Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands Read Free Page B

beyond. Nothing had been spared, from the frozen wastes of the far north to the tropics of Africa and the distant, mythical Orient. All had been consumed by titanic ocean waves that scoured clean the land, or volcanic eruptions that filled the sky and covered the land with lava and ash. The initial cataclysm had been followed by the Endless Winter, which buried the entire world in frozen white for many, many years, and drove Mankind to the very brink of extinction.  
    How his ancient forebears had survived, and where they had been to avoid the great catastrophe, no one knew precisely. Some believed that a legion in Britain, together with some of the barbarians there, had weathered the great storm. Others thought the Survivors had been scholars in Alexandria on an expedition in some far corner of the empire, or in a caravan taking goods along the Silk Road. Regardless of whom they had been, when the First Spring came at last and the snow and ice began to melt away, the descendants of the Survivors emerged into the sunlight and gave great thanks to the gods.  
    As the world’s blanket of frozen white receded, the people saw that the land and seas had been transformed, rendering every map in their possession utterly useless. Even the positions of the stars were different, the constellations having moved in the sky as if the Earth had fallen over on its side. The flora and fauna were also greatly changed, save for those species the Survivors had managed to preserve in their underground sanctuaries. Many animals and plants recorded in the histories had disappeared, and over time others — often strange, frightening, and sometimes deadly — began to appear, as if the gods were filling in some of the gaps with new animals to replace those they had taken away.
    Throughout their long ordeal, the Survivors and their descendants had preserved much of the history of what had once been Rome, and had never stopped thinking of themselves as Roman. And, as Romans, they were builders, explorers, and conquerors, well suited to the challenges of taming the new world into which they emerged.
    And so, over the centuries that followed, they had. It had not, of course, been a bloodless conquest, for the gods had left other survivors upon the world. Some had been easily vanquished, while others had come close to destroying the newly rebuilt Rome, nearly finishing what the gods had started. But, in the end, Rome had triumphed. Fifteen years before, Tiberius himself, then a general of the army, had seen to Rome’s final victory, bringing the southern barbarians to heel and solidifying Rome’s hold over the entire known world. As he stood now, looking upon the map before him, the world was one tremendous land mass bounded by great seas, beyond which lay the ends of the Earth.  
    Rome held sway over all, save for a landmass to the north known as the Dark Lands. It was somewhere in that vaguely defined region, legend said, where Vulcan’s hammer had fallen, smashing open the Earth and releasing evil spirits to haunt the land as a constant reminder of the wrath of the gods. The black, razor sharp mountains and smoldering volcanoes of the Dark Lands were often visible across the narrowest part of the Haunted Sea from Rome’s northernmost province of Aquitania, but those alien shores may as well have been on the moon. While the sea provided a bounty of fish to those who stayed close to the shores of Aquitania, to venture over the horizon toward the Dark Lands was to court death. The boats of those who had gone too far eventually washed ashore, the crews dead, as if they had fallen asleep and never awakened. The few foolhardy souls that had managed to return alive told tales of bubbling waters and the stink of sulfur, and the sight of strange and terrible creatures. While more than one Emperor had sent forth naval expeditions to the Dark Lands, none had ever returned alive.  
    Of course, that had not stopped rumor from becoming truth and drunken