Wraith and Rings, by scherryzade [AMTDI Challenge]
Title: Wraith and Rings
Rating: PG-13, gen
Character: OC
Disclaimer: Not mine (except the mistakes), no harm meant.
Warnings: Complete wacky alien hijinks fail. Sorry.
Summary: This is the simplest story that those who travel the rings now tell. The Wraith came, and we ran, and everyone else died.
A/N: Prequel to ' The City is an Island', written for the h/c challenge - this is Janel's fractured journey from the Five Towns to the City. It is rather obliquely AMTDI, but, dammit, it's not their galaxy...
Wraith and Rings
The Wraith came.
The Ring opened, the darts flew, the Wraith fed. And then they killed and burned and tore the Five Towns apart.
Everyone knows this story, even if it's not the one their parents told them. The Wraith once took what they needed, destroyed cities but left crops untouched. Now they burnt everything in their path.
Where once they culled one in three, now they left maybe one in ten.
Janel ran.
This is the simplest story that those who travel the rings now tell. The Wraith came, and we ran, and everyone else died.
~
They said that the Five Towns were what you'd get if you took Sateda and removed the self-restraint, the warrior code and the strict sense of honour.
As a consequence, the Five Towns were full of wealthy Satedans at the gaming tables, Satedan soldiers in the bars (not always on leave), and Satedan youths in the brothels. But then, the Five Towns were open to all, rich and poor, whether they were a hard-science race or common farming folk. The Five Towns saw much of the Travellers, but they also played host to young Genii on Jinreva.
The Five Towns were gambling towns because they were lucky, or that's what they said. The Delta hadn't been culled in twelve generations, some quirk of fate keeping the Wraith away and letting the Five Towns flourish.
They said 'May your luck rise like the blind-moon tide of the Delta, and stick like the black mud of the marsh'.
People didn't simply come to the Five Towns to lose money. They also came to live, and barely a third of the population could trace any heritage beyond the last culling.
This is why the Five Towns, despite their name, were in fact one city - the five villages restored on the islands of the Delta quickly grew into towns, and then spread, reclaiming the marshes and blurring into one another. And scattered across them were a hundred little ragged enclaves of lost and broken cultures - remnants of shattered planets and refugees from stricter societies.
Janel heard a hundred different dialects in a day, and she could cipher in a dozen scripts. Her father was a Five Towns native, but her mother had been a migrant who never failed to remind Janel how lucky she was, how privileged.
It was thanks to her insistence in passing on hard-earned skills of survival that Janel was not now dead.
That, or the last small spark of the Five Towns' luck passed to Janel when she fled the Wraith.
~
After she was run off Kelos, she learned to wear skirts until she was sure of herself on each new planet. But she split the sides, Athos-style, and wore trousers underneath when the weather permitted, because the Wraith didn't give a damn about sartorial propriety.
~
There's a game they played, that the tower class called 'Rats and Rings' and everybody else knew as 'Wraith and Rings'.
After Sateda was culled - no, after Sateda was destroyed - it was if the Five Towns could see its own fate coming. At the time, of course, Janel didn't see it as that, simply that brawls that once ended in bloody noses and bruised egos now ended under the medicats' watch, that drunks who where once amiable now became desperate, that those who once gambled now risked all. They knew. When the Wraith came they would spare no-one. When the Wraith came. Before Sateda, it had always been 'if'.
In Wraith and Rings, the stakes are high, but the rules are simple. Roll high, you win.
The Delta was too strong, and not strong enough. The Five Towns could defend themselves against any enemy that came through the Ring, but not the Wraith in the sky. When the Wraith came, they would destroy the Five Towns as a warning to those who came after, just as they destroyed Sateda.
But the enemy came through the Ring, and was welcomed, because they numbered only four.
Four is not a high enough number to win outright, but not low enough to lose. Lucky enough not to be scorned, low enough not to be feared.
They called themselves peaceful explorers. They smiled, and praised the Five Towns, and were impressed by the Delta, and there was an exchange of gifts. When they left, the Five Towns spoke of nothing else for weeks.
Nobody travels in groups of four any more. Janel saw a family bound and beaten on Pherdan because they came through the Ring and held out their arms in peace, and numbered only four.
Nobody rolls dice for the Rings any more.
~
She remembered Santhal from childhood holidays. She stepped through the Ring expecting a soft autumn and welcoming hearths, and gagged at the stench.
Santhal was not culled. It rained down white fire, and nothing was left, and the few survivors were mad with grief, not knowing why, not knowing who.
Who but the Wraith and the bastard sons of the Ancestors had ships that could kill from the skies? The Travellers had no such weapons. And the Wraith would have sent darts, foot-soldiers to clear the townships.
Nothing could be proven. Janel did not stay to hear their grief to its end.
~
It was the Genii that told the first stories of the people who stole the City of the Ancestors. Genii, who had always been so wary of outsiders but never raised a hand in violence when they travelled, and now came through the Ring with weapons held high.
It wasn't the Wraith did that, but the strangers who now lived in the City.
The Genii came to the Five Towns looking for more of the black, uncanny ore found in the hills south of the Ring. They offered good trade, a third of the tava beans the Five Towns consumed yearly in exchange for rocks the Delta would never use.
The trade was good enough that they didn't dare re-negotiate when the miners started falling sick.
Janel never saw many of the miners - it was a slow, creeping sickness, not part of the medicat's blood-thick work, but she had friends among the doctors, and they told her about the cancers that would rot the miners from the inside out.
At least with the Wraith, death was swift.
~
After she was run off Erdos, she stopped trying to help the sick.
~
They'd heard rumours of the Black Colonel long before the so-called Children of the Ancestors came to the Delta. Perhaps they would have been warier if it had been the Colonel who stepped through the Ring, but he had sent his second, instead, and the Delta had been taken in by the little Major's honest face.
Perhaps if it had been the Black Colonel and his harsh-tongued scientist, and the Athosian woman and the Runner, they would have known better than to let them into the Five Towns, but the quiet Major, and his eager 'botanist', and the two soldiers who smiled at the girls leaning from the windows -
Perhaps if they had listened to the Genii, instead of scorning the stories as mere rumour. The stories said that the Lanteans could not be trusted, that they carried death in their wake, but they also said that the Black Colonel had woken the Wraith, and who had that kind of power, however ill their intent?
They called themselves peaceful explorers, and it wasn't until later that people muttered about the weapons they never set down.
~
On Serace, they claimed to have fought off monsters that were neither Wraith nor man, but something between. She saw one of the bodies. They called it a monster, an abomination, and it was, but something in the creature's face reminded her of traders she'd met from Athos, and that made her stomach twist more than a mere 'monster' would.
The people of the City had made allies of the Athosians, and then the Athosians had vanished, and these - things were now seen -
The people of the City were a hard-science race. If you believed the stories, nothing was beyond them, because they harnessed the power of the Ancestors. Manipulation of form, of mind - like farmers breeding for strength and productivity, it would hardly be difficult for them.
Like Wraith, feeding on the weak and leaving the strong to breed the next generation.
Janel did not want to believe the stories, because she wanted to sleep at night.
The Seracii hung the bodies by the side of the road from the Ring, as a warning.
She did not stay on Serace.
~
The Wraith came.
Three days before the people of the City were to return to the Five Towns, the Ring opened, and no-one stepped through. Then the whine of the darts filled the sky.
The Wraith came, and they took what they wanted, and then they burnt the rest.
Janel ran.
There may have been others who escaped. Janel did not see them. She did not look.
She ran, and everyone else died.
~
Ordan wasn't safe. Ordan was known to be an ally of Atlantis.
Ordan wasn't safe, not if they had their claws in it. They were allies of Atlantis, and that brought danger, even if it was supposed to bring protection.
She had nowhere else to go.
Janel saw the oddly-clad and idle strangers, and by the time she realised who they were, the firing had already started, and she could not run.
~~~
(Continues in The City is an Island, if you don't mind the circular prequel/sequel thing)
Rating: PG-13, gen
Character: OC
Disclaimer: Not mine (except the mistakes), no harm meant.
Warnings: Complete wacky alien hijinks fail. Sorry.
Summary: This is the simplest story that those who travel the rings now tell. The Wraith came, and we ran, and everyone else died.
A/N: Prequel to ' The City is an Island', written for the h/c challenge - this is Janel's fractured journey from the Five Towns to the City. It is rather obliquely AMTDI, but, dammit, it's not their galaxy...
Wraith and Rings
The Wraith came.
The Ring opened, the darts flew, the Wraith fed. And then they killed and burned and tore the Five Towns apart.
Everyone knows this story, even if it's not the one their parents told them. The Wraith once took what they needed, destroyed cities but left crops untouched. Now they burnt everything in their path.
Where once they culled one in three, now they left maybe one in ten.
Janel ran.
This is the simplest story that those who travel the rings now tell. The Wraith came, and we ran, and everyone else died.
~
They said that the Five Towns were what you'd get if you took Sateda and removed the self-restraint, the warrior code and the strict sense of honour.
As a consequence, the Five Towns were full of wealthy Satedans at the gaming tables, Satedan soldiers in the bars (not always on leave), and Satedan youths in the brothels. But then, the Five Towns were open to all, rich and poor, whether they were a hard-science race or common farming folk. The Five Towns saw much of the Travellers, but they also played host to young Genii on Jinreva.
The Five Towns were gambling towns because they were lucky, or that's what they said. The Delta hadn't been culled in twelve generations, some quirk of fate keeping the Wraith away and letting the Five Towns flourish.
They said 'May your luck rise like the blind-moon tide of the Delta, and stick like the black mud of the marsh'.
People didn't simply come to the Five Towns to lose money. They also came to live, and barely a third of the population could trace any heritage beyond the last culling.
This is why the Five Towns, despite their name, were in fact one city - the five villages restored on the islands of the Delta quickly grew into towns, and then spread, reclaiming the marshes and blurring into one another. And scattered across them were a hundred little ragged enclaves of lost and broken cultures - remnants of shattered planets and refugees from stricter societies.
Janel heard a hundred different dialects in a day, and she could cipher in a dozen scripts. Her father was a Five Towns native, but her mother had been a migrant who never failed to remind Janel how lucky she was, how privileged.
It was thanks to her insistence in passing on hard-earned skills of survival that Janel was not now dead.
That, or the last small spark of the Five Towns' luck passed to Janel when she fled the Wraith.
~
After she was run off Kelos, she learned to wear skirts until she was sure of herself on each new planet. But she split the sides, Athos-style, and wore trousers underneath when the weather permitted, because the Wraith didn't give a damn about sartorial propriety.
~
There's a game they played, that the tower class called 'Rats and Rings' and everybody else knew as 'Wraith and Rings'.
After Sateda was culled - no, after Sateda was destroyed - it was if the Five Towns could see its own fate coming. At the time, of course, Janel didn't see it as that, simply that brawls that once ended in bloody noses and bruised egos now ended under the medicats' watch, that drunks who where once amiable now became desperate, that those who once gambled now risked all. They knew. When the Wraith came they would spare no-one. When the Wraith came. Before Sateda, it had always been 'if'.
In Wraith and Rings, the stakes are high, but the rules are simple. Roll high, you win.
The Delta was too strong, and not strong enough. The Five Towns could defend themselves against any enemy that came through the Ring, but not the Wraith in the sky. When the Wraith came, they would destroy the Five Towns as a warning to those who came after, just as they destroyed Sateda.
But the enemy came through the Ring, and was welcomed, because they numbered only four.
Four is not a high enough number to win outright, but not low enough to lose. Lucky enough not to be scorned, low enough not to be feared.
They called themselves peaceful explorers. They smiled, and praised the Five Towns, and were impressed by the Delta, and there was an exchange of gifts. When they left, the Five Towns spoke of nothing else for weeks.
Nobody travels in groups of four any more. Janel saw a family bound and beaten on Pherdan because they came through the Ring and held out their arms in peace, and numbered only four.
Nobody rolls dice for the Rings any more.
~
She remembered Santhal from childhood holidays. She stepped through the Ring expecting a soft autumn and welcoming hearths, and gagged at the stench.
Santhal was not culled. It rained down white fire, and nothing was left, and the few survivors were mad with grief, not knowing why, not knowing who.
Who but the Wraith and the bastard sons of the Ancestors had ships that could kill from the skies? The Travellers had no such weapons. And the Wraith would have sent darts, foot-soldiers to clear the townships.
Nothing could be proven. Janel did not stay to hear their grief to its end.
~
It was the Genii that told the first stories of the people who stole the City of the Ancestors. Genii, who had always been so wary of outsiders but never raised a hand in violence when they travelled, and now came through the Ring with weapons held high.
It wasn't the Wraith did that, but the strangers who now lived in the City.
The Genii came to the Five Towns looking for more of the black, uncanny ore found in the hills south of the Ring. They offered good trade, a third of the tava beans the Five Towns consumed yearly in exchange for rocks the Delta would never use.
The trade was good enough that they didn't dare re-negotiate when the miners started falling sick.
Janel never saw many of the miners - it was a slow, creeping sickness, not part of the medicat's blood-thick work, but she had friends among the doctors, and they told her about the cancers that would rot the miners from the inside out.
At least with the Wraith, death was swift.
~
After she was run off Erdos, she stopped trying to help the sick.
~
They'd heard rumours of the Black Colonel long before the so-called Children of the Ancestors came to the Delta. Perhaps they would have been warier if it had been the Colonel who stepped through the Ring, but he had sent his second, instead, and the Delta had been taken in by the little Major's honest face.
Perhaps if it had been the Black Colonel and his harsh-tongued scientist, and the Athosian woman and the Runner, they would have known better than to let them into the Five Towns, but the quiet Major, and his eager 'botanist', and the two soldiers who smiled at the girls leaning from the windows -
Perhaps if they had listened to the Genii, instead of scorning the stories as mere rumour. The stories said that the Lanteans could not be trusted, that they carried death in their wake, but they also said that the Black Colonel had woken the Wraith, and who had that kind of power, however ill their intent?
They called themselves peaceful explorers, and it wasn't until later that people muttered about the weapons they never set down.
~
On Serace, they claimed to have fought off monsters that were neither Wraith nor man, but something between. She saw one of the bodies. They called it a monster, an abomination, and it was, but something in the creature's face reminded her of traders she'd met from Athos, and that made her stomach twist more than a mere 'monster' would.
The people of the City had made allies of the Athosians, and then the Athosians had vanished, and these - things were now seen -
The people of the City were a hard-science race. If you believed the stories, nothing was beyond them, because they harnessed the power of the Ancestors. Manipulation of form, of mind - like farmers breeding for strength and productivity, it would hardly be difficult for them.
Like Wraith, feeding on the weak and leaving the strong to breed the next generation.
Janel did not want to believe the stories, because she wanted to sleep at night.
The Seracii hung the bodies by the side of the road from the Ring, as a warning.
She did not stay on Serace.
~
The Wraith came.
Three days before the people of the City were to return to the Five Towns, the Ring opened, and no-one stepped through. Then the whine of the darts filled the sky.
The Wraith came, and they took what they wanted, and then they burnt the rest.
Janel ran.
There may have been others who escaped. Janel did not see them. She did not look.
She ran, and everyone else died.
~
Ordan wasn't safe. Ordan was known to be an ally of Atlantis.
Ordan wasn't safe, not if they had their claws in it. They were allies of Atlantis, and that brought danger, even if it was supposed to bring protection.
She had nowhere else to go.
Janel saw the oddly-clad and idle strangers, and by the time she realised who they were, the firing had already started, and she could not run.
~~~
(Continues in The City is an Island, if you don't mind the circular prequel/sequel thing)