The dreary warning in my dystopian science fantasy
Every dystopian science fantasy in The Rebel Lore Vault sticks a dagger to foreign policy and politics. But one has gotten all too real.
We’re seeing a war brewing abroad while the ultimate Left vs. Right power struggle continues at home — a power struggle featuring two totalitarian factions.
The mistake most people make is believing one side ever wanted less power.
The Right were supposedly freedom fighters during the days of COVID, when they rightfully railed against draconian lockdowns and mandates that the Left supported and conformed to with subsequent smiles and bows.
And don’t let them fool you now that, a mere 15 months after their guy gets back into the White House, that all they wanted was to take back power and control. These are the same people who justified the use of invading cities with National Guard troops as if they were British soldiers in Boston, and they’re perfectly fine with kicking off a massive regional war as long as their guy is igniting it.
In many ways, it’s the George Bush era all over again. It’s Iraq and Afghanistan all over again, especially when you look at the track record of both conflicts. But don’t just isolate the Right.
Again, the Left’s perfectly fine with power, too. They love war just as much—again as long as their guy is doing it. They were fine with Barack Obama helping to destabilize Libya, Syria, and return to Iraq. They were also fine with Joe Biden fighting multiple proxy wars that occurred in the years following the Afghanistan withdrawal.
As for traditional neocons—the John Bolton type—they’re perfectly fine with just about every single war that erupts.
Back when I wrote Wind Master (Elementals of Nordica Book II), I was thinking about both sides of the aisle—the Left and the Right, when I wrote the following, which tells of the tragic destruction of the Lost World of Terrene that Sion Zona and his friend, Corra Eriksson, travel to while escaping Lord Tuukka Worthy and his Tamurian troops.
Check it out below:
The tragic tale of the Lost World of Terrene — Chapter 6: Fallen World
The world spun. Sion closed his eyes against the infinite swirling and tucked his arms to his chest. For at least thirty seconds, he spun until an unseen force catapulted him.
His feet hit the ground and sunlight penetrated his eyes. Perspiration squirted from his forehead and skin, forcing him to rip off his cloak and tie it around his waist. He opened his eyes, where a windswept Corra stripped until she wore nothing but a sports bra, her shoulder dressings, leggings, and boots.
“Really?” he said.
She scowled.
“What?”
“Where are we?”
Sion whipped around. They stood near an archway identical to the one they left where swirling energy remained. “Obviously in another world.”
Corra brandished her sword. “Alright, we know Tuukka’s around here somewhere, so it’s wise you prep yourself.”
Sion drew his sword, adjusted his shield, and stepped ahead, where forested terrain greeted them on the outskirts of a military base. “Maybe Tuukka and his crew are the only elementals in the area?”
“Or maybe they’re not? So why don’t we not play Mr. Nice Guy this time?”
“Why don’t we listen to our conscience?”
“Mine never told me to play clean.”
“Mine did.” Sion approached a gated entrance containing a sign stating Do Not Walk Beyond This Point. Lethal Force Authorized. “None of those soldiers back in Talvi had a clue of what they were doing. Maybe the same goes for this place?”
Corra nodded to the sign. “So you’re saying you wouldn’t kill if you had a hundred swords pointed your way from mind-numbed Elemental Masters?”
“I’m not killing if I can help it, alright?”
Corra glowered.
“Look, let’s figure out how to get inside without getting our heads blown off.”
“Stop. Joking. About. Dying—what’s that?”
Something rumbled in the distance and a military vehicle hit the road leading to the base.
He grabbed Corra and ushered her toward the tree line a hundred yards away as an olive green vehicle approached and the gates swung open.
“Not a single credential next to a familiar car,” Sion said. “So unless they have facial rec or something we don’t know about, I figured out how to get through this thing.”
“I’m sure there’s more to it than that,” Corra said.
“Drop your swords and turn around slowly.”
Corra’s eyes went round as she froze and opened her hand, sword clanging to the earth.
Sion whipped around and sneered at a man bearing thick eyebrows and blue eyes of the Iberians.
As the Iberian reared, Sion directed his sword at the man’s chest, whirling him into a thick oak ten yards away.
He sprinted after the fallen man and further separated him from his sword with a gust, blowing the weapon another ten yards into the forest. “Alright, buddy, you’re going to tell me how many of you are patrolling outside this base if you’re interested in living.”
Corra raised her eyebrows and thrust Sion an I told you so look. He would’ve shaken his head at her perceived wittiness, but for one, this man’s piercing eyes stated he remained in the right frame of mind. For another, if the guy walked this base and world, odds were he was a high ranking member of the Iberian Military who knew a thing or two.
The man chuckled through a grimace, revealing blackened teeth. “Enough to kill intruders like you two hundreds of times over. What would you expect from a top secret base?”
“I’m sure this world’s top secret. It got a name?”
“Terrene.” The Iberian jerked his head toward the archway, where the spirit energy evaporated. “And good luck trying to find your way back to the World of Eidolon.” Another grimacing laugh. “That archway just extinguished itself. You only got one known option left on this side of the world.”
Sion thrust his sword tip to the man’s throat. “Where’s the last one?”
The Iberian motioned to the base. “Prisoner compound, where Lord Tuukka and his crew are ordering perpetual torture on their prime inmate. Native Nordican girl.” Another grumble. “They brought her in last week. The Spirit Master.”
So Shia was the victim here?
“What’s making the portals disappear?”
“This world’s ending. Spirit mutants have died out. As light energy dies, dark energy takes it as its own.” He nodded to a gigantic sun in the distance.
Red, and at least ten times larger and cooler than the sun on Eidolon. Even if it looked like summer here on Terrene, it was no warmer than seventy degrees. If it wasn’t so cold over in Nordica, Sion and Corra never would’ve stripped their cloaks.
He pressed his sword tip into the man’s neck, where a drop of blood trickled. “What’s the story? And Corra, make sure no one’s sneaking up on us.”
“Terrene was our grand experiment.” The man’s sneering face made Sion want to run him through with his sword, but a voice inside, Skyra’s voice, ordered him to stay calm. “What would happen to a world where its governments, media anchors, and others with money, power, and influence divided its people so much that fights not only broke out between rival nations and international factions, but within nations?
“Government policy has long struck united nations with divisiveness. Laws and usurpation of liberties masked as safety on both ends of the spectrum. But don’t all laws lead to the same common denominator?”
“State revenue. Force, violence, intimidation needed to enforce them. Yeah, I learned a thing or two in Nordica. Restrictions are always about control, creating criminals, and serving military, healthcare, and other industrial complexes. How’d you divide them?”
“Plants. No different than the plants stalking around Iron Town that day back in Eidolon. Plants under our control to conduct attacks, riots, and crises to coax the masses into demanding more so-called restrictions.
“We knew once the attacks and crises occurred, news anchors would do the rest. Report something and use intel sources to confirm their claims that the crises occurred because of a lack of restrictions in place. A claim their selected research at leading universities would reinforce.
“The Iberian and Tamurian Intelligence Agencies, along with the strongest nations in Eidolon, supplied our plants with what they needed, where to attack, and the crisis they were to carry out.
“Once word hit news waves, droves of people gladly surrendered their rights for higher restrictions to supposedly take care of and protect them. Of course, what some factions within nations demanded, others stood against. Leading to domestic divisiveness and unrest.
“It was all about control and those strong enough to seek it used the crises to their advantage. People don’t just run for public office without hunger for power. They’re paternalistic people whose goal is to capitalize on crisis after crisis. To force their opposing factions to bend to their faction’s every whim.
“Little do they know, they’re pawns on the chess table evoking more divisiveness because they think they got the masses’ best interests at heart. Ah, divisiveness. Excellent way to spend taxpayer dollars, eh?”
“I can think of a tax rate I’d like to see in Eidolon now that I have an idea of where they’re going.” Sion bounced his eyebrows at Corra. “How does a zero-percent income tax sound?”
She cracked a smile.
“But we weren’t finished,” the Iberian said. “We also planted people in uncivilized and undeveloped nations to riot against the military presence of super powerful nations like what the Nation of Avarice had become while the divided factions within it fought amongst themselves.”
Sion twisted his lips as the Iberian spread his arms toward a ruined city in the distance. ”I get it. Build a duopoly of factions throughout the global power, keep them occupied, and allow that same power’s military to wreak havoc in the world.”
The Iberian emitted a perverse grin. “You should’ve seen it. Rioters burning Avarice and their allies’ flags. Demanding revenge against its constant meddling in foreign affairs. The thirst for revenge was there. And soon, you saw unstaged attacks all over Terrene.
“It thrust Avarice and its so-called status as Leader of the Free World in jeopardy. They became a national security surveillance state as a growing faction of people demanded new restrictions.
“Of course, politicians who craved popularity and secretly control wasted no time supplying their faction’s demand while the minority opposed it.
“Politicians and their minions promising and supporting restrictions and mandates for the greater good, they seized power. They got to tell history, and they told the public, especially the younger generations in their mandated schools, what to believe, and what not to believe, and what to think. And if you questioned their viewpoints or motives, they rendered you an incoherent outcast.
“Conditioning their people to demonize anyone who dissented. Anyone willing to fight the new status quo of a mass surveillance state in which you couldn’t walk down a single street corner without a camera following your every motion. Facial recognition tech tracking you at all times.
“Media anchors who craved their own popularity supported our restrictions narrative as power fell into the hands of the few. Mutant Masters, obviously. As we’re naturally intended to hold power, and fueled two superpower factions within Avarice at constant odds with one another while their warfare state ravaged nations and people on the global scale, sparking more divisive tactics.”
“Sounds a lot like what you’re trying to do on Eidolon today with Tamuria and Iberia. Or the demonization of elementals and anyone else against your sick agenda.”
The man’s grin stretched ear to ear. “There’s so much more you don’t understand, boy. This was only the beginning of the experiment. What did such restrictions lead to at home here in Avarice, Terrene’s prevailing superpower?
“We successfully pitted people of one nation against their own countrymen. Yet we wanted to discover what would happen in the superpower when those bickering factions reached the point of no return.
“Take foreign policy. The majority opinion stated government action won those proxy wars, that cold war with the opposite superpower, and kept Avarice’s enemies, manufactured as they were, at bay. And the minority correctly stated it was because the other side never had the resources to fight such a prolonged war.
“But those people were in the tiny minority, like most anti-statist camps. They were alternative viewpoints. The so-called misinformed. Censored in the media, by politicians, and ridiculed by those conditioned to believe the military might and restrictions narrative.
“Because of course, we naturally censor lies, right?” The Iberian snickered. “Who’s ever tried to censor a lie? Did not a single one realize you only censor if you have something to hide? Have they ever lied to a parent and threatened a sibling or someone else who knew the truth? Have they ever gone out of their way to discredit them to maintain a lie?
“It took years, long before my time and the time of Lord Tuukka. Much longer. Decades in the making. Over a century. Brutal domestic election after brutal domestic election, in which each who achieved such power continued with all those wars, if they didn’t start new ones.
“At home in Avarice, each domestic faction perpetuated fear and hatred with the pettiest issues. It divided Avarice under the media’s and politicians’ iron fists more than ever before. Fights in the streets. Fights in schools. Fights among old friends and families.
“Factions within Avarice reached a breaking point. And it didn’t take long before every street in this divided superpower shone red with blood.”
The Iberian jerked his head back toward the ruins. “You’re looking at what’s left of Vora City. Avarice’s capital. Population, Iberian and Tamurian Mutant Masters, and what’s left of Avarice’s Military. Those people are gone. All of them.
“They put their trust in opposing domestic authority figures and demanded they implement harsh laws, tactics, and monopolized programs. Forcing the losing faction to follow. Demonizing every citizen who spoke against them.”
The Iberian sneered again. “And look what it led to. Look what faith in a duopoly of one of two domestic factions within a monopoly of government that can only exist and profit by forced extortion led to.”
“You destroyed an entire world?” Sion said, his voice low. “You experimented on a global and a superpower’s population to see what would become of billions of people when you pushed them to the brink of extinction through a fear mongering game of lies and propaganda and you’re laughing about it?”
Whoosh!
A vortex jetted past Sion and struck the Iberian head-on, uprooting the oak and sending both a hundred yards in the opposite direction. Corra emerged, breathless, her sword in midair.
Her expression turned from anger to fear. Shouts in the Iberian tongue erupted, prompting Sion to grab Corra and bolt for the skies as elemental maneuvers shot their way.
It was as though they spied on him and Corra during the Iberian’s story. Perhaps the cunning Iberian signaled them the entire time to attack when he’d completed before Corra extinguished his life.
Sion jetted above the trees as elemental blasts erupted, and he zigzagged back into the wooded landscape at an angle. “Did your conscience tell you to get us killed?”
“Just get us out of here, alright? You can berate me later.”
“Let’s hope later’s in our future.”
A twin flare set nearby trees ablaze and Sion raced through, carrying Corra and praying the Iberians and Tamurians didn’t hold a presence in Vora City.
Sion windsurfed into the skyline where below, cars, bodies, and debris littered the city streets. Preserved bodies. Tamuria’s and Iberia’s global science experiment must not have ended long ago. But what explained the red giant above them? How old was this world?
He landed in what looked like a city square, where cars and trucks resembling those back home were covered in soot. Shattered glass littered the streets and burned out buildings smoldered with ash and smoke.
“Well?” Corra said.
“Well what?”
“Are you going to treat me like a two-year-old who caused a scene in a grocery store because mommy and daddy told them they couldn’t eat a cookie or what?”
“I’m going to find a way to get to Shia and you’re going to help me. That answer your question?”
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This article first appeared at The Rogue Scribe. For more pieces like this, commentary on what really inspired my books, confessionals, and more, make sure you subscribe to the Scribe.
