by Tyson Jordan
Exordium
Tyson Jordan
Copyright © 2019 Tyson Jordan
All rights reserved.
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Cover and formatting by ebooklaunch.com
For Clair, whose enthusiasm and encouragement led to the completion of this novel.
Contents
Prologue
1. What’s Your Name?
2. Waking Nightmares
3. Sightless
4. Affinity
5. Finding a Friend
6. Need and Nightmare
7. I See the World at Last
8. What Lies in Store
9. Glimpse of Prophecy
10. Knowing Myself, Knowing Another
11. Family History
12. How Little We Know
13. Vaelryk
14. The Maw of the Giant
15. Shame
16. Finding a Cause
17. Invincible No More
18. The Time Has Arrived
19. Pride’s Purchase
20. A Gift Bestowed Upon Us
21. Darkness Beyond the Gate
22. Departure
23. Arrival
24. Making Contact
25. The Bastion
26. Teeming
27. Making Ready
28. Making Our Way
29. It All Goes Wrong
30. Run
31. Wrath
32. The Enemy
33. Failure for the Weak
34. What Was Lost
35. Forgiveness
36. We Prepare Anew
37. Offer of Support
38. The Afflicted
39. Sewage
40. Uproot
41. Our Real Concern
42. Sacrifice
43. Losing Myself
44. We Do What We Must
45. Legacy
46. We Shall Meet Again
Epilogue
Prologue
Somewhere, hidden in the deepest expanses of the stars, a young child of defiant and independent spirit was beaten mercilessly time and time again by his mother. Sometimes the boy tried to fight off his enraged, drunken parent, but other times he was cleverer than that, knowing that any struggle would only prolong his pain, and he resigned himself to his fate for a time.
The beatings grew more and more frequent on the blue and shining ocean world that was their home. The child, for quite some time now, had been wondering why his mother hated him so, why she believed that it was his fault that his father had vanished. The last time either of them had seen his father was two years ago, yet the anger and disgust of the monster who was once a mother continued to grow. She drank back more of the same, perverting alcohol each day, finding temporary peace only in unconsciousness.
Lately, she hadn’t given him time for his bruises and cuts to heal, and he shuddered during the night, remembering the nightmarish time when his mother went insane and cut him with a knife, slashing him across his arms and chest gleefully. He looked at the cruel and deep scars on his body and even touched them, feeling pain and resentment and fear. The boy realised that his mother was no longer as she used to be, warm yet quiet, and had instead been corrupted by some unseen force, turning her cruel and unusual.
The child wished that his father would come for him, come to rescue him from the red horror that he had once loved, but the man never came. Prayer was the next resort, and the boy hoped that somehow his god above would grant him some small reprieve from the torment; if not his father’s delivery, then the return of his mother to her rightful state would suffice. The praying soon turned to begging, sorrowful, sobbing words that were barely comprehensible, all of them demanding mercy in the same bitter, tortured tone, but his god did not answer, and the cruelty pressed on. Sometimes there were footsteps to be heard late in the night, a slow rhythm on the wooden floor that gave fleeting hope to the boy. They were a desperate illusion, and he always fell back into sleepless anguish once again.
The boy’s father was dead, and with each unanswered prayer he came to understand the meaning of death in spite of his age. Two years before, the boy had been with his armoured father, clad in blue and lying still on the ground as his blood spilled out. The man smiled at his child then, hoping to touch his face once more and promise that the world would not be cruel. No sound escaped his lips, however, and his eyes saw nothing more. He died as hard rain fell, washing away his life to the sea. The boy shook him violently, howling and swearing to wake him up, but his father’s eyes would never open again. The wind turned cold and night came, leaving the child alone.
It was his uncle, his father’s brother, who found him the next day, shivering and in disbelief. The uncle scooped up the boy’s small, thin body, and carried him home to his mother. Assured that his nephew would find some peace there, the uncle left the two of them and retreated into solitude, feeling terrible loss and an emptiness from which he would never truly recover.
It took a mere four days for the boy’s mother to begin beating him, screaming out in mindless, uncaring throes how her son should have died and not her husband, how he was a mistake that should never have been in the first place. The words seemed to sting more than the craggy fists, and the child came to know rage. When his prayers failed him once more, thoughts of escape from this world soon filled his mind. He would turn his back on this hell and never again return to the monster he had once called mother.
There were fleeting times when the monster seemed to hear some small voice of reason deep within her troubled mind, a voice that told her it was not the fault of her child that her husband had been lost. She had known, after all, the risks he had to take, for they were the whole of his duty and obligation. As time pressed on, this voice nonetheless cracked and whispered and soon lost all of its vigour as the monster took hold, consuming the woman entirely while the boy waited in silent anticipation.
The time had come at last. Late at night, the youth crept out of their rickety old shack, taking great care in climbing out of his bedroom window for fear of falling and waking the monster. Running as fast as he could from the house, the child refused to look back, having no desire to remember any of the attacks. His lungs quickly burned, threatening to burst, but he pressed on, knowing that a mere few miles ahead he would find his escape and salvation. The sandy, jade beach ended abruptly, but the youngster paid no heed as he leapt into the opaque water, entirely black save for the faint reflection of a white moon. He swam gracefully, even perfectly, like all of his race could, and drew in oxygen through the gills on his neck, still exhausted but nonetheless hopeful. Any ordinary man would have been blinded in such a place, and would certainly have drowned, but the boy saw through the murky darkness with ease, and hastily sliced through it with his body.
The water’s edge became apparent soon enough, and he emerged from the bay out of breath, his body spasming, screaming at him in dire need of rest. Uncaring for his body’s wants, the child hurried towards the glowing city far ahead, knowing that the key to his flight lay there.
Great pillars and columns of impenetrable metal blurred past him as tiny dagger-like pebbles on the ground shredded the soles of his bare feet. Even with his blood flowing from him, the youth took little notice of the burning flow, as he had felt much worse. This pain grew, and served as a reminder that the monster would soon be far behind him and he would be free. Far ahead, just before the ho
rizon and nestled within the new testaments to an old civilisation, was a modern palace of computers and wires, with great ships that soared into the sky, undaunted by the emptiness of the void. It was not any ship that the boy was taking, however; he was taking a very specific one, one that would take him to his uncle and the key to his future.
It was in this place, this Guild as he had heard his father call it, that he would find meaning and strength for his life. His father was a man capable of many wondrous—even miraculous—things, but he would not have learned them without the help of this institution, this place where many races gathered to learn and serve others.
Seemingly no time had passed before hulking hydraulics hissed and gears ground, letting a lifeless metal door swing down to the ground below. The child was much brighter than most; he had planned this escape so far, and he would not be seen now, not when there was so much to lose and never again another opportunity to return. He darted into the marvel of technology without a second thought and instinctively found refuge from the tired, overworked eyes of the dockworkers there.
It was a tall thin grey cylinder that was labeled with hastily drawn characters, a scrawl of his written language that shielded him. The youngster breathed a sigh of relief as he glanced about, using the cracks between the other shipping containers to stay unseen. There were only a few workers in this place, none of whom would pose a threat. Their weary eyes drooped and the sound of yawns and malcontented grumbling was heard often.
His vessel had arrived. An ear-piercing screech was heard as jets of white, burning gas gushed from the bottom of an incoming ship, slowing its descent from the boundless sky above as it clumsily touched down on the cold metal below. On the floor, near the side of the long craft, a sliver of light appeared that widened into a gaping mouth. The interior storage bay had opened.
Darting quickly from the cylinder to the ship’s rear, the boy saw a thin crevice between twin steel crates, comfortably positioned inside the storage area. It would have been far too small for most boys his age, but his form had always been slender and he managed to squeeze in between.
With the deafening grind of gears and hissing that had come a few moments before, the child smiled, knowing that his time, his salvation, had finally arrived. Gravity released him as his ship bore him to the stars.
That child would grow up to become the greatest friend and companion I have ever known.
Elsewhere, far from that world of endless watery depths, a young girl prepared herself for her chosen life of hardship.
This girl had not been stricken by a history of abuse like the last, but nonetheless understood the meaning of sadness. Her days were those of high privilege, filled with constant supervision from attendants and tutors. Some of these people had even come to care for her with time, while others remained distant, but the girl was oblivious to this—uncaring, in fact. It was only her family’s attention that she wanted.
The child’s life was one of unbreakable routine, and as she sat with her family each evening, she felt ever more invisible and meaningless. It was her older brother who garnered all of the attention, her older brother who was worthy of praise and accolade. It was unfathomable for her that all of her hard work and cries for attention went completely unnoticed, or even dismissed outright as the whinging of a spoiled and ungrateful daughter.
As time passed, the girl shut herself away from the world. No matter how much she accomplished with her intellect or her athletic ability or any of her many other gifts, there would always be her older brother, forever one taunting step ahead. When the girl was not invisible, she was mocked and scorned by her brother, the one who so tightly held their parents’ affection and refused to share it. The brother was heartless, a boy who never experienced failure but revelled in the failures of others. It was the older brother who planted the seed of great ambition within the girl.
Numb yet all the same driven, the young one began to nurture hate and fury deep within, horrible feelings that she would one day unleash on her brother for taking something so simple yet so necessary from her. She would prove her worth, no matter the cost. She would make her family understand their mistake in choosing the brother over her, in failing to recognise her merit. She would make them understand that they had no right to shun her, and that they never would again.
Every ounce of her being was poured into study. Efforts were continuously doubled; there was no time for play, no time to spend with other children or those who could be called friends. There was only the drive, the goal, the ambition to surpass her elder. Her tutors marvelled at her results, but their opinions were irrelevant. There was only the elder brother and the path that he had merely walked before, and a path that she would run upon now.
The elder brother had enlisted in the Guild, a place that was spoken of frequently during each evening marked with protocol and finery and false pleasantry. This was a place where people could prove themselves, where they could pass into fame and from fame into legend. The girl saw her opportunity and made her arrangements to follow a mere two years afterward, always running and never walking.
Her parents made the arrangements dismissively, as expected. The girl left her privileged home behind without so much as a second thought, for that home had nothing to offer her. A ship soon arrived to collect her and carried her beyond the artificial sky of their home to what would be a new proving ground, a place of unyielding demand and rigour.
Blood and sweat were the price she paid for this choice. Her new teachers were unmerciful and unrelenting in their demands for no less than perfection. The memories of simple comfort and familiarity were soon distant, but the girl welcomed this change; for every mistake she made, there was yet another chance to improve and continue running down the path.
She shunned those around her, caring not for their words or their feelings. She turned her back on everyone who wanted to know her and understand her, for they were not her family, not the ones she wanted. It took little time for her to be known by a fearsome reputation, which was but another small step forward.
As the girl climbed the stairs to retire for another night, her mind and body aching, a small smile spread across her face. She would be legendary. She would be loved at last.
This girl would one day be my fiercest rival and one of the few to truly understand me.
Elsewhere, far from the Guild on a green and industrious world called Erde, something terribly wrong had begun.
At first, they came only a few at a time, those great, hulking wolves of charred flesh. The once purple sky had been blotted out by silver flame and crackling lightning, which cradled the monsters down to the ground with jets of unnatural fire.
The strange creatures were bent on destruction, and were known to all as the Malinvicta. They had been named out of the fear that people had always carried for beings so innumerable and unstoppable. Despite its strong-willed people, Erde’s many cities could put up only a meagre resistance to their brutality, for the eerie silver sky never stopped spewing forth monsters.
Deep within the heart of a more resilient and isolated city, the shimmering sky set panic amongst the people, and chaos erupted in the streets. The citizens ran screaming in every direction, letting instinct take over as they rioted. Shops and homes were cast into flames, and the streets flowed with too many to count.
High above, in a small apartment penned in by others just like it, a man and his child were preparing to leave. This man was not like the others below; he had seen this invasion firsthand many times, and he knew how to meet it. He donned his armour, a bright green plate mail, and cast a hard look at his young son, wishing that he had far more time than what was given.
The boy was standing on the narrow balcony, his eyes barely reaching the top of the guardrail. He peered down at the people below as they ran in throngs, crushed against one another. There were some who fell and were crushed by the wave. Their cries intensified when strange black creatures began chasing the masses. They were fast and unnaturally so
, and many of those people toppled to the ground after being swiped with claws or gouged by fangs. The child didn’t understand what was happening or why. He didn’t understand what made today any different from yesterday or the day before that, yet the world was ending.
The father called the boy’s name, and he obediently ran inside. In a flash, he was mounted on the father’s back and was jostled up and down and side to side as they barrelled down many stairs and into a back alley, away from the throngs and hopefully away from the Malinvicta. The child heard the man swear as they saw a young woman crumple to the ground ahead, blood pouring from her chest. Eyes fixed on the new corpse, the youth started to sniffle and cry. The father kept moving wordlessly.
The death reminded the child of his mother. He hated death. He hated that he would never see her again. She had slipped away two years ago, his father told him. Her face had been forgotten, but her warmth remained with him, a haven that he could find whenever he needed it. Now that haven was shrinking away, and with time, it would dissolve completely. He made sure to keep his eyes tightly shut, but his ears were still filled with terror.
What frightened the boy most was the strange silvery glow above him. It was a writhing mass of light that birthed monsters and blotted out the cool lavender of the sky. He hated those tendrils of light. He hated what they had so cruelly dispensed upon the world.
Screaming faded away into the distance, and the child hesitantly opened his eyes once again. Whatever pursuers the child and his father may have had did not seem to follow. They had come to the place where the silvery tide had crashed first and crashed hardest. The wreckage was unfathomable. Entire towers, unmovable and impenetrable by the most violent of storms, lay collapsed and broken in the streets. The father was undaunted by these obstacles. He held his son’s legs tightly, telling the boy to squeeze his neck as hard as he could before deftly bounding over rubble and mangled steel.
They bypassed one fallen tower after another, and the boy tried to ignore all of this madness. He imagined that the sky had not broken, and was instead filled with stars and all the hopeful promises that they made. He had always wanted to be a pilot, more than anything, in fact. He had often stood on the balcony, staring in wonder at the ships that pierced the air and the void beyond. There were many ships leaving this place today, though not nearly as many as there should have been. There were no arrivals.