Cataclysm by Joseph Hansen

Author:Joseph Hansen [Hansen, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Phalanx Press
Published: 2019-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

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Bobbick didn’t relish the task set before him, but he knew it must be done. He and his apprentices had worked hard over the last few weeks, but they were well fed and rested so they headed north at a good pace for two days before the crested a long sharp ridge. A full moon made the night a gray scape of revealing shadows upon the snowy ground.

The way was an easy go for the first several miles until they rode the rams up the backside of a steep rise that Bobbick, who was a seasoned Ranger in the Spires, knew to end at a clear drop off over a thousand feet into the violent white foam of turbulent water at the bottom of the gorge. An old river from the time of the reshaping frothed the entire distance to the North Sea. They had reached the spine in just over two days of hard riding. They would rest before they took the steep trail in the light of day.

Time was critical so they reduced their breakfast down to rice cakes and reheated coffee. They crested the rise an hour after waking, the view drawing an audible gasp from the apprenticed rangers. The gorge was a feature that people usually would think of as a narrow band split through a mountain face or cut out of a field where the land suddenly drops from a washout.

The Spires, as devastating as they were, had been created in much the same way as most geological occurrences on earth were created. Land mass breaks and shifts throughout the planet, land masses collide forming mountains and barriers, new countries grow, always have and always will. As a ranger, Bobbick was well versed in the geological as well as the cultural histories of the area that he ranged. He had been to Follock as well as Nevereiche, which is the land within the gorge that the breeds had claimed as their own.

“During the last continental drift a land mass slammed into the northern spire affecting the land all of the way to Riverhouse where the solid exposed bedrock acted as the anvil for the hammer’s blow. The result was the sharp jagged mountain range referred to as the Bone Spires. Constant expansion from freezing seas as well as quakes and volcanoes made it into the youngest but deadliest range known to the Five,” Bobbick said, taking advantage of their wonder at the view to instruct his apprentices.

“Look toward the upper most ridge and you will see how this whole gorge split off from the main body and slid back toward the sea. For your personal reference, keep in mind that it is still sliding toward the sea and casually bringing everything attached, with it.” They looked at him with disbelief.

“Oh yes, everywhere the Spires are there is movement, this range is not fully developed and won’t have its true and final face for over a million years. Some believe it will eventually become a sheer-sided seawall that has flat farmland on top instead of the shallow beaches that we now have.

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