Eric Griffin
Sunday, 18 July 1999, 2:00 AM Manhattan cityscape New York City, New York
Aisling Sturbridge sluiced through the rain-slick streets. The city towered above her on all sides in colossal glyphs of pitted steel and sizzling neon. The jumble of arcane signs and sigils that assaulted her senses seemed haphazard. The city streets were piled high with half-forgotten ambitions rendered in con-crete and raw altitude.
This was the Dragon’s Graveyard — the place where the lumbering juggernauts of unbridled industry came to die. Sturbridge could feel the weight of old bones looming over her.
She ducked through a low archway and found herself in the midst of a vaulted colonnade of jutting ribs. Each of the gently curving monoliths was yellowed and pitted through long exposure to the elements. She absently ran a hand down the nearest ivory pillar. Its surface was encased in a nearly invisible envelope of cool water, tricking over the pocked surface in dozens of miniature fountains, cascades, waterfalls. As if of their own volition, her fingers searched for and traced out the letters of the logo — the sacred name that the faithful had carved into the obelisk all those years ago.
The Plaza.
She smiled at a distant memory, recalling a lobby on the scale of a cathedral, filled with the luminaries of the American aristocracy gliding among peerless marbles. After only a brief contact, her hand fell absently to her side and she moved on.
In the rigors of the hunt, there was little room for nostalgia.
Through careful scrutiny, Sturbridge began to discern that hers was not the only sign of life among the ruins. She was amazed that the castoffs of two hundred years of avarice and ambition were not con-tent to lie still and be dead. All around her, the city clamored heavenwards, clawing its way upward, tram-pling upon its own shoulders in its rush. The glass-walled towers seemed to shift like liquid under her gaze, flowing upward toward some unguessed sea amid the night sky. Experimentally, she put one hand out and broke the mirrored surface of the nearest building.
The tingling was not the expected rush of cool water, but something different — the scurrying of thousands of tiny legs across her skin.
The touch of Sabbat sorcery.
The vision shifted abruptly as the enemy attack erupted all about her. The alien mindscape pulsed like a migraine of flashing red lights. Fire engines emerged from the glaring light and screamed toward the Harlem River where a great funeral pyre tore free from the low-lying tenements. It cracked skywards like a whip. There were figures among the flames. Long, lithe, gibbering figures. They danced the primacy of the flames — the legacy of Heraclitus.
In the beginning, there was the flame. And the flame was with God and the flame was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
Through it all things were made; without it nothing was made that has been made. In it was life and that life was the light of men. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
Sturbridge could feel those flames reaching out to embrace her, to engulf her. She >>>>>
For Download:
Aisling Sturbridge sluiced through the rain-slick streets. The city towered above her on all sides in colossal glyphs of pitted steel and sizzling neon. The jumble of arcane signs and sigils that assaulted her senses seemed haphazard. The city streets were piled high with half-forgotten ambitions rendered in con-crete and raw altitude.
This was the Dragon’s Graveyard — the place where the lumbering juggernauts of unbridled industry came to die. Sturbridge could feel the weight of old bones looming over her.
She ducked through a low archway and found herself in the midst of a vaulted colonnade of jutting ribs. Each of the gently curving monoliths was yellowed and pitted through long exposure to the elements. She absently ran a hand down the nearest ivory pillar. Its surface was encased in a nearly invisible envelope of cool water, tricking over the pocked surface in dozens of miniature fountains, cascades, waterfalls. As if of their own volition, her fingers searched for and traced out the letters of the logo — the sacred name that the faithful had carved into the obelisk all those years ago.
The Plaza.
She smiled at a distant memory, recalling a lobby on the scale of a cathedral, filled with the luminaries of the American aristocracy gliding among peerless marbles. After only a brief contact, her hand fell absently to her side and she moved on.
In the rigors of the hunt, there was little room for nostalgia.
Through careful scrutiny, Sturbridge began to discern that hers was not the only sign of life among the ruins. She was amazed that the castoffs of two hundred years of avarice and ambition were not con-tent to lie still and be dead. All around her, the city clamored heavenwards, clawing its way upward, tram-pling upon its own shoulders in its rush. The glass-walled towers seemed to shift like liquid under her gaze, flowing upward toward some unguessed sea amid the night sky. Experimentally, she put one hand out and broke the mirrored surface of the nearest building.
The tingling was not the expected rush of cool water, but something different — the scurrying of thousands of tiny legs across her skin.
The touch of Sabbat sorcery.
The vision shifted abruptly as the enemy attack erupted all about her. The alien mindscape pulsed like a migraine of flashing red lights. Fire engines emerged from the glaring light and screamed toward the Harlem River where a great funeral pyre tore free from the low-lying tenements. It cracked skywards like a whip. There were figures among the flames. Long, lithe, gibbering figures. They danced the primacy of the flames — the legacy of Heraclitus.
In the beginning, there was the flame. And the flame was with God and the flame was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
Through it all things were made; without it nothing was made that has been made. In it was life and that life was the light of men. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
Sturbridge could feel those flames reaching out to embrace her, to engulf her. She >>>>>
For Download:
