Draco ignis mortui

(AN: The book will be in first person unless stated otherwise.)

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My name is Magnus Jenkins and I was born in the year 2683 (AN: the name was from a name generator, plus when I saw 'Jenkins' as a created last name I just couldn't resist. RIP, PVT Jenkins, doomed Halo marine in CE.), I am one of the Cursed, have a twin named Mikkel Jenkins - who, surprisingly enough, doesn't have The Curse -, and I am hoping I don't die and become a monster, which is getting just a fraction of a bit more common with every decade. I go to a standard, not really worth mentioning school, I am almost sixteen - which means I will either only have about five months of life or I can finally stop worrying about keeping my suit on and keeping myself from being contaminated -, and I have only two friends; my brother and another nerdy dude like me. His name is Buster Price (AN: another name generated name cuz I'm getting sick of rending my mind apart trying and failing to make new names), he is about average height at around five foot two, my brother is at five foot eight, and I am quite literally just a centimeter from six feet tall.

We all live in a planet that while a hub for Covenant and Human trading, although it often feels like we're in the middle of freakin' nowhere, especially since we're in a bit of a more rural town about two hundred miles from the nearest major city or space port. I personally like this as it means its just us and nobody else - excluding the three hundred and fifty something people in this town with us - which allows a lot of peace. Plus, you can see the stars really well, as there's almost no light pollution due to an unspoken rule to turn lights off between four PM and six AM. The planet is incredibly similar to Earth, with a diameter literally just five percent larger while it's overall average mass is just low enough that the gravity of this planet is barely above that of Earth. Plus, it rotates just a tiny bit faster, meaning there's almost an exact twenty-four hours in the day down to the second. The atmosphere, other than lacking most of the pollutants Earth has, is really similar, with about ten percent more oxygen however, which makes it a bit easier to extract pure oxygen for giving me and the two other Cursed in this town breath - we cannot breathe anything other than pure oxygen as part of the genetic disease we have, the results would be horrible if we were to stop -, so that's a plus.

My life is pretty simple, play a few video games, do random things with my friends, go to school, you get the idea. My biggest problem at the moment however is Carmen Wood, one of the other Cursed, and a person who keeps attempting to bully me or something... what's ironic is that he's shorter than me and a month younger, and doesn't do the best in classes that aren't physical. Typical bully. Now, for my story. (AN: I'll go first days until birthday and then year and date.)

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Five months two days left.

Today was rather uneventful, although Price was considering creating a special map plus game mode for a game we all love, an FPS - First Person Shooter - built off of old world war three, pretty fun game, you can chose classes, slowly level them up, fight people, you get the idea. Carmen kept trying to bug me in school today, although he failed mostly, due to being like five inches shorter, so I jokingly didn't pay any attention to him. Plus my arms are longer so I can simply hold him out of reach of me.

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Four months thirty days left.

I found this neat - but tiny - black diamond in a shallow lake near a local volcano that nobody has bothered to name yet. It's active, but erupted a few years before the settlement was built, so it's not gonna erupt any time soon. I put it in a drawer full of other neat things I like - A small drone, an old book I love, various tinkered parts and pieces from random stuff, etc. - and left it be. My brother was pretty curious, but left it be when I told him where I got it. We went there a lot, so chances were he could find one too.

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Four months twenty-one days left.

Today was boring, and basically nothing happened, although something interesting is that a new corporation focusing on robotics and space exploration has been steadily rising, making revolutionary new technology.

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(AN: It's kinda hard coming up with what are almost journal entries for books, so Ima hurry it up, get to the REAL stuff.)

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Four months two days left.

A new and fun real time strategy game has come out that is literally based off of history from the war with the Covenant, it's literally called Halo Wars (AN: Yes I am literally putting a game actually developed in the Halo franchise into this. No I am not the one who came up with it, all credits go to the developers of Halo.) and it depicts the journey of a UNSC ship and it's crew as they go along and discover forerunner structures, the Flood, and fight the Covenant and actually help with a lot of victories. Neat game. And there is multiplayer, so me and my brother and friend can fight each other to the death!

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Three months nine days left.

According to reports, a new sector of space had a military ship sent into it to explore it, but contact has been lost with it, indicating it's destruction due to it having the most current quantum communications technology. Doesn't really affect us here, it was just shocking to the public.

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Two months six days left.

Halloween came along. This year, my brother (Mikkel) dressed as Master Chief (I still don't know why that's even a thing), Buster (I sometimes call him Price instead) dressed as a zombie, and I dressed as a murdered person, with a fake knife 'in my head' and fake blood around the 'wound' and everything! I got a few chuckles out of that from the other two, and at some point Mikkel made a show of saying "Still alive huh? Guess I better get a bigger knife next time." when he and I met up with Buster. Buster was left clutching his gut as he struggled to breathe through his laughter.

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One month twenty-six days left.

It's Christmas today (AN: It was so hard to calculate the days between Christmas and Halloween and I might still have it a bit off LOL), and I got a little drone, a new upgrade for my computer (I prefer to install them myself, this one is an upgrade to the RAM), and a bow since I was interested in archery. It obviously came with a target I can set up in the yard and a quiver with a dozen training arrows. I would write down what my brother got but with the threat of execution via wrung neck hanging over my head... I won't risk it. He may be shorter than me and younger by a minute, but he's a pretty feisty and creative person, and may be able to set up a trap or something for me.

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One month left.

Been getting nervous about my birthday coming up. Then again, basically everyone would with the threat of having to hope that you go seventy-two hours without turning into a monster or something like that just to survive your sixteenth birthday. Some people say that being one of the Cursed is actually a blessing, but I say that a mere chance to lose any last semblance of Humanity maybe with special requirements that are hard to maintain and a good chance of literally turning into a monster isn't worth it. Maybe if the ability to... I dunno'... Have your 'Dragon' form and your 'Human' form with no chance of essentially dying and killing everyone around you... sure. Without those though... I don't really see why it's so great.

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Twenty-two days left.

A rescue ship was sent to find and salvage the ship and it's crew that disappeared a bit back yesterday. Today reports have come in that it too has disappeared, which is worrying because this ship was a light assault cruiser, with much thicker armour as well as weapons, which is different as the last ship was unarmed and had relatively thin armour, with it being made in a way to deflect asteroids hitting the ship while it's moving at a high speed rather than anything else. People are starting to get a bit worried.

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Thirteen days left.

Reports of an unidentified energy beginning to appear everywhere have begun spreading, and three more ships have disappeared into what has been nicknamed 'The Dark Zone'. None have come out since, although the partial wreckage of what could be identified as the explorer ship that went in was found drifting just outside of the zone. There were no bodies, despite there being lots of blood, some of which was... Blue? And not Covenant alien blue but something else... It was analyzed and identified as a synthetic material similar to blood, but not quite... It was very confusing, even to the people who sent out the vessel, as they had not stored anything like it and it was older than the vessel itself.

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Two days left.

It's almost time, and I am incredibly worried. Soon there will be a chance, no matter the precautions, for my death. The Dark Zone has also... expanded. It has begun destroying ships from dedicated travel routes - or whatever it does - as well as taking another few military ships. Everyone is worried, and a group has come out that want to literally build massive orbital defense systems around it - which is stupid because there's nothing to orbit - and shoot everything coming out of it and block passage into it. I think it could be something like rebels or maybe a quantum tear in the fabric of space and time that teleport the ships entering it to some other place or time. Who knows.

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2699, Jan 27th.

First day after my birthday, so far so good. My birthday was uneventful, got a bunch of spare parts and components to tinker around with. Carmen has also started avoiding me. Clearly he wants to bug me, but I guess he's afraid that I won't hesitate to mash him down? Or something like that, I have no idea.

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2699, Jan 29th.

I made it! I actually made it! And now I have no idea what to do with my life as I never planned beyond my last birthday... So. Yeah. I have actually been thinking of becoming part of a spacecraft crew. It's not that hard nowadays and it's also a rather rewarding life. I think I'll do it.

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(big AN note;

So guys, this chapter was interesting to write. It's finally done! So I can just go write more chapters when the Muses of my Despair strike me down again. Cya in the next chapter.

What will happen next? What bizzare story will the Muses of my Despair give me next?

Read on to find out! Or don't it might actually be safer that way.

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