Marked Yours

Prologue It has been written that all good things come to an end. Civilizations are no exception. They arrive on this planet, kicking and screaming newborns, struggling to eke out their place in the timeline humanity calls history. They grow, some thrive and bloom, others fail while still young. All, however, are living entities and at some point, they come to an end. They might vanish completely, be absorbed by another civilization or morph into something entirely different. One civilization expanded to cover every continent on Earth. It became so dependent on power and electronic devices that when that power was rendered impotent the civilization came crashing down. It was a series of events, bad luck really, that ended that civilization. The eruption of a super volcano and a series of massive hurricanes might have been overcome, but the Sun conspired against Earth at almost the same time. It belched out several enormous clouds of energy and magnetized matter over the span of a few years, in effect, disrupting communications and power to the point they were useless world-wide. Oil powered machines became a thing of the past and there was a return to the reality that if it didn’t run on horsepower or steam, it didn’t run. The civilization dependent on that power and communications ended as well. Humanity, as is its nature, survived, changed and grew. A new society was brought kicking and screaming into the world on what was still called the North American continent. It was different from its predecessor, young, wild, and with a bullheaded determination to thrive. In one part of the land, groups of people sought refuge, fleeing a super volcano to the west and massive hurricanes from the east. They settled together and over the course of many decades, created a new life. Mixed with farmers and builders were academics and scientists. They were forced to come together or perish. Couples forming bonds, having a partner to love and be loved by, was paramount for the human psyche. This was understood with startling clarity and perception of love is love evolved beyond one man and one woman. As a result, same-s*x unions were accepted and valued for what they were, love and support of another human being. From these people, with exceptional skills, a unique system of slavery evolved. A woman had the opportunity to offer one child to be raised and educated by tutors in specialized villages dedicated to seeing these children from infanthood to adulthood. It was a high honor to parent one of these children and the competition was fierce. Men and women who produced slave children carried the prestige of passing stringent mental and physical tests. These slaves were a highly sought-after commodity because of their specialized training. The children never knew their parents and their parents never knew them. The babies were cared for, raised to the age of twenty-two, but not loved. The onslaught of natural disasters also unleashed supernatural creatures into the light of day that had once dwelt only in the realm of nightmares, legends and scary stories. Some were harmless, others threatening. Another specialized group of people came into their own. These men and women came to be known as Sentries. Highly trained and dedicated, they were the general population’s defense against supernatural and human threats alike. They were a rough, cut-throat group and considered a necessary evil, supported by the people of the cities and protectorate they guarded, sometimes revered, often feared. Sometimes a slave child was discovered who had the aptitude, or possibly the heritage, to become a sentry. They were bound to the most compatible sentry when both were very young. Once the union between master and slave was complete, it was permanent. Sentry and slave children alike were raised and trained as weapons in the never-ending battle to keep the average citizen safe. Their lives were hard and dangerous. Occasionally, one slave was extraordinary, and one Sentry stood out from the rest…