Read Mrythdom: Game of Time for Free Online Page A

and he felt shivery. Jagged shapes were beginning to slice through the hazy curtain of snow drawn across the horizon.
    “There,” Gabrian said as they drew nearer and nearer to the twisted ruins Aurelius had seen from the air. “These ruins, and all the others like them scattered across Mrythdom are all that remain of your people, elder.”
    “What are you talking about, Wrinkles? These aren’t ruins. They aren’t old enough. There must have been some kind of battle and . . .”
    The broken spires and crumbling foundations of skyscrapers loomed over them now in all their stark reality. Aurelius couldn’t help but gape as they wove around the broken remains of what had clearly once been a modern city.
    Once, a very long time ago.
    The twisted alloy frames had all but eroded and rusted away, barely a trace of them remained. The concrete was pitted and pocked, the edges worn smooth by wind and weather. Only synthetics remained reasonably undiminished by the elements. Here lay a wedge of muddied styrofoam tumbling through the ruins, there fluttered a tattered sheet of dirty gray plastic, at his feet he saw a broken piece of colored glass, jutting out of the snow—its edges worn smooth by the wind. Last of all he saw a bright orange placard poking out of the snow, still pegged to a giant wedge of marble. It read:
    Fogrim City Brigadiers .
    Aurelius blinked. Forgim city? He’d been there only last year to deliver a shipment of arms. The Brigadiers were ex-military, and almost all of them had joined Freedom as a bitter consequence of finally realizing how much they’d done for the Dominion and how little the Dominion had done for them.
    If these are the ruins of Fogrim city, then . . .
    Aurelius abruptly stopped walking and Gabrian jabbed him in the ribs again with his pistol.
    “Keep moving.”
    Aurelius ignored him. “These ruins are centuries old.”
    “Millennia.”
    Aurelius shook his head and he felt his vision blur. The world spun crazily, and snowflakes danced before his eyes; then someone turned out the lights, and his thoughts ceased to trouble him.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Aurelius awoke with a loud, continuous scraping sound in his ears, like someone rubbing sandpaper on wood to scratch off the flecks of paint. He blinked his eyes open and found himself staring up at a cold, blue slice of sky with fluffy white clouds racing to snuff it out. His face felt numb and his head was throbbing. Where was he? What had happened?
    As he glanced to the right and left, he saw that he was being dragged across the snow and ice on a dirty piece of plastic.
    “Stop,” he groaned.
    “You’re awake.”
    The scraping sound stopped. He lifted his head to see Gabrian untying him. “What happened?”
    “You could no longer deceive yourself about what has happened to you.”
    Aurelius’s brow furrowed as he dredged up his last conscious memory. He’d been looking at a weathered placard which read Fogrim City Brigadiers , and then . . .
    “So it’s true,” Aurelius said.
    “Yes.”
    “It’s impossible.”
    Gabrian sighed. “Don’t relapse.”
    Aurelius blinked up at him for a moment; then shook his head and sat up. He clapped a hand to his face and found he could barely feel the frozen material of his flight gloves against his bare skin. “I’m going to get frostbite if I don’t cover up soon.”
    Gabrian stood and offered him the hand which wasn’t holding his staff. “Come. We are almost there.”
    Aurelius eyed the old man’s hand dubiously, but he took it anyway, only to find a surprising reserve of strength lurking beneath Gabrian’s frail appearance. They began walking together toward the looming palisades of the town which Aurelius had thought to be a movie set. As they drew near, Aurelius noted the two guards standing before the reinforced doors. They carried wicked looking halberds and were clothed from head to toe in thick furs.
    “Who are they?”
    “Guardsmen of Nordom. Whatever you do, do