A name? I never wanted or needed one. Names are trivial, meaningless and commonplace. And nothing, NOTHING about me is common. A name can't help you survive. No, only the Storm could do that. Its angry tidings kept my kind alive against all odds, allowing our airships to stay afloat above the scorched land.
Alright, alright, fine. None of our kind had names in the beginning, mostly because we didn’t need them. In those days nobody talked much, speaking only to denote things of importance. There were no children among us and gender was nonexistent. With so few differences between us, most storm folk were content with nameless silence.
Most of us, except, you know… me. You see, while doing my part crewing one of our fine airships, I had a teensy little accident.
Lightning.
It crackled out of the sky towards me, passing through my body in an instant. Oh yes there was pain, hot and fiery whips of it coursing throughout my system. But trust me when I say it was the best moment of my life.
For a single fleeting moment I felt POWER.
The word that would come to define me for the rest of my life. From that moment on, it was the only thing I desired. That electrifying energy showed me there was something more to the Storm than its sustaining winds. It was a force of domination, of control.
Up till that point, I’d lived among creatures that only did what was necessary for survival, nothing more. They allowed the Storm around them to shape their way of life and suddenly I understood why. The Storm had power over them. Over me.
Something within me seethed at that concept. It asked why I couldn’t have what the Storm had, why I couldn’t control the world around me on a whim. That was my first big epiphany. If you don’t choose power, you choose to live under someone or something else’s. What choice do you think I made?
Maybe it was fate or luck (though I doubt it was either, given what happened later), but I recovered. I knew there was little use in asking questions to my fellow storm bred. More the strong, silent type, as I said before. So I consulted the old books.
Reading them was hard, at first, but with my dazzling intellect and a bit of perseverance I learned to decipher them. They spoke of a time when my kind had lived on land in expansive cities. It made sense, since the more curious among us surmised that we hadn’t always lived in the sky. A species with limbs like ours had to have once walked the land.
I read on, about how our species had banded together to live together in friendship and harmony (bleh!). Eventually, different leaders sought power over the land and fought wars to get it. There was that word again. Power. It seemed to shape our very history, sweeping away friendship and harmony like the winds of the Storm itself. So much for them eh?
Unfortunately for my ancestors, nobody seemed to have won the war. Something about terrible magics being unleashed, refuge in the sky, blah blah blah. Nothing that could help me end our aimless drifting in the roiling Storm and obtain domination.
I tossed the book away and walked over to the window, considering my reflection. A black, pointed face with beady eyes looked back at me. Thick white hairs surrounded it, like a halo of sorts. Yes, shocking though it may be, I didn’t always look as handsome as I do now. No, my face was pedestrian, ordinary and no different than any of my brethren. How I got my terrifying but attractive visage is yet to come in my story.
The view beyond was just as bleak and ordinary. A sea of grey storm clouds surged past our ship’s starboard propeller, hurling powerful bursts of lightning. They seemed to shove each other out of the way, flashing dangerously as they fought. It was as though the clouds had decided to continue our long forgotten war with gusto. Heavy rain pounded against the window like a drumbeat, providing a dreary soundtrack to it all.
Two giant clouds came to a head, pushing, pushing until BOOM! They sprang apart. For a few seconds I had a clear view of the blackened ground beneath. I was about to turn away, when something caught my eye. A white speck amongst the darkness, reaching toward the sky. Some sort of structure, a remnant of our former cities.
Whatever power the leaders in the books had sought might lay down there, awaiting claim! I stared at that dot of possibility in awe, contemplating the secrets it might hide.
Then the cloud curtain knit itself together once more, obscuring the view. My initial amazement dimmed slightly as more rational thoughts seeped in to fill the space.
What I was looking for could very well be down there, in our abandoned cities. Or not. My stormy colleagues never even considered landing our ships and for all I knew there might not be anything left for us on the ground. But not taking that chance would mean an end to my curiosity. I would only be able to look out at the Storm’s power and never know it for myself.
Yes you all must be asking why it was such a dilemma. Looking at me today, I’m sure ‘timid’ isn’t a word that comes to mind. Well, all I can say in my defense is that power is an acquired taste. My instincts pushed me to sink back into my boring, safe old life. I told my instincts to take a hike and then some.
The next question was, obviously, how in the Storm’s name I was going to get down there. I briefly considered trying to persuade the others to land the ship, before realizing the rest of my kind probably wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about abandoning the sky as I was. Climbing down the anchor seemed like a viable option, but one slip…
“Crash the ship.”
If I’d been standing, I would’ve fallen. The voice was harsh and sibilant, echoing throughout the storage room I sat in. I wildly turned my head this way and that, trying to find who spoke.
“Hello?” I whispered cautiously. Of course, the language wasn’t one you’d know but let’s just pretend shall we? I wasn’t always the polyglot I am now.
The voice spoke again, “Sabotage the controls. We await you in the ruined city.”
I waited a few moments, but it said nothing else. My hair stood on end and sweat caked my face. The voice had brought about a new feeling in me, one I really really didn’t like. Surprising though it may be, that was one of the few times I, greatest of all conquerors, ever felt fear. Fortunately it subsided quickly as my curiosity renewed. The voice, whomever it was, had given me two very important things.
Most obviously, a way down. Sabotaging the controls and forcing a crash would be a surefire way to reach my destination. If I did it right, it might even be safer than climbing the anchor. More importantly however, I had a defined goal. Vague notions of matching the Storm’s power were nice, but now I at least had a semblance of an idea of what to look- or hear for.
So while I wasn’t the mastermind, the force of will you know me as now… while I had no name or power to speak of… the beginnings of greatness were there.
