30 Days Of Undead Summer

To Love is to Err. To Err is Human.

#sciFiSaturday

Master Silva says I am his greatest creation. An amalgamation of flesh and machine beyond the capabilities of both the king's mages and *Ingeniare. Perfection in all forms. He travels with me as his ward and apprentice, as the destitute urchin rescued from poverty and certain death.

He has given me the name Noah, claiming I will be humanity's survival as was another of the same name. I do not understand his reference but I have heard the Holy Men of Sanctity profess this name. Master Silva does not believe as they do, but he does believe in something greater. I know not what it is.

One particular night I had been visited by the most awesome of visions. I saw a great city of towering stone and glass that reached the heavens. Vehicles of metal that moved on black wheels. People in strange, colourful dress moving about elevated pathways of grey stone. Tall, thin poles blinking scarlet, amber and verdant, dictating how the vehicles and people should move. Above all, what captured me most, were the rectangular signboards as large as houses, flicking between images of men and women and fruit and words I had never seen.

I rushed out of the bed I shared with Master Silva, the sheets still covering his scarred torso. I drew the curtains to let  sunshine stream onto Master Silva's face. He cringed against the light,

"Blast it Noah, you know I despise being woken so!"

"Master Silva! I had a vision, in my sleep."

He rose swiftly from the bed, his legs swinging off the side. I moved so as to block most of the sunshine from his eyes.

"You had a dream?"

"Yes!"

"What of?"

I told him, watching with growing warmth across my chest as his eyes brimmed with life.

"By the Great Gods boy do you know what this means?"

I shook my head. The long locks fell across my face. I brushed them away quickly.

"The future awaits!" he threw the covers off quickly and hurried into his clothes.

"Get dressed my boy, and meet me in the laboratory."

Master Silva's laboratory was nothing like anything in the entirety of Sándorné. Not in Castle Sándorné. Not in the hallowed walls of Raekinn's Institution of Mages. Nowhere. It was, in fact, very similar to the vision I had seen.

I had dressed warmly for the laboratory remained in constant cold. The pristine white walls were lined with glass vials of varying colours. Beyond the devices that ticked and hissed and grumbled, was the sole door I had been warned never to enter. It gaped open now and a draught of cold tendrils swirled from within.

"Come in Noah. I hope you're dressed warm." Master Silva called from within. I shuffled closer, feeling gooseflesh rise against my arms and legs with the growing cold. From within I could hear the screeching noises of animals.

I trembled into the room. It too was pristine. White. Cold. I shivered once again, and not from the cold. Lined across the floor, in large metal cages, were rabbits and squirrels and foxes and deer. All of them baring their teeth at me, clawing at the metal bars. Their flesh seemed to had fallen off and that was when the stench hit me. Like the rotting corpses we'd seen in the King's dungeon.

Master Silva turned to me holding a glass vial with liquid that gleamed lavender.

"Today we shall go see the King's River in Sándorné. I will need you to keep this."

Master Silva moved towards me quickly. A blade was in his other hand. He feverishly started to unbutton my shirt until I could feel his cold fingers against my chest. He placed the blade against my skin but I stepped back. His eyes flickered with anger then softened quickly.

"Do you love me?" He asked. Trembling, I could only nod my answer.

"Then stand still my love." 

The blade pierced the skin. Pain and fear willed me to flee. My devotion to Master Silva kept me still. I gazed from his face down to my chest. There was a hole the same shape and size as the vial in Master Silva's blood saturated fingers. He it slid in and held the flap of skin closed. Within seconds it began to seal itself with a quiet hiss.

His fingers slid up along my chest to my face, a smile growing on his face.

"Go put on the regal attire. A new dawn awaits."

*

Ingeniare: Latin. Meaning "to contrive, devise". Engineer is derived from this word.