Halgod 7 was too good to be true. E was about half a foot taller than the average Druinte, twice as smart, and even though e was a full rount younger than the standard age of Druinte adulthood, e left the Hall of Orphans with Falstraq 6’s generation. Or e would have if not for the terrible explosion that killed a third of the Druintes on the planet. Halgod and Falstraq were attending an orientation for their new jobs at the Hall of Biological Sciences when they heard a loud sound and saw the cascading destruction of a pyramid in the distance and then the other structures around it. The building shook around them and everyone panicked. Pod travellers that had been summoned by their owners hovered next to the pyramid as the building slowly crumbled and Halgod helped Falstraq escape as the building mostly collapsed. Halgod was presumed dead in the chaos.
Falstraq managed to clear the destruction and e landed on the long mall in the city center of Triusia where many others had fled the destruction. They watched as the dust settled and it seemed that the destruction started at the Pyramid for Advanced Physical Study; the building was completely gone and the destruction was worst closest to the spot where it had been. Falstraq watched in silent disbelief as the crowd of Druintes on the mall grew and joined erim in eris shock. After a while, Falstraq regained eris sense of the present and worried for Halgod. E had definitely died when the building they were in collapsed, Falstraq was sure of it. Even though the Biological Sciences pyramid was mostly intact, there was still considerable damage to the section that Falstraq had fled and Halgod was certainly crushed inside.
In fact, Halgod’s body had been crushed. E didn’t suffer, it all happened so fast and before long the rumbling in the city of Triusia stopped and the proud Druinte civilization started their long recovery efforts.
But Halgod did not die, because e is too good to be true.
The Dark Matter Manipulator that found its way to Earth, did so despite astronomical odds. Rather than being incinerated, as was the fate of the body of its creator, Belfrat, it was propelled up into the Druont atmosphere like a rocket. And rather than drift off into nearby space after it had pushed beyond the atmosphere and gravity of it’s home world, it breached a spot in space that instantly transported it to a different part of the universe. The Dark Matter Manipulator had traveled an unfathomable distance across the universe in the blink of an eye, and it careened to crash land on the planet Earth that happened to be in its trajectory.
Earth and Druont have a mysterious link that is not a curiosity to inhabitants of either planet; Earth is mostly unaware of Druont, and Druont had local interests that outweighed the curiosity floating space on the other side of the universe. The link is seldom exploited, and usually accidentally.
Earth today is a mad place, covered by the dark pall of Illuminatos, the ancient weed that had released pollen to take control of the human population. But even without the takeover of Illuminatos, Earth as a peaceful planet was doomed. The invasion of Illuminatos only delayed another inevitable invasion.
Detective Paul Young is a terrible alcoholic. He has been for most of his life, but he managed to shake it off for periods long enough to find a wife and make a family, and to become a detective with a good reputation among the community he protected. He wasn’t very popular with other members of his department, he was known to poke holes in other’s cases when he was sure they were doing sloppy police work and he seemed to always sympathize with the criminals he was supposed to be arresting. He wasn’t a dirty cop, he just understood that the majority of the people he arrested weren’t exactly bad people, but victims of a world that had literally gone to shit. The police were like a bandaid, even before Illuminatos, and they mostly protected government employees who seemed determined to continue their jobs to maintain a sense of society. Young and other detectives like him mostly tracked down sources of organized violence; packs of people who had formed into feral communities around the twisted trees in the countryside, or gangs that terrorized urban centers. There was corruption in his department, and Young was often drunk even when he was on the job, but he cared about making the world safe for the few decent people who still existed. He had been content to collect his pay check and drink it away in the house his father had bought long ago, but then his family was murdered by a vicious gang and Young swore to get his revenge. He couldn’t stop drinking, but he had caused trouble for the worst criminals in his city and they knew his name.
The week after his family was murdered, well before Illuminatos released his spores, Young was still on paid leave from his job. He stumbled out of his favorite bar one night and he found himself huddled on the sidewalk in downtown Tennessee after two in the morning. His head hung between his legs and he cried without shame. He hadn’t been the best husband and father, but he had tried his best and he loved them. His wife, Darlene, had been the best thing that ever happened to him. They had two daughters and Young cried harder at the thought that he had failed to protect them.
Then he heard a sound that seemed to echo down the empty street. The street lights were on, but when Young looked around, it seemed that there were more shadows than cones of light from the light posts. The clicking noise seemed to start in a distant shadow down the long street. It snapped the still night and Young heard it like long nails rapping against one another five or six times. It stopped and Young went back to his misery. Then he heard the clicks again and he was sure that the sound was closer.
Young stood from the curb and he peered at the darkness. He felt like an animal was stalking him and in his drunken state he was primed for a confrontation. When the clicking started again, he was sure it was in the shadows closest to him, underneath a tree just beyond the sidewalk. He screamed as he walked toward it, “Come on out here,” he slurred as he walked boldly.
And just as he said it, Detective Young wished that he hadn’t. A tall thing emerged from the shadows. It looked like a black man, but it only had three fingers and each had long claws that were as long as it’s arms. It seemed to snarl at Young and he backed away in disbelief.
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