The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

and
I am not a child .
    Then they would close the cover, and the darkness would
return.
    He’d awaken after a time, his mind confounded by sleep, and
watch the air above him shimmer. Visions appeared, showing ranks of people
rushing toward each other with strange weapons. They chanted the name of their
god as they attacked, each side in a different language.
    It had to be a dream.
    The vicars returned and asked why he carried the flute. They
warned that music, taken to excess, might facilitate the return of the darkness.
For in the darkness, the young gathered at night to dance to forbidden music, a
way of worshipping death.
    Later, his cell lit up with visions once more. Boys and
girls, tenfold all those of the Ponds, crowded in the dark with strange lights
flashing above them. Their shirts bore images of skulls, and some had etched
symbols of death into their skin. A piercing sound pained his ears, a kind of
music played not with the sweet flute and drum of festival but with impossibly
loud instruments. The people swayed to the beat, oblivious to each other’s
presence.
    Another dream? He began to wonder.
    The vicars told how scholars had created a liquid that melted
flesh off bone, and the leaders of the darkness allowed them to drop it from the
sky so they’d be deaf to the cries of their enemies. In their arrogance, they
even created a false sun. They dropped this too, so its heat scorched those on
the ground, leaving nothing but the outline of their bodies in ash.
    This time, when the vision startled Thomas awake, he pressed
his eyes shut to block out the light, but the flash of the false sun glowed
through his eyelids.
    Perhaps the horror had been real.
    Again and again, the vicars told of the darkness. Again and
again, what they’d described showed in the dreams.
    The vicars came so many times he lost count. Each interview
started with the same question: “Do you know the darkness?”
    “Yes sir,” he always replied.
    They’d ask him to recite the precepts. With each response, he
spoke with more sincerity, until one day he sobbed and struggled to get out the
words.
    Then suddenly, the interviews stopped. No more questions, no
more visions. He waited in silence.
    His cracked lips measured the passage of time. With no
taste, no smell, no sight, no sound, he exercised the last of his senses by
groping at the walls. They had the feel of stone, rough-hewn by unskilled
workers, but worn smooth by thousands of desperate fingertips. Like so many
before him, he’d been abandoned. If light was the giver of life, his would soon
end.
    Then, as the wings of death fluttered in the darkness
overhead, a new vision appeared, no longer a nightmare from the past. He saw Little
Pond in the spring, its sparkling waters, its hills strewn with apple trees
newly bloomed, its granite mountains looming in the distance—and the utter
loneliness of his circumstance struck him. He imagined Orah and Nathaniel
strolling along the path to the NOT tree together, hand in hand, without him.
No longer their burden, he’d drifted from their memories. He reached out,
trying to touch his old life once more.
    The vision vanished and the ceiling board creaked open. He
looked up at the panel of vicars and staggered to his feet.
    This time, they asked a different question: “Thomas, are you
happy with your life in Little Pond?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Do you care for your family and friends?”
    “Oh, yes sir.”
    “And would you like to go home?”
    His throat seized up. He nodded.
    The clerics leaned in and consulted with each other, and
then the senior vicar turned to him. “So you still may, Thomas. You’ve learned
of the darkness. We believe you may become a faithful child of light.”
    Thomas waited.
    “The Temple offers three teachings. The first demands understanding,
allegiance and proof. You must convince us you understand the darkness. Once
you’ve done so, you’ll prove your loyalty by swearing allegiance to the Temple.
But know