Prologue - Requiem

I am alone. What more can I say? My friends, my Caelbri, my tribe and my boyfriend all either lie dead, or worse. Seven years ago, I didn’t believe there was such a thing. Especially with the whole ‘Apocalypse/ End of the World’ shit that was going on at the time. Yes, there was indeed an ‘End of the World’. No, it wasn’t on the twelfth of December 2012. Or that other date that nutter religious guy guessed. It was in 2012 though. It was a Saturday, and I was having a day in town with my boyfriend and a friend. Little did anyone realise how warped our lives would become. How they would become destroyed - twisted, convoluted shards of shrapnel that would be sharply torn asunder, all in a matter of mere hours.

* * * * *

We wandered aimlessly through the outdoor market, the bewitching aromas of sizzling burgers on giant barbeques slowing our pace. It was lunch time, and as per usual I hadn’t eaten yet. We walked on further and the infused aromatic tang of herbs and slowly char-grilled meat were blotted out by the more bitter, acidic smell of Vince’s cigarette. I disdainfully wriggled my nose – I loathed the odour of smoke, especially cigarette smoke, but I didn’t complain. I might not understand, even to this day, the desire to smoke, but it wasn’t my place to stop Vince, particularly as he was keeping me company until Matty arrived. Plus, as a bonus, it stopped all of my hunger pangs.

I checked my phone again. Still nothing, Matty was late again, but I’d guessed that it would happen; the local bus service was notorious for its shitty service, or lack thereof.

‘Still nothing?’ Vince blew the pungent smoke out of the side of his mouth, so that it was as far away from me as possible. I shook my head.

‘A bus probably hasn’t even turned up yet,’ I sighed, exasperated. Vince threw the burnt out tab on the floor, then instantly lit up another.

‘What did you honestly expect Kimmy? It’s fucking atrocious. A flying carpet would be a much more efficient form of transport that that pile of wank.’ I nodded wordlessly. Maybe not worded eloquently, as I had grown to expect from Vince, but he was right.

I’d known Vince a few years now, for most of Secondary in fact, and even though we now went to different Colleges in town, we had remained good friends. People at Secondary used to mock how clichéd his name and appearance were. With naturally pointed teeth, an appearance not too dissimilar to The Crow (minus all the makeup) and a full name of Vincent Crowne (yeah… the name really hadn’t helped matters for him), he was a perfect target for unintelligent youths with big mouths and no brains to hurl abuse at. At least, he would be, if not for his infamously short temper, his physical strength and the fact that the last time someone had given him trouble, the unfortunate culprit had lost most of their teeth, the remainder of their brain cells and any and all dignity which they previously held on to.

To his friends though, Vince was a good guy. Never without a cigarette in his mouth, he would always put his neck on the line to help someone out of a jam, even if it caused him inconvenience. Be it offering someone a place to stay when they had nowhere to go, sorting out arguments between friends, or even just staying with someone (in this case me) until their boyfriend of over two years turned up, Vince was, overall, a very caring person.

Bzzzt! I jumped out of my skin. I frantically dug out my phone; I glanced down at the screen to see it was Matty ringing me. My heart started thumping loudly in my ears.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Kims. You won’t believe the morning I’ve had. I tried to text you multiple times, and it just keeps saying it’s failed each time. Not to mention the bus being late, again!’ Matty sounded irate. ‘Where are you at anyways? I’m walking across the bridge up to the market square now.’

‘Calm down Matty, you’re here now; that’s what matters. I’m with Vince at the market place. Meet you besides the statue, then we’ll head to the pool hall?’

‘Sounds good to me. See you in a minute then.’

We shifted awkwardly through the Hubble towards the ancient green statue in the centre of the market, away from most of the ensuing Saturday bedlam. As we walked over to the newly renovated 20 foot statue, I flinched and subconsciously went to grab my left shoulder. There’d been a strange occurrence overnight, leaving me to wake up with a bizarre ‘mark’ on my shoulder. By ‘mark’ I mean some unusual looking tribal tattoo, with delicate, black swirls and heavily resembling Celtic art. It wasn’t red raw like a fresh new tattoo would be, and besides, I hadn’t been in a state, nor been in a place where I could get such a tattoo. I was pretty sure I would remember getting something like that done anyway, considering it covered all of my shoulder and a fair proportion of my left arm. It was all incredibly strange, and it kept flaring up with a searing pain every now and again – like millions of sharp pins stabbing me repeatedly in the shoulder.

Ignoring it as best I could, and trying not to show any evidence of pain on my face, I did my best to casually chat to Vince about games and the like. Like many of these things tend to be, it was coincidentally linked (or, if you believe in such things, down to fate) to the events which were to follow. We were deliberating which game was better, both as a game and as an environment to live in: Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.

‘Skyrim would be miles better, without a doubt. There are swords, cat AND lizard people and dragons. What more could you possibly need? Plus, as an added bonus, it would make the ‘Cool story bro, needs more dragons’ meme redundant, unlike Fallout.’ I argued furtively.

Vince thought for a brief second, but then shook his head. ‘That may be true, but an apocalypse is far cooler, plus we’d have guns, which I prefer, and an environment we already know. Besides, I’d get sick of people coming up to me and telling me that they used to be an adventurer, but then they took an arrow to the knee. There are only so many times that can be funny. Oh, and let’s not forget zombies.’

I shivered. I fucking hated zombies. I was terrified of anything that was dead, and more so if it was still somehow wandering around, trying to eat me. Just as I was about to retaliate, I saw Matty approaching and broke into an impish grin.

I’d been with Matty for over two years, but we’d never fallen out or argued even once. It was never dull though; Matty was a bright, vibrant character, always laughing and telling jokes. He was a year older than me, so when he entered our Secondary’s Sixth Form, he thought of himself as the ‘cooler’ older guy, and so he tried to ask me out at school, in front of my friends. Whilst incredibly drunk. At the time I didn’t know him at all, although I had heard of him, but I was fairly amused and impressed with his level of determination, even with his lack of coherence, balance and sense of logic at the time.

The next day, once he’d sobered up and apologized profusely, I told him I would go on a date with him. He stared at me, gob-smacked, whilst I laughed and explained that although he hadn’t really set that good an impression, he seemed like a nice guy that meant well.

Now here we were, over two years down the line, still together and happy, head over heels in love with one another. Matty was everything I could want in a guy – a tall, skinny, black haired metalhead with a leather jacket, a sense of humour and a sensible head on his shoulders (well, unless he was drunk of course; then he was just plain hilarious.)

I ran over to him, forgetting the pain for a moment, and hugged him tightly, and stood on tip toe to kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘Took your time a bit there,’ I laughed.

Matty groaned. ‘Don’t even joke about it. I swear the buses have somehow gotten worse. I set off over an hour and a half ago, and the bus took over half an hour just to get to my bus stop.’

I hugged him again. ‘Awww, it’s ok. So long as you’re here, that’s all that matters really.’

He kissed me on the forehead, as he so often did, then walked over to where Vince had hung back, and gave him a brief hug. ‘Cheers for looking after Kimmy, I hate leaving her on her own like that.’

Vince hugged him in return, then broke away to light his third tab. ‘No problem mate, you know I’ll always look out for her; we’ve been friends a long time after all.’

We began to walk away from the statue, making small talk about how terrible the bus service was, slowly progressing towards the local pool hall, when the air was punctured with a thunderous, booming voice.

‘Halt fleshlings.’

The earth shook from the sheer force and volume of the voice and the buzz of the entire town ground to an instant halt. I don’t know how that voice didn’t puncture our ear drums, especially as it was apparently heard on a global scale, but I digress. Cars stopped in their tracks, shoppers immediately stood still, dropping their purchases and gazing up to the Heavens, us included. An eerie silence loomed overhead.

‘Excellent. Now then, pay close attention to what I have to say. For many of you, it will be the last thing you hear.’

My heart pounded deafenly in my head, at the volume and speed of gravity blast style drumming. I gripped Matty’s hand tightly, gulping down air, beads of sweat gathering on the brows of all that were present. My shoulder suddenly surged with pain, but I ignored it; this situation was drastically more important.

‘We, the immortal powers that be, rulers of your world and all others, are, to be quite frank, bored. We are bored of your puny existence, and so we have hatched a plan to… spice things up a bit.’ The voice paused to snigger, a noise of huge granite boulders colliding that made my hair stand on end and icy cold shivers shoot up my spine, before continuing smugly. ‘Therefore, most of your precious world is going to die, and most of you with it. Those of you that remain will become part of our new world, a world of our own creation. It will have been infused with a second world, a world which you know naught about.’

I began to convulse violently, my legs wobbling, nearly caving out from under me; the pain in my shoulder becoming more prominent with every passing second. I let go of Matty’s hand, and clenched my shoulder in pure desperation. I closed my eyes, grimacing from sheer pain. What could possibly be happening to me?!

‘Right about now, those select few of you which have been chosen should be getting signals to show that you have been selected. By signals, I mean a profane pain from your Geishra – your unique symbol etched under your skin, which you may have already found. Each of your Geishras are different, showing the tribe that you belong to. As of now, there is only you in that little tribe, Chosen Ones. But you can change all of that.’

My eyes snapped open – I wasn’t going to die? Plus I might be able to rescue some people from their apparent fate?

‘You all have a quick decision to make. For the next two minutes, you now have the ability to save two people. Just. Two. People. So… who will you protect, and who will you leave to die? Your two minutes begin now. Choose wisely.’

As the pain quickly and mercifully diminished, I immediately grabbed Matty’s hand and Vince’s arm, pulling them both towards me. Without a moment's hesitation, and without even fully understanding why, I found myself internally screaming: 

‘MATTY AND VINCE!’

I don’t really know why I thought to do that, but I seemed to intuitively know that it would work. A female, but no less powerful, voice laughed deep within the recesses of my mind.

‘Very good,’ she purred. ‘You’ve picked well Tai-egra.’ I blinked stupidly. What on earth was a Tai-egra?

Moments later, Matty hissed in my ear. ‘Kimmy, what the Hell is going on?’

Pointing to my shoulder, I whispered so that they could hear me ‘I’ve got one of those Geishra things that voice mentioned. So I’ve picked you two.’ Matty kissed my forehead, squeezing my hand caringly.

‘So long as you’re safe Kims, that’s all that matters to me.’

I squeezed his hand back. Matty was so loving; I couldn’t imagine any future without him. Even if it was unorthodox looking one. And Vince had been such a good friend the past few years that I had known him, through good times and bad; I could hardly leave him behind.

‘Your two minutes are up, Chosen Ones. I hope your decisions have been made. So now you can begin your introduction to the new world.’

My shoulder seemed to explode with relentless, unfathomable pain. My muscles tensed, eyes glazed, open and wide from shock, mouth wide open, ready to scream. My legs buckled from under me, I felt my entire body hit the ground hard, heard faint noises of shouting around me, blurring out and become mere white-noise, and then the entire world just went black.