The Red War

"Trezlan!" I was dreaming, I had been dreaming. Of drifting among the stars, just floating. It was one of those pleasant things I thought of when I wasn't grounded to the reality of everything I disliked in the galaxy, of which there had been and continued to be thousands of things.

"Trezlan!" The voices seemed distant, like from a far away place. I tried to ignore them, focus on the drifting, but it was fading, like all dreams light and noise and disrupted it and I was brought back to the dirt. I don't remember the day or time, it's never my strong suit. I just remember it was after the corporate split, after the five fires was unleashed. It was the middle of the red war, or I should say beginning, again time not my strong suit.

"Sorry I was just dreaming of a better place." The people I was with, a couple archeologists and two security personnel, were waiting for me. The planet was one I don't remember the name of (doing a bang up job of repeating this story, can't remember the time or place, if I forget the peoples names might as well be just a timeless tale of whatever), we were standing in a door covered in runes. My least favorite kind of door. My favorite kind is the one to my bedroom where a comfy bed and some booze is waiting.

"Get off your ass Lorentino, you aren't being paid to day dream." That was Trenk the leader of the expedition a young executive who thought if he solved the Red War he could make a lot of money. At this point the Red War had been going on for about a decade. Ronerawth's solution to it was to bomb and destroy, hoping to cut off the infection before it spread, that wasn't working naturally. The corporate strategy was to negotiate/find a way to return to the damned to the five fires, that wasn't working either. Which is what brought Trenk and the rest of his small corporation to me in a dive bar on the edge of the galaxy where I'd been hoping to drink away the troubles of the galaxy. It hadn't exactly worked, somehow my name had come up in some record as someone who had dealt with the fire god and so I was pestered once again to save the universe. Though this was the first time it was the universe, in the past it had been the world or the city.

"Right sorry forgot sleep is for the weak or whatever." This planet was the fifth planet we had visited, all had remnants of things on them. Various dead civilizations or abandoned colonies. Trenk had a whole list of them to visit, I always wondered where he got that list, but figured some things were best left unsaid.

"If you need to take a stimulant take one, we don't have much time Lorentino, now get to it." I looked at the other three people and they all seemed to share Trenk's desire to get things moving.

"Right where was I?"