For some time he just lay there. At first the emptiness, the vast sense of space was almost pleasant. However, his aloneness began to dawn on him as the scorching sun parched his brittle skin. His throat felt extraordinarily dry. His stomach was empty. He seemed to have an ordinary flesh and blood body again - yet it wasn't quite as heavy as it should be. He could move his limbs. This wasn't the Earth plane at all. He must still be in a thought realm of some description.
This was nowhere he recognised. Every telepathic call he put out boomeranged unanswered. He felt a long way from home. And then he remembered: the attempts to win him round, the Nemesis code, fighting the Elif. Had he won? If he had beaten the Elif why was he here, discarded like a useless piece of rubbish?
In every direction all he could see was sand. The lower half of the sky was a dirty ruddy massless grey, the upper half a harsh metallic blue. The sun beat down mercilessly. He could feel the moisture leaving his skin in droves, drying his scalp and face. He took his ragged T-shirt off and tied it around his head and shoulders.
Being able to use his legs was a brief moment of joy. He stood up, contemplated briefly and headed off. The sun was at midday but Danny did not know in which direction he was going. For hours he walked the harsh and unchanging landscape. Occasionally dust storms would blow his way. He would crouch down and shield his eyes and then continue. After some time he thought he might very well die. So the Elif had won after all.
Had he not emitted the Nemesis code for long enough? Now he would never know. Just as he was beginning to despair an internal voice reminded him of the ruro. He looked at his chest, and glowing a faint blue, the small globe was still there pulsing quietly to itself. He sat down cross-legged and meditated upon the ruro within his chest. The pulsing and the intensity grew slowly stronger. Leaving his thought-body he scanned the surrounding environment. A few miles away a small group of people were travelling on foot. If he just entered their thoughts and adjusted their path a little they would reach him shortly.
Danny entered the personal Thought-realm of the youngest member of the group. Suddenly the boy thought he saw something in the distance, something move, an animal perhaps. The youngster remarked to the others about maybe seeing something out to their right. The leader of the group thought they should investigate and then return to their original course. One of the others checked a primitive looking compass and reluctantly agreed.
Danny was asleep with exhaustion and heat stroke. They found him shortly before his body, albeit a less material one would pass away. Danny awoke to find himself being carried upon the shoulders of one of the men. They were heading toward a large residence, an obviously ancient but seemingly ordinary, brick and wood board suburban house. It was nothing unusual except it was placed alone, at a slight angle, in a seemingly endless desert. The men took him around to the side of the building then down some steps to a cellar.
A massive dust storm was approaching. Everything needed to be battened down. Danny found himself placed on a rough mattress in a small dark room. It was blessedly cool. Sometime later a girl came in and held a leather bladder of musty water to his lips. She brought him some strange hard bread. He ate it in small bites, his appetite still shrivelled from the heat of the desert. Danny slept. Whether it was for a day or a week he did not know. He felt stronger when he eventually made his way from the dark, cool room.
‘Ah, the stranger arises! To what do we owe this honour?’ the man exclaimed in a friendly tone. His pronunciation was strange, somewhere between Chinese Cantonese and English Yorkshire. The man's voice had a rough guttural, dust-baked quality to it. ‘You're not from round here are you lad? I reckon you dropped from't sky. First Un-triber we've seen in a dozen years you is. You're a star hereabouts. Not that there's many of us. We lost another one only last week,’ he paused, lost in his own thoughts. ‘Long way from home I bet?’
‘A very long way - although I can't say for sure. I don't really know how I came to meet your tribe but thanks for saving me from the desert,’ Danny replied.
‘You're welcome. We need every last person we can get. There are less than a few thousand of us in the whole tribe of Angle. Still it’s Atmos Day tomorrow, the one day of the year to have a full belly.’
The man, who Danny came to know as Torreano, went on to explain a little. For as far as had been explored by his tribe there was only desert surrounding them in their new homeland. Here and there the tribe’s people could tap the salty wells. They had learnt to desalinise the water they’d found. A little food could be grown and a few animals fed from place to place.
The Angle tribe had found this building, a hundred years previously, miraculously preserved amongst the otherwise barren landscape. They called it The House of the Last-Born. It had been placed here as a sign for them, the last of the Chosen People. Their king had recognised it from a very vivid and disturbing dream he’d had. It was a sign to settle the tribe. They had travelled for nearly a generation, escaping from the endless dark floods of winter that shadowed all the northern countries. The tribe had survived despite countless bandit attacks, against all the odds.
The actual house contained treasures from a previous civilisation. Torreano had shown Danny around. He took him past the ancient electronic equipment, the kitchen with central bar and once expensively tiled flooring. The tribe’s people couldn't read any of the writing in the house. Although they spoke accented English they appeared to have no written language.
The house was a dusty museum piece, a mirror of a large well-off modern home. The tribal caretaker of the house turned out to be Torreano. He afforded the pictures of the family special devotion. There was no electricity here and Torreano did not even understand the concept. The tribe guarded the house as a treasure and no one was allowed to live there.
The annual Atmos day was tomorrow. Groups from the four neighbouring tribes were making the long and tiring journey. There would be a feast, a celebration, and an offering - a human offering. Somehow both the name of the day and the talk of offerings made Danny nervous. It did not bode well. Still Torreano seemed a decent fellow. He was thin and had a straggly, pointed beard. He was not the most pleasant smelling, he had a sour aroma. But he seemed kind.
Throughout the rest of the day small groups of people arrived. All were on foot. They slept that night in tents surrounding the mysterious house. There were small fires. Sad meals of the black bread were eaten. By nightfall there were hundreds of people.
The next morning had a hazy sun-baked dirtiness to it. When Danny had awoken and wandered around to the front of the house he saw that most of the people had already risen and were gazing upwards. A black satellite had just arrived. Far above them it sat menacing and all-powerful.
For Danny the image had that larger-than-life quality like a scene he remembered from the film War of the Worlds. The emptiness and void-like hunger of the thing could almost be felt. There was a sense of a growing evil. It was like a gathering storm waiting to crack the dead motionless air. It never landed, so Danny was told. It just watched from afar.
The black continents that moved continuously about its face could clearly be seen. If it was observed for some time a slow pulsation became apparent. Defocusing his eyes Danny could see that it had many spikes of black energy sticking out viciously from its dark grey aura.
‘It keeps the deserts from killing us. It doesn't ask for much - just that we celebrate its day and remember the legend of Atmos. It was Atmos who guided us here to our new homeland. Atmos who stopped the bandits from destroying us on our great journey from the Winter-lands,’ Torreano explained.
Danny and Torreano took their places at one of the wooden trestle tables that had been placed all around the house. The atmosphere was heating up. An excitement was building. The mood was now like that of a busy country pub on a Sunday lunchtime. Food was being served, roast goat, mushrooms and a light bread.
Every person in the crowd had been given a small wooden tankard. It contained a bitter tasting beer called Trinitarian. It was made from herbs and appeared to glow. Torreano explained that Trinitaria, a powder from which the drink derived its name, was made from a desert rock that shines in the dark. Danny tried a sip and grimaced. It was better to be thirsty he decided. Whatever it contained it was obviously very potent. He'd had to tap into his powers to rid himself of the effects of just the single sip he had drunk. An angry looking man from the neighbouring table snatched his drink, eyeing him murderously as he did so.
‘Here’s to the year of our Lord, 1066. Atmos day is also the winter equinox, we are nearing the end of another year,’ Torreano toasted Danny. ‘You really didn't know that did you? I don't see how you could come from so far away. I really don't.’
Danny felt strangely comforted. It was like he had known Torreano forever. If he was here with him things couldn't be quite so bad.
‘So what's the legend of Atmos then?’ Danny asked.
‘A long time ago when there were billions of humans living on the Earth, I know that’s hard to believe, there came a great era of disasters. Many of the people had been led astray by the Hidden Ones and knew nothing but hatred and fear. The disasters wiped out most of mankind but the great god Atmos and his black satellite led the Chosen People. We were the ones that had thoroughly repented. Atmos took us here to a land where there is still some food. The four tribes, the Angles, Saxa's, Normasts and the Braves settled this land, the last living continent.
‘Once a year the great black satellite returns. The god Atmos comes from the sky. Atmos travels in the black satellite. He is our saint, our protector. We celebrate and offer ourselves. That way Atmos gains the strength to protect us from the worst ravages of the desert.’
‘I see,’ said Danny swallowing down the last piece of goat on his square wooden plate.
‘Watch! The festivities are about to begin,’ Torreano exclaimed.
Four lean and strong looking men were pulling a large wooden tower. It was the height of a house. It was mounted on a square block and four uneven wheels lent it motion. The men heaved and sweated as they pulled it to the front of the large house along the sandy road. An expectant hush fell upon the crowd.
The top of the wooden tower had four arms. These extended horizontally in an even cross shape. The cross was fixed to the top of the wooden block in such a way as to allow it to rotate horizontally. It looked like a medieval fairground ride. Suspended from the end of each arm was a rope. At the end of each rope a leather helmet could be seen. It was a carousel of murder.
The sky turned dark as night in seconds. A red glow could now be seen around the black satellite. Four bonfires sprung into life throwing the wooden structure into a thing of mythical properties. The four men attached themselves into the helmets.
‘Any who survive are heroes. The spirits of those who snap at the neck go and live in the sky - with Atmos himself,’ explained Torreano in a whisper. A laser-like beam of blue energy turned slowly to a red fiery light as it emerged from the black satellite. When it struck the top of the wooden structure the whole thing began to rotate.
The crowd clapped, stamped and chanted. They screamed, 'Atmos, Atmos,' in time to the rotations. The spinning cross was getting faster and faster.
The drugged drink, the hypnotic murmuring and the evil carousel were so overwhelming that Danny almost lost himself to the madness. A dark part of himself wanted to join in. Danny stood up to leave. The man who had stolen his strange beer saw him stand up. The man leapt upon him and threw him to the ground. His breath smelt of meat and death.
‘YOU EVIL CHILD! What gives you the right to walk out on ATMOS!’ the man yelled. His eyes were bulging, deranged. ‘Give me the power stuff. It belongs to Atmos! GIVE IT TO ME!’
Danny looked around desperately. Where had Torreano gone? The man was too strong for him. His limbs flailed but he was pinned down by his attacker’s weight.
The crowd saw nothing. They were ecstatic, clapping and shouting, stamping their feet. A loud unmistakable crack of broken bone could be heard from the medieval carousel. Danny felt it in his stomach. The crowd immediately went wild and the noise was overpowering.
Danny’s attacker produced a large 9-inch razor sharp blade. It appeared to be made of sharpened bone. Danny struggled with all his might but the man had the phenomenal strength of madness. His insane eyes glinted with dark power. Oily sweat dripped from his sneering face. Danny could taste the stench of the bitter beer, and death.
Danny watched in horror as the blade entered below his sternum. The blood appeared in small rivulets as the knife moved shallowly upwards. The sharp pain was numbed both by the surrounding madness and his efforts to break free. Perhaps the Trinitarium beer had dulled his pain too. The ruro globe glowed brightly beneath his skin. The madman grinned - the prize was in sight.