Sanguinem Verborum Dierum
Centum Laminas
{The following chronicle was inscribed in classical Latin onto one hundred plates of lead recovered from the Tschamberhöhle Cave by Arzt Gerhard Von Straub of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut of Berlin in the June of 1890}
A Fallen Star
Consciousness was slow in returning as a powerful numbness left me paralyzed in both body and mind. Smell was the first of my senses to return, it brought with it the raw odor of moist earth, overlaid by the acrid tang of burning greenery and the scent of ozone. Hearing must have come second for there was both a ringing in my ears and a steady if unfamiliar pounding in my head. As the numbness receded from my flesh it was followed by the sensation of pins and needles in all my extremities and the realization that I lay on my back. A familiar taste, blood, filled my mouth as I tried to open my eyes. At first everything was dark, my eyelids were crusted shut with sleep, but as I blinked it away I saw an unfettered firmament. The cold stars shown brilliantly in a midnight sky and around me there was a constant, but irregular flickering light - fire.
My first attempt to sit up was an abject failure for the weakness of my muscles, but I succeeded on my second attempt prompting me to review my surroundings. I lay in an irregular bowl shaped depression about forty feet in radius, patterns of earth and stone radiated out from my resting place, but I could make no sense of what I was seeing. Beyond my immediate surroundings, I perceived a ring of carbonized earth and still burning vegetation and beyond that, the dim impression of a disaster area. I tried to recall how I came to be here, wherever here was, but everything before this moment was a blank.
Despite a few questionable tries, I managed to get to my feet, and I stumbled forward and almost fell for my feet were still numb and the ground here was uneven and unstable. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I realized that it was night, although impossible to tell what time it might be for my watch was missing and so were my clothes. The air was cool and moist, but not frigid, but I would not want to remain outdoors in this weather for long. I hesitated to strike out in any particular direction without some sort of landmark, but the night darkened hills covered in thick forest offered no notion of which way I should go. In the end, I searched the heavens for the North Star, but failed to detect it, but as I searched I noticed faint flickering of light upon a distant hill and began to make my way there.
I cannot say how long it took me to reach my destination, but as I moved away from the place of my waking, I observed massive devastation. The area in which I had awakened was a flat valley with a stream running off center through it. Once the valley floor must have been covered in long grasses with occasional copses of pine trees, now after whatever cataclysmic event had befallen it, the landscape was very different. The dark moist earth had been burned clean in the immediate area followed by a zone of dwindling fires, and then an area of pulverized debris that reached the lowest foothills.
Barefoot and cold, I stopped only to pick up a still burning tree limb saturated in resin to use as a torch. The fire light gave me a sense of safety and the light it provided probably saved me from a critical fall and a broken leg. The lowest level of hills revealed a similar pattern of devastation, with whole copses of trees blown down and all pointed away from the valley as if there had been a large detonation. I was afraid of encountering wild animals, but I need not have worried, for all I found were animal carcasses scattered in the foothills broken and cold.
As I climbed it grew colder, but physical exertion warmed me to a degree, but not enough and my teeth chattered as I walked. Between the cold and a growing exhaustion I began to have doubts of finding shelter and warmth, but then I came over a low rise where the trees still stood straight and beheld a bright flickering of firelight from between screening trees. I cautiously abandoned my own torch for fear of giving away my presence to whoever before I understood the nature of the people I was about to encounter. Naked and alone in a strange place, my self-confidence was ebbing due to the cold and exhaustion of this miserable trek.
