#regrexit

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“Someone told me once that we all live in borrowed time, but could never explain who we borrow it from.”

[unknownpoliticalobject]

New figures show Britain £500bn poorer than thought - Independent.ie

Britain is £490bn (€550bn) poorer than thought and no longer has any reserve of net foreign assets to help protect against any damage to the economy from Brexit.

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“The only proverb I have ever put trust in is to live your life so that the gods have no cause to know your name.”

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“The world is too full to have ghosts, but even so you manage to haunt it.”

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“No one had tried to kill us yet. That is always a cause for worry on any long journey.”

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What ever happened here predated even the wars against the Ancient Intelligences?”

“There were many wars before that,” Kuldeep said. “The wise fought their own wars not to be exterminated, or considered just the same as other animals. There is a whole history of battles that almost no one remembers because the victories had such bitter fruit. Intelligence is a gift and curse both, and those made wide quickly began to question many things. There is a story told of birds that could not fly, whose eggs were eaten by humans in vast quantities. And the ones who were given wisdom – whose minds were raised and woken – hated the lot of their people.

“They invented a disease, in secret, and within a generation every one of their kind was extinct, including themselves. After that, there were attempts to exterminate all of my kind, make sure we had limits, or make all animals wise to protect allow the others of a species to make such a choice as well.” Kuldeep scratched behind his left ear. “Most of what we know is fables, like the animals who created a farm and kept humans in it, trying to breed humans to be as unwise as they used to be.”

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Her gaze flicked up to the sky as she left the house; sometimes Mars could be seen, in the late evening, if you knew where to look. Red and burned, no longer the vibrant green shown in old data fields. Somewhere out in the universe a thousand arc-ships flew, set off at different times to reach worlds and stars that might no longer exist by they time they reached them. And back on earth, the last attempt to breach the laws of the universe was one ruined one and one slowly dying.

The world was ending; most everyone had come to accept it with a gentle melancholy. The world was ending, but still the Bells rang out. Still tradition demanded servitude as though the dead had a greater voice than the living.

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The second day saw them hurrying, barely stopping for rest and food; there was a city in the distance surrounded by an energy shield, the first sign of proper civilization they had seen so far on this continent. And the closest thing to safety, even if it might not be safe at all.

They were an hour from the city when the sky cleared entirely. Blue as far as the eyes could see, with barely a hint of the green solar fields far above. No wind, no rain. Only a calm as though the world had breathed a sigh of relief around them.

“Not good,” Spera said. “Kuldeep, weatherward up. If we’re on either side of Wex, they might hold for the three of us. Mun?”

Mun bit into his lower lip, then removed the battered weatherward from about his person and handed it to Wex. “This will help you. I can weather the weather just fine.”

The attempted joke was flat calm between them.

Wex took it in shaking fingers moments before the sky pulsed.

Clouds. Roiling into existence as though the sky was boiling above them. Grey, black, thousands of shades of purple and dark hues filled the sky. Lightning filled the sky in ragged sheets, not wanting for the thunder before it struck into the earth. Bolts of blue, white and yellow struck down, ball lightning flaring into existence like small suns as hurricane-force winds tore through the area. The city in the distance was entirely invisible, the earth an explosion of debris that tore and knifed into the world.

The weatherwards held. Gravity had other ideas, and Spera held onto Kuldeep and Wex as tightly as she dared, an energy field snapping into existence about the three of them to hold them in place. Lightning struck again, and again, and again, the wind screaming like some thing alive and enraged. One minute passed, and then two, and almost five before the ruinstorm was gone as violently as it had arose.

The earth was jagged and sundered, and they fell a good five feet from where Spera had formed the shield to land among rocks shattered by wind and rain, the air acrid with acids that were seeping into the earth and boiling stone.

“That was – that was –.” Wex shuddered all over, their eyes almost as pale as their face.

“There are reasons the floating isles bargained for protection long ago,” Kuldeep said, and even a king’s calm cracked a little as he looked about at the changed and shattered land about them. The city in the distant had no protective shield left, and what village had been there was likely little more than a fresh ruin scarring the skin of the world.