Lord of Ashes

A priceless journal rolled and hidden in an equally priceless hollow bejeweled scepter is discovered in a dark subterranean royal basement. From huge video monitors in community meeting halls, all citizens gather to hear what will be read to them. The reading shatters all expectations. A benign, friendly society realizes that their founder was a beast not like them at all.Mutant! Outcast! A diabolic bloodthirsty rebel.And so the story was told beginning on a small planet in a three...
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A priceless journal rolled and hidden in an equally priceless hollow bejeweled scepter is discovered in a dark subterranean royal basement. From huge video monitors in community meeting halls, all citizens gather to hear what will be read to them. The reading shatters all expectations. A benign, friendly society realizes that their founder was a beast not like them at all.Mutant! Outcast! A diabolic bloodthirsty rebel.And so the story was told beginning on a small planet in a three star system light years away. Panpaniscus. Proxima Centauri. Born with a malefactor gene, Nigel rejected all that he saw around him utterly and violently. Though alone, he was not to be alone long for he found the ally of his dreams. Lenny made two and it wasn't quite enough even still.They must find fertile partners or all was futile. That set them on their first sojourn into unknown oceans in the smallest of sailboats.Impossibility confronted them repeatedly. They encountered windless seas, Neolithic pagans, cannibalistic remnants and then a dormant volcano ready to erupt. Lost at sea came last.Finding shore at last brought murder and the capture of a precious space craft that they rode into the heavens.Nigel feared pursuit. He should have feared an enemy nearer at hand; a grotesque hidden enemy as vicious as he was vicious.Who survives? Obvious seeming but is survival everything? Surviving, ever surviving, again, is that everything? If its taste is ashes, how brutal is that? Brutal enough to hear soft voices calling?His malefactor gene says no.Transformation says yes.The battle goes on.The audience leaves judgement behind and becomes transfixed by it all