Phoenix in the Trees

Prologue

It all started one foggy evening on the 13th of October 2203. That night Jason Aaron Tailor was born in a stuffy two room flat, in Britian, to the pauper, Mrs. Tailor. Jason was a small dark child with no friends, preferring the silent pages of books as company. By the end of his twelfth year Jason had an extensive knowledge of robotics, science, and mathematics. This fact was unknown to his mother who was working fifteen-hour shifts just to support them both on the very fringes of society. Due to his mother’s continual absence and what he felt was society’s fault for their poverty, Jason turned into an aggressive adolescent with a hunger for power. During the following years as Jason grew up on the fringes of society with his smoldering anger for company, his mother passing on a few years earlier, he delved deep into the field of robotics. In his pursuit for the instruments to avenge the wrongs society had done him he created a machine that he dubbed, Blackrage, after its distinctive black casing. This atrocity embodied all that the young man stood for, unrestrained power, rage, and a desire for destruction, and was controlled only by him.

With his design he approached a rising dictator for mass manufacturing. Hungry for power that this supposedly mindless army would supply, the dictator accepted the offer and started mass-producing. The dictator learned of his error too late, the rages were not just a mindless black mass for him to control, instead the machines answered only to their creator. After a fruitless attempt to resist, the dictator and his officials were destroyed. Jason now took the empty seat of power and with his unstoppable hoard he turned his eye to the domination of Europe.

All too soon, the unprepared Europeans fell like rotten fruit into his waiting hands. With Europe secured as a firm seat of power Tailor stretched out his hands to Asia, Africa, and western Russia. These countries tried to put up a fight but never stood a chance against the implacable hoard of rages.

Desperate, North America, South America, and the remaining free states that dotting the globe formed a treaty and combined their armies to fight the unwavering tide. Despite their valiant attempt, the stream was only slowed for a time, and countless men fell in the battles to protect their shores. In a last attempt to save the free countries they pooled their nuclear weapons to drop on the hoard. Knowing those who would survive the atomic winter would live in a drastically different world. Three flights containing the last hope of the beleaguered people dropped their cargo before they were shot down themselves. The hundreds of atomic bombs dropped the face of the planet set into effect the rages’ self-destruct sequences, which could not withstand the massive amounts of radiation. The carapaces of the once invulnerable hoard dropped like flies. Victorious, the Free Nations stormed into Europe intent on wiping out Jason and the last of his human supporters. They had destroyed his inhuman power base and with the death of Jason they were safe, or so they thought.

The battered world quickly remade itself, but not quickly enough. As the scientist had predicted, the use of so many nuclear bombs had destroyed the environment, causing massive storms and acid rain that tore apart the fragile countries. During that long atomic winter the remnants of the population fled to the remotest parts of the world, where they waited for the world to right itself.

Arising from this winter, there were those who were transformed into the next step of human evolution, gaining extraordinary powers from their exposure to radiation. These superior humans took control of the direction-less mass of humanity and formed order out of chaos. The new regime called themselves the Council of the Mystics and formed a society that surpassed even the ancient Romans in order. Everything down to the clothes you wear would and could be controlled. Some found this environment a blessing, but others chaffed under it.


Murder of the Tree


A shadow slid through the darkness that rimmed the courtyard, quite as a cat, and dark as the night. With a smile that revealed a series of white teeth, it pulled something out of a pocket. The thing was the size of a small candy bar and as dark as the hand that held it, dark enough that it seemed to suck the light out of the air around it. The humming of motors filled the calm night and the black box started to unfold. After a minute or so, the black box now resembled a large mechanical spider. The figure muttered something and the spider skittered across the pavement towards the tree that dominated the walled courtyard. Upon reaching the tree it clambered up the rough bark to disappear in the dense foliage.

The tree tossed and turned as if in a high wind as the spider climbed, but the night was calm and the stars shown bright overhead showing the stark concrete. The tree began to scream, so human like that one would almost expect a person would be trapped in the folds of the tree’s wrinkled bark, screaming in agony. That was almost true, for this was no ordinary tree, it was one of the seven trees that had survived the nuclear holocaust, the only part of nature left in this world of steel and concrete, transfigured by the waves of radiation making it a sentient being. The tree had survived drought, storms, hurricanes, and flooding, cherished always by the faithful humans that cared for it, but now the venom of the spider slowly snuffed out the tree’s life. With a final scream of defiance to the forces that wished it dead, the tree finally shattered. Thousands of splinters showered the concrete, making a tiny forest of dead wood.

With a grunt of satisfaction the shadow slid away in the darkness that surrounded the courtyard’s high walls. The guards along the catwalk stirred, groaning, as the screaming of the tree awakened them. With a start the youngest guard shot up to his feet and stared in horror at the courtyard below.

As he sand back to his knees after viewing the horrific sight, the young guard whispered, “Why, oh why?”

Staring morbidly down at the site the commanding officer answered in a gruff voice, “We were drugged you idiot. We were drugged so somebody could kill our tree. Probably someone with a grudge against the Council, they probably wished to weaken them, what a better way then to destroy their source of power?”

The young guard stood there too shocked to answer. He, like most of the population, held the seven trees in reverence as a living symbol of the Council of Mystics power, the source of living magic. The fact that one of the trees might die had never crossed his mind; they were as timeless as the Mystics themselves were.

“You know that we are going to have some major trouble as soon as the Council hears of this, they will want to know what has happened,” commented the a passing guard, “You know that we have to come up with an account of what happened or else our lives are on the line. I personally would like to hold on to my immortal soul, I don’t know about you. So what will we tell them?”
The officer in charge thought for a moment, his face contorting with the effort, “I think we will tell them the truth, we don’t know what happened.”