A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) by Michael G. Munz

for momentary lightning flashes that shine across its depths and then vanish in the dark.
    Shielded by the batt lements, Michael Flynn weathers the storm. He stands watch for the enemy that approaches and takes solace in the strength of the fort about him: a stronghold of the Agents of Aeneas. He is one of them now, lending his strength to their whole. That whole will support him. Together they stand as secret sentry, defending those who need it, those who live in the shelter of their guardianship, those who cannot defend themselves.
    Michael walks the length of the ramparts, thankful for the shelter the stone gives from the elements that rage only feet away. He helped build this fort. Or had it been there before he came? He suddenly cannot recall. Perhaps both? But it is there, strong beneath his feet. Without a doubt, he belongs.
    There comes a rumble. He feels it on the air and in his mind. A sickening creak of rock cuts through the wind outside. The fort begins to tremble. Michael presses back against the inner wall, his hands bracing against the stone as the wind whips inward to sling bullets of rain across his face. Lightning flashes in an assault of power. Thunder rolls in on its heels.
    The storm rips the ceiling away in an instant. Buttresses crumble, fall, and with them tear away pieces of the cliff. Michael yells an alarm, barely able to hear his own voice, barely able to do more than hunker against what wall remains as the fort breaks apart around him. The deluge strikes with all its strength, drenching him, chilling him. It tears at the foundations of his fortress, ruining the cliff side until it buckles under its own weight and stone after stone falls. Streams of mud carry them down into darkness before they crash and splinter far below. Michael scrambles for footing as his perch begins to slide, broken beneath him, and then is gone.
    Somehow he remains . Michael struggles against the torrent of rain, mud, and wind that twists about him like a thing alive. The fort is no more. He is alone, exposed. Water and darkness blind him as he fights to gain another handhold and keep from being dragged down with the rest.
    Lightning flashes .
    Diomedes i s there.
    The older man st ands atop the cliff, cold, hard, and seemingly immune to the storm that assaults Michael's senses. He regards Michael like a priest on a pulpit. Mud washes over Michael's face, spills into his clothes, yet Diomedes makes no move toward him, gives no sign of acknowledgement beyond a cold gaze that grows harder with every thunderclap.
    Rain continues to pour: rain like daggers, rain like fear, rain like the night Michael pointed a gun at the man he'd once called mentor and told him to get out of his life—at the man who stands there now.
    A chunk o f earth gives way beneath Michael's feet and only a blind, lucky grip on an exposed root saves him from falling after it. Diomedes rushes forward and reaches for Michael's free hand. Diomedes now struggles against the river of mud himself, trying to pull Michael up the cliff to safety, but even as Michael's grip on the root weakens, he beats away his mentor's hand with all the strength he has remaining. Diomedes stumbles back, off balance, until the mud sweeps his feet out from under him and takes him into open air.
    Michael watche s him fall.
    Then the cliff gives way. Michael loses his grip. Rain bears him down into darkness.
     
    The dream's end jolted Michael up in his bed. A crash a moment afterwards jerked his attention to the side where the aloe plant had fallen to the floor from the far edge of his nightstand. He must have knocked it down with his waking movements, though it seemed strange that it should have toppled so easily from so far away.
    He swung his feet out of bed , sat on the edge of the mattress, and tried to shake the nightmare's residue from his thoughts. Fading adrenaline still thrummed through his body as he stared down at the plant. The soil was spilled out across his tan carpet,