Chapter One

Zefir'enel pushed her damp white hair away from her forehead, wishing once more that she’d remembered to write that note to herself about getting her bangs trimmed. They were getting long, even for a side-swept style and in this kind of heat, they were more of a hindrance than fashionable. At least she’d braided the rest of her long mane back today, that was something she could count in her favor.

She looked up at the blue-purple sky again, or what she could see of it past the walkways above her, frowning at the lack of clouds to block out the twin suns, Akas and Zezi, and the heat that came from the great golden stars. It had been a blistering august and now that they were nearing September, she was looking forward to cooler weather. Today was not to be the one to fulfill her wish, though, that much Zefir’enel could recognize and she sighed as she started to walk along the white streets of the lower City once more.

The people around her paid her little mind. She was just another face among many, another obstacle to get around as they worked toward their destinations. Zefir’enel was fine with this. She didn't want to be noticed. To be noticed would mean death for one such as her.

She kept her eyes down as she made her way through the second circle, knowing every street and every building though she was not supposed to be here. Zefir’enel lived among the shining red structured buildings, with their floor-to-ceiling windows on the first circle. She and her family lived among the wealthy. She lived among teleportation devices for the purpose of travel and robotic servants for one’s every whim. She lived among bright and fashionable clothing, and rich food. She lived among suspended roads that branched out like bridgework between the red buildings, overlooking the second circle below.

She lived on the first circle where the streets were clean and white, never dirty or littered no matter how many people walked them and fountains ran cool and crystal blue water until nine at night, the curfew, and starting again at eight in the morning, before anyone was scheduled to wake or allowed to go outside. Beautiful vegetation decorated every balcony on the red sky-towers and gardens flourished in numerous parks that large disc-like platforms made possible as they hovered above the second circle.

She had to call such a place home, but Zefir’enel’s wanderings often took her to the second circle, the lower half of the City of Ruuk. She was not permitted to be in such a place according to her statues, but she didn't care. There were many things she shouldn't have been able to do, but she could. The only thing she had to be wary of was the Government finding out that she was breaking the rules.

Such a thought chilled Zefir’enel to contemplate and she pushed it away, shaking her head and looking around once more in a subtle way, cautious. All she saw were more people who looked exactly like she did. Their clothing was simple, usually consisting of shirts and jeans, some skirts ad dresses here and there and work uniforms, but no one appeared to be a Government worker. Zefir’enel knew how to recognize them easily enough. Even in disguise they were too….perfect. They always appeared to be trying too hard and she avoided them without a great deal of effort.

There was no evidence that any were around right now, though, and the young woman relaxed again, looking around at the red buildings around her. They appeared different down here in the second circle. They looked nearly identical with their rounded corners, intricate swirled designs and small windows with drawn curtains. They seemed to want to reach toward the beautiful blue-purple sky, never attaining their goal as they were the lower half of the beautiful red buildings of the first circle, but trying nonetheless. And unlike the first circle, there were no grand, flashy signs to tell you where you were and which building you wanted.

Small signs, clean and clear, but simple were the only clues as to what each building might contain, but Zefir’enel knew where she was. She’d only gotten lost in this place twice and then never again as she’d learned the tricks of the second circle.

The greatest one was to blend in. Things were different down here in the second circle. The streets were orderly, controlled, but dirtier and the air not as clean, the atmosphere not as bright. The red hue of the buildings was faded and the people who dwelled in the lower level were more cautious of their actions then those who lived in the higher level. They knew their places in life. They were the workers, those who provided the rich with entertainment, food and clothing. They were content, most of them, with this life and their only goal was to do their work without being noticed by the Government.

No one wanted to be noticed by the Government. People who were noticed did not come back to work the next day. Zefir’enel had seen this happen many times even when the person being arrested had done nothing wrong and it scared her immensely to think of being apprehended in such a way.

It should have made her stay where she was supposed to. It should have encouraged her to follow the rules. It should have made her content to live in her perfect world. The only problem, though, was that Zefir’enel knew it looked like paradise and she knew it seemed perfect, orderly, peaceful…but it wasn’t.

She knew it was all a lie. She knew while everyone appeared content with their lives, whether they be of the second circle or the first circle, there was something very wrong that no one seemed to want to notice. She could feel it, had always been able to feel it and now for two years she’d known why.

As the young woman turned unto a side-street and left the crowded main one, she stopped to lean against the red building at her back, looking up at a patch of sky as she recalled the first time she’d known she was truly different. It had been a day, nearly two years ago, when she’d woken up feeling sick and for once her mother had believed her and not sent her to school, though, the older woman had left for the day to see to her own errands regardless.

Zefir’enel had had the house to herself and she would be forever grateful for that small mercy as over the course of a few hours she’d tossed and turned with fevered dreams and a pain in her lower spine she could not ease. It had only been in the late afternoon that the young woman had realized why the pain had suddenly abated and her fever had broken…and she’d realized why it was so uncomfortable to lay on her back.

She had discovered that a long tail had sprouted out from her lower spine. It was a serpentine sort of thing with soft violet scales, the same shade as her eyes, and a tendency to wrap around her leg when she was nervous or wary or scared - things that Zefir’enel was often. She’d been justifiably terrified and shocked upon first seeing it even as she was fascinated by the curling way it moved, reacting with her emotions and thoughts like it was controlled more by her subconscious mind then her conscious one.

Strange and exciting as it was, though, she’d been near to panic at how to hide it, not understanding just what had happened, but knowing it could easily get her a death sentence! She’d managed to hide the odd appendage away before her mother and father returned home with by wearing a dress. After that she’d taken to wearing baggy cargo jeans that her parents hated, but gave her tail enough room to wrap around her leg without notice. The pockets provided enough bulk and space to store odd objects so that no one questioned the slight bulges that could sometimes be detected on her behind or against her leg.

Zefir’enel had done well hiding her physical deformity, but it was with the emergence of her mental one that she found her world starting to fall apart. She was starting to see things that should not be, things she had no right to know, much less understand. It was these pictures that were opening her eyes to how imperfect her world was. It was these pictures, these images that were going to get her killed!

They never came peacefully and they never gave warning. One minute she’d be writing an essay at her desk and the next minute she’d find herself falling out of her chair, convulsing on the floor as an image invaded her mind, taking over everything else until all she could see was the vision. And then it would leave as suddenly as it had come, no explanation for the odd event and Zefir’enel would be left to explain to her parents that yes, she’d fallen out of her chair once more.

More and more those around her were looking upon her with greater concern and some even with suspicion. She was starting to seem different to them and different was never a good thing. The Government didn’t like different. And they didn't like sick, either. Sick people were a blemish in their perfect world and that was why the young woman was here now, in the second circle as it was getting dark and closer to curfew. The Government arrested anyone outside after curfew.

Zefir’enel growled under her breath at the thought as she pushed away from the wall. Stupid control-freaks.

The young woman almost stalked down the street now, frowning at the ground as she thought her mutters silently, knowing better than to say them out loud. One never knew who might be listening. And she could not afford to be followed. Zefir’enel looked around once more at her own reminder and flipped her white bangs away from her face and to the side as she picked up her pace, her fingers slipping into her right pocket to feel the objects there, reassuring herself that she still had them.

It WAS getting late and though Zefir’enel liked to defy the Government as much as she was able, she could admit that she should have been done with this task by now. Zefir’enel was running before she’d consciously made a decision to do so and she used the back-streets to avoid being noticed until she came upon the red door she’d been aiming for. It looked just like any of the other ones around, but the young woman knew it was the right one as she saw the tiny little flower painted just beneath the keypad. A smile flitted across her face as she came to the door and after a moment’s hesitation, pressed her hand on the screen.

A ringing sound could be heard inside the building and Zefir’enel knew that the inhabitants would be hearing her name by this point and her identification number. She knew they would not know it, but still she waited at the door and bit her lip nervously as it opened and a man with dark, but graying hair and a tired look about his face answered the door slowly.

He appeared puzzled by the young woman in baggy, tan cargo pants and a red tank-top, her white hair falling out of her braid and her skin flushed with heat. Knowing her name didn't help matters for it meant nothing to him. But still, he tried to be polite. The girl was from the first circle and could cause trouble for him and his family if provoked.

“Can I help you, child?”

His voice was weary and Zefir’enel knew why. She knew why his eyes looked so hopeless and why his curly-haired daughter, the one who’d painted the daisy, appeared so scared as she hugged her father’s leg, clutching her stuffed bear in her small arm. Zefir’enel knew everything she needed to know and she shook her head, reaching into her pocket again and pulling out the small pouch there. Inside, credits clinked. They were the currency of the City, square slabs of bronze, silver and gold. This pouch contained six silver credits, half her allowance and more than enough to help the man before her.

“I do not need help, but you do. Your wife is sick and your son also. Take these and get your family a doctor. They’ll be all right.”

She handed the pouch to the shell-shocked man who just looked at her with wide eyes. He had not told anyone of the illness in his house, afraid that his wife and son would be taken away from him, but here this girl was, a girl from the first circle, and she was offering him money to help his loved ones. It seemed a miracle to the man and he watched as the young woman smiled and then ran back up the street, disappearing from sight.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“My Prince, forgive my disturbance, but your father, the King, requests your presence on the Great Balcony.”

Nissi opened his eyes, letting them clear of the dark gray clouds that had gathered in his gaze as he lowered his hands slowly, gripping the railing before him with a white-knuckled hold as he felt a wave of dizziness take hold of him briefly before fading away. He blinked the last of the haze from his pale green eyes and sighed as he looked up at the turbulent sky. He’d been working for the last hour, trying to get the clouds full of even a small amount of water to gather, but the process had been less fruitful than usual. There was just less and less water for the clouds to release and even his weather gift could not produce water where there was none.

The Prince shook the concerning thoughts away, finally turning toward the steward of the house, nodding to show he’d heard the man. “Thank you, Val’norn.”

Nissi walked past the older man, heading back into the fortress and the familiar halls of his home. The Kingdom of Escon was settled in the Haaprin Mountains, a place of fairly abundant vegetation and protection from the elements of Jagason. Nissi’s father, Tilno’san, was the King of Escon just as his father before him and had been and his father before him and his before him and so on. Nissi was the first-born son in a line of seven generation of kings since the Great Destruction.

The small kingdom had been founded by a group of survivors from one of the Ancient Cities, now the ancient ruins, and over time there had arisen a new people with their own laws and culture. Tilno’san now ruled over this small, but thriving kingdom and Nissi had seen no sign that this would change in the near future. Escon was well-protected from the outside world and though they had regular travelers, nothing ever threatened their way of life.

Until now.

Their doom was creeping upon them slowly, but the Prince could see it where no one else appeared able to. With each small lake that shrank, with each stream that dried up in their little valley, he could see their enemy getting stronger and their death approaching while those around him remained oblivious. Nissi did not understand how they could not see what was happening!

The very environment, already unforgiving to begin with, was becoming their enemy. Jagason itself seemed determined to kill them off as the water supply started to dwindle. It had been nearly four hundred years give or a take since the Great Destruction, but the world was still reeling from it in a way that was only now being noticed. Nissi had not been alive to see a blue-purple sky or yellow clouds. He’d never seen the twin suns shine without any hindrance from the shadowed sky. He’d never seen grassland stretching on as far as the eye could see or what was said to be forests of trees. He’d never seen the mountains whole or great rivers and lakes flowing freely and in abundance.

He’d not been alive to see any of it, but he’d heard the tales and the legends. He’d heard of what Jagason has once been and he could clearly see what it was now. The Prince could see that his world was dying and his people would die with it unless something changed.

Change. He could almost feel it in the air. Or, maybe it was just the need for it that he could sense so keenly. Nissi suspected his father felt it, too and as the Prince made his way down the torch-lit walls that smelled of the burning Lonik - something musky and strong, but not overpowering - he speculated about what the King might have called him for.

Nissi didn’t have long to wonder as his long strides soon had him facing the large wooden door that led out to the Great Balcony. The Prince took a minute to run his fingers over the wood in a fond way, a respectful way. Wood was hard to come by, even in these mountains, and this door was special for it’s uniqueness. It was special because it WAS a door. Most of the rooms in the fortress didn’t have them, rug-skin partitions separating one room from the next.

Letting his fingers slide toward the latch, Nissi finally let himself out of the fortress and out on to the stone balcony where his father waited at the railing, hands behind his back and clasped together in a loose manner. The Great Balcony overlooked their kingdom, giving them view of the village below and their people. The entire valley, what with its harsh rocks and vegetation carefully kept alive by the people, was on display and Tilno’san looked over it now with a speculative expression.

It was a face Nissi often hated to see on his father’s face because it usually meant he had some task or another for the Prince that the younger man was not going to agree with or want to do. Still, Nissi approached his father with steady steps, taking in the older man’s graying black hair and sharp green eyes. Father and son looked very much alike with Nissi’s hair being the same shade as his father’s and his eyes only a shade lighter.

Their temperaments and opinions could not have been more different, however.

“You called for me, father?”

“What do you see when you look out at this valley, Nissi’shayn?”

The question didn’t take Nissi by surprise as it might have others and he sighed quietly as he came to his father’s side and dutifully looked out at the land his father ruled over. His reply was not long in coming for he already knew what he saw every time he opened the dirty pane of his window and looked out over the valley.

“I see a kingdom content with struggling to survive.”

Tilno’san cast a frown at his son, but Nissi didn’t look at his father, knowing of the disapproval that would be directed at him. His responses never pleased his father and Nissi had just about given up on trying to make the older man proud of him or make him understand what he saw.

“Nissi-”

“Why have you called me here, father?” Nissi finally turned his pale green eyes to his father’s green ones and the King sighed, momentarily giving up on his line of questioning in favor of avoiding a pointless argument and perhaps getting through a civil conversation with his offspring. “We have received a message from the Zealots.”

Nissi frowned, his attention instantly captured as he turned his body toward his father, showing he was willing to listen and discuss this in further depth. “Which tribe?”

The King scoffed, making a dismissive gesture with his hand and his voice was filled with scorn. “Does it matter? They are all the same.” And to the King they were. Mostly unorganized bands of rebels, the Zealots were tribes of both gifted and ungifted people who roamed the land of Jagason as nomads and fought against the domed-Cities of which there were six - three in the north and three in the south. Their cause was to bring down the ‘perfect’ societies that had cropped up after the Great Destruction and to bring down the Government that controlled these six Cities. The methods for how to do so varied from each tribe of Zealots.

Escon had never wanted anything to do with the movement of the rebels and the kingdom only gave the Zealots supplies when an attack from the fighters was imminent. As a rule, though, Escon tried to stay out of the picture and not get involved with the Zealot’s skirmishes with the Cities. Some kingdoms chose to support the rebels, but Escon would never be one of them as long as Tilno’san was King.

Nissi, unlike his father, could distinguish between the tribes he was aware existed with ease. He’d always had a mind for knowing such things, for being able to see the differences in fighting techniques and the differences in the very confusing tribes, in rules and customs of differing kingdoms that others most-often missed. The Prince now frowned at his father, holding his tongue, but barely.

“Was it the Ariin?” That particular tribe usually wintered near the Haaprin mountains. Perhaps they were threatening an attack if they didn’t get supplies?

“No, no they called themselves the ‘Enasi Tribe’. They are demanding entrance into Escon and supplies to cross the mountains. Demanding!” Tilno’san was fuming over the rudeness of it, but Nissi was already trying to logic out why the Enasien would have traveled this far north at all. They usually stayed to the south of the parallel mountain ranges, Nayhota and Zanetor, and rarely did they trek over the Mali Hills, the barren, but rolling land that occupied the space between the two mountain ranges and separated the Iius plains to the south from the Rork plains to the north.

The Enasien were said to be the most elite tribe of Zealots that existed. They only accepted the most skilled of members, people with the strongest of powers and the greatest control over them, those who excelled in combat and intellect. They were an organized and secret group. They did not suffer fools and when they set their sights on a goal, they met it no matter how long the fight or what the cost. To hear they were demanding passage through Escon was strange for two reasons. The first being that the Enasi liked to travel the plains, namely the Iius. They stayed near the three southern Cities - Ruuk, Kiiton and Zanic - and fought them, hiding dangerously close to the Ruins that decorated those plains in abundance. They rarely came north and never as far as Escon.

The second anomaly that stood out to Nissi was the fact that the Enasien were traveling near the beginning of autumn. This was the time when people, no matter where they lived or what their tribe or goal, prepared for the winter months, when the twin suns would hide their faces and Jagason would become a freezing and almost uninhabitable place. But the Enasien were traveling and they traveled far from home.

Something was wrong and for a moment, Nissi again tasted the change in the air he’d detected earlier.

“Let them pass, father.” the Prince said in a confidant voice and his father stopped his flow of angry words to look at his son with surprise and then furrowed brows. Nissi spoke again before the King could start, knowing that getting the monarch‘s agreement before he could create arguments was crucial. “We cannot afford to fight with them, father, and they will pass by quickly. They might bring news of the outside world as well and places to draw the clouds from.”

It was Nissi’s last sentence that seemed to make his father pause just as the Prince had known it would. Tilno’san had no notable power, but he knew very well the strength of his son’s and the benefit it had been to Escon. If there was one thing the King would listen to the Prince about, it was Nissi’ ability to control the unpredictable weather of Jagason in short bursts. The Prince had played his trump card well.

“Did you have any luck in your water-harvest today?”

“No. The clouds offer very little here in the north. I would much like to speak to the Enasien and see how the weather is in their lands. If it is better than the northern lands then I might be able to draw the clouds of the south here with a few days of concentration.”

Tilno’san was nodding, but he didn’t appear happy with the request. It was not for the reason the Prince would assume, though. Yes, the King did not like the thought of the Enasien in his land, especially since they had been demanding about it and not polite, but it was his son that he worried for. The last time Nissi had gone into a power-trance he’d been unconscious for a week afterward.

Losing his wife four years ago had been agonizing for Tilno’san, but the thought of losing his son, too, had near broken his spirit. The idea that Nissi might have to do such a task again concerned him. He knew he could not stop the young man, though. Nissi was loyal to his people and he would sacrifice anything for them. The King would just have to trust that his son was strong enough for this and knew what he was doing.

It was something Tilno’san hated putting into practice.

“Fine, I will allow them passage without hindrance, but only so you may discover how we might obtain water.”

Nissi hid the smile that threatened to make his lips turn upward and dipped his head. “Thank you, father.”

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