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| The Psychic Wars; A future, though perhaps unpleasant | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 17 2005, 08:53 PM (278 Views) | |
| Eragol | Jul 17 2005, 08:53 PM Post #1 |
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Keeper of the Eternal Flame/Baron of Kinaldi/Fire God
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Prologue: At What Price Victory? The sun rose over the landscape. The United States had finally been conquered. “Serves them right,” said Commander Williams. “Should’ve known to stay inside their boundaries, and not attack us.” The man alongside him nodded. “I almost pity those who thought this would be a nuclear war,” said the other, drawing himself to a full height of about seven feet. “However, it is unwise to spread our military. After all, reports are coming in that the East is beginning to fall again.” “What, Boston and such? Nonsense. We’ve got those so tightly monitored, the Yanks wouldn’t be able to even have hunting rifles.” Commander Williams looked at Southern Florida, almost willing himself through the thick, almost syrupy mess of the Everglades. “Then California,” said the seven-foot-tall man. “Surely you don’t believe that they’re not up to something.” “They’re growing marijuana is what they’re doing.” "Marijuana? Or dissent?” “Aren’t the two synonyms or something?” “No.” But before Commander Williams could answer, what felt like a bullet whizzed by his ear. “Don’t come any closer, Butcher!” shouted a woman’s voice. “We’ve got you surrounded! Just drop the weapon, and we’ll talk nice about a treaty.” Williams laughed, then took another step forward. “Treaty? You’re losing! You’ve retreated into these Everglades because you’ve nowhere else to run!” The woman sniffed. “So? A hundred and fifty years, Butcher, a hundred and fifty years we’ve been at war against you, against the Brits, against the Japs, the Krauts, the Finks, the Muzz, you name ‘em, we’ve fought ‘em! We ain’t afraid o’ you!” Williams took another step forward. The smell of swamp surrounded him. “Besides,” she said, stepping forward for him to see, “we got ourselves a secret weapon.” She wasn’t bad looking, for a Yank who’d been on the run. Her long brown hair was tied back to reveal a face that had been streaked with some kind of war paint. If it weren’t for her hair, she would look like a boy, and a ten-year-old boy at that. He saw that she carried no weapon, and wore a ripped shirt and ripped jeans. He couldn’t see below her ankles, but he suspected that she wore nothing down there anyway. He bared his teeth. “Little girl, do you know what you’re doing? I could mow you down right now!” He leveled his gun at her. Before he could think, before he could act, his hand began to feel warm. Very warm; in fact, he would say that he was on fire if he didn’t know better. She smiled. “They call me Carrie. I assume you know why?” He fired a hail of bullets at her. Within fifteen inches of the gun, they began to melt, and within thirty they had dissolved. A massive cloud of steam rose in front of him. “Can’t say,” he said, as the gun began to smoke. “Come now, don’t say you haven’t seen the movie? Oh, you’re making me upset!” The gun was now very warm, and the girl had a sort of fire in her eyes. “Carrie! Stop!” came a male voice. A man, probably fifty due to the gray in his hair, with singed clothes and green eyes, rushed out of the mist and fell to his knees near the little girl. “Not until they stop, Father. Not until we are United.” The gun was now fusing to Williams’s hands. “The Butcher came to find us, Father. We daren’t let him return.” Commander Williams now shrieked with pain. He couldn’t hear her next words. Then, it was as if someone had lit a fire under his feet. The soles of his boots were melting. His clothes were catching fire. The molten metal of the gun was now stripping his hands of flesh. “Make it stop!” screamed the Commander. “Make it stop! I’ll do anything! Anything, do you hear me, ANYTHING!!! Just make it stop,” he cried, sobbing. The inferno that had once been his uniform was now spreading to his hair, burning his face. The tears steamed the moment they left his eyes. Soon, he knew, he would be blinded. Soon, he would die… The advisor looked on, horrified. “Madam,” he said, bowing to young Carrie. “I am yours to command.” Carrie smiled. “I know of you, Burton. Bring me your son, and we shall have peace.” Burton took a step back. “Peace… But he is my only son. Pax cannot be allowed to…” Carrie frowned. “You won’t… harm him, will you?” He stole a frightened glance at Commander Williams, who was now hissing and steaming. The flames took on a slightly dimmer look as his flesh burned away. A blackened, twisted stump stood where moments earlier a right hand had been. Carrie caught his gaze. “The Butcher deserved this. Your son is still…” She left the sentence hanging. Burton nodded, then dashed from the swamp. A message echoed in his mind. “Burton, if you don’t return with your eleven-year-old son in a month, you will feel like the Butcher here.” The thought chilled Burton to the depths of his spine. You have won today, Miss Carrie, he thought, dashing from the infernal swamp, but at what price? What is it that you have done to yourself? How much did you need this victory? |
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| BahamutFry | Jul 17 2005, 09:16 PM Post #2 |
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Two syllables: Sah-Weet! |
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| Kestrel Sumner | Jul 17 2005, 09:42 PM Post #3 |
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And then she was gone, her hips swinging as the knives jostled her thighs, passing by guards with her head held high, a haughty smile upon her lips.
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Again, very interesting Eragol. I would like to see more of this in the future! |
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| Eragol | Jul 17 2005, 10:07 PM Post #4 |
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Keeper of the Eternal Flame/Baron of Kinaldi/Fire God
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Trust me, there will be more. It's just the prologue; expect Chapter One as soon as I finish writing it (although it'll take a while, and I'll have to do more formatting stuff like I did with this.) |
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| BahamutFry | Jul 17 2005, 11:54 PM Post #5 |
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I betcha he can do the whole story without using the word, "bitch" |
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| Eragol | Jul 29 2005, 11:06 AM Post #6 |
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Keeper of the Eternal Flame/Baron of Kinaldi/Fire God
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Chapter 1: The World At Midnight Something echoed in the Emperor’s mind. It was an unpleasant throb that he’d felt before. “Another assassination, I’d wager. Fyodor really wants to keep me out of it.” Smiling, he continued walking down the hallway. “It’s not going to work, he realizes. It’s a mere annoyance, a buzz. Nothing compared to the War.” The “buzz” grew louder. Oh, hush. The thought squashed the buzz. The Emperor looked at his clock. “Midnight. And all’s quiet on the Eastern Front.” The War had been over. It had just begun. A thousand of them began and ended, ten thousand more had been fought, and now another began. The Europeans were fighting the Asians, but what was new? Anti-Empire agents were trying to infiltrate the country; they wouldn’t really matter anyway. They had never succeeded; why should today be any different? Sighing, he looked at the map of the world hung in the corner. It was old, older than even the Emperor. It showed the First Northern Empire – My empire now, he thought – as a giant, stifled, city-choked morass; this could be further from the truth. The population was spread through, about three hundred million – fifty million of whom were like the Emperor, brilliant minds struggling against the mundanity of everyday life. The Fourth European Empire was on there as well, although the Emperor knew full well that it should be called the Fourth German Empire, since it had been the Germans who began the conquest. Or perhaps it could be the Second British Empire, since the British had finished it. But the Fourth European Empire was its name, and the Empress was not one to change things that didn’t need changing. To the east – here he chuckled – to the east of the Europeans was a conglomerate known as “New Asia,” even though the land had to have been there for centuries. It was ruled by the Russians, of course; when had that ever been untrue? So what if the population of that country was more… gifted… than the rest of the world, ratio-wise? It all evened out, especially considering what lay to the south of Europe. Gifted… That is what we call ourselves, “gifted” or “chosen”. Other words can scarcely apply. Brilliant? Perhaps, though many of our number exhibit normal Bell Curve intelligence. Genius? As self-righteous as brilliant. Pure? If ever we were “pure,” the first of us rid us of it. He turned towards a portrait. I knew I would inherit this when I asked my sister to tell me what might lie ahead. She said you would stare back at me, First Empress and First Emperor. She told me your youthful faces would smile, smile even as the old painter nervously had. I wonder… Empress, what am I doing? The portrait upon the wall smiled at him. Beside a brown-haired woman in a velvet gown stood a straight-backed young man, at least six feet tall, with a furiously red handlebar moustache and close-cropped black hair. His welcoming blue eyes smiled at him through the portrait. The woman next to him was blue-eyed as well; all who were “chosen” had those blue eyes. Empress St. Joan, Emperor Mitchell, give me your guidance. I beg you. A bit of rain began to fall on the building he was in. Rain. The one thing you feared, Empress. And you, Emperor Mitchell, smiling at me. The end of the one thing I fear – war. Out of one blue eye, a tear slid down the Emperor’s face. “And you are sure this is what you saw?” asked a female voice. Thoughts welled up in the young man’s head. “This is the exact scene?” “Y…yes, Mistress of the Third Order,” said the boy. “A tear slid down the Emperor’s face as he looked at something on his wall.” He paused, unsure of what to say next. Opening his eyes, he chanced a look up. She was, and had perhaps always been, the Paragon of beauty. Auburn hair drifted down lazily from the peak of her head in long, unwinding curls. Bright blue eyes glistened from a shimmering face. Her robes, spun from the finest silk, were blue in color, and they brought out her eyes in a way nothing else could. The right breast of the robes held a monogram, “A.F.W.”, and the left held the symbol of the Order, three eyes on the palm of a hand, against the background of a book. And practically every inch of her screamed “beauty” at the top of its lungs. She looked down on him with a mixture of curiosity and detachment, a curious mixture to be sure. “Something on a wall… I can only assume it was a portrait of the First Ones. Nothing else would give him that teardrop, unless it was a picture of a war – and you know the kind of man the Emperor is.” The boy nodded. “Very well then, go. Tell the next clairvoyant to meet me here.” The boy nodded again, happy to leave her presence. She had frightened him, in her infinite beauty. His mind had tried to shut itself to her, but she had extracted far more than he wished. The Order of Telepaths was never one to allow itself fright unless deserved, and the boy knew he would either be tossed out or forced to work. He hoped the latter; he was an initiate, and knew nothing of such things. To be offered this assignment so early on in his time was… Unheard of was a good attempt. “Sir,” he said as he reached the person who had been waiting next to him, it is your turn to enter. A tall black man with long dreadlocks and blue eyes stood up, nodded, and entered the room. Hoping he wouldn’t be caught, he tried to look on into the room. Instantly it came into focus. Then he tried to hear. It was if someone had turned on a switch; he could hear the Third Order’s fingers drumming against her desk. “Mistress of the Third Order,” said the Black as he stepped into the room. AFW looked at him. “Reports on the First Northern Emperor. I have a sketch of him, if you’d like to see.” She nodded. “I’ve seen him in person, but a sketch never hurts. Besides, he’s probably aged in the past couple years.” Wordlessly, the Black pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and showed it to the Mistress. At that moment, the boy turned off his clairvoyance; he had to find his room again. When he turned it back on, he managed to just get a glimpse of the room. The point of view had shifted (rather annoyingly) to behind AFW; he had seen the young man before. The sketch showed the Emperor, his short blond hair almost perfectly drawn. An eidetic, thought the boy. I’d swear my life on it. He had the same blue eyes as all other of their kind, and was (though the picture did not show it) tall for his age. His nose was thin, and his arms and legs long. He was wearing some sort of ridiculous military uniform, as if he’d ever been in combat. Suddenly, the scene went black. “Stupid regulations,” he muttered. “Someone’s gone and set up a no-see zone.” He could understand why, of course; AFW was the Mistress of the Third Order, and nobody should by spying on her. Muttering to himself as he flopped down on the bed, he turned over and began sailing into the land of dreams. “Report!” shouted a voice. Into his mind came the words. Assassination unsuccessful. We believe that he may be too powerful for a single assassin. We cannot risk having more than one attempt, however, because he must not know of our power. We must- The report was truncated as the voice sent its own message. To all assassin crew: Change target. Since Emperor Mitchell cannot be destroyed, focus attacks on Advisor Mitchell instead. Perhaps the death of one so close will spur the Emperor into action. If Advisor Mitchell should prove to be unwieldy as a target, choose thirty-five random dalits and kill them. Fear should provide motive enough to aid us. The voice’s owner paced his study. “I am Prime Mover, Head Kshatriya. Soon to be Brahmin.” He repeated this mantra to himself as he walked the room. When he stopped pacing, he said, “But first, the Kshatriyas Other must be dealt with.” He looked in the mirror that hung in his room. A short, brown-skinned man stared back at him. His father, he knew, had been the last Czar, his mother a Vaishya from the Hindu Lands. Neither had been a dalit; both had the blue eyes that marked their heritage. Had it not been for the Psychic War, they would still be around today. But it had to have been that war. Their death, his sister would have said, had unhinged him. But his sister was dead, and good riddance; a dalit was not supposed to be born to superior stock. It was unlucky. He walked back to the papers on his desk. Ruling New Asia had been difficult, especially after the latest fiasco involving the Antipsionic Confederation. Unfortunately, they had spread almost as far as Kabul before his troops had pushed them back into Africa where they and their fleabitten comrades belonged. To imagine that dalits would be so fierce; it was unbelievable. He had pressured the New Asians into accepting his new names for the matter; his mother had shown him the truth behind such naming schemes. The Varnas were the perfect simile; the only thing lacking was a position for the Brahmin, and he dared not take that upon himself until he was sure he was ready. “When the Kshatriyas Other are dead, then will I take up the mantle of Brahmin. For then, and only then, will I have access to the unlimited power.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them, grinning with anticipation. A knock came to his door. “Enter,” he said, his accent rough on his ears. The door opened, admitting a balding old man with a cane and a humped back. The Prime Mover took one look and recognized him for a loyal man, one of the Brigade. “My Lord, a message from the Emperor of the North. If you would care to listen…?” The man unrolled a scroll, held it far away from his face, and waited for the Prime Mover to acknowledge. “Go ahead.” The old man licked his lips and proceeded. “‘My Colleague Czar Fyodor. Congratulations on your latest endeavor; it seems that Kabul will remain free for you and your psychopathic minions to terrorize. I am afraid I cannot comply with your request to “drop dead,” as I am currently living a very healthy life. I wish for a reply to my now fifteenth request for you to stop attacking the Northern Empire’s nonpsionic population. Yours in good health, Emperor Alexis I Mitchell.’” The Czar looked as though he was about to eat nails. “Tell Mitchell that if he hopes to live to his next birthday, he’d better start treading carefully around me. I’m more dangerous than his precious ‘Empress,’ even if she was First of Our Kind.” The old man bowed out of the room. “Psychotic minions… Even as he is planning to betray our kind… How dare… Show him… Get him… Kill him… Someday…” He walked over to his desk and began writing in his journal. It was necessary to give an appearance of normalcy, after all. |
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