Read Still Falling: Book 1: Solstice 31 Saga for Free Online Page A

crawled into bed fully dressed and slept hard.
    During the night, Em found other paths. More BUGs were deployed. Map definition improved.
    Barcus slept twelve hours and was awakened by a full bladder.
    He was already dressed, so he made his way down the hall and found the midden. He peed for a long time, thinking about food. He had been running on survival rations, 2,000 calorie bars, and he was already tired of all but the peanut butter flavor.
    “Em, what's our status?”
    “Good morning, Barcus. Or rather, good afternoon. I'm glad you slept.” The avatar fell into step beside him as he was moving down the hall to the stairs. “All the wooden buildings in the town were burned to the ground more than a decade ago. The forest has reclaimed those places like they were never there. Only the foundations remain.”
    Windows opened in his HUD, showing images of what Em was describing.
    They entered the common room of the Tavern as she continued. “I found other indications of paths, but none has been used recently. Following them, I discovered six other burned villages. The last one burned only about a year ago.”
    They exited the tavern and moved toward the spider. It rose up as they approached, granting access to the belly hatch. He climbed in.
    The wind was blowing leaves in a mini tornado. The leaves seemed to be falling faster.
    “There are no other villages to the north from here, so far. But I did find a possible candidate location.”
    Em showed the live image of the place in the HUD window. The BUG was flying around an outer wall that was about ten meters high. One section was collapsed, and a hill of rubble ramped up the wall there. Rounding the wall, there was a tower in evidence and gates at twelve o'clock and six o'clock. One large and one small. The road that once led to these gates was now overgrown, moss covered and unused. Returning around the wall to the rubble, it looked like the structure was about 100 meters across and perfectly round. The mapping software filled in the details as it went.
    “What's inside the walls?” Barcus indicated on the display. It looked like the EM could walk right over the collapsed section.
    The BUG ascended to begin an aerial survey of the fortress. There were multiple sections divided by inner walls. It looked like there had once been a cathedral central to the fortress, but it had fallen to ruin decades ago. The tower remained, but the roof of the main sanctuary had collapsed through the floor into the basements and probably to the crypts farther below that were now flooded with water.
    “Barcus, it looks like an Abbey. It has stables and a gatehouse there. Some kind of barracks over there. A great hall of sorts there. Still mostly intact, but fallen into disrepair. These were once inner gardens, I'd wager. All the inner doors have been torn from their hinges.”
    Barcus studied the images as they moved. “How long will it take to get there?” A map popped up with a route plotted.
    “If we continue at this pace, we will be there in about fourteen hours. None of the footpaths we discovered led there. This site is very secluded, and there is very good hunting game available.”
    One of the BUGs was ascending to a greater altitude to get a bird’s eye view of the area around what they started calling The Abbey. It was dense forest near foothills at the base of a small mountain range. A large area looked too organized to be regular forest and must have been orchards. Another higher section held acres of overgrown vineyards and scattered outbuildings.
    Straight down The Abbey was a perfect circle, almost invisible because of the color of the slate that covered the roofs and capped the walls and walkways all the way around. It was broken up further by the trees growing inside and outside The Abbey. It almost looked intentionally camouflaged.
    The BUG was very high now. The status in the window indicated that it was a calm, cool, dry and exceptionally clear day over The