20062801
2) Of Dreams and Men
"Xan! Xan! Wake up, man!" The voice rang out in my head. Through the hazy remnant of a lost nightmare, I woke to my best friend's persistant calling. "Today's the day."

I sat up immediately, all slumber fled from my now alert form. I vaguely remember something about the importance of stones, and a blood curdling scream as they took my girlfriend. I hated sleep now, nightmares plagued me throughout the night. I preferred to stay up and work on my sword forms or go down to the shooting range. Or read over arcane manuscripts until I was too exhausted to dream. I always did though. Always of her.

I stood up and looked in the mirror. Blonde hair kept short as an act of apathy. Blue eyes with dark circles around them from the lack of proper sleep. There was a time when some had called me handsome. It didn't matter what I looked like anymore. Just how I performed in the suit.

I threw on a set of clothes and laced up my boots, and headed out of my sardine-can of a bedroom. "Sleeping Quarters" the military nuts called them. Like my best friend. He met me on the way toward the armory and we walked side by side through the big double doors. Men surrounded a couple of tables where there was an assortment of objects not commonly found together. There were complex circuitry systems arrays built into nano-fiber woven titanium mesh armor, swords with electrical switches and firearms with potion reservoirs. This all seemed commonplace to us now, but years ago it would have seemed just sheer impossibility, if not nonsensical. We've trained for years and now the select few of us, those that seemed most qualified, would actually engage the enemy. Up close and personal. Not that this was the first expedition out to fight the creatures. Many had gone before us and fallen. That technology that went with them lost forever, unless newer teams reclaimed it. But we were the most prepared.

As we surveyed the objects laid before us, we steeled ourselves for the possibility of this being our last sight of what we now considered home.
I turned to one of my few real friends left on this disamal earth, "Ready for this, Dahvid?"
"Let's do this."