This is the prologue to my pride and joy - so you'd better enjoy it! The Elemental Stones has been my literary baby since I was about 13. But the world goes back to when I was 12, probably. I started to write a book about a boy called Tim, and I knew that there would be a series of his adventures. And then I knew that there would be a trilogy [The Elemental Stones] where his son would have his own adventure and Tim would take a backseat. As it turned out, I was more excited about the son's story.
Throughout its existence, The Elemental Stones has undergone many evolutions and drafts. Originally, the villains were evil twins called Vekuiah and Vokuiah. What can I say, I was 12! As I grew older and matured, so did the story until its form here and now. Enjoy:
They were savages now. Dependent on anything they could find. Food was becoming more and more scarce in the dark, barren wasteland, aptly renamed as “Nothing”. It really was a nightmare for the civilization. But the past for these human beings, though now they were barely human or being, was far from great or powerful.
The older “Nothingmen” told stories to the younger ones, before they were eaten. Stories of tyrannical queens with powers beyond belief. Powers over the natural forces. Elemental powers.
“They were tyrants,” the old men would say, in cracked and husky voices. “They ruled over with a fist of Jumbantine. But at least we were fed and watered.”
The old men would then sigh, dreaming of those days when life consisted of heat, woods, water and winds. Then they would speak of the revolution.
“We were angry. Furious at our oppression.”
The old men recounted the stories of the angry mobs that gathered at the base of the Temple of the Queens, shouting for freedoms. The youths of the civilization sat around the fire, listening to the elders. They daren’t interrupt. The longer the story took, the longer it was until it was time to eat.
“The Queens did not react kindly.”
The old men could remember the outrage in response to the action the Queens took to suppress the revolution – to create a new land, a mirror image of the original.
“Further riots led to the degradation of our home, and the enhancement of the twin.”
As the Queens removed their power, forests had withered, lakes and rivers had drained away, the sun and stars stopped burning, and the air stood still, dry and stale.
For many, the extreme suppression of food, water and happiness was too much. They abandoned the protection of the community and wandered away into the darkness. “We could remember from our glory days what lay beyond the darkness – mountains, that we rarely crossed. We had no reason to before – we were in paradise!” But that paradise had long since gone, and many felt that nature may still exist beyond the peaks and left us. The remaining community, stayed in their cove in the corner of the land surrounded by mountains and the walls of the world.
“All the beautiful qualities of our home…were gone.”
The elders always seemed to weep at this point, and who could blame them? The Nothingmen had been belittled to little more than rats and pests living in sewers. The Queens had continued to live there, gloating in their palace that continued to be filled with wonders and life.
“We made sure that it wouldn’t last.”
A group of rebels had been planning this move for months and it was finally ready. They had created four orbs – one for each Queen. They had made a crude fire with what dry wood still existed and had melted the sand and dust from the ground with the titanically strong metal, Jumbantine. This coarse and crude mixture was the material that made the orbs. The rebels had stole into the palace and, through a process lost through the years, imprisoned the Queens within the orbs. The orbs began to glow with the life of the elements and what life had existed within the palace walls died.
“We sent three of the orbs away over hundred year periods, over the mountains to be scattered and lost.” It would only be at the reunion of the four orbs at the summit of the palace that the Queens would be released to restore their powers.
“Now, the fourth and final orb, the one we decided we would keep as a symbol of our victory over the Queens, is gone as well.” It had been sent away after fears it was sought after to be stolen. A stranger asking questions. Simny, she called herself. A ginger-haired woman. A bright colour we hadn’t seen in our land for so long. She wanted the Orbs. She never gave a reason. She just wanted them. “We didn’t want anyone outside our species to take the Stones. What if our fears came true?” But the fourth orb is gone, and with it the unanswered questions and the woman.
“We entered a time of even greater and desperate need – the state that we are in even now. Resorting to cannibalism for food and petty raids upon our homeland’s twin for everything else.”
The Hall had not suffered. The Queens, sly in their actions, had each invoked their power into a single being – a creature that would keep the Hall full of elemental life. This creature would taste the pleasures and displeasures of immortality until the reunited Queens so decided. “We do not intend for the Queens to be reunited though. The damned creature will live for always through war and famine and disease.”
The traitor to nature was amongst the first of the inhabitants of the Hall, and will be the last as well. The Birds command ultimate power over both lands. “They have grown careless, however, and have forgotten about us, despite our continuous raids on their land.” The old man sat up straight and stared into the darkness. “There, you have our story. Devour me.” And he was no more.
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