Prologue

Prologue

 

                   

 

 

 

         Watch. Unblinking. There, another light flits out in the velvet darkness. A solitary figure, dressed from head to toe in a starlight blue cloak, stands atop the remains of a crumbled tower, one delicate white hand clenching on the crumbled remains of a battlement, her heart feeling close to breaking. She heaves a profound sigh that carries the regret of ages.

Cowled head tilted back, she forces herself to watch the night sky a moment longer, not allowing herself to tear her eyes away. And oh how she wishes she could look away! Another star flickers and dies, leaving only a void, like the last spark of life leaving a dying person’s eyes. The figure lowers her head and closes her eyes in anguish, unable to bear the sight any longer.

            “Another world lost,” she whispers, as a silver tear drops down her cheek to make an imprint in the dust at her feet. The watcher had witnessed the birth and death of countless worlds. But this- this was different. It wasn’t just one or even two worlds ending. It was all of them. The Temporal War had torn the very fabric of time and space, and because of it the multiverse was dying.

            With slow, deliberate strides the figure approaches the cracked edge of the tower and steps off into thin air. But instead of falling, as one might expect, she seems to hover there like some strange ethereal bird. Spreading her arms wide to either side, making her look even more like a bird, the figure soars across the dark sky, scrutinizing the forlorn landscape below her with heartbreak in her eyes.

This desolation was another mark of how things had changed. In her flight she passes over the burned remnants of a forest where no living creature had set paw for centuries, the broken bones of a once mighty city, part of a civilization that once thrived here. It seemed that not even creepers and thorns dared grow here any longer.    

            This world, too, was dead, the figure noted with a heavy heart. It just hadn’t gone through its fiery cremation yet.

            The watcher could vividly recall how beautiful this planet once was, how much potential its people had shown, before the Temporal War stole all that away. A fresh stream of tears courses down her cheeks at the terrible loss laid bare below. She could still see the shining cities, vibrant with life and laughter as if they still stood.

            The watcher knows she has failed in her most sacred duty, her life’s purpose, to guard and guide the history of all worlds. Somehow everything had gone terribly wrong, and the whole tapestry of the multiverse was unraveling before her eyes. She would try to grasp at one broken thread, coax it back into the weave, but just as quickly another unraveled. Nothing had turned out as it was meant to be.

            “What could I have done?” the figure laments to the forsaken earth, outspread arms drooping helplessly. “Or is it too late?” she whispers more quietly. No, she silently berates herself. There has to be another way. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end, and she refused to believe that this was the way it had to be.

            Continuing to hover over the desolation, the eyes of the watcher turn inward, the world around her fading to her periphery as she looks back across the ages in a frantic search for… something, anything to stop all this.

            Using the innate powers of her race to see the lives of all living things and how they fit into the great weave of history, she sorts through the life-threads of countless people of different races, a great jumble of shining threads flowing out in all directions.  Only a being such as herself could have hoped to interpret that conflagration.

            The figure suddenly gasps, eyes going wide, as her mind’s eye is drawn to one particular life-thread that glows more brightly than any others, shining out like a beacon on a stormy sea. She smiles for the first time in ages as she focuses in on that thread.

            Wait, there were two of them! Yes, two threads inextricably wound together so they hardly counted as two.

Following the course of these lives, the watcher suddenly frowns as the threads come to an abrupt end before they truly begin. She knew all too well what that meant; in the history she had seen come to pass, they had not survived to complete their destined role in the course of events. A role she could plainly see looking at an alternative history in which the two threads continued on.

Their deaths were never supposed to happen, the figure realizes. And because they had never gotten the chance to influence the course of events, the weave of history had been broken. The watcher quickly follows this logic to its conclusion, and a smile breaks out once more under the cowl. If these two should live…

The figure alights on a hilltop in a spurt of dust, her breath coming hard and fast with uncontainable excitement and elation. A bright seed of hope flares inside her breast, and her eyes close in sheer relief. She offers a quiet, heartfelt prayer of thanks to the night sky.

            “Thank the Maker for showing me the way. I will not fail again, my beloved people. I will find a way to save you as I could not before, a way to save us all. By my lost wings, I swear this.”  Her voice rose in intensity, full of steely determination.         

         Reaching behind one slender shoulder, the figure draws an ornate silver staff from its leather sheath on her back. Raising the staff high above her head, she abruptly slams the butt end hard against the ground, sending ghostly ripples through the dust. The air begins to shimmer and twist, an unseen wind lifting and tossing the folds of the watcher’s cloak. There is a sudden blinding flash of light and when it fades, the lone figure is gone, not even a pair of footprints in the dust to show she had ever been there.

            Up above, another star winks into blackness.  

Reviews

[DaughterNature]

I immediately like the situation, the premise behind what you're doing. However, in the third paragraph, when you explain the Temporal War, it feels very... obvious? Easy? Try to make sure that your narrative is self-contained and that the reader learns and understands through the fabric of the narrative, rather than having you insert explanatory sections. May I ask, why did you choose third-person present-tense? Also, if we are so closely following the "watcher," why is she constantly referred to as "the figure?" Again, if you're going to choose present-tense, make sure you stick with it -- past-tense is often easier to maintain. I wonder, as I continue to read through this first part, if this might be better in first-person? Why did the watcher not notice the special life threads earlier? Lots of questions, perhaps they are answered farther through, but, if not, make sure to consider them during your revisions. Excited to read on!