself before he was forced to jump backwards as the multiple walls were knocked over by the sheer force of the multi-ton Golden Guard. A massive fist swung down cracking the ground at the place where he just stood and he jumped forwards using the arm as a springboard to launch a kick at the white snake creature, only for it to dart backwards out of his reach with unexpected speed and he was flung away by the arm on which he stood and he landed on the roof of an only mostly collapsed house.

  "Easy, I'm more of a lover than fighter," he said smiling, before it faded. "Actually I'm not really a good lover either." He thought back to his many semi-successful trysts, all two of them. His words were interrupted as another blast of pure concentrated mana violated the space that he used to be in and he hopped away before turning and running.

  "Do I have an outstanding library book or did I forget to pay a fine the last time I came to this city," he mused to himself. "Actually what city is this anyway. Is there a map shop, somewhere around here. Oh, shit there actually is."

  An only mostly destroyed storefront appeared in front of him at the junction up ahead. It was painted in a vivid red and had a quaint mid-thirteenth century feel about it. At the top above the door in worn and faded gold lettering hung the words 'Camies Convenient Cartography.'

  "Well it is convenient," he admitted, as a blast of pure mana pierced through his heart.

  -0.5 seconds ago

  "Ha, missed," he remarked as he pivoted away just in time and then the blast of mana tore through that cartography shop, causing his face to dramatically fall. "You fucker, I wanted that." He made to roll up his sleeves and fight, before realising that they had both been destroyed at some point. "No," he said to himself, for the first time feeling a bit irritated.

  -12 seconds ago

  ...using the arm as a springboard to launch a kick at the white snake creature, which dodged back only for him to reach out with his hand and in one smooth movement rip the thing straight out of the face of the Golden Guard. The arm reflexively threw him off and he landed on his hands and knees a few dozen metres away. For a moment the thing sagged and after a moment watching he slowly climbed to his feet.

  "Glad that's ove___" his words were immediately drowned out as the thing screeched, a howling, agonizing melody that caused every hair on his body to stand up, and cold spikes to stab into his chest. In an instant the thing unloaded beam after beam, indiscriminately bombing everything, flattening nearby houses and he hit the deck scrambling backwards trying to minimize his profile. He ran, heading in the direction of the cartography store and behind him, he heard a massive boom, like a mechanical-magic creature reaching the end of it's life and detonating the remaining energy within its shell.

  -0.5 seconds ago

  He dodged to the side as a fist sized chunk of golden metal nearly pierced through his head. His worry right now was that the noise might have drawn additonal Golden Guards towards his location, but his worries were proven unfounded as a nearby door slammed open and a different thing entirely stepped out. Grey-skinned, decaying, and with the ever present scent of rot, those were the only three similarities that all zombies possessed. Otherwise they varied wildly in terms of overall physical form.

  "Are you one of the slow ones," he asked before a pair of red glowing eyes locked onto him and he swiftly discovered that it wasn't as the thing sprinted wildly towards him and he barely ducked past the outstretched arms. He curled his hands into a ball before swinging a perfectly timed haymaker that landed on his chest...which he swiftly discovered was more akin to steel then flesh, thick, unyielding fleshy steel.

  The zombie stepped back briefly before it crouched and it's mouth opened so wide that it's head nearly split into two, before it leapt and he sidestepped. Kicking it's unsteady leg from beneath it causing to faceplant onto the cobble street. Without an ounce of hesitation he stomped down on the reverse of the kneecap driving his heel into the vulnerable part and crushing something important.

  Or at least it might have been important to a normal human, to the zombie it did nothing but cause it to redouble it's efforts to climb up and grab him and he sidestepped again kicking at it's arm, causing it overbalance, only for it to grab his ankle with the other hand and fling him way down the street, with that unnatural strength. He landed on his hands and knees grabbing a chunk of that golden metal and beaning the undead on the forehead. Stepping to his feet he strode forward to the undead that was relentlessly getting up and caught it in the face with a full strength kick causing it to topple onto it's back.

  Without any further pause he reached down and grabbed that massive chunk of golden metal and slamming it down onto the snapping head of the zombie. He swung down again and again and again until nothing was left of the head, but some putrid grey flesh and blackish blood, and it was only then that he got up discarding the golden metal, only to be confronted with hordes of red eyes.

  Inside buildings, alleys, and crawling out of the sewers, the army of the dead were everwhere that he looked, in each and every direction. Each pair of eyes were locked onto him, as if just waiting for him to show the slightest sign of weakness, or movement, or anything really. There were at least a few dozen and they grew by the minute, he was completely surrounded.

  "Bugger," he said to himself, twitching his fingers as he desperately, unadvisedly wished for a cigarette. "At least it's a nice night," he remarked to himself staring up at the moon and stars, untainted by the city lights of the year 4000.

  His moment of peace was shattered as the ground quaked and the moon and sky were blotted out as something rose from the Earth, something inconceivably huge, big enough to flatten the city if it ever fell, and he felt a laugh slip from his throat at the absurdity of the situation. He laughed and laughed and laughed even as the zombies lost their patience and charged towards him, he laughed even as he was ripped to shreds and only then did his laugh fall silent.