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.' Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlCHAPTER 4As with almost everything since John Ross had become a Knight of the Word, his disintegration beganwith a dream.His dreams were always of the future, a future grim and horrific, one where the balance of magic hadshifted so dramatically that civilisation was on the verge of extinction.The Void had gained ascendancyover the Word, good had lost the eternal struggle against evil, and humanity had become a patheticshadow of the brilliant ideal it had once approached.Men were reduced to hunters and hunted, theformer led by demons and driven by feeders, the latter banded together in fortress cities and scatteredoutposts in a landscape fallen into ruin and neglect.Once-men and their prey, they were born of the sameflesh, but changed by the separate and divisive moral codes they had embraced and by the indeliblepatterns of their lives.It had taken more than a decade, but in the end governments had toppled, nationshad collapsed, armies had broken into pieces, and peoples world-wide had reverted to a savagery thathad not been in evidence since well before the birth of Christ.The dreams were given to John Ross for a purpose.It was the mission of a Knight of the Word tochange the course of history.The dreams were a reminder of what the future would be like if he failed.The dreams were also a means of discovering pivotal events that might be altered by the Knight onwaking.John Ross had learned something of the dreams over time.The dreams always revealed eventsthat would occur, usually within a matter of months.The events were always instigated by men andwomen who had fallen under the sway of the demons who served the Void.And the men and womenwho would perpetrate the monstrous acts that would alter in varying, cumulative ways the direction inwhich humanity drifted could always be tracked down.But even then there was a limit to what a Knight of the Word could do, and John Ross discovered thefull truth of this at San Sobel.In his dream, he was travelling through the nightmare landscape of civilisation's collapse on his way to anarmed camp in San Francisco.He had come from Chicago, where another camp had fallen to anonslaught of demons and once-men, where he had fought to save the city and failed, where he had seenyet another small light smothered, snuffed out in an ever-growing darkness.Thousands had died, andthousands mare had been taken to the slave pens for work and breeding.He had come to San Franciscoto prevent this happening again, knowing that a new army was massing and moving west to assault theBay Area fortress, to reduce humanity's tenuous handhold on survival by yet another digit.He wouldplead with those in charge once again, knowing that they would probably refuse to listen, distrustful o£him, fearful of his motives, knowing only that their past was last and their future had become anencroaching nightmare.Now and again, someone would pay heed.Now and again, a city would be Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlsaved.But the number of his successes was dwindling rapidly as the strength of the Void's forces grew.The outcome.area inevitable; it had been foreordained since he had become a Knight of the Word yearsago.His failure then had writ in stone what the future must be.Even in his determined effort to chip awaythe hateful letters, he was only prolonging the inevitable.Yet he went on, because that was all that wasleft for him to do.The dream began in the town of San Sobel, west and south of the Mission Peak Preserve below SanFrancisco.It was just another town, just one more collection of empty shops and houses, of concretestreets buckling with wear and disuse, of yards and parks turned to weeds and bare earth amid a jumbleof debris and abandoned cars.Wild dogs roamed in packs and feral cats slunk like shadows through themidday heat.He walked past windows and doors that gaped broken and dark like sightless eyes andvoiceless mouths.Roofs had sagged and walls had collapsed; the earth was reclaiming its own.Now andagain he would spy a furtive figure making its way through the rubble, a stray human in search of foodand shelter, another refugee from the past.They never approached him.They saw something in him thatfrightened them, something he could not identify.It was in his bearing or his gaze or perhaps in the black,rune-scrolled staff that was the source of his power
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