The Eighth City: A Torch in the Darkness Read online

  About The Author

  (Continue on for an excerpt from the second installment “A Cradle for the Fallen”!)

  Hi! My name’s Robbie and you just finished reading the first part of The Eighth City series. I want to thank you for reading and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it as it was a labor of love for me and my friends. I’d like to tell you a little about myself and then I’m going to ask you a favor.

  I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in Spanish and English. I love running and I’m hoping to run a marathon sometime soon. I tend to like geeky and academic stuff but I get very competitive with sports. I also love music, playing and listening to it. Really, my favorite thing is to interact with people and work collaboratively with them, which leads me to that favor I mentioned earlier…

  I’d love for you to join me in working together to create a great story and an awesome community around The Eighth City. Below are the places you can contact me and we’ll have a blog up and running soon too! What do I want from you? Anything you want! If you like music, art, writing, or just want to offer your opinion, I want to hear it!

  So thank you again for reading! I look forward to meeting you and speaking with you over the various forms of social media!

  The Team

  EDITOR: Lauren

  Lauren Erin O’Brien is a creative writer and focuses mainly on flash fiction. She’s interested in dreams and studies of the subconscious. It only makes sense, then, that she’d sign on to The Eighth City as Editor. When she’s not writing, she’s living in fear that her parents will ship her to space while she’s sleeping, or simply playing with her cat/neopets. Lauren hopes to obtain an MFA in Fiction at some point in the near future but decided that cubicle life is appealing enough at the moment. She’s excited to be working on The Eighth City with such a great team, although the illustrations consistently remind her that she’s the worst visual artist in the world. You’ll hear a lot from her because she doesn’t shut up.

  ILLUSTRATOR: Trish

  Trish Vosburg is a current student at the University of Massachusetts studying wildlife conservation, biology, and coastal and marine sciences. She enjoys illustration in her free time as a means of escape from endless lab reports and case studies. Her mediums of choice are markers and ink above all else. She works at the Student Union Craft Center during school as the silk painting area manager, and is employed as a lifeguard during the summers. Outside of science and art she loves tea and coffee, animals, comic books, the great outdoors, and water sports. Her favorite food is avocados. She also insists that she makes the best guacamole known to mankind.

  MARKETER: Victoria

  Victoria may or may not be a figment of R.C. Champagne’s imagination. While the evidence of her existence remains inconclusive, R.C. likes to think she’s somewhere warm, like Florida. And that maybe she enjoys learning languages, traveling, and the occasional rum & coke. And, perhaps, he imagines that she may even have a B.S. in Advertising from the University of Florida and currently works full-time as an Internet marketer. But we can’t know for sure.

  Connect with us online at:

  Blog: https://the8thcity.wordpress.com/

  Twitter: @The8thCity

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/the8thcity

  The adventure continues in: A Cradle for the Fallen!

  A yellow light had begun to brighten the familiar landscape of the Below. Grey mounds of garbage extended out before them like hills crowned in fog. Endless columns, support for the raised city above, marched away into the darkness. Barely visible were the slender branches that reached out from the apex of each pillar like slender limbs from the trunk of an elm. It was from high above that the light shone down.

  “What is that?” Crimson asked.

  Peering up, Pan and Crimson saw a glowing point of light emanating from one of the countless outlets for the garbage system that fed the Below with its lifeblood, the discarded treasure of Above. As the light grew brighter, the two fascinated onlookers perceived a strange sound.

  It was as if someone were smacking bone against metal, reminiscent of the thuds one heard as the Cleavers cut their rotten meat for trade in the dangerous markets of the Below. Echoes drifted down from far above. It certainly wasn’t an under rat or a marauding gang. Crimson voiced Pan’s very thought.

  “No idea,” Pan finally answered. “Go get the others.”

  It was a sign of how strange of a phenomenon the light from above was that Crimson didn’t offer her usual objections and complaints when asked to do something. She stood and made her way back towards the others. The light was bright enough now that she had no need of the guideline that had led her to Pan’s lookout. She kept glancing over his shoulder up towards the growing light and shaking her head as she moved away.

  As soon as Crimson disappeared over the ridge the light increased dramatically so that the entire area was lit as if by a bonfire. The cold grey of abandoned steel and the deep browns of mud and excrement burst into being with the arrival of the flickering light.

  Staring up at the outlet, nearly blinded, Pan watched as the flaming body of a young boy came tumbling out of the garbage chute, the figures silhouetted against the blackness by the flames that smoldered from on his skin. He slammed into one of the peaks of discarded trash that reached perilously close to the city’s underbelly and rolled down the slope, flames shooting from beneath him. His limbs cast tall, thin shadows across the hills and columns as though some supernatural puppet were traipsing the about in the darkness. Liquid fire poured from the outlet, igniting the landscape and rapidly spreading in every direction.

  Sebastian had arrived in the Below.