Fan Fiction ❯ Triskle (Life Giver) ❯ Remembrance ( Prologue )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Title: Triskle (Life giver)PrologueTitle- RemembrancePG-13 to RAll concepts, characters and situations in this belong to me, c. 2002. Any resemblance to actual events/people is coincidental. :)A few people die, it might be a tad confusing. Also, just so people know, this will be a yaoi (male/male romance) story. words (triskle, sol'ra, etc.) in here do not come from any particular language other than the one I'm making up, bit by bit as I need it for this story. Just so you know. :) only thing I've done to check this is run it through spell check so please forgive any glaring grammar mistakes. As always, feedback is worshiped!!!
Fire. Death. Destruction. I remember these things, lying awake at night. I remember the screams, the blood spilt over the ground. I remember my sister, pulling me away, trying to avert my eyes. I remember the smoke that stung my eyes, the charred corpse I tripped over. I was ten then. What was left of our people gathered together in the forest, hoping that whatever had attacked us would move on quickly. I slipped into an uneasy sleep that first night, ripped away from the comfort of my home. When we woke that day, singing the Sun Song we dared hope it was gone. But it came back, hunting us down. We fled.
don't remember my parents, or the friends I shared my first adventures with. But I remember the Flight. The endless days and nights of running, pushing on when my legs felt like they would collapse underneath me and my lungs burned for air that seemingly wouldn't come. Our clan found others, all of us running from the same thing. Eventually we came to the edge of our known world. My sister held me close to her, fear in her scent, in her eyes. One of the foreigner men spoke to us, the gathered huddle of frightened people. He told us we had to press on, that we couldn't stop. The people wouldn't listen. The rumors of the Otherworld were too numerous, too terrible. The man said that we shouldn't be afraid. We had once fled from the Otherworld, scattering into the various clans, each generation learning the lore of our kind. He spoke, his voice throbbing with emotion, urging us to cross the invisible boundary, to not be afraid of that which we had once called home.
came around the camps that dusk, gathering followers. My sister listened to what he said and believed. She stood with his followers. I was only ten, so I followed. Her decision would be mine. I remember the one statement that gave me courage to follow her bravely, not to cry. The one simple phrase that intrigued me so much, I had to go... just to find out whether it was true!
may be others left in the Otherworld."
like us! I went into the Otherworld that day, when twilight spread its glow across the land. And several paces in, we stopped and made our camp. Of course it didn't look any different than where we were before, but to my overactive imagination the air danced with forbidden knowledge. The earth cried to me as I had never heard it before, the very wind seemed to caress my skin differently. That night, I woke to screaming. I bolted to my feet, the instinct to run having been branded into me in our flight. What I saw I will always remember. Those who had not followed us were being butchered. I saw a girl running towards the boundary, pursued by something that eluded my sight. Every time I tried to look at it, it would vanish, swirling into form again at the corner of my eyes. The girl was holding a baby, little more than an infant. As she neared the boundary she was caught. Her belly was ripped open, blood gurgling up out of her mouth, spilling down her front. She should have died instantly. She threw the child. He made it across. I ran to the child. The infant's skull was all wrong, crushed in. The head was at an unnatural angle. I ran away, further into the Otherworld. In that moment I felt so alone, as if I was the only one who existed that night. It was a feeling, I would discover, that would not go away. I will always remember that night.
the years passed we moved farther into the Otherworld, renaming it Sol'ra, Land of Newborn Sun. I grew up and our people settled in Sol'ra, living in apparent harmony. The man who had convinced us to come with him courted, wooed and finally married my sister, Lisais, when I turned fourteen. His name was Drakiurn. So my sister Lisais and her husband Drakiurn took over the clan, leading us through both good times and bad. Everywhere there were people happy once more. The years had lessened the horror of the attacks and those who had been very young didn't remember it at all.
became isolated, I couldn't forget... nor could I share the happiness of our people. I became rebellious, running off to the plains and screaming at the sky. At times I felt a presence, comforting me, calming me. The wind shared her secrets with me and I learned how to hunt, how to kill. Every day I wandered further and further away from the settlement. By the time I was seventeen it was not unusual for me to be gone most of the year. The day I turned 18 my childhood name of Milik, which meant nothing at all was replaced by the name Nakol'oun: He who walks alone. It suited me.
enough, on the eve of my nineteenth birthday my sister, her husband, and several of the loremasters came to me. I listened with growing amusement as they told me that the people thought bad spirits were inhabiting the settlement. They wanted me to find a new place for them. I refused. The loremasters would not accept my refusal, coming time and again to try and persuade me. When my sister fell ill, I finally decided to go look. As I left the village the very same group that had come to me that first time came up to me again, insisting I take them with me. I protested at my sister's inclusion but she was a stubborn woman, older than I, and she would not be swayed.
we traveled farther away I became excited by the prospect that I might encounter other people. The loremasters had told me that if I did manage to find others, that they would be blessed people and the would be like us. I thought the whole thing was a load of dung. If people had managed to survive in the Otherworld before it had calmed, they would have had to adapt. They might not look different, but they would be different, of that I was sure. After two or three months of traveling the loremasters declared they had found the site for the next settlement. They brought the people and we settled once again. Against my will I was drawn into the care taking of the village, and was appointed a forager along with my sister. It was on one of our foraging trips that we found the trees. Now don't mistake me, trees were a fairly common thing, though not widespread. These ones, however, were huge. As we approached closer we saw that the whole valley with the trees was enclosed in some sort of fence. My skin tingled with anticipation; I could almost feel the other people! I knew somehow. I knew that this was not an old settlement, that it was still inhabited. We circled the fence structure and eventually came to an opening in it. As my sister hesitated a few steps away from the entrance I walked boldly forward. My interest however, was not at the moment on what lay beyond the fence, but rather what lay in front of it. It seemed to be a large sheet of glass, and as I touched it a hum invaded the air and shapes began to scroll across it that I did not recognize. I drew in a sharp breath as the shapes abruptly switched, then again, and again, each time different. My sister had crept up behind me, I could hear her breathing. I knew that the same thought was running through our heads, machina. Machinery! I was fascinated and would have gladly sat there for hours watching the shapes scroll across the glass if not for Lisais' insistence that we go back to the village. As she pulled me away the shapes switched again, and this time I recognized them. I pulled away from Lisais and ran back, reading what I now knew was a message as it scrolled across the flat pane of glass. It read thus:
whoever may be reading this message, consider yourself warned.people of this settlement are not inclined to tolerate intruders andthey will not. Any and all intruders upon our land are subject to theof the Council, and will almost certainly be executed. Youbeen warned, please leave us in peace. Good health.
Council of Mages
all but carried me away from that place, running for home as if she were being pursued once again. Once there, she immediately gathered the loremasters and told them of what we had seen. The way she described it we had been in horrible danger in a foul place. It called to me, that grove of trees. I wanted nothing more than to go back, to enter their land. It didn't matter to me if I died or not, I needed to see for my own eyes other people, people who had adapted. Not until later the next day however, did I start to wonder about the message. It had been signed the Council of Mages. It was that one word, mages, which puzzled me. Mages supposedly dealt with magic. But there was no such thing as magic... My mind had been made up, I was going back and I would discover them, these new people. I didn't realize then how irrevocably my whole life would be changed by that one decision.