The Hidden Shadowmaker

Prologue

I was saved by an accident. Sometime before I was born the angry people up North decided my people were next on some chopping block. I think it was sometime between their journey of self reflection and the massacre of those in the West. To make a long story short, I shouldn't exist.

To make it long, I think it began some hundred years before I was born. A lot of stuff happened. Wars, fighting, I'm sure some Romeo and Juliet stuff between the feuding tribes of the North and South. And I'll even go as far to say stuff stuff happened. Like a specific tribe betrayed my people. Now I'm not pointing fingers because I'm sure their metallic hearts couldn't circulate their empathy but it was the West.

But when the North came, I was a newborn that had been born prematurely. And my parents were in their home faced with two decisions. Create a shadow around the house and hide or fight. But the Northerners were smart and they had the information from the West. They could find the hidden with a special lens. When the fires rose in columns around our home, my parents made a different choice.

My mother swathed us in the shadows and my father stepped out to fight in the battle that surged around us. With a final kiss in my direction, my mother pushed me into a corner and faced the soldier that had stormed into the home. No shadows covered her, no invisibility. She stood protectively over me and stared him down.

The young soldier hesitated before raising the lens and looking directly in my direction. But he couldn't see me. Lowering the lens, the soldier took in my mother's apprehension and held out his hand.

"Come with me." He muttered. "Or you will die."

"I will not move." The accident was miniscule. Something barely noticeable in the millions of lenses the West had given out. But the lens the soldier held that day was broken. It was one of the few mistakes to ever come from the West. The other, of course, being their shoddy loyalty. And it was a mistake that had saved my life.

Yet my life was the only one spared. And sometime when the shadows had faded and the soldier returned to catalog our belongings, he had found me. A red faced baby crying in a small crib made of wood and stone. And faced with the option of admitting his fault or taking me in, the Nightshade became the father of a Shadowmaker.

In the beginning, there were 4 tribes. To the East, the Healers lived by the sea. Their only concerns lay in the water below them and the vicious storms that grew above. They were a peaceful nation that never quarreled. Every tribe got along with them. Next were the Philosophers to the West. Residents of the highest mountains, they lived as close to the heavens as they could. The Philosophers were technologists and rarely allowed for anyone to overstep. They didn't have any enemies nor allies. A neutral party all the way up to the year they had surrendered. Then there were the two warring tribes. The Northern Nightshades and the Southern Shadowmakers.

Each tribe held a gift. The Healers were medical prodigies with waters that held the cure to many afflictions. It was said that even their blood ran the cure to every illness in the world. The Philosophers held the gift of technology. All new inventions could be traced back to their people. And their story mentions ancient tales of robotics replacing even their true forms. The Nightshades held the knowledge of every plant. Their specialty was poison. And the Shadowmakers had the most coveted power of them all. Invisibility. The ability to mask themselves in darkness and create that same darkness around them.

In the beginning, I guess there was peace. There was calmness in the waters near the Healers and beauty in the heavens above the Philosophers. Maybe even the Nightshades and Shadowmakers got along. Of course this was all before the Nightshades learned of a particular poison.

The very plant I was nicknamed after. The Rue held the beauty of every flower before it. Blood red petals grew from the darkest green stem in existence. And the only plant that temporarily granted you the ability of another tribe through the death of a member.

My name is Ruwaida Layl and I am the Hidden Shadowmaker.