Colony - Bloodkin

"Morpheus! Where are you?" Haleah screamed over and over.


Haleah's limp body hung broken and twisted. Her dislocated shoulders, the muscles stretched and torn beyond repair. Her knees bowed, unable to rise on the balls of her useless feet. Dark brown, dried blood coated the remnants of her dress torn open from the collar down to the jagged strips lying limply against her kneecaps. The knees been broken, shattered repeatedly by the blows of a heavy metal hammer. How many times had she screamed out her agony at the sickening sound of joints cracking, bones breaking? A thick, ugly pool of her own hot, streaming blood formed at her feet, staining her repeatedly crushed toes. Knives had pierced every inch of soft skin, tracing tattooed designs conceived by the sick, twisted mind of her tormentor. Large, odd shaped patches of her flesh were ripped away by rough implements with jagged edges and holes being pulled down her twisting, howling body. She wanted only to fall into the darkness of death.


But, the Other would not let her. Not yet. No, not yet.


Prologue


It is almost time for me to leave this life. The golden luster of my once long hair has faded to a pale white. It hangs just over my shoulders like thin wisps of fog, blown to and fro with the slightest breeze. The sun-darkened skin that used to flow smoothly and softly over the travel-hardened muscles of my six-foot-four frame now hangs wrinkled and limp as a rain-soddened leaf on bones that creak and moan in protest with each movement. Blue eyes that could pierce the darkest of nights to spot the flight of a speckled hawk now have trouble reading the writing of my own trembling hands.
I am so old; so tired. I am ready for this life to end.
This life. Ha! It has not turned out anything like my wildest dreams – worse than my deepest nightmares. Nothing happened as I imagined it would. It did not happen as it was supposed to happen. It did not happen in the way I trained for it to happen. It all went wrong. Yet good did come of it.
I am Haleah. For the last nine hundred and forty years, I have been Keeper of the Izon Clan.
Keeper. It used to mean such a different thing than it does now. For time untold – I still cannot think in terms of millions of years. It is beyond my feeble comprehension – the Keepers of the Izon have led them through this frightening, dangerous world. Keepers read the lines etched on the Box to bring them to the place not far from where I now sit. A Keeper's sole purpose had always been to help the Izon fulfill the Need.
The Need. What a horrible joke upon us that turned out to be. We Keepers followed the Need blindly, keeping the Izon from lying down in green valleys ripe with fruit and game. Keepers pushed the Clan onward, into danger and death, plague and famine. We Keepers thought the Need would free the Clan from hardship. We were taught that fulfilling the Need would lead our people to a life filled with happiness, with food, with comfort. It would be a life filled with change and freedom.
Oh, how it changed! However, there was to be no freedom.
Yet, to our credit – and our sorrow – how could we ever have known? It should have been as we thought.
After all, fulfilling the Need meant awakening the Gods.
Now they are awake – and all is not as it should have been.