The Black King
I am not exactly sure who really leads this city I have been apart of for fifteen years. They call him THE BLACK KING, yet no one has ever seen him. We do not know his gender, age, background and for all I know he could be a pink elephant with wings. All we know is he is the ruler of Heraclion the great city of survivors.
Seventy years after the world was predicted to end it did. In a glorious and almost divine fashion. Everyone expected the world to end by a huge asteroid crashing into the earth and causing a domino effect cataclysm but being the humans that we are, we just simply could not allow some silly space object to take the credit for our destruction. No we had to bestow that credit upon ourselves.
While everyone was focusing on what used to be North Korea and it's largely frowned upon nuclear weapons development. No one except top level personnel were aware that various trusted governments all over the world was funding PROJECT GAMMA. This project was used to produce bombs with the gamma ray power of the sun. They told my great great grandparents that it was for the good of the whole human race that this project was being undertaken. Even I in my fifteen year old state figured out that nothing good could have come from it.
In the year 2040 the first gamma ray bomb test was a success. However the rest of the world knew not of its existence. By 2043 the plan was set in motion. The Black King could not have risen in a world where radical thinkers were rampant and people literally had no use for a king because they were autonomous. He had to rise out of devastation,despair and the lowest point of human history when we were at our weakest. Only then could he dominate, control and forcibly build an empire in his image and glory.
The day the world ended is the stuff of legends. The morning was abnormally bright. Lavender scented winds caressed the earth and gave everyone a euphoric feeling. According to the story every single person on earth was happy that day. Which would have been odd to me had I been there. Everyone went merrily about their daily routines blissfully unaware that the bomb of death was already circling the periphery of the earth's atmosphere. Everyone including reporters were unaware of the movements of world leaders and important people into a bunker, the Retorects were the last to enter the bunker before the bomb hit.
A heavenly light flooded the earth with halos and hallelujahs so much so that most people thought that God had arrived and frantically knelt down in a last ditch attempt to atone for unforgiven sins. In an instant that light of goodness turned to darkness and death. Eyes melted in their sockets, flesh peeled from bone, waters simply evaporated, cars melted into the asphalt they had often abused with their sheer weight and tires. Everything conceivable disintegrated into oblivion. The world ended like a child dying in their sleep, without warning and without a sound; the world as they knew it ceased to exist.
The Retorects an ancient society used the souls of the damned to resurrect The Black King. Legend has it he existed before in some distant time long forgotten by human history. This time he intended not just to exist but to utterly dominate the human race and the mistakes he made before would not be repeated.
Soon after his resurrection the construction of Heraclion commenced. Lessons we recite at school tell us he alone constructed the city by calling it out of the earth. Heraclion Prime a shrine built in honor of him and where it is fabled he resides is built out of pure unyielding white limestone, that glints blindingly in sunlight. Oh the irony of it all a Black King in a White City. The six Retorects that resurrected him, he betrayed and transformed them into evil half spirits we call Red Wraiths. They are so deadly if even one of their wisps touch even a strand of hair on your head you would degenerate into a bloodless pile of vessels and capillaries.
Through the Wraiths he rules with fear and horror. He is always watching, his eyes are everywhere, he knows everything. No one who has ever entered he palace has ever returned alive. The last uprising that took place every person in the underclass was tortured with fire rain. Literal drops of fire that burns white hot when it touches your skin but amazingly does not kill. Most people here walk around with the ugly scars of that day.
There are whispers so soft that not even the wind can hear. Whispers of a person The Black King is deathly afraid of, they call the person HER. She will be the one to end his reign and bring hope and light back to the human race. Some say she hasn't even been born yet but I know the truth. She is out there in the barren ice of Cashmore Mountains she escaped long before anyone knew she existed. The Black King is building an army specifically to wage war against her. They say her touch is colder than the heat of fire but it soothes away all pain. They say she can exist in any shape or form and she wields pure water like an expert swordsman would his sword.
The water part is what intrigues me for I have only seen pure water once in my entire life. It was so clear I could see straight through it and when I put my finger into it, it gurgled and rippled like a bouncing baby. I cannot believe that pure water was abundant before the world ended it all just seems like a dream now.
A near impossible feat to escape the stranglehold of The Black King but one I must attempt. The plan has been made, it only needs to be executed now but that my friends is another story waiting to be written.