Chapter One
Hate Born
Explosions rocked the night and Loric felt the air in his chest shudder out, as he was overcome with fear. He ran with everything he had toward the great Hall ahead of him, as tears blurred his vision of it in the darkness. A streak of green fire sizzled out over top of his head and slammed into the ancient Hall ahead of him. The shockwaves from the explosion picked Loric up off his feet and threw him flying backwards to land hard on his back on the icy ground.
Loric looked up to see that the outer stone façade of the Hall had been shattered and the now exposed great oaken beams that were centuries-old and centuries in the making were wreathed in flames. Surging up to his feet Loric screamed out from the very inmost pit of his being, “No!!!”
More green fire slammed into the surrounding buildings causing the ground to shake beneath him violently, even as the night sky was lit up by the corresponding flames of destruction.
“Loric! What are you doing? You must come now! There is but one of the ships left! We have to go!” Cried out Loric’s mother, even as she grabbed him and started tugging him back down the hill.
“But father! We must bring him with us mother!” Loric cried out resisting against her hold on him, as much as a strong seven-year-old could.
“He died Loric! He died yesterday! I didn’t have the heart to tell you. We have to go now or we’ll miss the last ship to Assoria!” Loric’s mother said her face awash with tears and heavy emotion.
Loric followed after her stumbling, as she led him by the hand through the burning wreckage that had been their home. Father was dead! It was the only thought that repeated over and over in Loric’s consciousness. It was so loud that he neither heard nor noticed any of the carnage that was befalling what remained of Thunder Ridge.
They ran headlong down the hill toward the ship docks, but they were too late. The last two airships lifted into the night sky silhouetted against the embers of Thunder Ridge’s destruction. One of the airships began to increase in speed, and the other one started to follow but suddenly exploded into a giant fireball of falling debris, as it received several direct hits from enemy ships that had suddenly loomed out of seemingly nowhere.
Loric and his mother drew to a halt, as they watched in stunned horror, as their means of escape disappeared before them. Green glimmering light shafts touchdown repeatedly all over the burning castle grounds, from the overhead enemy cruisers as they passed by. As the green shafts of light disappeared Rattan gunfire began to blaze out, as enemy soldiers infiltrated the grounds of Thunder Ridge from their beam down locations. Those still left alive within the castle grounds soon fell prey to the enemy.
Loric and his mother ducked in and around buildings in a desperate attempt to avoid detection, but they both knew that they couldn’t find sanctuary here within the castle, because the place would be completely destroyed just as all the southern Valley Lander cities had been destroyed over a week before.
They rounded a corner and smacked into two enemy soldiers. Loric’s mother let go of his hand and grabbed a hold of both soldiers, “Run Loric!” She screamed out desperately.
Loric turned and ran, as his insides felt like mush. He’d made it twenty feet, when some greater will then his fear made him stop. He turned to see his mother screaming on the ground with one of the men on top of her, while the other one held her down. Fear was replaced by blind fury, as he yanked the small hunting knife free that his father had just given him for his seventh birthday not over a month ago. He ran screaming towards the two men, who were hurting his mother.
A blow to the back of his head sent him falling to the ground. Raising his head in a daze of pain Loric still saw his mother in need of help and he started to crawl toward her, but a second blow to his head sent him into a world of nothingness and he let go of the knife and fell into the darkness.
Slowly, Loric realized the first feelings of awareness and pain, as he became aware of his surroundings. He lifted his head up off what he realized was the lap of a girl not much older than himself. The lighting was dim in the cargo hold that he and several other children were locked in. They were probably headed toward the Tranquil Islands even now.
Loric turned his head to look at the girl; whose lap his head had been laying on. He had never seen her before.
“My name is Soralee. I come from a small village further down the valley from Castle Eschol. Where are you from?
“Thunder Ridge.” Loric responded softly.
There were several gasps among the other children, but Soralee was the first to respond, “That’s bad! We had all hoped…… well we hoped that they would hold out. Is Thunder Ridge gone?”
“Yes, all gone.” Was all that Loric could manage to say, as he valiantly tried to hold back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him and reduce him to a blubbering idiot. This wasn’t the time to be weak. He had to be like his father. Had been, came the responding somber realization, as he remembered that his father was dead.
The ship they were on started to descend and they all knew then that they had reached the Tranquil Islands, home of the worst traitors ever to be known to this world. Loric pledged to kill every last one of them. He swore it with every fiber of his young soul.
Loric was jerked into a small square room and tied down to a chair by two men. He tried to bite one, but was sharply backhanded across the face for his efforts.
“You’ve got a live one there Dr. Tagean!” Said one of the men, as they both made their way out the door.
“Good! That’s what I like to see! The stronger willed ones fall the hardest and hate the most!” Said a short baldheaded man, who had stepped out of the shadows of the back part of the room. The man had a look of calculated cruelty about him and Loric instantly felt trepidation for what was to come, as he looked upon the man.
The man spoke, “Well has it been said, that if you want a soldier you can find one anywhere, but if you want a warrior than you need look no farther than the Valley Lands. Your people, boy, were truly a great and noble race of warriors, but soon all that will exist of your people after we have finished rounding them up will be you and a few others. You’re only being spared, because you’re part of a research project of mine. I intend to make warriors of renown out of all of the boys we’ve caught, who will be loyal to us and the enlightenment of our cause.”
“Never!” Loric screamed out in defiance.
The man only chuckled evilly in reply, “You will have no choice in the matter, which is a good thing for you, as I shall show you.”
The man pressed the button and the wall before Loric’s chair became clear and revealed a room like the one he was in on the other side of the glass partition. Sitting in the chair bound was Soralee. She looked very scared, as two men stood off to either side of her.
“I had wanted to keep some of the females, for strictly breeding purposes of course, but my superiors have deemed it too much of a risk. They fear that allowing any remnant of your people the ability to create others such as yourself could prove to be a liability in time. I tried to assure them otherwise, but they wouldn’t listen. So you see dear boy that you to me represent literally a once in a lifetime opportunity by which to perfect my science. Now about your choice. You have the ability to choose how the girl before you will die.”
One of the men in the other room put a gun like device next to Soralee’s throat and squeezed off the trigger. Soralee jerked hard and looked as if she was in great pain for a moment. The baldheaded man, who was Loric’s tormentor, pressed a device into Loric’s hand that had a single red button on it.
Loric looked up at the man and then back to the control in his hand and the man explained, “Press that button and poison will be instantly released into the girl and she will die quickly. This is your choice, kill her quickly or watch her be killed slowly and painfully.” The man said drawling his words out, as if he wished to savor the moment.
Loric looked up at him pleadingly, as tears ran down his cheeks, “Please, please don’t do this!”
The man looked away, as if completely disgusted by what he saw. “Begin.” Was all he said in response to Loric’s desperate pleading.
The two men on the other side of the glass lifted whips, which they lashed out at Soralee with. The whips left thin lines of blood in the wake of every strike.
“Stop! Please! Don’t hurt her!” Loric screamed out, as he twisted frantically in the chair he was tied to, the button remaining un-pushed. His tormentor held up a hand and the butchery in the other room stopped.
“I told you the way of it boy. It is for you to give her peace. Kill her!”
Soralee lifted her head up and her eyes met Loric’s through the glass. They stared at each other for a long moment as both of them cried. She mouthed out one word, “Please.”
Loric shook his head back and forth in denial of what she was asking him to do. Dr. Tagean raised his hand and the two men began to whip Soralee again. Blood ran down Loric’s face, from where he had bit his lip, in the anguished fervor of his denial of the hell that was unfolding in his life. Soralee’s bloody face lifted once more pleadingly to his and he pressed the red button with his thumb. Soralee briefly convulsed and then she slumped lifelessly forward in the chair.
Dr. Tagean began to clap loudly, “Well done boy! So tell me how does it feel to kill? It’s a powerful feeling isn’t it?”
Loric turned his bloodshot eyes up towards Dr. Tagean and reached out toward him, as he fought the bindings holding him chained to the chair, every fiber and muscle in his young body standing out in strained relief. The boy, who had been called Loric, growled and snarled in his eagerness to kill his tormentor, as deranged as any maddened predator could be with the need to kill.
“I love it! I see hate in your eyes and that is a very good thing! Hate gives you strength, which you will need in plentiful supply, if you are to survive my experiments.”
One of Loric’s hands tore free of the restraints and he reached out towards Dr. Tagean desperate to grab a hold of him. Dr. Tagean motioned to an attendant, who came up behind Loric and stuck a needle in his neck. Loric after a brief moment of struggle went limp in the chair unconscious.
“This one is special. Assign him first class status. Take him to the lower level surgery unit, so that the procedure can be done immediately. By tonight we will be doing his thinking for him and he will do all that I ask and more. He will be the perfect soldier by which we will usher in and enforce our new society. And now let us go on to the next child, hopefully he does not disappoint given this one’s remarkable qualities.” Tagean said, as he and the two men with whips headed to the next room, which was only one of many in the long hall of the underground bunker.
Loric was loaded up onto a gurney and wheeled off down the hall to lower portions of the underground facility, which went by the name of Enlightenment Society Bunker Number 3.