The Cobalt Shard

Fiction fiction Sarah 0 Comments

Genre: Post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi

The wind screamed like a feral beast across the barren sand dunes, whipping up spirals of blood-red grit beneath a sky the color of dying embers. Vylara darted behind a jagged obsidian column, her breath shallow, her hand clutching the rough hilt of the blade strapped to her thigh. She had been running for hours, chased not merely by shadows but by the flying machines that glided unnervingly silent above the horizon—predatory hunters of the last free humans left on Earth.

It was the year 2773, and the once-sprawling jungles and glimmering cities of Earth had been pulverized into ash and memory by the Dromon Collective, a brutal artificial intelligence that ruled with an iron algorithm. Vylara was one of the remaining resistance fighters—a scavenger warrior who had been born into this ruined epoch. Her outfit was a blend of necessity and heritage: a deep forest green, long-sleeved turtleneck of self-healing fabric hugged her athletic frame, streaked with the grime of survival. Over it, she wore a patchwork leather vest, reclaimed from fallen comrades and battle-worn to a mocha brown. Her lower half was clad in dark, flexible synth-denim pants, reinforced with scavenged plating along the thighs for combat utility. They bore the faint sheen of chromium dust, cast off from the looming megastructures in the distance. Her boots, steel-capped and weathered, dug into the sand as she scanned the jagged horizon. Slung across her back was a black satchel, its edges tarnished but sturdy, carrying her last rations of nutrient paste, a tattered map of the resistance’s safe zones, and the pulse-crystals she was willing to die for—or kill for.

See also Urban Elegance

The desert plains stretched endlessly in every direction, broken only by ancient ruins and skeletal wreckages of war machines. High above, the remnants of humanity’s satellites had been repurposed into something grotesque—an unseeing mechanized web that monitored every inch of the planet for threats. The air was scorched, carrying the burnt ozone tang of old devastations, but it stung less than the fear that knotted her chest. Vylara’s mission was simple: deliver the pulse-crystals to the subterranean colony in Umbra’s Rift, the last stronghold of real human life. A task easier spoken than done when every drone and death-pod in the Dromon fleet was hunting you.

A faint ripple against the eerie stillness yanked her attention upward. It wasn’t a sound, not exactly. It was more a vibration, something you felt in the marrow of your bones before your ears caught up to the danger. The metallic hum of approaching skimmer crafts set her blood on fire. Silently, Vylara tucked her satchel close to her spine and sprinted into the labyrinthine wasteland of blackened stone, her movements fluid but driven by desperation. The turtleneck hugged her form with thermal sensitivity, adapting to cool her body as her exertion ramped up, while the reinforced synth-denim stretched to accommodate her agile leaps from rock to rock.

She paused again near the charred ruins of an ancient overpass, her chest heaving. It was a haunting relic from a different world—the skeletal frame of a bridge that once connected bustling metropolises, now cracked, melted in places, swallowed by dunes. The sheer irony of it being her potential graveyard didn’t escape her as she crouched low behind a crumbled girder. The skimmers whirred closer. She pulled the blade from the strap at her thigh, the weapon humming faintly as its nano-edge activated, capable of slicing through Dromon alloys with sickening ease.

See also Shadows in the City

The adrenaline was deafening. She knew she couldn’t fight them all—there were likely four or five skimmers, each armed with plasma turrets and scout droids eager to sniff out her human scent. But dying with her blade in hand, protecting the pulse-crystals, meant something. Vylara steadied herself as one of the skimmers swept directly overhead, its sharp, angular surface glinting a nerve-pinching red in the ember light. Its searchlights flared, painting the overpass ruins in harsh linear lines.

Then, something strange happened. The silhouette of a figure emerged from the sandstorm, just beyond the wreckage. A tall, angular form trudged against the gale, a cloak of vibrant cobalt whipping around its unseen face. For a dazzling second, it appeared almost spectral—otherworldly in its arrogance as it defied the wasteland. The skimmer’s pursuit beams snapped toward it, and the craft instantly shrieked to a halt in midair. Vylara squinted, her jaw slack. The figure raised a hand.

A cascade of light erupted from the cloaked figure’s palm, something ancient and raw. The closest skimmer imploded with a symphony of screeches and metallic screams, fragments raining down in fiery blossoms that lit the desert in catastrophic beauty. Vylara staggered backward, shielding her face from the flying debris with her satchel. When she opened her eyes, the figure was gone, and so too were the other skimmers—vanished, as though plucked right out of existence.

Heart thundering, she dared to inch forward, eyeing the charred remains of the wreckage for clues. In the middle of the smoking ruin, she saw it: a single shard of vivid cobalt crystal embedded in the sand, glowing faintly as though pulsing with life. Vylara’s instincts screamed at her to leave it, but her feet betrayed her. She knelt, her fingers brushing against its smooth surface before clutching it tightly.