Ashes of the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

thrashing stopped as soon as my feet left the steps but I couldn’t stop the force of motion and I couldn’t stop to marvel at this new turn of events. I dropped to my knees when I did finally reach the fireplace and I felt my face crumple. I could feel the savage contortion of my features; my eyes were barely open as I let the burning hot tears sting my eyes and cheeks, my mouth was a pinched raisin, my forehead became a valley of wrinkles. The baby blanket remained pristine but wrapped inside were the charred, blackened bones of an infant. There was no doubting the very human, very tiny bones that made up her body. I didn’t know this baby, how could I? I didn’t know how I knew it was a girl aside from the blanket but I know I did this. I did it.
    I didn’t know how long I stayed there sobbing at my fireplace and the remains of the child. Sometime after the tears had slowed, and my features had smoothed out, and I was quietly mourning this world’s loss, I realized that I had to bury this child. I had to put her to rest. Maybe that would save me from my ghosts.
    I reached my hand slowly towards the fireplace. I saw her, I knew she was there, but I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to feel the evil I’d done to her rip free of her bones and take root in my heart where so much evil already lived like a black, lifeless stone, but I knew I had to. I had to reclaim what was mine. My hand barely crossed into the fireplace when there was a sudden whoosh of noise like a gust of wind. I felt my heart stutter and I lost my balance, falling backwards on my butt. The child, in a puff of smoke, was gone and replaced by a roaring fire. I could feel the heat of the flames, I could feel the sweat dripping off of my body and mingling with my tears. There was no child in my fireplace, there was only the fire that I set and stoked before I left for mission preparations.
    I lifted my trembling hand towards the fire though now I was not close enough to touch it, and I felt a slow, shuddering breath leave my body. I closed my eyes against the things living inside of me. They felt like they were outside now, like they were looking in and I was the living thing inside of them.
     
    My world was nothing but kill or be killed, though the world hadn’t always been that way. Some camps, I’d imagine, could go on for a very long time without being attacked or even discovered. There were books that had been recorded by people who lived in both the old and the new worlds. We used to be civilized people for the most part. Sure, there was war and murder and other atrocities done by man to man. The world was coming to an end anyway, they said. The people had used up so many natural resources; fear and greed reigned towards the end and war broke out everywhere. Nations attacked other nations and turned cities and towns to dust. The numbers recorded by survivors for the casualties were in the billions. I, in my twenty short years of life, could never fathom so many people living in the world at once.
    There were two types of people in the world. There were people like me, who lived under the Legion’s militaristic reign and people who lived freely under the Clash’s reign. Most of us never really had a choice about which side we fought for; it was mostly a matter of parentage. It was said that a man named Adam Tchaikovsky survived the old war, and once the dust settled, he believed that the world needed to be rebuilt on law and order, simplicity, and harsher punishments for wrong-doers. He believed that the easy-going nature of law enforcement in the old world was what led to its nearly ultimate destruction. He created the Legion and called his people Legionnaires.
    One of Adam’s friends, a man named Thomas Cendara, disagreed with Adam in almost every way. He believed that it was the law and restriction that led to the end of the world as they knew it. He believed total freedom was the way to save humanity. And thus, the Clash was