[i]Sands of Time[/i] It's easy to forget how long ago The Collapse was sometimes. Historians can ascribe dates to that dark time, but those are just numbers. Old stories made threadbare by the generations give us faint visions of what life was like before, but those are just words. It's only when you stand in a ghost city that's been flooded with red sand that you understand how long it's been. Old towers that had once touched the skies are now in tatters, their metal skeletons exposed to the elements. Wrecks of old vehicles abandoned in the panic of the Collapse litter the landscape. The rusted remains of this place were picked clean by the Cabal years ago, and now the dunes have come for their share. Sand fills the city in puddles, in waves and in mountain peaks, and with every gust of wind more comes to bury the remnants of this once towering utopia. The wind, like a howling pack of wolves, rushes through the streets. My crunching footsteps and the occasional creak of rusted metal are the only other sounds. After tapping the holster of my .44 reassuringly, I continue deeper into the ruins, back towards the camp that my squad has made in the shelter of an old station. So many of my fellow Guardians believe that the time where even the Traveler will be unable to protect us is fast approaching, but I know better. Our alien enemies will not be the ones to land the killing blow. It is only when the last of our cities have been crushed under the sands of time that we will be truly gone. I can at least be thankful that, should that day come, none of us will be alive to see it.