WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 59

Before Jon was a prophet, he was the storyteller of his Red village. 

The town that he had lived in-the town that Maven destroyed in his hunt for the little lightning girl and the Newbloods-had not been a desirable place to live, though he hadn't minded it. It was a step above Albunus, the town where Mare Barrow was born and raised. But whatever opinions his fellow villagers had of their little town, those opinions were dashed away on the lazy summer nights when Jon pulled out his old book. 

The book was only for show; Jon knew the tales inside of it by heart. 

Of course, this was all years ago, when the ways of the world were simple and unfair. Before he began waking up from the vivid nightmares. He thought they were just bad dreams at first. His mother and father had always thought he was an imaginative child, after all. His wife said the same, brushing off his jolts and screams as an effect from those hours at the factory. That was one thing that he did not miss.

The dreams were too real, though. Jon dreamt of freedom and death and life and sorrow. Births of babes and losses of grown men in war. People of ranks he could never believe to meet. Boys with fire for skin and a girl with lightning eyes. 

When he met her, years later, she looked just like the girl in his dreams. Brown hair with greying ends, a fierceness to her that implied she didn't trust anybody, and for good reason. Eyes that were wells of sorrow, not yet full either. The boys looked just like they did in his dreams, too, somehow related with their blue and bronze eyes, one ice and the other fire. 

Weeks after the dreams-nightmares, depending on circumstance-began, he started to daydream. It wasn't voluntary at first, and he couldn't control it. He would see things in the midst of his factory shifts, suddenly jerking back to life though he had stood the entire time. It was when he was beaten by the overseers for not working, that his wife became concerned for his mind. 

Selene. 

The gods were real, and Heaven was real, he assured himself each night, as he begged the Gods to take care of her. He had not been able to take care of her the way he ought to have. 

She had ran to him in the town square where they beat him, so stupidly trying to force the guards away from him. She screamed that it was not his fault, but she was Red and they were Silvers, outnumbered one to three. They cut her, the nameless Magnetron of the bunch slashing her across the stomach with one of his blades. 

It was a shallow cut, easy enough to be mended. But infection leaves no man.  

When he realized that she was infected he reached deeper into his powers, searching for a way to save her. Never before had he been able to control his dreams consciously. He supposed he could thank Selene for what he had grown into. 

But Selene was slipping quickly. His village was isolated, save for the few Silvers that resided there to keep watch over them. He was a coward, dignifying himself with the logic that the Silver houses could never be infiltrated to get the right medicine. And what cruel fate it was that the apothecary of the town had gone bankrupt mere months ago. Nobody could afford the medicine anymore, and the Silvers would never help him, not when they had done this to him.

His wife knew it, too. What was happening to her. By this point, he had acquitted his position as storyteller to his apprentice. He still told stories, though not from his storybook. From his dreams, he told Selene of the stories he saw while he sat on her sickbed, pouring cold water over her face. He promised her that one day, all the Silver dynasties in the world would crumble to the ground. 

She died a few days later, Jon remembered as he strolled through the dungeon passageway, searching for the Whisper. 

From that day on, he focused all his energy on learning of his strange power. He called himself an anomaly, for being a Red and having powers. It was not the way the world was supposed to function.