The City of Life
In Ruin, Book Two: The City Of Life, we follow Deke’s life and adventures twelve years later, as he returns from a campaign during which for the first time in his fighting career, he has committed a variety of war atrocities including rape. Renouncing war and conquest to combat the growth of a dangerous alien threat, he embarks on a mission to discover the source of the invasion as well as to reconcile his personal demons and make reparation for his lifetimes of war and bloodshed. He also feels a need to channel his brujo (mystical & psychic) powers and use them for good. He has grown much stronger since boyhood, and speaks of how his abilities are growing exponentially, with no defining limit in sight. He utilizes energy drawn not only from nature but also from the greater Universe and alternate realities to go “between moments” and become invisible, as well as to focus an energy source channeled through his body from non-physical sources.
When he discovers Beori, a peaceful, ecological, technologically advanced society, he enjoys romantic interludes with two female cousins while he seeks the political favors of their aunt, Ourn Rohlvaag, the vast and brilliant President of this Utopian society hidden in the Rocky Mountains. Believing his people to have been overrun by alien invaders, he is further demoralized when one of the cousins (Ella) with whom he has fallen in love, is killed, also by the alien creatures. Driven by a need to repay what he believes is a karmic debt incurred during his last life (when as the arch-terrorist Muhammad Tabari he was responsible for the destruction of the Earth) Deke must first overcome a purely physical enemy, Gage Rohlvaag, in a duel over what his people regard as a mortal insult, or “blood matter.”
Science and technology are challenged by sorcery and supernatural powers in a climactic battle waged in Beori’s Chamber of Conflict, a place where disputes that cannot be settled by mediation or the law may come to a final resolution.
