Eril

Bred to guide a colony through a 4X strategy game, Kalan has to force the natives to flex or shatter.  The guy's a basic teenaged leader forced to play god with people who bleed, adapt or die.  The wind on Eril shears across landscape of feathery, keratin fronds. Kalan sits on a crate of salted meat, hollowed out by the weight of the numbers before him. In the simulation room, a population drop is a number on a HUD; here, its the sound of Maef, his friend, coughing up blood because barbarians at the gate brought parasites when they destroyed his field of grain cob. His people would adapt.  They had to.