The Bringers of the Night

The war was brewing. All of us ‘gifted’ ones could sense it; some more than others. Being an elemental, and having the element water, instinct, sensitivity and insightfulness were some of my specialities. I was one of the first to sense it.

I sat by the fire in my favourite chair as the dark day drew to a close. Every day was dark now in Cleveport. Astravarius was not designed for human contamination. Electricity, fuels and industry were all slowly killing the world. Already, the dawn rose as a dusty purple or blue every morning over the city. Never did it properly get light. If you travelled for miles out into the countryside or off into the ocean, then the day would be clear and pale blue and beautiful. The sun would penetrate through that endless, glassy space, and it would bathe the world in its golden rays. But, despite the fact we all knew we were killing our home, destroying our one and only world, we still continued. People still wanted televisions and computers and trains and telephones.

Not a lot more was available at the moment, but they all said they were looking into giving all humans their own personal transport—cars they called them. We all knew cars were a bad idea, but we were greedy enough to still want them. And they wanted to make electric games, and electric books and electric music and electric lights.

I didn’t believe in any of this. Astravarius was here long before the humans. Humans did not have a right to this planet; therefore we should leave it in the pristine state we found it in the primitive days of our ancestors.

Or we could protest and go and live in The West. Most of the western civilisations didn’t have any fuel-based transport. Few of them had running water in their homes. Hardly any of them had electricity—not even the basics like kitchen appliances.

The world was falling, and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it.

But that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was the constantly brewing war between the Light and the Dark.

Everyone in our world was Light or Dark. As a child, our auras were undecided, but everything we did throughout our childhood built up to what we would become. On the day of a person’s eighteenth birthday, their aura was set. Their fate was decided.

To my immense relief, I had become Light. That was a few months ago and, two weeks ago, I started Light school. That was our university. However, we learnt different things from the Dark people. Many of the leaders in our world were Dark because they had the drive and motivation, whereas we were taught more about having to be good people. However, the leaders were the only ones that held any true power. They were the ones that were killing our world. The Light weren’t happy. We were going to be caught up in a war if nothing changed.

It didn’t help that Minister Malvoritus was one of the darkest hearts on our earth. He was the Minister; the leader of the world; and he was ruining us. No one dared confront him, apart from the few Light Emperors, such as Emperor Varisii of Larveksia.

Larveksia was the wealthiest western civilisation. It was in the middle of the vast ocean, about a week’s boat trip from Cleveport in Perimenia, where I lived, but it was joined to the great landmass that was The West. There were two main landmasses on this world. Occasionally there were islands and disjointed countries—Perimenia was one of them, but it still belonged to The East. People always debated what to call Larveksia. It stuck out on a huge peninsula from the Western landmass, making it technically further east than the rest of The West. It had a more western culture, but it still had sense. It had running water and wealth and little bits of industry, but not enough to kill this world.

Our world was in danger. It wasn't hard to guess. And I hated Perimenia, along with our Emperor Loravel.

I turned on the news on TV, already guessing exactly what would be on: Emperor Loravel and, worse still, Minister Malvoritus ruining the world.

At that moment; the lock clicked and the front door swung open. It was Marta: my housemate.

‘Lena?’ she called.

‘Hi,’ I called back from the living room. The TV flickered into life, just in time for the news headlines. Call me whatever you like, but lately I’ve watched the news like my life depended on it. Lately, since being fully exposed to the horrors of the world—I’d done enough reading and researching over those endless summer holidays until I became a bit of an eco nerd. We all knew the planet would die if we kept on exploiting it like this, but only looking deeper into the situation did I realise how critical the situation already was. If we continued advancing technologically at the rate we were right now, human life would not be sustainable on Astravarius in a matter of decades.

The Light needed to do something about it. All us ‘eco nerds’ as the media called us were counting on Emperor Varisii of Larveksia to do something to help stop these problems. So far, war seemed the only answer.

‘Have you had a good day?’ I asked Marta as she walked in. She was studying history in her college course. I was studying creative writing. I knew it was never going to get me a job, but the way our world was running now, none of us would need jobs soon. I’d deal with getting a job when the time came. Hopefully being a water elemental would increase my chances.

‘It was alright,’ she replied. She walked into the kitchen to grind some coffee beans. ‘Is the news coming on?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. Almost on cue, the familiar jingle that signalled the start of the programme came on, and I sat back down in my chair. I couldn’t help but be so cynical as to wonder how much money and, more importantly, electricity and resources, had gone into making that computerised introduction to the programme alone.

‘Today’s headlines,’ read the newsreader, her bouncy, bluish hair sitting neatly on her shoulders. Her eyes were dark today, so no doubt the news was bad. She continued:

‘Minister Malvoritus has given permission for a new industrial estate to be built about five miles outside of Cleveport. The estate will be the second biggest in Perimenia, and will be used to house factories making all sorts of products, including The East’s first home computers. Should everything go to plan, the first computers could enter people’s homes for personal use in less than two years.’

Yeah. The world was getting even shittier.

‘Also in today’s headlines, in the last twenty-four hours, five people around the world have been claimed by Demons, the most recent of which occurred in Perimenia. As these events seem to increase, we ask whether today’s modern lifestyle is actually making people happier, or whether having luxuries such as televisions, telephones and trains, the production of which have increased dramatically in the last decade, just make us want more.’

Demons. They were the one driving force of today’s people. They were the only reason I hadn’t given up completely.

The Demons were there for people who thought their lives were unworthy. People were supposed to move on in life; mistakes were made and problems were faced, but we had to continue the journey. If we stopped and stood still and just sat around, waiting for things to change around us, no one would get anywhere. The people who did that—who didn’t control their own lives and didn’t ‘seize the day’ as everyone liked to say, were punished. They got Claimed.

The Demons were not living; nor were they dead. No one could see them apart from the person who they Marked. Once a person was Marked, it would be a matter of days before the Demons caught up with them. It could happen at any point—when they were alone in bed at night, or when they were in the city centre. They would freeze, and they would scream as they saw the monsters approach, although all the people around them would see nothing. They would begin to bleed, and eventually the Demon would suck the Last Breath from the person, and they would become one of the Soulless.

The Soulless were damned to wandering the world for all eternity. No one could see them, but modern scientific research had proven their existence. Other superhuman creatures like the vampires, werewolves and Wanderers could all see the Soulless, and recent contact with them had solidified the proof. They wandered the earth—pale and broken. They had no eyes and could barely see. They hurt almost constantly—if they were Light people, the dark of night was agonising, and if they were Dark people, going out in the light of day was unbearable. They were eternally trapped in this parallel world between life and death.

They were different to the Living Dead. The Living Dead were ghosts essentially; people who had died in our world with unfinished business. They could pass onto the other world once their business had been completed. They still had souls and often, people with special affinities and gifts—especially psychics and water and air elementals—like me—could see them. If they got broken, they could not mend, but their driving force was that they would one day enter into the other world. That could be Heaven, but no one really knew.

People could escape the Demons, but only those who had an advanced warning of their approach. Some people said they saw monsters in their dreams and in their shadows and in the corner of their eyes, and this fear drove them to make their life more worthwhile until the Demons focused on another target. However, overall, less than 1% of Marked people ever escaped. There was little hope if it happened.

So, if five people had been Claimed in one day, the world was going to end thousands of years sooner than we thought, and a war was brewing beneath the surface of the world, my question was simply: what was the world coming to?