Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives Read Free

unknown object, our sandaled feet slapping against the hard packed sand near the water’s edge. The cool wind blows against the shaved sides of my head, my short red hair flailing like whips over the exposed skin. We’ve done this race a thousand times before; it’s become a sort of game whenever we spot an object on the beach.
    First one there wins.
    Jude is just slightly ahead of me. I can catch him up, if I really want to, but I might need that extra burst of energy at the end. Jude suddenly slips his sandals off midstride and, unencumbered, begins to pull away. I curse and he turns his head back at me, laughing, knowing his victory is inevitable. He turns back around and–
    A nd slams to a dead stop on the sand.
    I sear past him, turning my confusion laden face on his, seeing an expression of pure fear there. 
    “JUNO! STOP!” he shouts.
    And I do. Sort of.
    Just in time, I turn back around and see the object, a metal cube, on the sand about three feet ahead of me. I leap over it, coming down daintily on the other side, tip toeing to a stop and whirling on the spot. Jude is on the other side and he’s staring downward, but not at the metal box. It’s what’s around the box, pressed into the golden beach sand, that has him stunned. 
    It’s what caused him to stop the race.  
    I follow his gaze and see them too: footprints, leading away from the object, up the beach into the woods towards Krakelyn.
    And each footprint has six toes.
    “ Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live ,” my Father’s voice echoes in the recesses of my mind.
     
     
     
     
    PART I: E VERSUMMER
     
     
    1.
     
    Going about my day, acting as if nothing of significance had occurred the day before, proves to be the challenge of my life. As always, I leave the Manse and make my way toward the Glass Gardens an hour before my shift starts at the sixth hour. The sunvisor from my bedroom window fell out and broke two days ago, and so I’d barely slept with th e sun’s constant glare in my room. I'd only had a few thin sheets to hang up as a replacement. Adrenaline, mixed with fear from the day before, still lingers, but I'm groggy as hells. 
    The streets of Krakelyn are a foggy blur as I walk, all my attention focused on getting one thing: my morning cup of coffee. Coffee is a relatively new thing in Krakelyn, imported from one of the southern cities. It was hard to get ( and expensive as hells) for years, but then a new passage through the southern Bleaklands was discovered that was both passable and breathable; a rare combination. Coffee started to flow more readily into Krakelyn. I was hooked instantly, finding I had trouble starting my day without it. My Father likes it too–another rare occurrence–considering he tends to be wary of new things. He always has to know exactly where something comes from; to be sure no mutant had a hand in its creation.
    But he was the one who led the expedition that discovered the new passage thro ugh the southern desert, and had been to the cities where the coffee comes from, so he knows that it's safe to drink. He tells me it grows on a vine, like a bean, but the idea seems funny to me. Not that it matters. I just thank the gods everyday that my Father and his Deacons found that passage–and by sheer dumb luck to boot. 
    They'd been trying to locate a rumored land bridge across the Great Desert Canyon, finding themselves in a low lying area with little air to breathe. There are many such places in our world. We call them Bleaklands. My Father says they are a result of the Great Cataclysm that brought the Forerunners to their ultimate destruction. It was to such a place my Father led his caravan. When the men and their horses began to black out from lack of oxygen, he called a retreat. But they were waylaid by a vicious storm, forced to seek shelter inside the canyon itself. The next days found them following the dry riverbed at the canyon’s bottom, their way out washed away by the storm. They