Thread by @drinkswithdaveX

The air smelled of rust and ozone.

As the Longcovid Barbarian pushed open the iron hatch, a hiss of steam curled around him, swirling into the pale green fog that blanketed the valley. Gears turned in the distance, slow and broken, their teeth grinding like old bones.

Before him, Longcovid Land stretched wide and strange: jagged towers stitched from scavenged brass and darkstone, their spires belching smoke into a sky lit by twin moons—one whole, one shattered into drifting shards. Webs of copper wire connected the towers like veins, carrying pulses of blue witch‑light that sparked and fizzled with every surge.

His axe hung across his back, rune‑etched steel fused with pipes and a faintly humming power core. Along his gauntlets, glyphs glowed and dimmed in rhythm with his heartbeat—old spells etched by someone long forgotten.

A broken sign swung in the wind, its letters clanging softly:
WELCOME TO LONGCOVID LAND
and beneath, half‑burned into the metal:
ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

The Barbarian said nothing. His breath fogged in the chill air as he scanned the wasteland ahead—derelict rail lines twisted like serpents, shattered airships grounded in the muck, and in the distance, the faint thrum of something alive within the machine.
This was not his first time here.
But it was the first time he’d returned since the Great Burning. And that, after all, was the reason for all of this.

Longcovid Land had once been whole. Bright, teeming with life, alive with the hum of machines and the pulse of magic in every pipe and circuit. Skyships threaded between towers trailing banners of living light. Waterways carried endless trade, and scholars sang spells from rooftops while children danced in the mist of fountains. - Then came the Concordance Strain.

Born in secret laboratories deep within what is now called the High Cities, the strain was meant to merge man and machine—to create soldiers who could heal as fast as they were wounded. But the virus learned faster than its makers imagined. It devoured minds, twisted flesh into living metal, turned soldiers into ravenous engines of destruction.

When the virus escaped containment, panic spread like wildfire. The High Cities tried to cordon off the infection, but their greed had already seeded disaster. Other regions, fearing contamination, struck preemptively with spells and sky‑cannon fire. Entire districts burned. Towers fell. The skies turned black with smoke and ash.
This was the Great Burning.

When the flames finally died, the old realm was shattered into four nations: To the north, along the cold lakes and canals of the North Sea, scattered fleets and mist‑bound towns survived. To the east, the poisoned badlands became the Wastes, a land of scavenger clans and whispering ruins. To the south, pointed peaks and ash‑winds forged the Jagged Lands, filled with mountain tribes who trust only their own. And to the west, behind walls of iron and steel, the High Cities endured—wealthy, ruthless, and ever hungry for more.
Each corner claimed to be the true heart of Longcovid Land. Each raised its own banners, birthed its own tribes, and nursed its own grudges.

A raven wheeled above, brass wings catching sparks of dying sunlight as it sliced through the smoke‑choked sky. Tiny gears clicked beneath its feathers, a rhythm the Barbarian could hear faintly when the wind shifted. That bird had been with him through storms and sieges, and though it was no magical familiar, it was his second set of eyes—loyal, tireless, and ever watchful.

It darted over a collapsed aqueduct, gliding toward the shattered ribs of what had once been a great market square in the northern reaches of the Wastes. The Barbarian followed its path through the fog, boots crunching on old glass.
The image of that square, once alive with color and trade, flickered through his mind like a memory from another life.

The market lay in ruins, but its ghost whispered on the wind. Rusted iron stalls, once vibrant with color and laughter, now sagged under layers of ash and dust. Broken lanterns—some cracked but faintly glowing with dying witch‑light—hung from twisted posts, swinging gently like tired sentinels. Torn banners, their colors long faded, flapped weakly in the cold breeze.
Yet it was not abandoned.

Footprints marred the ash‑covered stones—some heavy and booted, others light and hurried. Grooves scored the pathways, evidence of wheeled carts and scavenger sleds passing through recently. Near a collapsed fountain, a faint trail of soot and oil led away, as if something mechanical had limped off into the fog.
The raven let out a soft clicking cry. - Someone was here.

From behind a toppled stall, a shadow shifted—a broad shoulder, the glint of metal catching stray light. The Barbarian’s hand moved to the shaft of his axe, fingers tightening. Through the raven’s eyes, the figure sharpened: a man, tall and muscular, skin mottled with a strange greenish tint that shimmered beneath layers of grime and old scars.

The Barbarian stepped forward, boots ringing against the cobbles.
“Show yourself,” he demanded, voice low and edged with warning.
A pause. Then a voice answered, rough but cautious:
“You first.”

The figure emerged from the fog, muscles taut, his chest marked by scars like roadmaps of survival. The green hue traced from his jaw down his neck, winding like a living tattoo, and along his forearms brass studs fused with flesh caught the light. His eyes were sharp, wary, and not entirely human.

Both men froze, locked in silent calculation. The Barbarian felt the humming pulse of his rune‑etched axe. The stranger’s hand hovered near a jagged short spear strapped across his back.
“You infected?” the stranger asked.
“No,” the Barbarian answered evenly. “You?”
A dark laugh escaped him. “Not anymore.”

He stepped forward—and suddenly like thick of a second hand, his body convulsed. A harsh shudder ran through his arm, the green flesh spasming as if the virus still lurked beneath the surface, coiled and restless. He dropped to one knee, his spear clattering.

The Barbarian hesitated only a moment before kneeling beside what could have been a dangerous advisary.
“What’s wrong?”
“Seize… core won’t—” The words broke into a strangled hiss. Beneath the mottled skin, faint blue lines pulsed erratically—remnants of the Concordance Strain still fighting for control.

The Barbarian pulled a glyphstone from his pouch, etched with stabilizing runes. Pressing it against the man’s arm, he watched as the stone glowed softly, sending a calming pulse through the infected flesh. The spasms slowed.
“You… you know what you’re doing,” the stranger rasped.
“Enough to keep you breathing,” the Barbarian said quietly.
The man flexed his fingers and leaned back against a broken stall. “Name’s Lurin.” he said with a tired voice.
The Barbarian met his gaze.
“They call me the Barbarian.”
Lurin’s eyes narrowed.
“I’ve heard the stories. Never thought I’d cross paths with you in a place like this.”
“You’re far from home,” the Barbarian said with confidence.
“I’m far from everything,” Lurin replied, "But I’m here for a reason. To strike at the heart of the West—the High Cities. Those gilded towers sit fat on the suffering of the rest of us. They say they still hold a cure for the Concordance Strain, and they keep it locked away. They use the virus like a leash.”

The Barbarian’s eyes darkened. “And you believe this?”
“I’ve seen too much not to,” Lurin said. “If the cure is real, it belongs to all of us. And if I have to tear down their walls to take it, so be it. Because if no one stops them, the Burning will come again.”

For a moment, they stood in silence.
Then Lurin extended a scarred hand. The Barbarian clasped it, their grip a silent pact.

“You’ve your path,” Lurin said. “I’ve got mine. But in this land, the wrong things move fast. We’ll meet again.”

With a last look, Lurin stepped back into the fog and was gone, boots swallowed by silence.

The light was thinning, turning the ruins to silhouettes. The twin moons began to climb, one whole, one shattered into drifting shards, casting fractured beams across the broken stones.

The Barbarian lingered a moment longer in the square, listening to the cold wind whisper through rusted beams. He felt the weight of his own heartbeat, steady but heavy, like a drum counting down the hours until nightfall. He could almost hear the machines sleeping beneath the ruins, their hums fading with the day.

He thought of Lurin, of the fire in his words, of his own dormant rage slowly waking like an old engine. He thought of the red‑glassed man, and a shadow passed over his mind—one part fury, one part doubt.
The sun slid lower, painting the Wastes in bronze and shadow. Night was coming, and night in Longcovid Land was no ally.

He left the square as the fog deepened, heading north through cracked avenues and low hills of ash. The raven flew ahead, finding a broken signal tower leaning over a dried riverbed. Beneath it, he cleared shards of glass and brittle wire, making a camp shielded from the cold wind.

The fire he built was small, shielded by plates and gears. Night settled in, thick and alive. In the distance, Razor‑hounds howled, Skewers slithered near the canal beds, and far out under the green glow of the shattered moon, a Shardback bellowed—a sound like stone grinding on stone.
The Barbarian ate in silence while the raven kept watch.

When sleep came, it came in fragments as it always did.

He dreamed of the world before the Burning, of airships and banners, of friends now gone. Jora’s smile. Thalen’s sacrifice. Ravenna’s betrayal. And always, at the end of every vision, those red glasses, catching the light like blood. The drumbeat of dream memory quickened, and in the haze of the sleep induces reality Lurin appeared, walking forward through smoke, his green‑scarred skin glinting.
"If no one stops them, the Burning will come again."

The Barbarian awoke with a start. The fire had burned low. He stared into the embers, heart pounding with old rage and new confusion. He had let his quest die… but Lurin’s words reignited something buried indeed.

He stoked the fire, the sparks rising and fading into night, then leaned back against the tower and drifted once more into uneasy sleep

He woke to the raven’s clicking and the pale light of dawn.

The twin moons were fading, dissolving into the bruised amber of morning. A thin mist curled across the Wastes, softening the jagged silhouettes of broken towers and rusted rail lines. His campfire had died to a curl of smoke, its embers whispering as the cold wind stirred them.

For a long moment he stayed crouched by the ashes, watching the sun climb over the horizon, painting the land in layers of copper and gray. The Wastes were still, but not silent—distant cries echoed from unseen creatures, and somewhere out among the ruins a machine groaned, dragging itself through another endless circuit.

He packed slowly, the weight of his gear familiar on his shoulders. Ahead lay Glen‑Dac, a northern town clinging stubbornly to life in the fractured East Nation. He had walked these roads before, years ago, when he was someone else. Back then, Glen‑Dac had been just another stop, a place to trade salvaged parts for food and bullets. But now it was something more—a destination tied to a promise he wasn’t sure he should have made.

He thought of her. He had met her not long after the Burning, when the land still smoked and the air stank of iron and ash. She had found him half‑mad with hunger near the bones of a wrecked airship, and instead of leaving him to die, she had offered a bargain. She had eyes like tempered steel, and words that cut like the edge of his own axe.

He owed her now—no, not owed. He had been paid. A heavy pouch of coin and a sealed request, simple in its phrasing but impossible in its weight. She needed something, something hidden deep within the chaos of the Wastes, and he was the only one mad enough—or desperate enough—to get it.
The thing she sought burned in the back of his mind, a secret he carried alone.

But Glen‑Dac was no safe ground. He could already feel the danger waiting for him there. The town remembered blood, and some of that blood had been spilled by his own hands. There were those in Glen‑Dac who would greet him with a spear point before a handshake, and others who’d pay well to see his corpse hanging in the market square.

The raven clicked again, drawing him out of his thoughts. He rose, tightening the straps on his cloak and adjusting the axe across his back.
North. Always north.

Each step crunched against the brittle stone as he left the shelter of the signal tower, the sun climbing higher, casting long shadows ahead of him. The wind carried the scent of rust and far‑off smoke, and the raven circled overhead, brass feathers flashing in the newborn light.

The Wastes waited. Glen‑Dac waited.
And somewhere within that treacherous town, she waited too—patient, dangerous, and holding him to his word. The Barbarian lowered his head against the wind and moved on, the path ahead uncertain, the promise unspoken but heavy in his chest.