Twilight of the Wolves by Edward J. Rathke

through the labyrinths of streets and alleys and dormitories, grabbing who he could, telling them all to run, to escape, to take nothing and go.
    His hair grown long, his cheeks touched by faint sickle moons, his eyes bright as the bluesun.
    The soldiers arrived and with them came the fire and slaughter. First with the whores north of the market, all murdered side by side, watching one another exit the living in the hands of the Deathwalkers, now more numerous than the boys. They moved south to the market and looted the wares then burnt the pavilions, the shops, the stalls.
    He raced, urging them to go, the screams following and preceding his approach, his warning. Through the fires he watched children dying, men and women vomiting blood or burning alive or slaughtered in the dirt. The soldiers marching through the streets setting everything to the pyre, the dormitories and homes, the wood spreading the blaze faster and faster, cooking alive those too old or sick or asleep.
    The tears came and did not stop but he moved quickly through, warning those he could, hiding mothers with children, telling them to swim south or north or anywhere away from Luca.
    The soldiers formed a ring round Luca’s perimeter and slaughtered those who ran, by ironball or sword, from the too young to the too old.
    Luca in flames. Luca drenched in blood. Luca emptied of all humanity.
    The ships and the port, the market and homes, once-great Luca, cremated.
    Above them a dirigible flew with Vulpen colors: crimson and black. The flames leapt upward, dancing beneath it, calling for it, and it dumped fire upon Luca, raining incineration. The fire illuminated its opulence, the intricate metalwork, the careful textiles. Its shadow dwarfed burning Luca, blocking the suns from the blaze.
    The man came to a woman halfscorched holding an infant. Azura’s hair burnt away, her face blackened and sizzled, she stared into the white face, into the blue eyes with rings of gold. Her tears did not come and her voice torched out of her, she stretched her hands towards him, holding the child, untouched by flames.
    Azura’s lips moved but no sound came, her arms trembling.
    Sao took the child in his hands and it cried. Watching Azura, her desperate lips clenched into a tight smile, she lay down, her arms still stretched towards him, watching him. He turned andwalked away, the city burning round him, and he ran, carrying the child and its tears with his own.
    The dirigible caught fire, fulminating, and then the descent. The great flying machine, Vulpen pride, combusting, consumed by flame, falling, falling, falling.
    He left Luca behind, burning, as the dirigible crashed down amongst its sisterfire. Great Luca, made a pyre in a day, burnt for three.

The world was a forest and he walked through for months growing leaner and stronger. His hair grew back to his shoulder and his smooth cheeks were marked by the faint outlines of sickle moons, but his eyes remained the same bright blue ringed with gold.
    He exited the forest as naked as he came and found himself amongst brown people wearing fabrics of many colors speaking incomprehensible words. Sao walked towards them but stopped from the abject revulsion contorting their faces. He passed them and walked away from the forest, from the music of the trees, from the howls of the wolves. The air thickened the further he walked from the shade of trees but he did not turn back. Walking north, he found himself at a market where the tumultuous babble of racketeering, trade, and prostitution collapsed upon him as a barrage of linguistic barriers culturally thick. The eyes followed him, some leering, some digesting, some calculating. The world weighed upon him and he left the market down a narrow alley where he was stopped by two smiling men in grey trousers speaking at him. Sao tried to pass but they barred his way, laughing, gesturing, talking, touching. Sao turned and walked back to the market crowd but they followed and he did