Prologue 1-2 Guardian

Cleo first saw the monster when he was eight, during a parade through a defeated city.

The pale thing led the way, absentmindedly dragging one taloned hand across the buildings. Rubble and broken glass fell onto the sidewalks, exacerbating the work of the cleanup crews. Men, women, and children stared from the broken windows and ruined storefronts, focused exclusively on the nightmare with haunted eyes. Cleo sat next to his father and mother on the top of a truck, looking at the crowds. It was a hot summer's day, rippling waves of heat pouring off the cracked streets.

When they arrived at the City Hall, the eerily-human monster vanished into a backlot, gouts of dark smoke rising as it sank from view.

He wondered what the monster really looked like.

[+++]

Cleo was nine when his little sister was born and immediately doted on her. Even when she vomited on his best shirt, he still wanted to hold her. And when Mother fell ill with the Black, it was he who held the baby. When Mother grew too sick to visit, when she screamed and clawed the walls of her hospital room, vomiting all the while, it was Cleo who whispered to baby Emma to keep her quiet.

And after Father finally laid Mother to rest, Cleo held the baby at the funeral.

Premier Thane, father of the monster, was there. The monster wasn't.

Thane was a tall, handsome man, with well-combed brown hair and laughing green eyes. After the funeral, he gifted Cleo with a wooden motorbike, just big enough to hold in the palm of one hand.

"Thank you!" Cleo said through tears. Thane ruffled his hair, and began to talk to Father about what a nice person Mother had been, how horrible it was that she'd drank tainted water— but that's how the world is, isn't it?

[+++]

Cleo grew up learning everything required to be a Premier among his people. He learned about the Black Rains, and all the remembered suffering that had been passed down from mouth to ear for two hundred years. He learned about warfare, statesmanship, logistics… everything Premier Ash wanted drilled into his son's head.

Cleo devoured it eagerly, and jealously hoarded books from before the Black Rains.

[+++]

He met the monster when he was thirteen, on the summer-scorched concrete of a vast, flattened lot. Some said it had once been a place for flying vehicles to land, but that was obviously superstition. Only birds could fly. Cleo was bold, confident, standing just in front of his Father. Little Emma hung behind him, clutching his leg. Premier Thane smiled and nudged the monster forward.

He wasn't monstrous at all. The boy was pale, like a sun-bleached bone, with long hair that hung in his eyes. They were icy blue, like splintered glass, and almost instantly broke eye contact to stare at the ground. Cleo almost didn't notice the peeling burns that had consumed half his face, blackened veins like those on Mother plainly visible where the skin flaked and ran. While Emma began crying at the sight, Cleo felt only pity.

"Hello, I'm Cleo," he said with a smile. The boy didn't react.

***

"He'll be staying with us for a while," Father said. "And be nice to him. Remember that he's very important to our nation."

The boy looked lost in the halls of the old mansion. Cleo offered to show him the rooms he'd be living in. The boy nodded.

When the bedroom door swung open, Cleo was the first in. He jumped on the window seat, and grinned at the boy.

"Hey, can I see your burns?" Cleo asked. The boy didn't say a word, but brushed his hair out of his face. Cleo drew his face close, but not too close. He sat there for an hour, watching muscle slowly stitch itself together and once-ruined flesh smooth into skin. Once it was done, he looked into the boy's shattered, cerulean eyes.

"That's so cool! Can I touch it?" He asked. The boy shrugged, crimson suffusing his cheeks, and Cleo extended a hand. His skin was hot as a fever, smooth as silk.

"How do you do that?" Cleo asked. The boy pushed his hand off and rolled his shoulders.

Cleo smiled, and laughed. The boy turned away, staring into space.

***

Later, Cleo took up pen and paper and asked the boy to show him his arm. The feathery black patterns, like the scarring some people got from lightning, fascinated him. Cleo showed the sketch to the boy, and he clung onto it like a piece of driftwood at sea. The boy offered Cleo a tenuous smile, brittle as an obsidian knife.

Cleo almost cried when the boy had to leave again. Almost.

***

By the time Cleo turned seventeen, the wars had ended. With the nearest rivals pacified, the new empire could truly prosper. And after years of war, the boy would be coming back.

Cleo greeted him with a smile and wave, only to be brushed off as the boy walked past. Emma, only eight, ran away as the boy approached. His eyes were hollowed-out, lightless.

***

Cleo spent his days teaching the boy how to read. Cleo had been told it was a good thing to learn, and although the boy never spoke, Cleo was certain he was improving. Soon, he'd be able to read some of the books that filled Cleo's rooms.

When Emma broke a window somewhere else in the building, the boy sprung to his feet. Eyes wide and unseeing, he raised his hands. They blackened and smoked, energy swelling in the air, like the taste of lighting before a strike.

"Please stop," Cleo said softly, seizing his shoulders. "Everything's all right." A shuddering breath, and the boy snapped back to reality. His eyes blinked, and then one pale hand slapped away his own. The boy snatched up a book, and sat far away from him.

***

They were eating the noon meal when Emma broached the subject.

"Why don't you talk?" She asked the boy. "Are you dumb?" Father was not there, and so it fell to Cleo to defend the boy.

"If he doesn't want to talk, then he won't," he said. "You shouldn't be rude to him."

Emma subsided into a childish silence, and the boy offered Cleo a faint smile.

***

The summer storm was the worst part of the time the boy spent with Cleo.

Dark clouds engulfed the sun, casting vast shadows over the city. The first flash of lightning illuminated the storm's heart, and seconds later the thunder cracked through the air.

In an instant, Cleo was at the boy's side. When the lightning and thunder shook the earth, Cleo held his hand and whispered calming things, as he did in a different place and time. As the light flared bright as day, he remembered the harsh hospital lights. The thunder reminded him of his Mother's inhuman screams.

But he never faltered.

***

"You were a good friend," Premier Thane said. "But, well, times change. I've already set into motion things you can't undo. The future will be splendid beyond all telling, even if you don't have a place in it."

A flash of light, black veins weaving flesh and sinew from nothing, and then Archie's Other shape loomed. Taloned, skeletal hands buried themselves in the shattered roof, his skull of a head lowering with the gruesome sound of ribs carving through flesh. Long, bowed ribs extended from his sides, waving like centipede legs, and a stench was heavy in the air.

"Kill them all," Thane said. Cleo held Emma close, and put an arm on Father's shoulder. If they were going to die, Cleo wouldn't blame Archie. He would never blame him.

Archie extended one hand…

And seized Thane. His legs must have broken in Archie's grip, and his screaming was loud in the stunned silence.

"Goddamn bastard! Put me down, and kill them!"

Archie, as always, was silent.

"Worthless thing! You're mine, you hear me? I own you! I'm your father, and you had better listen to me now!"

Archie began to breathe loudly, rasping deep with every breath. The air tasted fetid, like dead snakes. Like things rotting in summer sunlight.

"You fucker, I always hated your pretty face. Monster."

And before Cleo can react, Archie lunges and bites down.

Gouts of red gore sprayed from between Archie's teeth. After a few shocked seconds, chunks began to rain on the stone. Cleo stared, wide-eyed, into the face of the monster. Archie looked around, his shattered, brilliant, icy blue eyes full of horror. And then he looked at Cleo. Blood dripped from ivory teeth, white steam pouring from his jaws and nostrils.

A second of recognition, and shame.

Archie turned and fled, racing towards the open desert. Premier Thane's lower half fell to the ground with a meaty thwack. Gore splashed across the stone. Screams filled the air.

Before long, Cleo's motorbike raced onto the sands to follow.