Displaced: A fantasy work in progress
First ever submission. I hope it's up to scratch.
Prologue
The call to withdraw had been made. There was nothing more they could do and it was time to leave these foolish, angry beings to their own inevitable self-destruction. For centuries they had tried to steer the human race towards peace. Towards acceptance. With a nudge here, a word in the right ear and the odd unavoidable assassination the Dracyd visitors had done what they could to save them.
It was not enough. It was never going to be enough.
War. Greed. Hatred. Vengeance. That was what had driven the humans to this bitter point. The point of their annihilation at their own hands. An entire species committing suicide in the most painful and horrifying way.
Desperate and unwilling to let go of their duty and their cause the Dracyd had met and tried to find a way to move forward. A way to stop the looming destruction. Their best minds failed. The rolling boulder of extinction had been set in motion and was hurtling down at the human race with unstoppable speed and malice. Not even Dracyd magic could save them now.
So the call to leave had been made.
Scrambling through rubble, panting in the smog and smoke of war, staying low to avoid the bullets randomly spraying the air, they made their way to the pre-approved rendezvous point. Extraction. Escape. Failure. The Adepts, those most skilled in using the innate magical abilities the humanoid dragonkin shared began to weave their strings in the air. Slowly an upright oval of crackling blue... something... appeared in the air. A portal. The way home after three hundred years on this forsaken world working on a lost cause.
Back in the ruins of a parking structure with the last of his human friends and wearing his human form a single Dracyd frantically rummaged through his pack, hunting for something. Giving a howl of triumph that made his companions look at him in shock he pulled out what he had been seeking. A book. Tattered, dog-eared and clearly having seen better days, the tome was quickly stowed away in his shirt. Noticing his comrades' stares he cleared a lump from his throat and rasped "Good luck guys. I'm sorry".
Lux, known as Luke to humans, turned on his heels and began to run, pelting as fast as he could for the portal rendezvous. He prayed to the True Blood that he wasn't too late. He should have been there already, but he was not going to leave the book behind. Not after what it had cost him to attain it in the first place.
Moving quickly was difficult. Collapsed walls, abandoned and smoking war machines, craters in the ground all conspired against him and forced him to weave and dodge instead of taking a direct route to safety. Smoke obscured his vision as he made too-slow progress.
"Fuck this", he growled.
Lux slowed down and snarled even as he kept moving. Anyone less focused on saving their own skin and observing this strange lone soldier would have thought their eyes were deceiving them as Luke grew taller, lengthening his already impressive six foot frame to a full seven feet. His shorts bulged obscenely at the back before giving way at the seam and releasing a five foot long, writhing white-scaled tail. His shirt erupted as if he had taken a grenade to the back and he unfurled a pair of breath-takingly elegant white wings emblazoned with black markings. Last of all and with a gut-churning cracking noise, his lower legs broke and bent in an opposite way to his knees as his true anatomy returned to him after so long. Flexing muscles not used in decades, Lux flapped his wings once and launched himself into the air, arrowing forward towards..
"Fuuuuck" he growled again, this time his voice betraying his panic.
...towards a portal that seemed to be fading. Shrinking out of existence. Receding into a different reality and slipping agonisingly out of reach. Lux flapped again to increase his speed, blazing over the ground at a pace no human could ever hope to achieve. He already knew he was too late. He had dallied too long. Why the fuck didn't he just take the whole pack and take the book out later? Why hadn't he obeyed the call to leave sooner instead of firing off just a few more rounds in a pointless war? The portal did not answer his questions, only shrank further and further out of reality until, with a strangely melodic tinkling it winked out forever.
Stunned and disbelieving, Lux leant panting against a broken concrete column and stared in horror at where his only route home had vanished. He had missed his chance. His magic was not strong enough to allow him to help create portals, and even if it had been it took four individuals at the very least to craft such a passageway between realities.
Lux was just one.
Left behind with a doomed species on a doomed world.
Abandoned.
Alone.
From KTB
_Hi, thank you for taking the time to read the prologue to something I may or may not continue depending on your feedback. I hope you enjoyed the taster I've left for you here and that you would like me to add more and take you through Lux's story as he tries to adjust to his new existence.
All comments welcome, positive and negative alike._