The long night would soon be erased by dawn, and they would be happy to see it gone.  Night was starless and wickedly chilled on the island’s gentle slopes and low hills.  Guilla was one of the most Northern islands in the Caribbean archipelago that the tyrant Zlthur had conquered.  This meant it was the furthest from the glimmering crystalline spires and domes of the capital city, which hovered, far away, over the burning lands of Demerara.  

That night, young Orleon Trust and his comrades stood atop the hill’s plateau staring down in horror at the burning village in the valley.  From there, the lamps of the island’s homes winked weakly, like joyless Christmas lights scattered across the dark landscape; bundled together where various villages stood. To Orleon it made this scene seem more tragic somehow.  This village, Coldteen, was no more.

Almost two hundred years prior to this very day, the mysterious warlord called Zlthur and his duplicitous sister, the Dominixa Zlthoria, queen of necromancy, had emerged from the crimson mists of the Great Dust War and declared Zlthur ruler of all the Americas.  His swift military campaign had fallen short of their grand ambitions but when the bloody smoke of war had finally cleared, half of Central America, all of South America and the entire Caribbean island-chain were firmly beneath his rule.  

His rule and his sister’s immovable skygrid; a translucent hardlight defence grid in the sky that spanned the Atlantic nations, preventing aerial attacks on their GrandDominion from the Outworld and serving as dependable transport routes for persons and cargo.

Guilla’s barren landscape was ever unchanged across the years.  Never abundantly green but merely hinting here and there, that rain had passed that way.  It was a mostly flat, dry island of unimpressive size; hardly a great prize in the crazed siblings’ conquest.  Where woodland grew it was dense and dark beneath the canopy but mostly it was a dry land and who knew it, mocked it as a land of dust and bones.  At only seventy square miles in size it remained fairly unknown.  But to be unknown or forgotten in Zlthur’s GrandDominion could be a good thing.  Coldteen village is what happened when the Dominion remembered your existence. 

Orleon Trust could not believe it had come to this.  “An entire village raked to the seed,”  he whispered.  Guilla had gone many decades without much more than a Givenboot patrolling their soil.  Only the occasional flyover or capsule drop, the GrandDominion’s meagre charity, to stave off the starvation and rebellion of the masses.

Yet, in this overlooked and impoverished land at the edge of the Caribsea, the faithful Believers had found a blessing unique in this evil GrandDominion; the freedom to worship their Lord, Jesus Christ.  Of course it was not the worship of days passed, that the old Englishman, N’yardo, spoke of from his cedar bench when he was full of wine and merry.  No, those days of Believers openly shouting their wild hallelujahs, were long gone.  Still, they thanked God that at least they could continue to gather in rank basements, abandoned buildings and forgotten caves.  As long as they did not seek to evangelise the populace; and as long as the GrandDominion’s local Comptroller got his demand in gold-cogs, silver-bits and flesh-favours, they could be.  They could live a “peaceable life”.  

Of course, this was not a mercy of the dark government, they simply lacked the resources to bother policing a land of only thirty-five thousand souls. The Believers thanked God for the Texaneers and Kartels keeping the Dominion busy at the Mexy-line.

“By His Living Son, may God have mercy on us,”  young Orleon Trust, their leader and pastor, proclaimed somberly, “This ain't good…this ain't good at all guys,”  he stood with them in the close dark surveying the burning village in the valley, their stunned faces only illuminated by the raging fires below.

Orleon Trust was a stoic, brown-skin island-boy just eighteen years of age but had already lost too much to the barbarous world around him.  His parents, his three siblings and only a few months passed, his wife, the red headed American beauty, Poettica Fuse.  The Last Visionarii, the Believers had called her.  He was the young Pastor of one of the many Earthen-Churches on Guilla.  Understanding more verses of scripture than most, he was respected and revered by all and had once led a congregation of ninety-eight Believers.  

He wore black jeans, a white long-sleeve shirt and hanging from his hand was a black pastor’s jacket which he had inherited from his father.  It had been passed down for ages among the Trusts.  Old, but showed no signs of its age.  Pastor Orleon shook his head at the destruction then swung on his jacket. The garment was made of a rare AI-synthetic which used to have direct communication to the underground Earthen Church leaders in better days.  It hung past his waist with three thin, white lines from collar to sleeve’s end.  Large navy blue buttons, fastened to the coat by nylon thread.

Orleon had been ordained pastor of this congregation after his father was slain.  Then the GrandDominion’s marching military men, the GivenNetz and GivenBootz, came and the Believers scattered across the island hiding out in various secret locales.  He thought it better for sure that they should go separate ways.  And so the agents of the GrandDominion now had to hunt for many souls in various places, but still, it had brought him more sleepless nights as Believers scavengered the most stripped and horrid places trying to find food and medicine for the hungry and sick in each desperate camp.  

From the grassy hilltop, Orleon Trust and his five companions surveyed the razed village below.  His cousin, Somael, of equal age, stood next to him stone-faced as usual.  They could have passed for brothers, almost identical in features, if not for the thin scar that ran from Orleon’s left ear to the corner of his mouth.  Close by stood the younger Indian boy, Keethin, who watched quietly, shaking his head in disbelief as the small village continued to burn.  

They heard the cruel sound of metal failing and glass shattering in the wind-fed furnace.  Standing beside Keethin were the twin seventeen year-old blonde girls, Milnah and Nilvah, true tech-heads; skilled guides and diggers of Zlthur’s underweb.  They were blue-eyed, almost unhealthily skinny but fairly pretty; each often seen with two cedar flowers over the right ear.  The girls were young but hardly carefree.  By Orleon’s order they served to monitor the movements of all the impious GrandDominion troops in the nearby islands.  Their findings on the underweb were vital to the church’s survival.  It often meant the difference between a service on a beach, a basement or a cave.  Once, a time ago, when a post on the underweb indicated six GivenBootz were on the neighbouring island, Z-Martin, searching for a defiant evangelist, they did not hold service for a month.  

At the escarpment’s edge stood Arthned, a thin dark-skinned boy.  At twelve years old he was the youngest and most formally-schooled of them all.  These were six of the small group that were the core of the congregation called ‘His Faithful Church’.  They were quiet now; and fearful at what they were seeing.  Standing there, hidden in the thick of the dark they saw Coldteen laid to waste.  Its houses, tents and huts were all engulfed in furious flames.  And at the centre of this vast ruin was the GrandDominion’s prized Ranzi Tower, built only ten months prior, now broken, burning and at last, half fallen.

The hellish flames ascending from the tower to the dark sky were the colours of the most malevolent magixah.  Blood-red, fiery lightning bolts crackled from its glazed floors, darting ever upwards towards the black clouds as the last of its core spells screeched, fizzled and dissipated into thin intentions and ever-fading soothsayings.  If the Tower had really been a living monument to evil, as many islanders believed, it was now dying a most dramatic death.

The Tower.  Once the shock of the loss of life had faded, it was the assault on the Ranzi Tower that now bothered Orleon most of all and his faithful companions understood this well.  The GrandDominion, despite its considerable military might was strained trying to patrol its vast seas on all sides while guarding carefully against the covert missions of the Londonaire Navy. 

Still, with rumours of the arrival of the Poetts in Guilla and the rise of the Earthen Church once again in this corner of the map, they saw it necessary to fund the construction of a skyscraping Ranzi Tower to monitor all passenger aircraft, drones and liftpaths on the skygrid.  And where would they build it?  Coldteen of course.  The GrandDominion remembered which of Guilla’s villages had provided the most men for their army of Givenz.

But the tower had been brought down.  Orleon knew this would mean the end of them if they did not act quickly.  Wiping out villagers loyal to the Dominion was one thing; killing a dozen practitioners of New Magixah was another great crime; but destroying a Ranzi Tower dedicated in the name of Grand Dominin Zlthur himself?  Unpardonable by Dominion Law.  And so, everyone in Guilla who heard of the attack on the Ranzi Tower knew it would not be long before GivenScrollz would be landing on their shores to investigate the matter.  GivenScrollz, he hoped, and not GivenBootz.  Those grunt level foot soldiers of the GrandDominion were unbearably cruel; slicing first and asking no questions after.  

Orleon was saddened by the merciless assault on Coldteen village.  Hundreds of villagers had been slain and he knew the one who had done it.  He knew who it was that always longed to avenge the Last Visionarii and destroy the Ranzi Tower.  No one else had put it together.  Not yet but he would have to tell them the cutting truth; It was a Believer.  A brother in the Faith.  A member of their assembly, the young rogue of His Faithful Church, Poetticus Fuse.

“I hear voices down there,” Milnah said tapping the small, soft, yellow button on the side of her plastic and chrome helmet with a trembling hand.  A hologram flickered on before her viser and reaching out with her mind she expanded the image for all to see.  She zoomed in on a section of the village below and indeed, she was right, there were a few people coming out of the fire.  All seemingly unburnt and full of rage.

“Good Lord!  We have to help them!”  Nilvah proclaimed.

“What?  Are you looplard in the head?  They would kill us,”  Somael warned.

“Pastor Orleon?  Please tell him we have to help,”  she pleaded.

“Look...listen ti mi.”  Orleon said forcefully, “we had a hand in dis.  I want y’all ti know dat it was a Believer who did dis.”

“What you mean Orlo?”  Keethin asked worriedly.  He knew the wrath of the Dominion was everlasting. “Who would do that?”

“Poetticus.”  Pastor Orleon Trust stated bluntly but it was painful to utter the words.  He took no pleasure in reporting this about his brother-in-law.

“Poett?  No.”  the blue-eyed Milnah protested for her fiancé. 

“Milnah, I know it hard to hear but trust me, ‘tis he who do it.”

“No, no.  Orlo, I don’t think he even found the ash-canons,” Milnah proposed, “And if he did he would never use them to....”  she stopped herself abruptly.  Hearing the uncertainty in her own voice she dropped her head, her messy hair covering her shamefacedness.  She had missed him when he had flown off seeking the ash-canons.  Missed him so much she had not considered that he would ever follow through but of course Poetticus was capable of this.  A brother in the faith he certainly was but he nor any other of the sect of Believers known as the Poetts were beyond the shedding of blood to protect the Earthen Church and its mission.  Never had she known a group of people who could be so loving and cold at the same time.  But Nilvah and her, had long had their fill of Poettical dogma.  They too were of that Believer Clan but could do it no more.

“Ain’t enough buttons,”  Milnah admitted, an ancient saying for one with an especially cold heart.  No coat, no matter how long, or thick, or how many buttons could warm such a heart.  

“Ain’t enough buttons,”  Orleon agreed.  Both knew Poetticus was truly that icey. But hey, he was her ice-king.

Though the village fires still raged, the once panicked voices down the long slope were calmer now, greeting each other and organising.  Accusing fingers pointed towards the teenagers on the hillside.

“Hey, we gotta go, Pastor Orlo.  Dey aint want help dey want blood,”  Somael, his young Deacon, reasoned.  Orleon saw a half dozen men begin the slow climb towards them.  A deathly thin old lady led assiduously, with more vigour in her steps than the others.

“That’s a witch,”  Orleon announced with much disdain.

“Yeah, Priestess Awagah?”  Somael inquired unafraid.

“Yes,”  Milnah confirmed on her visor.

Orleon shook his head.  “Of all of them, is she who woulda survive, eh?”  Still he considered that it was possibly a mercy from the hand of God as her death would have been even a more outrageous crime in the Dominion’s sight.  Afterall, she and her coven had performed the dedication spell over the tower.

“C’mon man, you don’t think we should be blazing outta here?”

“No. Let me speak to her…”  

“Pastor, no.  She will not lis…”  Somael suddenly stopped.

Orleon had taken one brave step forward when the dark sky lit up with fearsome yellow lightning that ran jagged behind the black clouds.  The sound was like that of an old ragged garment being torn fast, and unlovingly.

Orleon froze where he was, as did the magixans far down the path.  They all looked upward to the far skygrid.  The lightning ceased and the sky returned to fitting black.  Then, with a whooshing sound, a yellow laser-like bolt as straight as an arrow pierced the clouds in the place from which the lightning had radiated.  It lit up the night, moving slower than the lightning had but faster than would have allowed the living to outrun its intent.

The magixans  had barely uttered an awestruck “urrrh” when the pulsing orb at the head of the descending bolt line hit them and from the grounds outside the burning village a bright fiery explosion of immense power reduced them to embers in a split second.  The firepower was far more than what was required to kill a few practitioners of magixah.  The resulting blast wave expanded in a flash, with winds so strong it outed many of the village fires; a billion pieces of sparkling debris blown across the darkening night as the light of the explosion vanished again to black.