Others took to the woods to hunt, to the fields to plant. Some chose to take to the roads in an endless migration to nowhere. Some hid, skittering out at night to scavenge or steal enough to survive another day. Until she, The One, led light against the dark.īut months became years, and the world remained broken. She, daughter of the Tuatha de Danann, would remain hidden until she took up her sword and shield. There were murmurs in the light, rumblings in the dark, that reached the ears of men-of a warrior to come. In a world so broken, who would stop them? Man would always find ways to wreak cruelty on man. Raiders cruised the ruined cities, the highways, and the back roads to burn and kill because they enjoyed it. Madmen claimed God in their vicious righteousness, stirring fear and hate to build their own armies to purge what was “other.” Magick, they preached, came from the devil’s hand, and any who possessed it were demons to be sent back to hell.

So a child who had discovered her wings might find herself restrained on a table in a lab, in the name of science. Panicked governments ordered their militaries to sweep up survivors, to “contain” Uncannys. And those-man and magickals-who embraced the dark struck, turning great cities into rubble, hunting those who hid from them or fought against them to destroy, to enslave, to bask in blood even as bodies littered the ground. Uncannys shared what was left of the world with man. Awakened powers offered a choice between good and evil, light and dark. The rise of magicks, white and black, sprang from the chaos.

Out of the dark, lights dimmed for millennia flickered and woke. It fed on presidents and peasants with equal greed. The Doom gave no quarter to democracy, to dictators, to parliaments or kingdoms. Governments toppled from their perches of power. The spine of technology cracked, bringing the dark, the silence. Still others, unable to find shelter, food, clean water, medications, simply withered and died waiting for help and hope that never came. Many who survived that first shocking strike died by their own hand or by another’s as the thorny vines of madness, grief, and fear strangled the world. And yet the innocent-the touch of a hand, a mother’s good-night kiss-spread the Doom, bringing sudden, painful, ugly death to billions. The virus was its weapon, a barrage of arrows winging, silenced bullets striking, a jagged blade slicing. But it was magick, black as moonless midnight.

Children of blood and bone epub