Devastation everywhere, but no signs of death - no movement, no cries. The screams of the missing were lost forever, drowned out by the echoing emptiness left in their wake. The humans had expected technology to be their savior. In the end, it was the only thing left.
Courser rose to his feet and began walking down the deserted streets. It had been like this for a long time. He had been walking, looking for something...people? He was not sure. There had been no trace of life so far, but maybe... these thoughts motivated him forward, gave him a purpose, a reason for life in the oppressive silence of clean death. The food labs were spaced fairly evenly, still functioning for nobody. He could survive; but for what?
His thoughts were interrupted by the change in scene. The towering specters of empty buildings were gone, no rain fell. But this was definitely not Lux Giallo. This was something new, something dead, something devastated, something...wrong. Courser crouched on a vast plain, a plain of ash. The black-gray powder was everywhere, the charred viscera of objects that no longer existed, the elemental carbon remains of fire-death. Odd shapes rose out of the ash-sea; twisted, tall, and incomprehensible. No visible wind, just a constant dry heat that stifled and squeezed drops of sweat to mingle and meld with the floating flakes of ash, leaving dark trails on his skin.
This was new. The sudden switch to Lux Giallo had been a welcome occurrence, breaking the monotony of his lonely travel on sterilized earth. But that was the only place he had been, this was something else. Something forbidding.
A dull dread began to grow in Courser's head. Shapes began to rise out of the ash. Hundreds of shapes, they moved towards him. Towering figures with skeleton limbs the drab color of this world. Deep amber eyes hid behind cruelly bent eyelids. They crowded around him, stirring the ash into an ethereal atmosphere that reeked of death. Hands extended from this cloud, gripping him with a cold pulsating embrace. Courser jerked out of their grasp, flailing for space.
"Ahhhh Portent! You struggle!" The mouths of these mocking specters moved in unison but only one voice was audible: deep, rasping, and horrible the sound reverberated through his head. "Long we have waited for you to visit us, Portent." Courser remained silent, waiting to hear what they had to say. "We want to see your earth, Portent."
"I'm not sure what you need of me, then." Courser replied.
"You are the key to your earth, Portent, only you can bring us there."
Their voice was still horrible to hear, but Courser looked the closest specter straight in the eye. "What do you want with the earth?"
"Simply to study it, that is what we want."
It didn't seem right, Courser thought. These creatures could not be trusted. "I will not show you earth, keep your hands off me and I will be on my way. "
The specters hissed angrily and replied "we will visit your earth, whether the Portent is willing or not".
The hissing noise amplified and they closed around him. Courser moved quickly, dropped his shoulder and ran. The specters collapsed under his onslaught, screaming a horrible keening wail of frustrated pain. Courser headed toward a particularly dense portion of the ashy towers, sprinting fast. The deathly specters wafted across the ash, spreading into perfect formations. It would be almost impossible to combat this hive mind. Another scream ripped through the air, a shockwave of sound that exploded into the base of an ash tower, which collapsed, toppling other towers and stirring up a thick cloud. Courser dodged another scream, ducking and rolling under the cover of a small hill. He landed on the cool surface of a wet sidewalk. It was raining.
Courser pondered this strange new world and its menacing inhabitants as he continued to walk the dead streets. What had happened to bring him to such a place? Was this a dream or reality? What would happen if he returned to that world? Questions without answers, rumbling misgivings from some forgotten corner of his mind. He stepped towards the door of a tall building and typed a short password into a keypad. The door slid open smoothly. He had entered the maintenance door of a food lab. He descended an elevator to the storage levels and collected a week's worth of preserved food. His portable molecular synthesizer was able to provide him with a sufficient supply of pure water. The constant rain outdoors was far from potable. After returning to the ground floor, Courser made the final arrangements in his pack, ensuring that the watertight cover was firmly in place. A sudden flash caught his eye. A spot of light swept across the low cloud cover, illuminating the streaks of rain. As abruptly as it had appeared it was gone, leaving behind a night that somehow seemed blacker. Courser's pulse raced. This was a sign of some other presence, some link to an entity that was not himself. He bolted from the building and ran towards the closing darkness where the light had been. A mad desire overcame him, the insatiable ravings of a mind starved of human contact. His sight blurred from the onslaught of rain, its cool embrace constricting and slowing. Nothing could distract Courser, the endless wandering now had a purpose, a goal, a finish line. Then everything went dark.
Blackness strangled; thick distress enveloped, a bewildering array of sensations numbed Courser's mind. There was no way to struggle or escape, the darkness seemed infinite. A pinprick of yellow light suddenly appeared, then blue, then red, then green. The tiny spots of colors swelled larger and larger, combining and brightening, dispelling the horror of the darkness. As quickly as it had set upon him, it was gone. He stood in a forest, surrounded by a number of concerned Lucians.
Fini stepped forward. "Courser, are you well?"
Courser nodded "I'm fine, what was that?"
Fini's expressive blue eyes shone bright with fear. "It is our greatest enemy, the blackness that threatens our colorful world. We refer to it as Nameless."
Courser thought back to the events that had just occurred. "Why are you afraid of it, didn't you just drive it off with your manipulated colors?"
Fini sighed, "Courser, that is the problem. We have driven it off temporarily with our color, but it absorbs these colors and comes back stronger. We must find a way to destroy it before it consumes us."
A tall Lucian stepped forward and spoke, "Courser, it is you who can defeat the Nameless. You can manipulate the color in a way none of us can, we have seen your power."
Courser paused before replying. This offer was not a surprise. He doubted his ability to manipulate the colors, but the Lucians held him in high esteem. To face this entity again which had so recently devoured him seemed pointless. But what really was there to live for? A monotonous search in an empty earth? The light he had just observed was probably an illusion or simply a result of robot activity. And the prospect of returning to be the prey of a spectral hunt in the land of ash was not appealing. Courser looked the tall Lucian in the eye and firmly spoke, "I will destroy it".
The Lucian nodded, "Waste no time then, Courser. Fini will assist you in the search for the Nameless. I wish you luck."
Courser and Fini had been traveling through the deep forest for some time now. The beauty of Lux Giallo was especially poignant at this time. The radiance of the sun swelled through the multicolored forest canopy, mixing colors, painting the ground with a shifting palette of vibrant hues. After several hours in this sylvan paradise it was difficult to remember that the dark evil of the Nameless even existed.
A strange sound shattered these thoughts. An eerie sound, with no natural explanation, the sound twisted and writhed through the dense forest like a viper stalking its prey. The sound echoed and multiplied, filling the bright forest with its hellish darkness, slowly bringing darkness with it. Tendrils of inky black snaked through the trees, darkness so thick it muted the color around it. And above this scene, a constant sound, a despairing wail paired with a triumphant groan; the death call of a hundred demons, the screaming pain of a thousand damned souls. The Nameless approached.
All turned to ash, the darkness replaced with the hopeless monotony of endless gray. The terrible groaning replaced by echoing screams, the sense of doom still present. Courser got up from the ground where he lay and
resumed his flight from the pursuing specters. His lungs began to burn from the combination of his exertion and the rasping ash filling his mouth and siphoning his breath. He bowed his head and continued his mad flight, concentrating only on outrunning his pursuers, giving no thought to failure.
Failure...the awful backdrop, the cold wind that always lurks, only temporarily suspended by the flimsy walls of momentary success. Failure always exists, failure always is the true reality. Failure brings its cold pain of sadness, sorrow, and depression. Our temporary joys can only make a weak, sputtering light in the oppressive darkness of failure. Of death. Courser was back in the forest of Lux Giallo, the Nameless was there, everywhere. Its voice spoke in Courser's mind, destroying his will, siphoning his life. His arms hung limply, his mind was numb. When...
Plumes of ash appeared suddenly, sickening screams flailed their death cries. A deathly gray hand, twisted and gnarled, grabbed his wrist. He pulled free and sprinted onward.
Sprinting, sprinting in the rain. Another glimmer of light reflected off the silent glass buildings. Courser pushed forward, his heart skipped a beat as he heard something. A voice, a human voice. The first voice Courser had heard in a very long time. Directly