Candles burning, he steps out from the pool inlaid into the altar space, the leader was ready for him. Pouring the freezing water over his steaming body, he screams in frustration at the state of the world today, and the potential cataclysmic future to come.
“You are ready, come join us in our mission.”
The leader kisses his brother on the forehead and releases him to do good work. The descend the steps of the altar together as the final blessing is complete and they step into their combat gear simultaneously.
Leaving the altar room, they ascend the stone steps to a higher point in the old church building on the outskirts of the city, hidden conveniently behind a ridge of mountainous terrain yet still visible from the tips of the crumbling structure, allowing the observers to gaze down upon the corruption below. The leader and his protégé burst out onto the flattened surface of the tallest spire, surrounded with high spike-topped spears tearing through the night sky, they joined their comrades.
“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we make our move. We have waited for this moment as we have watched humanity enhance their artificial existences into a state of blissful ignorance. Tonight we begin to end this capitalist regime of technological torment. Who is with me?”
Joining hands, the circle dressed in black say nothing.
“We mourn the death of humanity on this night. We seek to take from them, they in their curated cubes of habitation, the key to their success; soon to be the key to our salvation, we take from them their light and liberty from mother nature’s grasp. Let us go and do her work.”
With that as its cue to wake, the night chopper began slicing through the air, whipping up a nearby mist in its spiral and carried those inside to their long-awaited destiny. A long tail trailed behind as the driver retracted its spines into the underside.
Gliding across the town, the craft passes over the city and all of its inhabitants as they went about their night unknowing of the developments to follow.
The heli’s journey was a calm hiss as they passed overhead. In the suburbs, a candlelight memorial walk for a local suicide slowly turned a corner into a neighbouring suburb as they mourned the death of yet another loved one, succumbed to the pressures of the new social hierarchy. As they lifted higher into the sky to soar over the taller buildings in the centre they saw all the way to the coastline; a tall castle loomed out over the sea looking out into the distance while keeping an eye on the progress of the growing city to its back.
Zooming over the taller skyscrapers the crew inside watched as countless screens blinded the shoppers and dawdlers on the streets below with advertisement after advertisement on the wonders of METAL. Dazzled eyes stare up at the marketing as a black shape crawled across the stars above them.
Coming to hover above the infamous METAL announcement venue, the chopper waits impatiently for its moment to strike. Long tendril curling down, poised to strike, a hatch in the floor opens to present the target area as several guided charges are sent plummeting down to latch on to the intricate structure.
In the seconds before the controlled explosion on the roof, a passer by happens to look up into the sky and watches as a man falls from what looks like a scorpion floating in the sky.
One single scream is heard from outside as the roof is popped open like a can and the prize is extracted from the guts of the building.
Elle is pulled from her sanctuary, hanging upside down with her long hair flowing in the darkened wind. The tendril is firmly wrapped around her most prized possession…
…METAL.
The Next Chapter 