I was someone else before I took on the name Kirk. I was someone else even before that, but I digress. I was different before the death of my friend, that was what led me to take on the name Kirk. This was all before I painted a skull on my face and killed just to be isolated. This was before I figured I'd never make any more friends so I only had to go through loss one more time. Though that time I knew I would be the participant and not a spectator. This was when I got up off the ground wearing a dusty pair of pants and an old shirt. With no weapons and no knowledge of the Light. With a talking light floating above my face. This is how I began, or maybe continued. Who knows? --------------------------------------------------------------- Just After the Collapse, Earth. I woke up surrounded by bodies. They littered the field around me, none of them merely unconscious. All of them dead, there were various wounds among them. Caused either by strange technology or something… other. Besides the bodies there was a floating… robot? It began to talk when I had finished surveying the area.   "Hello, I'm what's called a ghost. Not a scary ghost though. A mechanical, sentient, nice one."   "What?"   "I said, I'm a gho-"   "I know what you said. Can you explain what it means?"   "A thing called the Traveller created me. Then it sent me out to find you."   "Me. Who is me?"   "I don't know."   "Who are these people?"   "Ordinary citizens. They died when the Collapse struck."   "Why was I asleep?"   "You were dead."   "Dead."   "Yes. Dead, dead. As in no longer breathing or moving dead."   "We're any of these people my friends?"   "I don't know."   "What do you know?"   "That I was sent to find you."   "Why me out of all these people? Or can you revive them all?"   "I was sent to find you. I can't revive them, there was something special about you."   "No more special then them."   "Maybe, or maybe not. The Collapse hit them pretty hard, you pretty hard. Humanity fell back to Earth and eventually lost that too. Now we fight amongst ourselves for resources and territory. They call it the Dark Age."   "What a world to be revived into. We should do something with the bodies."   Without waiting for an answer he spent the next few hours piling up the bodies. He set dry grass at regular intervals in the pile.   "Ghost I need to light a fire."   "Just think about it. Your hand, set it ablaze."   He looked at his hand as it flowed red with fiery energy. The grass caught fire as he touched it. As the bodies burned he found himself repeating a poem. He couldn't remember where it was from, but he recited it anyway. When the sun began to sink and cast a red glow across the plain they heard the sound of footsteps behind them. He turned to find a gun pointed at his head.   "New blood eh?"   "You could say that."   "The warlord will be real pleased with this."   The man holding the gun to his head looked young. He had short brown hair and green eyes. A long scar ran down his cheek and neck.   "Heh, I'm sure."   "Your future may not be too pretty if you keep that attitude up."   "Your future may not last that long if you keep pointing that at my head."   "Bold words"   Suddenly the man staggered back as his flaming hand punched him in the stomach. After a couple seconds he collapsed.   "I can deliver. Ghost, what's your name?"   "You can call me", it stopped to think for a moment, "Charon."   "I suppose I'll be-"   At that moment the man he had killed got up off the ground.   "Round two new blood. This time, there's no more fooling around."   He held his gun out in front of him and took aim. A crack sounded out across the field. The man fell face first into the dirt.   "Where'd that come from?"   "Right here."   Another person was approaching him. She wore armor made of rusty old plates, clearly scavenged from vehicles and other things. He couldn't see her face because if the helmet and she quickly kicked the man's gun away from him.   "One of Kasen's men. What did he want?"   "He didn't say. He just called me new blood and pointed a gun at me. So I killed him, evidently not for long though."   "What's your name?"   "Tavas."   "Kirilen, I'm trying to help a group of survivors find shelter. You want to help?"   "Why not. Isn't he going to be an issue?"   "He's been alive for the past two minutes. You can tell by the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. Also the twitch his right foot has."   "Why didn't he get back up?"   "Because he knows when to stay down. Come on, there's a long road ahead of us. But at the end, there may yet be hope."   "What kind of hope?"   "I know people who have seen things that would make you go insane. They're not even half as suspicious as you. Nor as cynical, try to have a positive outlook. There's no point otherwise, this place will eat the life out of you. I've seen it happen a few times. Almost experienced it myself."   They set off across the plain towards the survivors. Later, weeks later they reached the settlement. It was a mass of tents that would be called the City in the future. Only then, it was under threat by Warlord Kasen. Tavas would have to face this one day. But for that moment, he was just a new light. Trying to find his way through a dark world.