> The board has been a bit quiet, story-wise, as of late...so I've plucked this from my endless archives!
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> The Host
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> Since the age of nine, Josh Wilton’s life had been a zombielike trudge through a never-ending series of utopias. There was the gothic, southern metropolis, a nocturnal port rife with both mysticism and hedonism. He remembered humidity-choked nights battling French-Cuban werewolves and sigil-based gangs. For a while, he’d been in Futura, California, a city that had inexplicably vanished in the ‘50s, right before a major earthquake hit. They’d been saved from disaster by a 22nd century civilization, which plucked the art-deco wonder from the timestream and, thanks to a glitch, sent them back in 1999 instead of 1959. Combining outdated culture with far-future tech gave them a very retro version of tomorrow, complete with flying cars, racially-awkward robotic servants, and somewhat sentient sidewalks. Josh had also spent several years in the crossroads of America, a city built around and within the most tangled stack of freeways on the planet. Endless, maddening tides of commerce and secular pilgrims coursed through this architectural miracle 24/7; it was a labyrinth haunted by more than its fair share of monsters.
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> Through it all, when even jaded urbanites couldn’t resist gawking at the spectacles they lived in, Josh had plodded forward with all the emotion of someone enduring a waiting room. And though the reason behind his behavior was strictly ordinary, it made him irresistable to the most important people in the world.
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> Azure, Montana was the latest stop in his journey. It was a technocratic smudge wedged beneath a vast, overbearing sky. The region was bracketed by raw mountains that looked like the backbone of some subcontinent-sized beast. Azure itself was a postmodern marvel, the vast majority of it having been built within the last twenty years, utilizing the New Statism style that was popular among younger super-cities. Some of its skyscrapers were classically alabaster, while others were innovative and obsidian. Overbred trust-fund progeny of struck-it-rich ‘89ers ran wild through this shockingly-clean city. Its sprawling, futuristic urban center was surrounded by a prepackaged wealth of suburbs. It looked strange for a population of seven million (the state had been under a million, before the discovery) to be out in the middle of nowhere, among the fields and peaks. Blinking skystations orbited the city, acting as docks for industrial-class hovercraft.
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> An archeologist/explorer hero had discovered the crack in late 1988. It was a fracture in reality, located half a mile above the then-tiny town of Azure. She’d led her team through it to discover the dimension of Celestia, an infinite sky universe filled with antigravity predators and civilizations that well predated humanity. Instead of land, it was sparsely populated with “sky-islandsâ€Â: floating chunks of terrain roughly the size of continents. As both species became increasingly aware of each other, human forces and Celestial forces schemed to take advantage of the situation. Some humans were willing to do anything to get Celestia’s exotic resources, while some Celestial natives simply wanted unwinged slave-labor. Both groups were unsanctioned and operating in secret, but they would have triggered a war between the two realms, if not for a remarkable return.
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> Morning in America’s last boomtown was a blend of designer coffee and flimsy mountain air. A low sun found itself eclipsed by a stately tower belonging to the foremost of the sky-mining corporations, which shared its building with a number of independent watchdog agencies. (All companies that were awarded interdimensional contracts by the government underwent strict scrutiny, as required by treaty, given the environmental and espionage dangers.) Everyone was on their way to work--by monorail or taxi or private vehicle--most of them either employed by the sky-mining outfits or providing goods and services for those that were. They passed by stadiums which housed struggling or overachieving expansion teams. Digital billboards advertised local morning shows, while prototypical fighter jets made flyovers to remind the city that the portal was well-guarded. Children being dragged to daycare or school kept glancing up…not at the hoverships or skystations, but in search of someone specific.
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> And then came screams, explosions, and sirens, and the children found themselves about to inadvertantly get their wish.
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> Skystation C, jointly owned by two different corporations, was in flames. A boxcar-like container that had been delivered from Celestia had seemingly exploded. Bear-sized solar stingrays were hidden inside, and upon their release, they’d strafed the skystation with thermal energy and flown towards Azure. They were joined by a winged man, who held a device that had given a false image to the scanners that checked cargo. He had light grey feathers, and he wore a dark green uniform and an ornate, jewel-infested gauntlet. Ivarr was a Celestian native, hailing from a society that, to his shame, was not particularly warlike. He’d had to look outwards to find what he believed to be his destiny.
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> The solar stingrays were skimming the city and attacking at random, guided by training not that different from torture. Sad to say, species-leakage wasn’t an entirely uncommon occurrence, in Azure, and its citizenry and response personnel reacted swiftly. The sidewalks were cleared in minutes, as everyone ducked into buildings. Militaristic police helicopters were launched. Traffic went on surprisingly normally, except for a few panic-prone individuals. Ivarr descended and took up a position on a mirror-surfaced monolith, bathed by violent, multidirectional winds that failed to remind him of his homeland. He watched police ‘choppers trade shots with stingrays. Bullets didn’t particularly faze them, and the heat-seaking missiles were destroyed before they got close. One by one, the vehicles were forced to make emergency landings, assuming their crews didn’t have to abandon them altogether.
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> Suddenly, rolling thunder avalanched across the city, blending with a decelerating series of sonic booms. Black clouds exploded out of nowhere, congealing and spreading like a virus. Even though they knew they weren’t the rainmaker’s prey, everyone in the city froze, just for an instant. Lightning branched out and fried all of the stingrays at once. Ivarr was about to smile at how well his plan was working when a purple, metal comet rammed into him at just under Mach 1. The shatterproof glass of the building he was standing on liquified instantly.
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> After a momentary blackout, Ivarr found himself neck-deep in torn concrete, an impact trail leading up to his splayed body. He’d been rammed into a sidewalk. The Thunderbird was hovering over him, about twenty feet away. He was adorned in purple armor that had flexible silver segments, an inhuman take on the concept of knighthood. On his chest was a silver crest that featured wings and lightning; blank, electric-blue eyes stared through his helmet’s slitlike visor. Well-sculpted purple wings kept him aloft. He carried himself, fittingly, with a royal bearing that merely implied distance, rather than superiority. Ivarr looked up at him and saw the person he was supposed to be. Which was, of course, what this was all about.
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> For over a decade, Ivarr had used the gauntlet to protect Celestia and prove his worth, hoping the Thunderbird consciousness would choose him as its new host. It never had. He came to be convinced that there was some deep, hidden failing or weakness in him, one that prevented him from moving to the next level. Years of obsessive soul-searching hadn’t brought anything to light. With heroism out of the question, defeating the man he’d hoped to replace was the only way he could get his honor back.
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> The gauntlet--which had prevented him becoming a crimson smear twice in five seconds, its full-body forcefield buffering both the initial impact and the crash far below--fired a blast of cosmic energy at the defender of two realms. Thunderbird used one of his wings to deflect it, angling it harmlessly into empty sky. Ivarr used his own wings to launch himself out of the crater and charge gauntlet-first. Aerially sidestepping, Thunderbird let the man’s fist miss his face by an inch and hit back with a superstrong uppercut, sending him spiraling into the heavens. By the time Ivarr got his momentum under control, he found himself besieged by eons of martial experience: a rapidfire series of fists, feet, elbows, and blunt wingtips. Each blow could have shattered titanium. Topping it off, Thunderbird grabbed him by the neck and electrocuted him.
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> Ivarr fired point-blank and barely managed to break away. The ancient gauntlet was screaming at his mind, warning him about damage and overloads. Before he could fully recover, raging currents of lightning went crackling by, some missing, some clipping. He made evasive maneuvers that would have been nauseating for anyone born without wings. Thunderbird gave chase, now launching the bolts one-handed. His other hand was curled into a fist, building up a light-distorting energy. It was sheer, thunderous sonic force. The lightning had just been to test his opponent’s reflexes and habits, setting him up for the main shot--which demolished Ivarr like a battering ram. Instead of fighting the fall, he went with it, letting gravity take him down into a vast field of skyscrapers. He needed cover.
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> They played a game of cat-and-mouse, darting between buildings. Ivarr fired, but Thunderbird didn’t, given that the backstop for this high-speed chase consisted of high-rise offices. One errant shot could kill dozens. So, Thunderbird didn’t attempt to dodge Ivarr’s attacks. He managed to deflect most of them with his wings, but a few shots got through, hitting him in his armored torso. Right after one of those direct hits, Ivarr froze in midair and let the disoriented Thunderbird crash into him. Or, rather, into his power-charged gauntlet. Thunderbird ricocheted off several buildings, ending up on a rooftop. Ivarr pressed the advantage before he had a chance to get to his feet, swooping and shooting wildly at him. Some shots connected, some went off his wings, and a few simply took out chunks of concrete.
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> Thunderbird rocketed straight up, shoulder-ramming Ivarr in the stomach. Ivarr tried to pin his arms, but Thunderbird electrified his armor, launching waves of brilliant pain through him. Ivarr’s forcefield was flickering. He once again managed to get free, aiming his gauntlet and preparing to pour all his power into one last blast. Before he could, Thunderbird clapped his hands together over the gauntlet--they were charged with sonic force, and he let loose. The gauntlet was reduced to brightly-colored powder, unable to withstand that much force from two different angles. The shattered mental connection between man and object created a powerful backlash, and Ivarr fell.
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> The second crater was a good deal deeper than the first. Ivarr laid awkwardly on lumps of rubble, looking up at a jagged circle of daylight. Live wires danced around him. His body was more durable than a human’s, able to withstand Celestia’s laws of physics, so the fall hadn’t killed him outright. Most of his bones were broken, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Ivarr was wracking his brain, still searching for the weakness within him, whatever it was. He couldn’t believe it. Not only had it cost him the Thunderbird mantle, but probably this final battle, as well.
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> What he didn’t know was that the Thunderbird consciousness no longer gauged hosts in terms of willpower or nobility. It was simply looking for someone passive, now, such as the utterly-apathetic human known as Josh Wilton. Ivarr didn’t have some secret flaw, his personality was just too strong. And Thunderbird wasn’t the first hero to utilize Wilton’s otherwise-unused life…
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> Their first mistake was thinking that he was one of them: just another white-collar nomad, drifting from super-city to super-city based on what the magazines and websites said about its economy or nightlife. They tended to be in their late twenties, somewhat on the depressive side, and in need of a constant stream of fresh starts. The problem wasn’t them, it was the city. It had to be. Sure, “super-cities†were more expensive to live in--insurance rates tend to skew to the horrific when property-damaging demigods show up--but they were also perpetually trendy. If you wanted to succeed, why waste time in a city that didn’t even rate its own champion? It made perfect sense for someone to make a circuit across those types of cities. Thanks to all that, everyone at Josh Wilton’s office suffered from archetypical blindness. They looked at him, lumped him in with a group he superficially resembled, and thought no more about it. Except for when things got really boring.
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> Likewise, the cubicle universe wasn’t the tedium that American mythology made it out to be. Those who’d come looking for a happily dull, drama-free workplace were sorely disappointed. Zane-Pearlson’s window-walls were overflowing with affairs, backstabbings, corrupt dealings, and a good deal of espionage, though strictly on the corporate side. Don’t call in sick, you’ll miss a new batch of buyout rumors, an argument between one of the covert couples on the downslide, or the latest chapter in the Public Relations/Accounting prank wars! On paper, they were microscopic cogs in bureaucratic clockwork, but the job was secondary. The juicy stuff always came first. And there was so much of it that the mystery of Josh Wilton was hardly ever invoked.
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> They saw him around, of course. He supposedly worked in Filing, armed with some lengthy job title that confused more than it clarified. Basically a fancy name for being a data-pusher. Josh Wilton was brown-haired, expressionless, and insubstantial, both in terms of size (very short, very thin) and the impression he left on people (despite working there for years, few could remember his name). He struck everyone as being robotic. Monotone voice, little to say, seemingly incapable of reacting to anything. And then there was the slowness. He moved like someone on a gravity-heavy world, which was agonizing for impatient co-workers. Josh never smiled, but his face was entirely devoid of worry lines, as if he’d never experienced stress. Not caring about anything is a good way to prevent that.
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> The rumors, of course, got it all wrong. Some said he was a sociopath. Others, that he was just a clichéd office drone, a lifelong follower who counted sheeple to fall asleep. But what if it was an act? Was he a spy for the higher-ups, put there to keep an eye on productivity? Thunderbird had been around long before he’d moved to the city, so no connection was ever made; their discussions about him never got far, anyway. Inevitably, one of the million secretaries named Britney would come back from lunch without her bra, and attention would quickly shift away from him. In truth, the reason Josh had never formed an emotional connection with anyone or anything was because nothing about reality particularly affected him. Life just couldn’t make his soul spark. Was there something wrong with him, or something wrong with the world?
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> Josh’s daytime world consisted of walls of wide metal drawers that looked big enough to hide a corpse in. It was a low-lit labyrinth, full of still, stale air. Each corridor verged on the identical. The built-in drawers covered the entirety of the space, except for periodic doors that led to computer rooms or other small offices. It was as silent and forbidden as a church, complete with beautiful, corporate iconography that demanded worship. This was where data was entered, saved, sent to backup servers, printed out, shoved in drawers. Most people hated it. The solitude, the sameness, the way everything echoed…but Josh felt right at home. In fact, it wasn’t that different from his home, a condo that was just as sterile and soulless.
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> Mindy Carlyle was one of the people that couldn’t stand venturing into the bowels of Filing. Her job in Human Resources kept her upstairs; the only thing dragging her down to the ghost floor was him. At this point, she just assumed that Josh was some Vice-President’s son or grandson or nephew, because he should’ve been fired a dozen times over. Yes, he got his work done, and he was technically much more productive than the other maniacs on this floor, but he disappeared for hours at a time. Everyone had an ID card that logged when you entered and left the building, and according to security, he always got there at 7:59 and left at 5:01. His “superior†was bluffing his way towards retirement, and thus not much help. Was he doing something inside the building? She doubted co-worker lust, maybe playing video games somewhere?
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> Regardless of circumstances, Mindy tended to be in a bad mood. Unlike most people who lived in Azure, she’d actually been there pre-boom. But in the mid-eighties, her father had moved the family to Billings, anxious to launch yet another questionable business venture. When the dimensional crack was found, most of Azure’s citizens became multimillionaires overnight, as all the big corporations wanted to buy property under it. If they’d stayed just one more year, they could’ve sold their house and made a fortune. Instead of living in some tropical paradise, she was trapped in middle-management in the freakish new version of her hometown, stuck dealing with people like Josh.
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> Mindy nearly walked into him right after going around a corner, scaring herself to death. He was just standing there with his arms hanging down. She doubted he’d ever used a mirror or an iron. She, on the other hand, routinely wasted twenty minutes on black hair that was already perfect, and only dressed in newish, professional clothing, though she hated shopping and didn’t like spending a lot on anything non-essential.
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> Ice-blue eyes glared at him. “Hey, where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for like twenty minutes.â€Â
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> He mumbled something in the lower sonic spectrum.
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> “What?â€Â
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> “Just doing work. Busy, uh…â€Â
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> Mindy wasn’t sure if he was lying, if he had the social skills of a blind yak, or both. Pressing on, “You know those old personnel files they brought over from storage? Was the 1995 Denver office in there?â€Â
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> His genetic poker face covered for him while he thought, and he finally said, “Not sure.â€Â
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> “…you filed them. Yesterday.â€Â
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> After ten awkward seconds (for her; he was immune to awkwardness): “I can check. I mean, if you want.â€Â
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> “Yes, please,†she said, wringing every last drop of sarcasm out of it. He didn’t react to her tone, and it drove her up the wall. She was used to being able to provoke reactions in people. And, yes, part of the reason she kept coming down here was because she liked testing him…
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> Josh Wilton’s apathy was the perfect storm of nature and nurture. In addition to whatever psychological traits were in play, he’d been raised with a sense of isolation. His parents had been diplomats, and they’d taken him with them on their travels. They never stayed in one place long enough for him to learn the language. No friends, only talking with his parents, staying in the embassy for weeks at a time. But, occasionally, they’d take unofficial tours. When Josh was nine, they’d gotten a sneak peek at a recently-unearthed Chinese tomb. He’d wandered off and fallen through a weak part of the floor. Instead of breaking his neck in the fall, he’d been saved by a bizarre statue, which had communicated with him on some wordless level. Ages ago, a group of gods had been captured and bound together, trapped in the statue by an evil sorcerer. They’d always be handcuffed together, but they could walk among mortals by possessing a human body.
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> After being told that the sorcerer had a new plan brewing, Josh agreed to be their host. He didn’t have enough of a sense of self to be uncomfortable with it. By reciting a mystical incantation, Josh was transformed into a (fully-grown) being that combined all of the pantheon’s traits, and was controlled by their collective mind. It took a few years, but they eventually defeated the sorcerer--and they did so without anyone finding out about Josh’s double-life. He’d become well-known in heroic circles, however, and once the gods left him, he was approached by other entities belonging to that rare subcategory of superheroes: those that needed to borrow a biological form. Vengeance-obsessed spirits, sentient otherdimensional weapons carrying out prehistoric protocols, cosmic “office-holders†who strategized on an unthinkable scale. All those and more, including, eventually, the Thunderbird consciousness.
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> Though Josh never would have thought of himself in grandiose or heroic terms, he was something of a living sacrifice. His life--which he didn’t any use for--was being used by others, for a greater good. The logic was harsh but accurate; better him than someone with something to lose. And in return, they took care of him. His current employer, Zane-Pearlson, was owned by a group that was secretly run by a superhero. He went from city to city, based on wherever his next “guest†needed him. Strings would be pulled to see that he was put in a job with minimal oversight. On his own, even in an enlightened civilization that took care of its straggling members, Josh wouldn’t have been able to make it in the adult world. No drive, no wants, no purpose. But this way, they actually did his job for him. Whenever Thunderbird was needed in the daytime, Josh would transform into him and leave, and an AI program would do his data-entry for him. He only had to work for a few hours a day.
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> Once Mindy was gone, Josh found himself wandering cloned halls, storing files he was supposed to know something about, and waiting to be called upon for use. Distant conversations and echoes of footsteps were the only things that could be heard. Josh had no idea what time it was, or even what day it was. Sooner or later, he’d hear a voice inside his head. Transformation. He’d come to in his condo, later that night. Then it was time for dinner and more waiting. For Josh, life was a series of brief blinks between slumber--and as far as he was concerned, it was vastly preferable to the alternative…
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> Reality had betrayed them. For millennia, moderates in each of Celestia’s scattered societies had argued against the idea of the underworld, an idea that was often used to terrify populations into war and harsh doctrines. Explorers had found nothing, they’d say. They’d flown as low as they could, coming across only more of the same endless blue--no “ground†of myth, no evil denizens ruling it. The moderates had seemingly won; the scaremongers had been banished to an ideological wilderness. And then, of course, the dimensional crack was found. This Urth teeming with unwinged vermin. Panic had struck with the infectious, rapid-spreading power of a pandemic. Fringe figures emerged from the shadows and cried that they’d been right all along. Armies were assembled, plans made.
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> It took the return of the long-sleeping Thunderbird, the last relic of the Celestian proto-civilization, to prevent the two realms from destroying each other. And having done so, he now claimed responsibility for both.
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> Powerful channels of wind moved with the size and regularity of tides. They raced through vast emptiness and rammed into sky-islands--depending on their strength, they either slowly defined the landscape or made an area uninhabitable. The sky-islands themselves had bizarre landscapes and crystal cities on their top halves, while dripping rock and dirt from their bottom halves. Continent-sized, easily. Only in several sacred places were more than one sky-island present. For the most part, they were great distances apart, lending to isolationism and self-reliance. They navigated using a three-dimensional, sixty-four-point compass designed by Judge-Priestess Xeli circa 596 A.T. Their light came from weak, distant cousins to stars, which lacked gravitational pull and other basic principles. Day and night were irregular. One sky-island could block out another’s light for weeks, depending on the wind-tides, and other obstacles performed the same function: floating debris belts, exotic cloud formations, hover-hibernating flocks of griffins.
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> It was the Thunderbird consciousness’ home, it was majestic to the point of being intoxicating, and it wasn’t nearly enough to make him forget the guilt he felt over his new alter ego.
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> Eons ago, Celestia had been overflowing with its alpha society. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as close as they’d ever gotten, with justice and enlightenment ruling the day. And it had been a theocracy: each king or queen allowed themselves to be possessed by their god, the Thunderbird, who hailed from the inaccessible Silver Storm that took up roughly a sixth of their dimension. He’d protected them ever since they were primitive, even before they’d figured out how to create solar-sail ships. But, of course, the empire had fallen, essentially outgrowing itself. Secessions were requested, and he’d let them go their separate ways. One civilization splintered into a thousand, each one lacking the impressiveness of the original, but taking on new properties. No longer a king, Thunderbird remained as a knight. He defended the realm from monsters, slavers, and anti-treaty terrorists, who were determined to sabotage Celestian collaboration with demonic Urthlings.
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> The Thunderbird consciousness had long ago lost count of how many hosts it had possessed. After a tradition of bluebloods, it had used common citizens during the post-reign period, and since the discovery of the dimensional crack, it had used two humans. The first was a fighter pilot who’d retired after marrying and having a child, the second was Josh Wilton. Wilton stood out as unique among all he’d lived in. With the others, their minds remained active when he took over, but Wilton was naturally submissive. He willingly blacked out. Mortal personalities had kept him sharp, prevented him from being too inhuman. He was afraid he’d lose some edge, some source of vital input, but there was no change. It was actually easier, since he didn’t have to constantly argue with his host. How could any mortal’s limited experiences eclipse the wisdom he’d gathered over the course of time immemorial?
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> Thunderbird banked off a tidal wave of air, went supersonic to jump to the nearest mine site, and scattered a diamond-shaped flock of giant butterflies (their wings were covered with hallucinogenic color-smears) in the process. He floated a few dozen feet above the site. Corporate hoverships were slowly lifting off, weighed down with Celestian resources. Only narrow strips of selected sky-islands were available. The workers had to wear breathing masks, thanks to the thin air. He decided to do a quick perimeter orbit. Right before he did, some workers whipped out camera phones and took pictures that would probably end up fuzzy. One of them was a surprisingly-attractive woman, and he found himself reminded of the host he was trying to forget.
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> For some inexplicable reason, women loved Josh Wilton. Well, certain kinds of women, to be specific. He packed the double-punch of being both unavailable (his double life prevented honesty or commitment) and malleable. They looked at his complete lack of personality and, instead of running away screaming, sank their claws in as deep as they could. Some women loved the fact that they could be with him while secretly knowing that it was impossible to truly be with him, using him as a cover, a lie to themselves, or a way to kill time. Other women loved how easily-controlled he was, a natural listener that didn’t have any pesky thoughts or opinions. His neighbors watched a wide variety of surprisingly-beautiful women enter and leave his condo, and they couldn’t understand it. He wasn’t hideously ugly or anything, but, come on. Him? Really?
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> In Celestia, anyone ambivalent about their existence wouldn’t last long. The frontiers were obviously savage, rife with predators and outcasts, while the cities were harsh and demanding. If you didn’t care about life, you wouldn’t have one for long. (Once, when they were physically separated, Thunderbird had showed Wilton the beauty and glory of his home, only for the mortal to blink and remain impassive.) Advanced civilizations, being rightfully egalitarian, bred this. They made sure the dead-souled didn’t fall through the cracks, trying to keep them safe and productive. In the past, they would have perished, in the present, they were protected from themselves. Of course, the conspiracy theorists claimed that it was some sort of master plan. That those secretly in control wanted people like Josh Wilton, as they were easier to manipulate and less likely to be outraged about anything.
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> True or not, they were right about one thing: Wilton was far from alone.
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> Scouring his dominion for threats, exploding through mountainous cloudbanks unable to be described in any human language, Thunderbird thought of Josh Wilton’s spiritual duplicates. There seemed to be more of them every day. Thoroughly unmoved by life, sleepwalking, guided by some internal autopilot. The risk was that, since they had no emotional ties to the world, they also had no loyalty to it. If nine-year-old Josh had been approached by an evil force, instead of a noble one, he could’ve gone along just as easily. Of course people were scheming to take advantage of them. In the small picture, he felt like one of those people (Josh needed counseling, not having his body borrowed), but in the big picture, he was glad they were around.
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> A sleeper army was slowly filling the human world. It was claimed that they were emotionally stunted, that they didn’t care about anything. Something surely had to be wrong with them. In truth, they were free from an ingredient required for every form of evil: a sense of self. Without selfishness, they were incapable of greed, rage, egomania. Thunderbird had been around long enough to see how problems could surprise everyone by evolving into solutions, and he suspected such was the case here. Blank-faced individuals with no particular investment in the status quo, unable to be manipulated via fear or self-interest, just waiting to be triggered by some outside force…was he the only one that saw it?
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> He knew they’d never be a problem. Their very existence was claimed as proof that society was disintegrating, “What’s wrong with those kids?†But it seemed to him that the opposite was true. The power-hungry madmen he fought used the shiny and successful, while superheroes, gods, and their unimaginable colleagues preferred to make agents of the unlikely. (He’d been a rare exception, until recently.) Outsiders, the weak, those deemed useless or defective. Shepherd boys versus militaristic giants. And now there were countless subcultures of them.
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> There was another line from the same religious text--he couldn’t remember which; all those Urth myths blurred together--about the last becoming first. A similar phenomenon was happening before his very eyes. He sensed something large and powerful approaching history from the outside, and the time would come when the idolized self would have to be set aside, to make room for it. The first to transcend, the first to be filled with whatever this unknown was, would be those who’d been empty all along…
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