Nations- chapter one
#2 of Nations
ALLLLLLLLRIGHTY! Let's get the show on the road! This one's not nearly as exciting as the intro, focused instead on introducing the world arena and two of the human main characters. Please make sure to leave comments with any ideas or critiques you may have. I'm trying to make this genuinely literary and though it looks good to me I've also been staring at the words over and over. Fresh eyes see things that familiar ones gloss over by habit.
Oh, and fair warning this is a long chapter. ^_^
Spiritrunner was still kneeling as the sun rose, shedding red-pink hues as the otherkin who survived the night began picking themselves up and seeing to the wounded. Behind him the tall, thick-furred silhouette of Shade appeared from behind a tree. The large, wolfen figure carried a scoped rifle of some sort. It clicked slightly as it was brought to Shade's shoulder. Spirit barely twitched an ear frill at the sound.
"You know that you brought this on us. You crossed the line just when things were beginning to look even a little hopeful." The half-dragon's silvery scales shuddered as muscles shook with tension. Shade seemed nonplussed. He did, after all, have the gun at the moment.
"They had it comin' is what I say. Everyone was getting' soft as you, forgetting what they did." Shade paused a moment to let his next words have more effect. "After this the're all behind me now. All the other communities are gonna send word, you'll see."
Another pause, marked with the flick of a lighter and a deep breath. Shade was leaning against the tree now, a whisp of smoke curling from the red ember at his lips.
"Maybe..." Spirit's voice was steady as he finally moved. He stood slowly and turned to face the wolf. The tip of the half-dragon's tail flicked excitedly behind him. "But ‘they' aren't here, and the word hasn't come yet. Which puts an idea to my mind."
Shade tensed under Spirit's venomous look. It was a new one for the draconic and for the first time he felt a nudge of uncertainty. "Oh? And what idea might that be?"
"That you have something coming too."
Shade hadn't even realized Spirit was coiling to spring until the draconic was already in the air after him with an angry roar. His rifle was knocked out of his hands, to hit the dirt around a fresh cacophony of growls and yips and bodies rolling against eachother.
As is with the deciding moment for every tale to the history of man and beast, it began with the ending of another in a long line of causalities. This mark in history rode on the shoulders of a mass tragedy that happened some twenty years prior.
The time of man was marked with unrest. The eastern world was filled with war, and the west with conspiracies to take advantage. Stuck in the middle were the average people trying to lead a normal life. Or, of course, separate themselves from it altogether. This gave rise to worldwide subcultures that devoted themselves to denying that the troubles around them really mattered. Across the world new groups stepped away from reality through flights of fancy and dreams of higher importance.
One of these groups called itself the Otherkin- A subculture and, to some, a spiritual practice that linked them with anything except humans. From shamanistic animal links like wolves and birds, to the more fantastic vampires, were-creatures, gryphons and even dragons. Anything went. ...Almost.
As with everything that happens in history, there is a chain of events that leads up to it. The end to normalcy's first fateful link was when two very large planes flew into a pair of buildings on a September morning. It was the new shot heard around the world whose true impact was only felt years later. The attack started the perfect war. One that could never be won- or even ended. After all, anyone can be a terrorist.
As the shock faded the west began to question, though. There were holes in the story. Blank spaces that were never filled. Questions became doubt as investigations were renewed by independent lawyers, contractors, business men, and the general public who still looked for answers. What they unearthed led to anger as more pieces fell into place. The government's attempts to quell the questions only led to deeper unrest- eventually breaking out in demonstrations and pockets of rioting.
As anger grew, more people turned to escaping. Many turned inward, some plotted. All gave the Otherkin communities more reason to separate themselves from the immoral core of humanity. It was only at the peak of tensions that the government realized it was on the verge of civil war. Martial law was declared and the military brought from their eastern endeavors. But it was too late. Too many people believed that attack that began the war was staged by the then-government. Committing an act of terrorism on itself to trigger a profitable war. Chaos broke out.
Sensing the sudden shift of focus, the terrorist cells that had been hunted for half a decade suddenly struck back. Bombs and other, far worse things began detonating across the world. China and Japan suffered from detonations of their power sources. Africa's rivers were poisoned. The Korean wars resumed with no referees to separate north from south. Mass riots were instigated throughout Europe and Russia. Even the more stable nations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand weren't safe for long. Alliances rose and fell like the tides.
As life comes and goes on the planet, it carries with it a weight of energy. Some call it the soul, others spirit. The higher self, the divine light- it has many names. It is also meant to have a balance that is reflected in the flow between physical reality and the places where spirits and thoughts dwell. When one person dies, the energy of his life is released from the body so that it can join the spirit-realm it is drawn to. Sometimes this process can take time as the spirit holds on to its past life. Emotion, yearning, despair and especially pain all act as anchors to hold the energy from moving forward. On individual levels, these minor imbalances result in the tellings of ghosts, psychic experiences, and haunting memories that occur until the spirit crosses over.
While small imbalances have little effect other than as fuel for campfire stories, the mass of many spirits pushes against the barrier between this world and the next. Like the skin of a drum it bends, but it can only take so much. Eventually the drum snaps and there is a surge of spiritual power. The veil literally tears, and spirit can touch reality until it heals again. In short, what people believe shapes the nature of the spiritual levels- and then in these times the spirit touches the physical and makes these beliefs real.
The last such event was born of war as well. Well, two really. Hundreds of thousands of brutal deaths brought by the world wars weighed too heavily. It went nearly unnoticed however as most people believed in normalcy. Influences were limited to a surge in psychic talent (ESP and remote viewing mostly) as well as a renewed spiritual movement. This time many more lives were lost as the population had reached well over seven billion. The power of the internet allowed the new beliefs born from escapism and alienation to flourish into belief and a young sort of faith. Rigid physical reality was again touched by the more malleable spiritual, and this time people noticed. They also realized they should have been careful on what they wished for.
"Ken?"
"-to say good morning for another wonderful day out there. It's going to be a balmy one, free of rain and with temperatures slightly above the fall season norm..."
Green eyes stared bleary at the half-open bedroom door. Every morning it was the same. Ginnette would wake up with the feeling of being held in warm arms. Sometimes she would say the name that belonged to her phantoms. Others she would just lay quietly and try to hold on to the memory. She never really knew why but no matter how she tried to forget him, she couldn't. She even took to leaving the t.v. on at night to drown out the imagined creaks of his footsteps over her home's hardwood floors.
Ginette's next glance was to the red-orange glow of her alarm clock. She grumbled. How the weather man could be so damn cheerful at five forty-one in the morning no-one knew.
"-Death of a noted humanitarian today. Peter Halton was most famous for his relief efforts in Mexico and Florida where the most violent riots took place five years ago- led by the then-named defender of Otherkin..."
The clink of a metal spoon falling into a bowl drowned out the television for a moment, followed by the rattle of a shaking box as cereal fell over both. (Some naturally spilling onto the kitchen counter.) the television had switched to an archived video of a man handing out blankets and food to a small group of people. Some were obviously not human, others could only be recognized from small details- long fingers, small patterns of scales, the bump of a horn or two in the hairline.
"And the last headline of the morning, Our peace corps is still working hard to scour the area north and west of the old Canada-US border in search of a purported killer. An otherkin extremeist who has determinedly outdone pacification efforts across the country. Called by media the northwind ghost, his latest target appeared to be our leader of Development and resources kaley- who'se last name is withheld for her protection. The attempt on her life was not successful but..."
Ginette let out a frustrated sigh and pressed a remote to silence the idiot-box. With the soft buzz down of a dying screen the room came to silence. ‘Otherkin'. It was the new word for terrorist- not that she could blame the media though. At the climax of the last big war people started disappearing even if they were nowhere near the fighting. Or the riots. Then the sightings of everything from cat-people to the sasquatch started coming. Unlike many others Ginette had a good idea of what had been happening. She knew they were the people who had been disappearing. Her own husband had disappeared at that time, and he had been telling her strange things just before he did. Then there was the note that was left.
All in all the new sort of reality that pressed in could have gone better, but people panicked. The ‘kin were herded or captured and studied or worse. Accusations flung from one power to the next about genetic tampering and other nonsense. And the Kin themselves lived in the wilds that had been created by the war. In their separation some continually grew angrier. Eventually there were breaks, and it did little for an already dubious discovery when sights like that of a gryphon landing on someone and tearing him apart began reaching the news. It only furthered the concept that they had become no more than half-intelligent animals.
As Ginette got into her car- a rusty but dependable tank of a car- her thoughts returned to those days. It was, after all, only ten or fifteen years before. Capture, experimentation, control, dissection... The smart ones ran for the hills. Thankfully there was a lot of terrain to hide with now that almost three billion people had died. As her thoughts threatened to turn miserable she put her focus on the city she drove through. One of those that were being rebuilt piece by piece. The city of twenty thousand housed apartments as the bulk of the housing, with only a few plots for proper houses left to the developers. One of the rewards for working to rebuild society. The downtown core once had near twenty high rise buildings with dozens of floors between them. Now the tallest had ten- and even then only because it's base was a salvaged structure that just got cleaned up and topped with a new roof.
A card flashed, a beep sounded, and a little red light became a little green one as Ginette strode through a set of double glass doors. Beyond was the ‘office of reclamation and development'.
"Morning Ginn. Dressed for pro as usual I see."
The voice came from a tall man with suit and cropped short hair. He was leaning on the sign-in counter and appraising her ensemble. Tan cargo's, brown muscle shirt, rustled and curly hair, and topped with a faded ball cap which held the hair from her face. Ginn was a short woman- just over five feet- and though she wasn't exactly thin, her body was well shaped from exerting through bush and other remote camps for years.
Her response was a half-hearted laugh. "Let's just get this presentation over with. I hate being in front of all those people. Can't they just learn to read rock formations, sediment maps and metamorphic samples themselves?"
"I suppose..." Dan scratched the stubble of his cheek idly- the motion lifting his overcoat to reveal a smooth holster- though currently empty. "but then wouldn't you be out of a job? We need you geologists to look at the land and say if it's safe to get back to after all."
"I'd rather be in the camps and getting samples, or better yet dealing with migraines while bent over a microscope than to be watched by those soft-handed knowitalls."
Now it was Dan's turn to laugh. "Still as Anti-social as ever I see."
"Yup. Let's just get going. The sooner I finish the sooner we can find out where we're going next."
The boardroom was the same as always. One wall covered with maps that had an assortment of pins and string noting supply routes, potential sites, ones that had been investigated- and useable or not- dangerous ones, and everything in between. A knot of them centered on the city. It may have started as a refugee town but it grew quickly into one of the central hubs for the post-war. It was on a broad river- which certainly had helped the struggling survivors.
As the office door swung closed behind her, her thoughts lingered on survival. She looked at the faces of the people in the room. By them you could hardly tell a war happened- let alone one of such magnitude and ending with years of chaos and confusion. In the end farmers found land and farmed, children played, and everyone pretended it never happened. It may have been some mental survival instinct but Ginn just called it ignorance.
The door shut with a smooth click.