Earth 5
That night Autumn had a strange dream. She was standing up on the West Hills, overlooking Portland. A house stood behind her and she was able to see the entire city sprawled out below. It was daytime but the clouds and sunlight seemed to belong more to the evening sky. A low cover of red and sickly brown clouds hovered over the city. It looked like the pollution had gotten so bad that it distorted the color of the world. The trees and grass beneath her feet felt warm and prickly on her bare feet. However, something was not quite right.
Autumn moved herself forward until she was directly at the edge of the ledge of the cliff. She hoped that if she could lean out over the ledge and get close enough, she just might be able to see what was driving her intuition insane. She leaned her body forward as far as it could lean before falling down the cliff, she strained and squinted her eyes as they darted left and right over the cityscape.
Her eyes narrowed as they sought out the cause for her disconcern. As she moved her eyes closer to the middle of downtown, the dream shifted views. Instead of seeing all of downtown from atop the cliff, Autumn focused in on a small section of downtown. There, standing in front of the Rose Garden arena was a large group of people and a stage. Only a small fraction of the crowd had their attention focused on what was happening on the stage. These people all wore the same clothes; black military style pants with black collared shirts. They had heavy black boots on and many had machine guns slung over their shoulders. The shirts all had a red emblem with the insignia of a black bird that was drawn almost like a Pacific Northwestern Indian rock cutting with its wings spread out and 4 individual feathers pointing downwards. They were cheering and shouting what looked like responses to questions and passages a man was saying through a loudspeaker.
Somehow Autumn knew that what was happening on stage was not anything good. That the people with guns where some new military force and they were forcing themselves as the new government in the town. Those that did not wear the black uniform did not really pay attention to what was going on. It was almost as if they did not see what was happening on stage. They milled around, talking to one anther, making deals, shopping and carrying on about their daily business. Autumn felt a wave of sadness wash over her as she watched them carry on, unaware of some terrible fate about to befall them.
Autumn focused her attention to the stage. There was nothing special about the stage itself. It was made of boxed risers pushed together and a six foot long table was placed in a third from the back of the middle of the stage. A silver cloth covered the top of the table and two candle holders with three candles burning red and orange flames sat near the center of the edges. Autumn stretched her neck out further and saw that there was another item on the table. It was about a foot long and was thin, gold and cylindrical. It looked a lot like a longer version of a wand used by her pagan friends in their ceremonies. Features adorned one end of the wand and near the tip a purple stone sparkled from the light of the sun. Two smaller stones appeared near the top of the shaft, one dull to the rays of the sun and the other reflecting tiny rainbows onto the table cloth.
In front of the table, a man paced back and forth on the stage. He held a grey colored bull horn in one hand and it seemed to never move away from his mouth. Unfortunately Autumn was not able to hear the words that were coming out of the bull horn but he seemed to be excited and energetic as if he was ready to perform a ritual. He wore robes made of cotton that appeared to be dyed blood red. A gold necklace hung around his neck, with an deep black obsidian stone statue of the same tribal carving of a raven dangled from the end of it. The man had short black hair that moved slightly in the breeze coming through the streets of downtown. He raised his fist high into the air and it sent a frenzy of cheers and raised guns high into the air from the crowd of onlookers.
A boy emerged from out of the crowd and took a big step onto the stage. He wore the same black uniform as the rest of the crowd did, but there was something familiar about him. His long, wavy brown hair and nervous facial features seemed very familiar to Autumn. She cocked her head to the left side and squinted her eyes once more, faces of persons she knew from her past entered and passed through her mind as she tried to find a suitable match for this boy. Then she went through recent bookstore patrons, and that is when it struck her. The boy on the stage was the same one that she met earlier in the store. Autumn gasped and her heart beat faster. She felt pain and deathly fear emminate from deep within his spirit.
The crowd cheered as the boy smiled nervously at the onlookers. The robed man set down his bull horn and moved near the boy. He then touched the boy's face lovingly. The boy twitched a bit and took a step backwards, his eyes nervously darting around for a place to escape. Autumn clasped her hands over her mouth and watched the scene below unfold, hoping that it would not end in a bad way. She feared for the boy and wished she could yell out to him, to run and escape his fate. The boy turned his back on the robed man. The man smiled and pulled something from behind his back, it glinted in the sunlight and when he held it high over his head Autumn saw what it was. A curved knife, used in many old fashioned sacrificial rites. The crowed cheered as the robed man swung the knife down hard and into the boy's back. His eyes cried out in horror and blood spilled from out of the corners of his mouth. Shock and confusion spread over his face and he collapsed to the ground.
More cheers rose from the crowd and then rose outward towards the sky in chant. Autumn tried to hold her breath to catch the words that were being said over and over and over. The robed man moved back to the table and picked the wand looking item up. The crowd continued to chant the words, that were now becomming clearer and clearer. "Mortis multo mundus, mortis multo mundus." The robed man held the wand over the dead boy's body and repeated the chanted words along with the crowd, "Mortis multo mundus."
A hush fell over the crowd, as the robed man cried out with a sudden yealp of pain and confusion. A bolt of lightening shot down from the darkening sky above and crashed into the man. His body, jolted by the wave of energy, dropped to the knees and the wand hung limply in the man's arms. The crowd continued to watch, speechless, unsure of what to do next. The man slowly stood to his feet, throwing his head backwards to the heavens. A gigantic laughter boomed deep from within his chest. A nervous wave of energy passed through the crowd and Autumn and many people started walking backwards, their eyes transfixed on the events unfolding on the stage.
The robed man's head lolled back to meet the receeding line of followers. His eyes opened as he continued to laugh, and instead of seeing human eyes appear from the robed man's eye sockets, they were replaced by a un-natural yellow glow. The man swung the wand high up into the air and called forth, "Mortis fero exitium urbis. Ego novus dei."
As soon as the robed man spoke those words the clouds in the sky grew dark. The sun's rays of yellow light dimmed and a black glow spread across the city. It was like the sun had died and no longer continued to carry life sustaining energy over the world. Some of the uniformed people bowed down and started a new chant, "Blackstone dia," while rocking their bodies back and forth. Others cried out in fear and terror as the world grew darker and darker. They ran away from the robed figure on the stage whose eyes continued to glow with intense light. Panic spread amoung the people standing near the Rose Garden arena as the uniformed men ran as fast as they could from the horrible events occuring. Soon, everyone save a handful of people chanting "Blackstone dia," moved as fast as they could away from the center of the city.
As her eyes moved closer to the man standing in the center of the stage, a bright white flash caught Autumn's eye. It had appeared out of the nearby center of downtown Portland. And then a small ball of yellow appeared directly above the Rose building near the waterfront. Autumn knew she was not supposed to see that as clearly from where she was standing so far away but such as the vision of dreams, she saw it clearly. The ball hovered over the building and slowly started growing outward. As it spread, the intensity of the glow grew. Laughter filled the sky as the glow grew outward and downwards, enclosing the whole city in its grasp, spreading outwards towards the West Hills, North, East and South parts of the city and beyond. As the glow crept over Autumn she cried out and clasped her hands over her eyes. The flash was so bright and hot it hurt her eyes and skin, burning the edges until the tears inside them faded off her face in small puffs of steam.
And then, as the heat from the flash faded, Autumn carefully lowered her hands from her face and opened one eye. What she saw, was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen. Where the great skyscrapers and towers of downtown Portland once stood, there was nothing but a deep hole in the ground. There was no debris, no broken building frames marking where the great buildings once stood, nothing. She panned her eyes towards where the blue Willamette River flowed the waters into the Columbian River. Hoping to see a familiar sight of water flowing downstream, her gaze was met with nothing but dirt. All the water that was once inside the river was gone. Evaporated. Tears flowed down Autumn's face as her mind attempted to cope with the reality of what was going on.
Huge winged creatures suddenly appeared from the sky. Their giant black wings beat against the stale, arid air. The creature in front, shook its head and opened its mouth. A terrible cry, that seemed to sound like a cross between a cat's cry and an elephant emitted from between its human like face. Autumn ducked as they flew over her head. Up close she could tell that they were humanoid but their mouths were filled with fangs and they had giant leathery wings. Staring at them, only one word rang out from her mind as to what they could be. Daemons. They were daemons.
The pack of daemons continued their flight down into the city. Autumn followed them down into where the Rose Garden arena once stood. Instead of seeing a city full of people, she only saw daemons. And there, on the ground, still holding the wand high in the air stood the man, wearing the blood red robes, his eyes still glowing yellow and a smile appeared on his face. There were no uniformed men below the stage, they had all been insinerated. The daemons dropped from the sky and folded their wings. Then they bowed to the robed man, ready to do their bidding.
Then Autumn heard a new sound. Screams from the far edges of the city rose to meet her disbelieving ears. Autumn whipped her head around to the northern edge of the city and saw more packs of daemons hovering in large amounts of the farthest corners of the city. People who had survived the initial blast of heat and distruction now faced being ripped apart by these winged creatures. Autumn watched as two daemons picked up a man, who looked like a lawyer, dressed in a suit and flew in opposite directions, tearing him in two perfect halves. They let go of the pieces and they splattererd on the dirt below.
Autumn turned her head, she could not bear to watch the scene anymore. She cried and cried and cried as a primal scream emitted from her mouth. She howled in hatred and anguish as she understood what was going on to the city she once loved and the Earth she lived on. She was watching the end of the world; the apocalypse that somehow was triggered about by the robed man and his followers and that strange wand.
She screamed with all her might, hoping that it could undo some of the terror that she witnessed. Instead, she was shocked to see that the robed man turn his gaze towards where she was standing, high above the city, on a cliff that was once lush and green and had lots of trees surrounding it. The robed man stared right at her and hissed as he pointed the wand directly at her, as daemons took flight and headed in her direction.
Autumn blinked and stopped screaming. She thought she was safe up on her high perch but they had spotted her. She turned and fled, knowing the horror the daemons would inflict upon her if they caught up to her. Even though she knew where she was going, the terrain felt raw and bruised and foreign. She tripped as she moved back down towards a street. She covered the back of her head and closed her eyes tightly, praying to some unknown entity to come save her. She felt the heat of wings beating down upon her and hoped that the daemons would take pity upon her and make her death swift.
Instead, Autumn awoke gasping. She sat straight up in the safety of her bed, clutching her down comforter. And then she screamed.