WOTNA

It wasn’t long after the rains disappeared that what scientists called the 6th extinction began. My ancestors wrote that the chaos was of near biblical proportion. Even non-believers used the word Apocalypse. All of us began to believe blood would start to rain down from the sky. We should have known better, though. It wasn’t blood.

It was fire.

Without the rain, the winds started kicking up the dry and cracked land. A dustbowl arose, far more destructive than any that had come before because the dust wasn’t just dust anymore. They were particles laced with oil, refuse, acidity, and natural gasses.

Clumps reached up miles into the sky and spread across the entire country. When the lightning began (and never ended), the electromagnetic charges burned so hot that the dust caught fire. Anything stuck together and airborne had enough excess jet fuel, petrol, gas, or oxygen to burst into flames. Those flames fell to the earth setting fire to our cities, our homes, and our lives.

Also, when I say clumps of dust, I don’t mean anything larger than a grain of uncooked rice. Many like to retell the chaos of those days with a flair for the dramatic, a throwback to a time when oral history and folklore held as much sway as fact. I am not among them.

I write to understand.

Everywhere, the world was burning. The ash blocked out the sun. The winds pushed the fire-rain up into the north and down into the south. As far as people could tell, the western hemisphere was a death sentence.

Then reports of a dust bowl over Africa emerged. Natural resources became more precious than money. Clean food became a type of currency. Communication became intermittent spurts of relayed messages bounced via the technologies of that time. The only hope for those inside of the fallen Americas was to head east across the sea toward Europe, toward the Eye of the global storm.

A curious side effect to the burning sky was that the top layer of the ocean would catch fire and glow for miles. Cooler water from the deep would quell the flames but even the oceans were not fully immune. The sailors who chartered their ships to the Eye had become horribly burned in their travels, but their skin – melted and deformed – became impervious to heat. Their hair burned off and they lost their sense of smell. The thing these men held most sacred was their eyes and took to wearing goggles clouded with ash. This is why artists depict these men as having piercing blue eyes against a charred face. These sailors are still known to this day as the Burning Men, and these men possess The Eyes of God.

From a population of billions reduced to tens of millions, to then a few million, borders of the ancient world dissolved giving way to the rise of the six great Factions. The Leaders met and drew up borders for their land and people. All had different rules, resources, and cultures. The six great Factions were as follows:

Argos – After the Greek legend of the Argonauts who sailed to obtain the Golden Fleece.

My family had landed in Argos. From what they wrote, the civilization was mostly democratic. They elected a ruler, a type of rank called the Jason. They referred to themselves as Argonauts.

Lemuria – named after the fabled lost continent said to contain insight into mysticism and a doorway to the new age.

Cosmos – After the thinkers and scientists who dared to ask the bold and unconventional questions about the unknown.

Dynasty 0 – A hybrid of cultures blending in martial skill, warriors, tradition, superstition, and strict regimen.

New Machu – A people who brought with them the spirit of conquest, mythology, and a belief in spiritualism.

Hell – A Faction of survivors who refused to abide by the laws of any man or woman during the Age of Fire.

This is also where criminals were sent. They were cast out of the Factions and ordered to live in the borderlands closest to the edges of the storm. It became law that anyone sent to live in Hell would adopt the title Demon and incur great facial scars making them immediately recognizable as unwelcomed guests.

Yet, this didn’t stop people from being people.

History likes to harmonize with itself, and history has taught us that when people are forced together under dire circumstances, there isn’t much peace. Though the world was ending, border disputes erupted. Slaughters between Factions happened when hunger became too much. The eye of the storm was constantly closing and shifting, which forced the all of the Factions continuously inward and towards each other.

Those who had survived were constantly on the precipice of a civil war and at the end, it was predicted, that would be the last of our species.

The population slowly dying off, the rest preparing for a civil war to end all of humanity; hope emerged in the most unlikely of places. Eleven friends changed the course of history by doing something so simple that most had already lost sight of what it truly meant.

They were doing what they loved.

Small barns in rural areas were host to something that inspired a movement to which even the ashen winds and fire rains could not stop.

It was during this time that I met Caspian Silver and I understood the importance of what they were doing, what was truly happening, and why history needed us.

“Rosalyn,” he told me, “write this down because more than what happened, people will want to know why it happened. You, out of everyone, will understand the most. There is truth in fire, both within us as well as the world outside. Be honest to the point of pain. That’s all I ask.”

And so I obliged.