Young Writers Society

Ep stands for Epilogue, by the way. This is part one of two equally short parts.

This is the preview of my Book Two_ The Apostles for my Novel Series Advent Child (look at my signature, or click here.) It's short and sweet, so why not take a few minutes and size it up for meh! You might have to have read a bit of the first book to understand it, but I'm trying to phase that attribute out. Any help would be appreciated! If you're a fan of bold, italic, all around proper formatting, and not having it split it two -- the PDF is available for download at the bottom of the post.

... And it begins...

The image was shaky, like one of those old drive-in western film-reel movies, going through a pretty crappy projector. You could even see those white tear-lines scrolling the vision vertically. The quality itself may have been horrible… but the images were worse.

It started out black. Just… black. And then two red eyes opened in the darkness. The blackness faded away, revealing a man’s face. He had pale, cold skin and dead sunken eyes — like a cadaver, staring back at me. The irises were a shimmering bloody red color; his pupils were open black and white chasms, like hungry mouths waiting to feed. With a single glance I’m sure he’d snatch away your soul… and mine.

His over gelled hair fell over his face sloppily. He’d never even bothered to keep it groomed.

Why would he, considering?

It became clear the moment I laid eyes on him: There is no Major Player alive strong enough to take him on.

The image zoomed out.

The heavens were a sickly shade of scarlet, with clouds flashing by at unnatural speeds. The closer the clouds got to the creature, the blacker they got. Said creature was standing atop an immensely tall skyscraper — one that surpassed all others. He was totally inaccessible from the mortal world. You could just feel it, every time you looked up at his silhouetted figure — glowing red and yellow, in deep contrast with the blackened sky above him. Loose mummy-like wrappings blew in the wind at his back, completing his supernatural look.

In his hand he held a bible. It was on fire. Burning. Slowly.

The building itself was seriously damaged. It was literally falling to pieces. Massive chunks of concrete plummeted towards the ground far below in slow motion.

The image dropped down from that scene, flying into another.

This one was far worse.

Talus, the Lord of Seven, lay in two distinct pieces, at the side of a broken road. In between him lay a pile of seven of the ugliest beings I’d ever seen.

Lying a few yards to his right was Lady Sorrow. She wasn’t moving either. Her face stared at me… her eyes were missing. Her mouth was open in the ever dramatic ‘O,’ her dress sopping wet with some goopy red stuff.

Is it blood?

A figure dressed like some sort of musician — going to play at a really snazzy recital, lemmie tell ya — was pinned to a tree. His fancy clothes were ruined much like Lady Sorrow’s. Jagged pieces of metal — stained red by blood like the others — skewered the man, giving the scene a very ancient look.

A wolf was lying on its side, on top of a wrecked vehicle. It was as if someone had chucked the poor thing at the car like a pitcher does a baseball. The wolf’s carcass was bent at an unnatural angle, jet-black goop dripping from in-between its broken ribcage. Its eyes were totally white — void of any life.

On the other side of the road, someone had been kicked through the wall of a house. The only clue to the person’s identity was its wicked looking staff, sticking out of the wreckage. Lightning struck it in the same spot once… twice… three times!

The image flickered to another scene, much like the first.

An old woman with one eye sat hunched over against the wall. Her neck was twisted in an odd way — at a sort of slant.

A woman was on top of a black and silver motorcycle, bowed over. Her body was covered in a once magnificent white trench coat. The thing was torn to pieces now, but it looked like it had extensive black-colored designs sewed into it.

Other bodies from faces I didn’t recognize at the time were strewn across the scene. Nothing but death and destruction as far as the eye could see.

The scene flickered once again.

More corpses, surrounded by ruined buildings, overturned cars, and shattered streets.