Kings Of Calamity

Chapter 1: After The End

My name is Kaur Ewell.

At the age of seven my brother and I were rescued from our home.

We were adopted by the aristocratic King's Household, a rich safe haven for abandoned children. He found us in our, coincidentally around the time my mother had committed suicide.

I watched her from beginning to end as her body slowly faded; her eyes sinking into an oblivion of darkness and torment.

She was sick, deranged, and drunk with the devil's hunger.

Her failing health became evident within the following week of her return from work. She would be exhausted, too exhausted to even reach her bed. Soon she was too exhausted to eat, or to make food for her children. Her conscious failed, as well as her humanity, and love.

My brother said my father had left to bring aid to a falling country. After no word of his existince she presumed him dead out of judgement, and it broke her heart.

We both waited for him to come home.

For three months no one came.

Silas suffered the most pain out of it; the bruises and scars from our mother's hallucinations showed inside and out. Dilusions ate her mind into hysteria, and the more she resisted, the worse she became. There was no way to stop the disease; so Silas looked at me to blame instead.

We couldn't reach out to a doctor nor hospital to assist our mother. Silas said it was a bad thing, but didn't detail any further. We waited and starved in fear, until one day our new guardian, Roland came looking for an answer to her absence and found us hiding in the closet.

Ever since then we've been his children...

Ever since then he's protected us through thick and thin...

At the age of ten an incident occurred in which my family discovered that I too, was sick.

For some reason my father refused to tell me why.

Maybe he was afraid that I would be afraid of dying, or didn't want to trigger my flashbacks and hallucination.

Even though every morning, I wake up in a fit of sweat and tears.

It hurt so damn much, to lay awake in pain, in heat, and in lonliness.

I had some sort of autoimmune disease, and a pathogen. I knew that much. The white blood cells which kept the illnesses at bay depleted suddenly, and from then on my years of stigma began. For the most part my symptoms were my own ailments, followed by headaches, colds, flues, and at times hallucinations of my mother. In other instances I could feel my nerves crawling underneath my skin, like small insects excavating in my veins. My father said it was because my body was fighting against itself. As a result, it was easier for common sicknesses to get in.

Even with such shortcomings, my new guardian watched me grow, carefully monitoring my progress. He was able to provide me pills to stop the symptoms, but the effects of it made me feel fatigued and small.

Even when I had given up on trying to coexist with my ailment, he didn't want to give me up. He wanted to protect me at all costs in order to uphold my mother's will.

Unlike me, my mother took her own life to stop the suffering. Once she knew we were safe with Roland, her guardianship was finished. Her ashes were left un-memorialized, and unmarked somewhere under the debris.

Sometimes I thought of her death as cowardly. I've been living with it for sixteen years now, and knowing it was something so difficult that not even my mother could handle haunts me.

I haven't even felt the worse of it yet...

And I know my father is waiting for it, as so was I.

Even in my beginings, I linger inside the mansion unable to make contact with anyone. My brother keeps his distance. He shows love to me, and sometimes even works up the feelings to talk to me, but I feel his hostility underneath.

We barely share more than a few words a day.

As for today, It's been ten years since any civil war, unnatural deaths, and starvation has been documented within Terra's inner walls. Each district within Terra had its own separate wall, the largest and most outer wall emitting a thin force field to prevent more refugees from coming in. The inner walls had a controlled environment where all our food is grown and livestock handled.

The Elites, located in the richest district of Edon, controlled the lighthouse, a large tower which in times of overwhelming ash or disease would cleanse the air through fire and light. Only history books and documentarys tell of its usage during the genocide; how it destroyed the homes of thousands who could not afford proper treatment or purity.
Terra has had no use of its power now, but it proved its usefulness in controlling the population and preserving their utopian society. It was a luxury granted to the upper class.

That doesn't mean all of Tara's problems have disapeared however. Beyond the district of Edon, the light was weaker.

People died more often.

Disease spread easier.

Land security was low.

8 p.m was our curfew, when security would drop drastically on the outer walls. It's unknown why they did this, but some suspect the capital is trying to preserve resources by killing off the lower class districts. Everyone was advised to stay within their district during this time, as to make sure no lower class citizens crossed the boarders or any sympathizers took them in. Census would be kept at the gate on who's a resident and who is not. If the numbers reached any higher, or a rebellion takes, an alarm would sound. 

The lower class were sufferers, a scapegoat to our problems, their blood considered untouchable. You could recognized them by their skin, most of which has turned black with plague, eyes buried into their skulls, mouths receded back into their cheeks as starvation set in.

Helpless ghoulish bodies doused in gasoline, some still breathing, some still talking.

They were burned, dead or alive.

For the greater good of humanity; they were useless, and needed to be killed.

No one questioned the Elite's method, and the upperclass remained distracted. My father says the number of crimes in the lower class is dramatized, in order to instill fear of starvation, murder, and strengthen loyalty to the council. Even in our location in Nortwood Forest where animals had no physical restriction, very rarely does anything make homage.

By morning once the darkness was gone, and the squatters would retreat back into their abandoned ruins, the purification would begin.

White-coats were what we called them. Authorities armed with flamethrowers charring the remaining bodies by the hundreds, like a tide of flames. The ground would look like the end of a nuclear battle, burnt casualties covering the terrain, blood running down the storm drains.
Anyone found outside during the purification would be captured and burned. Any animal near the scene, big or small will suffer the same consequences.

The air would linger like shadow for hours until the ashes settled. Sometimes it would cover the lower cities in a blanket of white dust; the sewers and puddles acidic and poisoned with the smell of death.

People were afraid of them.

The entire world was like this.

And sometimes I wondered if our state was the only safe place left.

The Elites kept the world hidden from us. They wanted our state to be the only paradise on this forsaken land.

People fear the unknown.

They feared curiosity.

People are scared of the dark.

And I'm the alias walking among them.