The Fifth Dawn

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Wake up.

The voice slithered through the tangled mess that was his mind.

Mind. Yes, that was the word. A mind that seconds before has been cold, dark, and dead. A mind that was somewhat shocked to be aware of itself once more.

Wake up, now.

The voice became a little more insistent. Urgency played around the soggy depths of his brain. The hissed words coaxed a little more clarity into his mind.

Yert’s mind.

He was Yert. What was a “Yert?”

It was … his name. He was a man. A … Moriok. A Moriok man called Yert. A controller of nim. A controller of a mighty reaper that was, like him, dead. Though Yert’s death apparently hadn’t taken hold.

Visions flashed behind Yert’s eyes as optic nerves sparked inside his brain. He saw images of a strange world, an organic world of soft earth and flesh creatures, horrible and horribly unprotected from the elements. A white stone city filled with humans-tanned and leathery in gleaming silver armor-appeared, then was gone in a sudden burst of white light. Now open seas of some thin, translucent liquid covered the strange landscape, and verdant stands of trees exploded in clusters amid rolling green and gold fields. A flash. Yert saw a grim-faced man with no hint of metal on his skin, a flesh-and-bone warrior swinging a savage chain in a grimy pit. A third burst of white light, and he stood on the command deck of a massive living vessel, cutting through miles and miles of the translucent liquid he’d seen before. He knew somehow that it was as corrosive as acid, and the experience of touching it, even in his vision, made Yert’s skin tingle.

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