Allura:
The Deadland Between Cities

Author’s Message:

First, I would like to say thank you for reading.

The first book of Allura: Deadland is special. It is the first story of the Deadland I ever wrote. I was fifteen at the time.

Instead of rewriting it, I decided on something else: I want to see how fifteen-year-old me would have done if I had ever published it. So, aside from spelling and grammar edits, I have left it as it was. While shorter than what I write now, it will be interesting to see how fifteen-year-old me would have done.

I hope you enjoy it.

To my precious things, and the world I am to build for you: the gate opens, and the first step on the path to inevitability has begun.

Chapter 1: The Dust Wolf Hunts

The Deadlands stretched out like a graveyard of rust and stone. Desert wind howled through the skeletal remains of what once was a mega city, dragging grit down dead streets, rattling loose sheet metal somewhere far off in the haze. The sun hung low, a dull orange smear behind a curtain of dust and fungal spores that clung to the air like a sickness.

Reign “Dust Wolf” crouched atop a jagged slab of concrete, gloved fingers tracing the edge of his kukri as he scanned the horizon. His goggles fogged at the corners. He wiped them clear with a thumb, the steampunk lenses clicking as they adjusted. Below him the ruins sprawled, crumbled medieval arches fused with twisted steel girders, their Art Deco flourishes long since peeled away by time and rot.

He’d been tracking the Runner pack two days now. Shufflers were easy. Slow, stupid, cannon fodder for any half-decent blade. But Runners? Runners were bastards. Quick as feral dogs, with just enough cunning to make a man regret underestimating them.

His bright blue eyes narrowed. Movement. A twitch of shadow between two leaning smokestacks. His pistol, a sleek hybrid Kurt .45, rested heavy on his thigh, but he didn’t draw it. Noise was death out here.

His bunker wasn’t far. Two miles south, tucked beneath the fortified husk of an old police station. The underground garage was his sanctuary, a heavy iron door sealing it shut, its steam-powered lock hissing faint when he fired it up. Inside, shelves of scavenged gear lined the walls. Canned rations. A dented coffee pot. A stack of dog-eared books ranging from Beowulf to a tattered engineering manual. A cot beside a workbench cluttered with ammo casings and a half-repaired crossbow. His steamcycle rested in the corner, brass pipes gleaming dull, too loud for Deadlands runs but a godsend for city trips.

Reign shifted, trench coat rustling against the ornate pauldrons on his shoulders. The armor was light, industrial-grade alloy beaten into a medieval shape, scratched and dented from years of bites and claws. It wasn’t for bullets. It was for teeth. His half-mask filtered the spore-thick air, the armored plates cold against his bearded jaw. He reached back and adjusted the scoped Eisen semi-auto rifle slung across his back, the magazines strapped to his bicep clinking soft against his arm—

A low growl rolled across the dead ground.

Fifty yards off, a Runner loped into view, gaunt, its fungal-crusted skin splitting around a jaw that hung too wide. Two more flanked it, herding a trio of Shufflers like sheepdogs with a flock. Reign smirked behind his mask. “Clever little shits,” he muttered, voice a dry rasp. He slid the kukri from its sheath, the short curved blade glinting faint, and dropped silent to the cracked pavement below.

The hunt was on.

He moved like a ghost through the ruins, boots crunching soft on gravel as he flanked the pack. The lead Runner paused, sniffing the air, its head jerking unnatural as fungal tendrils pulsed beneath its flesh. Reign hurled a chunk of brick past it, a distraction, and darted behind a rusted steam pipe. The Runner snarled, charged the noise. The others scattered. Perfect.

His kopis came free of its backpack sheath in one pull, the heavy cleaving blade already moving, and bit clean through the first Shuffler’s neck. Bone gave. The head dropped sideways on a hinge of fungal gristle and gore sprayed black and thick with sludge, slapping wet across his coat. The second came in low and fast. He planted his back foot, drove his weight into the pivot, ran the kukri up under its jaw—steel punched through the soft palate and into the skull. It twitched once. Crumpled. The Runners wheeled, screeching, but he was already moving, calculated, ruthless, weight low and forward, a wolf in the dust. The lead one leaped, claws raking the air where his throat had been. He dropped his shoulder and met it mid-air—pauldron crashing into its chest—and slammed it flat against the wall, forearm jammed up under the snapping jaw. The Kurt .45 barked. One shot, point-blank, the report cracking flat across the silent city. The slug blew through the skull and fungal pulp slid down the stone in a grey-black smear. The sound rolled out over the ruins and kept rolling. The last two froze. Smart enough to fear. Reign bared his teeth behind the mask.

“Come on, then,” he taunted, holstering the gun and raising his blood-slick blades. “Let’s dance.”

By the time the sun bled out below the horizon, five corpses steamed at his feet in the cooling air. Reign wiped his kopis clean on a dead Shuffler’s rags, mind already drifting. Coffee sounded good. Maybe a splash of whiskey. He snorted soft and sheathed his blades. Another day in the Deadlands survived. Another hunt done. Time to get paid.

But out past the ruins, beyond the reach of his fogged lenses, something bigger stirred. Something smarter. Something that had watched every kill from the start. And Reign “Dust Wolf” turned south for his bunker with no idea at all.