Caged - Ch. 1

Dust. It all came back to dust, in the traveler's mind. His black combat boots were caked with it, the dry air seemed to choke on it, and if he looked inside himself, deep inside, he was subconsciously afraid that all he'd find there was dust.
Dust where his heart and soul should be.
It was blisteringly hot, summer in full bloom on this side of the world, and an observer might have stared oddly at the traveler. He walked with a steady gait, one that could hardly be labeled as lazy, his long legs eating up the ground in gracefully loping strides. He was certainly not in any particular hurry, as though he had no place of importance to be. The traveler kept his eyes on the road, ignoring the desert around him as though its natural, sparse beauty was painful for him, though it would be foolish to think him oblivious; the way he carried himself proved this illusion to be false.
The lean man's clothing was ill-suited for such a trek through the Southern Lands of Driagor: black boots, a skin-tight leather outfit in the same color, with a billowing navy cloak thrown over the ensemble almost as an afterthought—a cloak that partially hid his thin face, but not his brooding obsidian eyes. His only concession to the heat was a blue headband to keep the sweat from his eyes, and the ebony locks of longish hair away from his pale face. Black leather gloves covered his up to his elbows, and were folded inside the cloak so that neither one of them was visible. The road to Karat was not a safe one, but the traveler's only (apparent) insurance against the perils of the unknown was a three-barreled revolver waiting patiently in a hip holster. Its surface was weathered but obsessively well cared for, unlike his worn clothing.
These were only a few things, a series of puzzling oddities that all added up to one enigmatic stranger that appeared to be in his early twenties.
Altrius Dial.


***


One might take a moment to wonder what the once infamous man was doing as a shiftless wanderer, alone and seemingly known to nobody. It wasn't as if he had nowhere to stay; he owned an apartment on another continent, where people like him were not outlawed. Anyone approaching what Altrius would call friends had certainly asked him to stay, if not a bit tentatively. Altrius understood their trepidation, for his life was a tight-rope of control and he shared all of their feelings. So he had, in his elusive way, taken off by himself in the dead of night.
It was after the nuclear war that Altrius found himself alone again. Understandably, he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. He had, of course, promised his childhood playmate Vandralls that he would not go looking for his mother to see if she had lived through the endless battles. Perhaps he was being selfish, to not check to see if the last of his family was still there. But, he told himself, it was one of the prices he'd paid, was still paying, for his lost humanity.
So he'd become something akin to a vagabond, a shadow that passed by for just a moment, haunting the roads and the wilds going no place in particular, and staying there far too fleetingly to make any lasting impressions. He survived on odd jobs. Monsters here and there that needed killing, criminals on the run from one authority or another that needed catching...Ultimately, he fell back on the only thing he'd ever really been good at: hunting and killing.
This time, however, his targets were only monsters and scum. Sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, after all.
Truthfully, he was getting a little tired of sleeping on the cold ground with only his own brooding thoughts for company. That, and supplies were starting to run a little low. Not critically, but Altrius was nowhere close to being an idiot, and he preferred being prepared over lying in a ditch with his throat slit open somewhere.
Karat, Driagor wasn't his first choice for a stopping point, but it wasn't his last choice either, and it was close. It'd have to do.
As he approached the gates of Karat, he quickly took note of possible exits and back alleys, in case he ended up with the need of a quick getaway (something that seemed to happen far too often). The houses were made of clay and the desert land around them was sparsely populated with dry, brittle plants; the road was cracked and worn, halfway covered in sand and footprints from the barefooted civilians. It was a city with a history, and it appealed to the need of organization and the sense of solemnity in Altrius's tired soul.
Something was wrong, however, and Altrius had picked up on this as soon as the city had come into view. Guards, intimidating in their ceremonial armor and carrying rifles, patrolled the walls obsessively. A clumsy line stretched out from the gates: travelers waiting to enter the city. Altrius waited patiently for his turn to enter, enduring the nauseating heat and ignoring the curious stares of those ahead and behind him in line: a common occupational hazard. He drew the wary eyes of the two guards at the gate as he stepped forward for his turn.
“Name,” one ordered, the very picture of authority. What was going on?
“Dial,” was his short reply. The man scribbled the name down in his log.
“Reason for visiting?” The guard shifted uncomfortably. The tall stranger in front of him was well-armed...A bounty hunter or a mercenary, neither of which were very welcome in these times.
Altrius considered ignoring the question, but it occurred to him that this man was only doing his job, and antagonizing the guards was not a good way to draw unwanted attention to himself. “Supplies. A place to stay for the night,” he muttered.
“We don't want any trouble, Mr. Dial.” Mr.? That was a first. “You keep that weapon where it's at, ya hear?”
Altrius nodded curtly, stepping past the guard and into the city itself.
The streets inside were silent, a welcome change to the cacophony of cars and civilians in Racel, which had been painstakingly rebuilt after the bombing. The quiet did not ease his mind, but put him on his guard. Karat was never silent.
Normally, the city was quite friendly to travelers looking for a warm (or cold, depending on how you looked at it) place to stay the night. Karat didn't often have visitors, for almost nobody wished to take a trek through the highly dangerous Southern Lands. Humongous scorpions and deadly pit falls were common in the desert. Whoever dared to brave the conditions and check into the city were very welcome.
Today, however, the city seemed abandoned. Venders that usually haggled with customers at all hours of the day were absent, the adolescents were missing from their usual haunts, and the few passerby that were out glared at him suspiciously. It was almost as if they half-expected him to begin firing bullets randomly into buildings. He ignored these stares but noted them, crossing the street to slip inside a reasonably priced drinking establishment.
The cool interior of the building was a welcome change from the oppressive heat outdoors, and Altrius breathed an inaudible sigh of relief when his encroaching heat stroke finally began to ebb away. Leaning his Exvence, the Peacemaker, against the side of the bar within easy reach, he quietly ordered a glass of white wine (the only wine they served here) and settled down to listen to the hushed stories and conversations that floated by his enhanced ears. Receiving his drink, he idly ran a finger down the stem of the glass before bringing it to his thin, chapped lips and savoring the crisp flavor and sweet scent that wafted up as he took a sip.
This sort of quiet peace was the only time that Altrius ever came to enjoying himself.
As usual, the peace was cut dismally short.
Conversation stopped dead as a pair of guards entered the establishment and swept their serious gazes over the inside of the bar. Squinting from the sudden change in light level, they were nonetheless able to immediately pick out the solitary figure at the bar quietly sipping his wine.
Altrius exhaled noisily as the duo made a beeline toward him. He hadn't turned around when they'd arrived, but he knew that they weren't here for a late lunch at 4 in the evening.
“Mr. Dial?” one of the guards asked brusquely, as guards tend to do.
Altrius closed his demonic black eyes and breathed in the scent of his drink once more. “I haven't done anything wrong.”
The guard started to open his mouth, irritation written across his features, but the older, wiser of the two stopped him with a hard look. The older guard sighed deeply and shook his head. “We never said you did. Elder Tresting requests a moment of your time.”
“I stopped doing requests a long time ago,” Altrius intoned, sipping calmly at his wine.
“My apologies, Mr. Dial, but this is not a request that can be ignored, if you wish to remain a guest in our city,” the older guard returned.
“Ah. One of those requests.” His tone might have been considered dry, if Altrius had been more vocally animated. As it was, his rich voice was without emotion ninety-nine percent of the time.
The younger guard snarled and reached for Altrius's thin shoulder. “Enough of this nonsense! Elder Tresting wishes—” He stopped dead when a deceptively strong, leather-clad hand encircled his wrist and expertly dug into the pressure points before he could touch the gunman's shoulder.
“I heard you. Kindly allow me to finish my beverage in peace,” Altrius said softly. His eyes were still closed.
The frightening strength of his grip, and the sharp ache in his pressure points were not lost on the young man, who gulped uneasily. “Er—certainly, Mr. D-Dial..."
At these words, Altrius released the man's wrist and the guard snatched his hand back as though he'd just put it in a dragon's gaping mouth.
Altrius finished his wine in peace, but the quiet tranquility of the moment had vanished like a soap bubble in the rain.

Oh, something was so intriguing about this. Somewhere whilst reading, I forgot that I was looking for grammar and such and just kept reading on. I liked the characters, the dialogue, your way of writing. I'm especially fond of the line, "He was so gonna die" because of the way it captures that melodrama of a teenage boy in pain.

In fact, I liked most of it a whole lot.

This Altrius dude is intriguing in particular, though I kept picturing him as someone out of Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy and I don't know if that resemblance is intended. I haven't read the prologue, but maybe he is coming right out of a video game or a fantasy world like one, to slay strange beasts and rescue their victims in the nick of time in ways very much cool.

I think most of my comments for now are on the general side. You've got some passive voice here, some weird sentence constructions there, some adverbs overstaying their welcome. Not the worst case of any of those by far, but it's worth mentioning.

Some passive voice here and there:

I dunno your background in grammar-stuffs, so forgive me if this is old news to you. But a passive construction is, basically, what happens when you make the object of an active sentence the subject instead.

So, here:

The cat chased the dog.

Cat's the subject, dog's the object. In the passive, it gets flip-flopped.

The dog was chased by the cat.

And now the dog is the technical subject and the cat's not really a subject or object at all. But the point for writing is that passive constructions can really slow down the pace. They're more confusing than the active versions too, most of the time. Now, passives do have their place in writing--most definitely--but, the general rule of thumb (to be broken whenever you have a good reason) is to pick the active over the passive.

Here are some of your passives:

A dubious look was cast in his direction.

they were drenched in semidarkness

...Wait, nevermind. You only had those two, as far as I can tell. But, still. Something to watch out for. If you can make it an active sentence and that flows better, go that way. Generally speaking.

Some weird sentence constructions:

Well, weird isn't really the way to put it. But, go through and look at all your sentences that begin with "There was" and "It was" and see if you can find a way to rewrite them so you don't have the "There was" or the "It was." Sometimes, you won't be able to do it, so forget those for the time being. Sometimes you'll have to get creative, but creative is good... most of the time. (The reasoning here is that the 'there was' and 'it was' are just sort of clunky and wordy and unnecessary.)

These were only a few things, only part of a series of incongruous oddities that all added up to one enigmatic stranger

That's a good example there. Should you want, you could rewrite that as something like...

Only a few things, only part of a series of incongruous oddities, added up to one enigmatic stranger.

But perhaps it loses its dramatic effect that way. Hmm.

Your choice, in the end. You're the author. But, 'tis an idea.

Adverbs overstaying their welcome:

So, as said before, you're hardly got the worst case of adverbitis that I've seen. But, still, you do have some adverbs (and some adjectives too) that you could do without, particularly in the dialogue tags. So, what I'd do is this: go through, and every time you get to an adjective, ask yourself if it's actually giving the reader information he or she didn't have before, of if it's just loafing (or being a lump, as one of the teachers put it.)

Adverbs are sort of tell-iest of all words, if that makes sense. Or, in other words, they just tell the reader information rather than letting the other words or the story/dialogue itself fill in the space. And that's why they're loafers/lumps and need to be scrutinized before they are permitted to enter the prose.

If you could strike three or even four of every five adverbs, you'd be in glorious shape.

Other than that... I don't think I have any comments yet. Mayhaps I'll go read the prologue, or mayhaps I'll just wait for a second chapter.

'Liked' by moi. I don't do that too often.

Very good work, I say. Very good work indeed.

Rach

PS--let me know if you have any questions! I'm accessible by PM, reply to this thread, email, and occasionally telepathy. I talked about some stuff that can be confusing, depending on your grammar background, so don't feel bad if that seemed like a foreign language or something.

Well, I don't know really what to say, but I guess I can say this story is.....
AWESOME!