25 Days of SyndiSparklez and Motanite

1. Finality

Author's Note: 1 word: College

2 numbers, 6 words, 3 abbreviations, 2 symbols:

7 hrs of HW =/ 5 hrs of Time Not in Classes

In short: Aah.

AN: In words, I'm dealing with hardly enough time to breath, let alone get all the work done, day after day. It's 6 credit-hours-but, the courses were accelerated to fit in 4-6 weeks rather than 8-9, so I'm taking a much-needed creative break, ignoring 60 pages of COMS 130 reading and writing a one-shot. I'd like to work on Poisoned Crown, but I don't have the hours to address plot points and continuity currently, so I apologize. ☹--Yes, this turned out really long, but it's still easier than addressing an actual plot that's in motion.
...

In a world, where the very real threat of being murdered by a cult is as common as the chance of being in a motor-vehicle accident, you don't get by with ethical, honest maneuvers and reasoning.

What world is this? This one, but it's been some time since then. To what would have been my young dad, hello, you're only three now, but by the time you're fourteen things aren't going to go well. The world felt like it was going to end-but it didn't. Life resumed, not everyone's, but yours did.

And out of the ashes of such a monumental and devastating set of storms and bad luck disbelief and anguish. And when there's disbelief and weak-willed hearts, there's someone, a transformational leader in the nicest terms, that might just profit. With what could have been God-sent droughts, epidemics, and such forth alongside the storms, clearly this was a punishment from the heavens. Although scientists found a correlation with a certain other-worldly matter burning through our atmosphere and getting into soil nutrients as particles and breeding new strains of deadly or mostly deadly illnesses and how finally global warming kicked in and really tore some hurricanes in, the tornado, they said, was from the fronts caused by the few hurricanes pushing in fronts.

All in all, God-sent, naturally formed and explained by science-whatever theory you would have subscribed to, it's some unbelievable stuff that caused some very new, very violent, strong belief systems.

Thus, we have cults.

While there's some still rooted in the original prevalent faiths, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and more I can't name. There's some like the Aztec, Mayan, and Egyptian deceased religions, even Greek and Roman. Then there's the new ones, that if I didn't see what they did, I might feel compelled to join them.

Maybe some of the cults could be likened to gangs, but with the strong religious center-point, it's hard to pinpoint that word to them. Yet the ones I felt compelled to join, were the ones prevalent in the area you chose to settle down in, dad, because you didn't have a religious preference. Yet these cults settled here, and on the outside, with well-crafted pamphlets using what machines they possessed, benefits and offers of aid in finding some valuable, hard to find resources, or even job offerings, they seem like a slice of paradise.

Yet, you declined and just paid the non-member fee as they took over the city and you paid their 'taxes' for protection. It's a fair amount and hardly anyone argues, as many, despite the long turmoil before this new lifestyle settled, is used to the strong central authority keeping them in a modest status quo that's controlled and without large differences in equality.

Myself, the cults looked especially appealing. The main cult settled over this town, is Mianite. It follows a democratic system so similar to old-America you'd almost think you'd never left-unless you're not a member and can't vote on anything. The protections the cult gives out to members in exchange for their practice, worship and divine faith and complete compliance with the oaths seems almost worth it-except for their "Divine Trial" where once a year, everyone of age (which here is twenty-one and up) is subject to stand on a pedestal, on their birthday in the center of their public building-if you've followed the faith well enough, then there will be "Divine Intervention" and the arrow they shoot at your face wouldn't kill you-instead a bird would swoop between you and the bird, or something like that-in truth I've never actually seen what they do, I'm just going by the words-and the absurd amount of "non-faithful" that are wheeled out of the public building at least once-a-week.