Cities Forgotten~A Site being Resurrected

Long ago, there were billions of humans. Now, you have to look hard to find us. You have to listen hard to hear us over the birdsong. Now, it is barren. Everything is barren. Now the sky is once more clear. Now, though, began nearly four hundred years ago.

The year is 2642. A young man is lying in a stark hospital room. He sweats and gasps. His blue eyes are slits, barely visible like tiny turquoise slivers etched into a pale quartz face that is tinged with garnet in his cheeks. Blue-black boils cover his bare arms and torso. They cluster around his neck, making his skin look like a mountainside. His fingers are the same blue-black. Doctors stand around his enclosed room with worried looks, he isn’t responding to the medicine! They watch helplessly as the man slowly relaxes, his muscles loosening. His eyes open wide to reveal their starling blue depths, peaceful. A man with bubonic plague should not be that placid, the pain should be overwhelming! Then the doctors realize; he is dead.

Tests are done quickly on the cadaver. The carcass caries a new strain of the Black Death Plague called Perpetua pristis, or Blue Death. Three of the doctors die in the next week, ten civilians the next. The death bell will not stop tolling and the world is in its next major plague; this one though, will make most of the population vanish in ten short years. Those who survive will carry super-antibodies that defend against Blue Death and are passed on from parent to child.

The year is 2702. A family of five antibody carrying humans nestles deep into a cleft of stone, huddling for warmth against the blizzard that reared its ugly head outside. The father’s hand flicks down. Jack. The mother reaches over solemnly to rest her fingers on the card. She flinches at the cold paper as she picks up the stack of cards. The eldest son sets down a card-Ace of Spades. He smiles weakly as he recites “Ace of Spades-Fire, Ace of Clovers-Earth, Ace of Diamonds-Wind, and Ace of Hearts-Water.” He blinks as the card floats upward and sheds its shell. A silver girl stands before him, silver eyes, silver hair, silver gown and white skin. “You have chosen me. And I you. You shall become my first master, the master of Time, and the Ace of Tarot. If you accept a new name, you can become the first and strongest card mage,” the girl says. She is not lying and the son knows this. He nods. “I accept.” She bows her head. “Then welcome to the new world, Ace. I wish you luck, master.” She turns herself once more into a card, but this time it is a brightly painted tarot card that reads Time. Ace takes the card and watches as a new Ace of Spades forms. The deck floats into the air. The family watches as their newly renamed son takes the cards in his hands and disappear into thin air. “Let there be magic. All who survive shall be endowed with the power to use it, all who live or lived or will live. It shall be a gift from me to them.” He speaks clearly, as a hush falls over the world. Time seems to stop as the girl’s voice reverberates from the card “If it is your wish master, all those who survive, survived, or will survive will be endowed with the gift of using card magic.”

The year is 3013, Ace is long gone though a few of his scattered descendants remain with a very strong power in the way of card magic though all others still have the gift of card magic. The traces of greater civilization are gone, replaced only by small towns, loners and wandering mages. Some darkness begins to form, though. The BloodCult has been forming for five years now in the mind of an evil wizard. He is now beginning to recruit members. It can’t bode well for the mages who are straddling between life and death, just trying to stay alive. Those with a stronger sense of justice stand up to the BloodCult, and those with a darkness that guides them fall into its grasp. There is one thing that is certain, and that is death. The only one who can decide your fate is…

You

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