A Darkened Flame
Fire was discovered seven hundred thousand years ago, give or take, and we’ve been relying on it ever since.
Fire stopped working six months ago, and the world has pretty much gone to hell.
It wasn’t anything we saw coming; one day, campers everywhere noticed their fire pits wouldn’t start; the furnaces of homeowners crapped out, and industrial plants could no longer illegally burn all the waste they weren’t supposed to be burning.
Since we’re such a brilliant species, we’d stood around looking at each other for a few weeks wondering what the hell happened. Campers assumed they’d just had too much to drink, homeowners called their furnace companies and were charged exorbitant amounts for service, and industrial plants made giant piles of crap they really shouldn’t have and tried to burn harder.
Science went to work, and our greatest minds plopped out this gem of an explanation: fire no longer worked.
Thanks, geniuses.
Sure, they’d dolled it up in techno-speak, but the essential truth remained the same: fire didn’t work and they had no bloody idea why. They presumed a lot, and put a whole bunch of caveats in all of their statements, but what it really boiled down to was that there was no way we were getting fire up and burning anytime soon and we had better get used to it.
We didn’t, of course.
After a month, industry started to feel the pinch, even though they claimed there would be no effect on anything “important”. There were so many things that relied on fire, things that no one had thought about, that an already-strained society began to fray at the edges, and then crack.
Two months in, the riots started, and cities across the globe didn’t burn. Windows were smashed and items were looted, but without fire, a riot just wasn’t the same as it used to be.
Men and women around the world got increasingly frustrated as their rage and their passion found no outlet, and as winter came on, the death toll started to rise; anger did little to keep a body alive. The elderly and children went first, and families wept. The healthy came next – some because of the bitter cold and some because others were jealous of technology they’d hoarded or insulated homes they owned. It was chaos; it was madness.
It was humanity.
And now here we are, a ring of us, the last sensible ones left, and who have made our way to the southernmost parts of the North American continent. We needed warmth to continue our studies, sunlight to think.
Our star hadn’t burned out, so obviously combustion still worked somewhere; we had to presume that what was happening to us was planetarily localized and specific. Of course, that didn’t speak to the question of why, but it got us a little closer.
The answer came when the shadows grew long one evening, shadows that we noticed were blacker than any in the surrounding area. We’d been getting reports about these from around the globe – long, ravening darknesses that hid among more benign shadows and destroyed those who walked into them.
Most of use had dismissed it as nonsense; populations in the grip of fear often created ways to deal with the death and destruction around them, but then one of our best wandered away from the group after a particularly unproductive discussion. We could hear his screams from the camp, but couldn’t get to him in time – not that we had any idea how much time we had.
We found him, twisted and broken, under a swaying palm tree. His body was gnarled and bent, each limb blackened with a char that we were all familiar with, but the smell, even for a burned body, was wrong. Too ashy, with a hint of something sinister, and lacking the pungent slap of oxidizing combustion.
Shadows were burning now, and with no explanation as to why.
We buried his body and went back to work, feverishly trying to divine the reasoning behind such a circumstance, seeking the answers to a new question. We scurried around like insects, keeping to the light and watching out for any darkness that seemed too large, seemed too intent on staying near us.
The shadows achieved the status of demons, of ancient powers out to strike us down, and we allowed them to control us, use us.
Until we found a way to use them.
One of our junior members had a flashlight that still worked, a small thing that we used only the most desperate of situations. Time with poor nutrition and little water was taking its toll, however, and he began to speak to his flashlight, stroking it and telling what a good little lamp it was. When the shadows came hard and fast one night, he leapt into the fray, light brandished, screaming obscenities.
The shadow nearest to him screeched – no other word would suffice – and was pulled toward the streaming light. Its wielder howled in triumph and attempted to push farther into the darkness but we grabbed him and dragged him to the relative safety of the lesser dark.
There, at the mouth of his flashlight, was a flame.
Black and stuttering, it slipped around the edges of the light as if wanting to escape, but couldn’t seem to make it over the metal ringing of the bulb.
“Quick!” Someone yelled, “Find something to burn!” A piece of paper was quickly passed forward and placed over the top of the light, and sure enough, tendrils of black smoke began to rise, and the now-familiar stench wafted among those of us assembled.
We had little choice in the matter, all things considered, though many of us still question our positions to this day. We gave the people what they wanted; an explanation, but kept the truth of it to ourselves. Wizards, they call us, in a new age of magic, and we wield both power and fear. Are we deserving? Perhaps.
No matter.
We are here, where shadows burn.
- D
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