Chapter Text
They say humans were created in God’s image,
good at their core,
apt to forgive,
capable of kindness.
But in God’s image, they were also
vengeful,
demanding,
murderous.
___
In the old world, the gods stopped talking to humankind, and humankind forgot about them. Worship fell out of fashion as humans started understanding how the world worked, and as things that used to appear as miracles became natural phenomena easy to understand and explain. Houses of faith started closing down, holy days became regular days, people stopped teaching their young the ways of the old faiths. It didn’t happen all at once, but eventually, believers became almost extinct.
On one September day of the year 1972, the very last believer died. She was an old woman of an old clan, in the remote town of Tichla, Western Sahara. She was born of a people of believers, and every morning she’d lived, she did all the things she’d been taught to do before her days started. She’d offer salt to the gods of the wind, freshwater to the spirits of sand, say a blessing for the kanzif, the essence of mother nature. And every night, before going to bed, she’d leave a plate of clean bones outside her door for the dark spirits, for she’d been taught they kept the universe in balance.
She did all those rituals on that day, then she went home, lay down, and died peacefully.
The next day, the gods spoke again.
___
The last person alive to survive the old world, the Darkness and live into the return of the Light was an old man by the name of Pablo Flores. He died twenty-three years into the New Age. On his death bed, his daughter asked; ‘Papa, what was it like, on the last day ?’
His eyes, which had been blind for twenty-three years, seemed to see beyond the small hospital room when he answered;
‘I saw a woman made of light, she was scary but beautiful. I asked her if she was an angel; she laughed and it sounded like thunder. She said she was a god.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘No. She said she would spare my life.’
‘What happened next?’
‘She raised her finger to the sky and flicked it at the sun. Then she asked me to keep watch for nine minutes, and to try to enjoy the sunlight.’
‘And then?’
‘Nine minutes passed, then everything went black.’
___
The new age started out pitch black. The gods made humankind in their image; they too were vengeful, demanding, murderous. When humans stopped believing in them, the gods took the light away.
It’s an old myth that gods need no sustenance. Gods feed off worship: the more they’re believed in, the stronger they are. When the worship dies out, a god is as mortal as its creation. Who came first, then, some ask? The chicken or the egg? The creator or its creation?
They say the first god thought himself into existence.
The new age started out pitch black and remained that way for two decades. The people who remember the sun disappearing will tell you of the panic, the television programs being interrupted for special announcements, the scientists who were flown into the USA from all over the world to try and figure out life on an earth that was no longer orbiting the sun. Their predictions were grim, and they all came true: Temperatures dropped dramatically within days. It had been summer in the northern hemisphere – it froze in less than two weeks. Nuclear-powered habitats were put in place in countries that had access to them; some succeeded in time, some didn’t.
By the end of the first year of Darkness, all the oceans had frozen over, billions had died, most animal species were extinct, and there remained only sixteen living factions of humans around the world. Two of them were in the United States, both nuclear. One was in Iceland, where they harnessed geothermal energy from volcanoes. Life outside was no longer possible since the atmosphere froze and fell to earth.
Over the years, the US factions were able to slowly expand the main bunkers, until it was a small underground city housing the remaining 6000 survivors in North America, located somewhere in former Southern Virginia. Humans did what they did best and survived; over time, a semblance of civilization started forming. A voting system was enacted to make decisions on communal issues, a weekly market-like assembly was held for people to barter all sorts of personal works, from knitted scarves to salvaged books, toys or dvds. Scientists continued working on genetically modifying more plant stems that could grow without traditional photosynthesis – the taste of the one tuberous crop they’d already come up with was getting old. One bunker room was made into a makeshift hospital, where the fifteen surviving doctors took turns working. Another was turned into a media room, filled with whatever books, music and movies were rescued during the big move.
Children started being born again.
Humans lived that way for twenty years. Elders died and children were born, but the most famous person to live through the Darkness was an Irish woman by the name of Kayleigh.
Kayleigh and her parents were on vacation in New York in the summer of 1972, when the sun went out. She was rescued by a search party in Maryland, and didn’t remember how she got there. She was missing two toes on her left foot and a last name – when they rescued her from the frozen outdoors, her toes was frostbitten and her memories were fuzzy. She lost the toes, and never bothered with a family name.
The bunkers consisted of three main sections. They were soberly called Work, Life and Survival. The work section contained several smaller units that were given to people who had useful skills. You could find the hospital and the kitchen there, but also seamstresses, teachers, bakers and all sorts of small trades. Someone had set up a carpentry shop and made small furniture for people who needed it. A former electrical engineering student fixed people’s laptop and small electronics. A little boy sat in one of the empty shops and offered to sing happy songs to anyone who felt sad (his shop proved very popular).
The survival section was where all the labs and nuclear engines were. It housed all the scientists who worked on making this new mode of life functional, from biologists working on ways to create lab made edible plants, to nuclear scientists maintaining the engines that provided light and heat to the bunkers.
The life section was the housing unit. It was set in a way that allowed the few surviving families to regroup, but didn’t isolate the many people who survived alone. Two of the units were allocated to the children living in the bunkers without any family, whether they were rescued by search parties or that their parents used their last breath to get them to safety. That’s where Kayleigh lived.
On her first night, a hushed voice asked her in the dark: “Are you scared?”
She answered: “My mum says I’m fearless.”
On her third day, a little boy sat next to her in English class, which was held in Work and consisted of three teachers going around and helping all 36 kids with standard English homework.
She turned her head to give him an examining look. His hair was black and a bit too long, falling over his eyes. He was thinner than her, but she was satisfied to notice he was not taller. (Back home, she liked being the tallest of her friends, and when her classmate Moira sprouted suddenly, she had to unfriend her. The offense was intolerable.)
“Why aren’t you doing your homework?” she asked.
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know how to write English.”
Kayleigh’s eyes opened wide. “How come?”
“I’m from Japan.”
“I’ve never met anyone from Japan.”
“Where are you from?”
“Ireland.”
The boy gave her a quick look then averted his eyes to his blank homework again.
“Is that why you speak funny?”
“I don’t speak funny!” She took a minute to consider this new information, then noted: “You’re the one who asked me if I was scared the other night.”
“Yes.”
“Well, were /you/?”
“..No.”
Kayleigh didn’t press the matter. She gave him a puzzled look, then went back to doing her homework.
At the end of class, she caught up to the boy on their way back to Life.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Tetsuji.”
“I’m Kayleigh!”
“I know. Nice to meet you.” He bowed his head quickly.
“You too.”
They walked in silence for a minute, then she asked again:
“Are you going to join your friends?”
“No. I don’t have friends here.”
“Me neither. Do you wanna be mine?”
The boy looked at her in silence, then nodded. Kayleigh was unphased by his lack of enthusiasm. She grabbed his hand.
“A girl told me there’s a moon door up the last stairs, and you can see outside from it. Let’s go see!”
Years later, Kayleigh became the most famous person to live in the New Age. People called her Kayleigh Day, the woman who brought back the sunlight.
___
It happened at 11pm on a Thursday evening, on Kevin’s shift.
He blinked, looking at it for a few seconds before he snapped out of his haze and started running towards Castle Evermore. The guards let him in, and he ran up the stairs, down the corridors, until he reached Riko’s door. He knocked twice then let himself in, a bad idea under usual circumstances, but in this instance and this one only, he knew Riko wouldn’t mind. He approached the bed and (gently) shook Riko awake. The reaction was instantaneous, fingers digging hard into his wrist and furious eyes looking at him.
“It went out, Riko.”
“The flame?”
“Yes, the flame. It went out, five minutes ago.”
Riko got up, fumbling to find his clothes, ran his fingers through his hair.
“I have to go wake the Master.”
Castle Evermore was a structure from before the Darkness. Kevin, who read history books in what little spare time the Ravenhood allowed him, could’ve surmised that it was not a castle but a gothic structure, but he valued the lack of scars other than the tattoo on his face, so he kept his mouth shut. The property was the size of a big neighborhood, fortified walls surrounding its gardens. The building itself had a square perimeter lodged in between four towers, referred to by the cardinal points they occupied.
Kevin followed Riko to North, where the Master’s quarters were. He stopped before the main entrance and waited for them to come out. Tetsuji didn’t acknowledge his presence, but Kevin was used to that. He followed the Moriyamas downstairs.
Tetsuji led them to the sanctuary, where he verified for himself that the flame had gone out. Only then did he turn to the boys.
“Wake the others. I expect everyone here, clean and alert, in 30 minutes.”
“‘Yes, Master.”
Riko predictably sent Kevin to wake the others on his own. He’d said he needed to prepare the ceremonial artifacts, but Kevin suspected he needed time to compose himself. The fact that he offered an explanation at all was testimony to his nervousness. Not that Kevin didn’t understand that; Riko was the heir, after all, and though they all expected him to be the Chosen, it wasn’t a fact written in stone. And the alternative to him being chosen when the Master spoke of it as a done deal was terrifying to say the least.
Kevin pushed the dormitory door open and took a minute to look at the fourteen sleeping bodies of the people he’d shared almost every waking moment with for the last twelve years. Fourteen kids taken from their homes the moment they manifested the Gift (sometimes, a parent might try to hide it, but someone always ended up snitching to the Master). Some of them might end up dead by the end of the week, and he couldn’t tell how he felt about that. There was something strange about growing up with people you bore your soul to, who bore theirs to you, and knowing they would kill you without blinking if ordered to do so. Just as you would.
He turned the light on. All fourteen ravens sprung upright immediately, but as soon as they realized who had woken them up (him, and not the Master or Riko), complaints started arising.
“The flame went out”, he simply said. “The Master wants everyone in the sanctuary in 25 minutes.”
That got their attention instantly. Kevin picked up his shower bag and headed towards the bathroom. He took a quick shower, then he headed to the Fountain, a bathtub made of black stone, that was built around an underground source. The water in it was flowing constantly, and its color was slightly green. He knelt beside it, scooped some of the water out and rinsed his face, making sure to get it in his eyes, nose and mouth. The sensation was still unpleasant to him, even after all these years. He repeated the process sixteen times, until his eyes felt raw.
On his way out, Thea stopped him. Thea never looked unphased, but her voice had a tinge of worry to it.
“So, now what?”
“Now we wait for the Messenger to come.”
“I meant – what if he doesn’t choose Riko? What if he’s not-”
“I’m guessing he’ll take out his anger on whoever’s in his reach. Us, most likely.”
They exchanged grim looks at the thought.
“You were around last time the flame was renewed. How did it go?”
Kevin shrugged. “We sat in the sanctuary. The Messenger got the signal and showed up six hours later. The Master burnt the sacred scrolls and the quest was spelled out, the Messenger told the Master who the chosen one was, then he left to fulfill the quest. He came back with the Artifacts, the ceremony was held, he was sacrificed on the altar and the new Guardians were appointed. The whole thing took about a week or so.”
Thea nodded.
“I really hope they chose Riko.’ Kevin added. ‘If they didn’t, the only one who’ll be safe from his wrath will be the Chosen one.”
“Hey, if it’s me, I’ll use my newfound holiness to protect you”, she jokingly promised.
The Sanctuary was a circle-shaped room, built on a meadow, in the woods surrounding the Castle. It had a circular window in the center of the dome, which let the moonlight in. The walls were black, covered in red tapestry that told the stories of the gods in forgotten languages all Ravens could read. The Artifacts from previous renewals were carefully hung where they fit in the stories.
In the center of the room, there was a marble pool, filled with the same greenish water, and in the middle of it, a stone altar, which held a golden cup. A bright flame usually burned in it, and was guarded at all times.
All sixteen Ravens pooled into the sanctuary, and kneeled one by one in rows, forming a half circle around the altar. Tetsuji, standing on the other side of the pool, dipped his hand in the water, then passed amongst them, wiping a wet thumb on each of their foreheads. They closed their eyes, and the crows began to sound. The waiting had started.
____
In a different part of the same city, a young man woke up to a bird-like apparition floating over his bed. The apparition was grey and smoldering, like it was made of burning coals. It opened a mouth that looked like a black hole, then went up in flames, and nothing was left of it but ashes falling on the blue blanket, and a tightly rolled scroll in his lap. A voice sounded in the room, delayed like thunder after lightning:
“Messenger, you’ve been marked.”
Neil Josten rubbed his eyes, squinting at where the thing -whatever the fuck it was- was floating seconds before. He yawned, picked the scroll up and looked at it for a few seconds, then decided out loud:
“Fuck that.”
Then he threw the scroll away, and went back to sleep.