Prologue (Revised) - The Golden Eagle Supremacy Trilogy

A big thank you to all who have reviewed my previous prologue and had given very detailed feedback on ways to improve! You know who you are ;) This would be the re-written prologue after the considerations of the reviews. Leave me your honest and extremely detailed feedback!

You Have a Choice.

PROLOGUE

2 February 2165, Centarum Earth

Time, What Is It? The Power To Create, To Preserve Or To Destroy?

Are we slaves to its powers? Or are we players capable of making free choices?

Some wish to think of time as predetermined, where everything has already been decided, and we are mere pawns walking into our destinies.

Some choose to believe it to be free, holding a million possible outcomes, just waiting to be condensed into reality. Yet most of us believe that our decisions are connected.

With every choice we make, the future changes a little. With every effort we sow, we reap over a billion repercussions.

Those were the information gathered in the thoughts of a golden eagle. Soaring over the landscapes, he sensed the changes in the jagged terrain. Solitary and dominant, he chose to stay close to the cutting grounds, zeroing in on his destination…

Centarum Earth.

The clouds changed, rays from the sun pierced through its delicate fissures, letting the cirrus slash and rupture through the waves of rising and falling debris.

Beyond the crimson clouds were the fading cumuli; dying in the setting sun as strands of remaining smoke plough through their bodies. Winds ebbed in the dry desert. The earthly realm was littered with the remnants of a great battle.

The eagle landed in the heaps of broken steel and twisted rust. Leftover swords stuck out from the cracked grounds like a desolated cemetery. Momentarily, his talons scratched the remains of bone while his claws touched rotting flesh.

A device around his head clicked and sounded. He turned to a nearby corpse.

Within just inches of a severed arm lay a golden watch. Inching around the raw flesh, the raptor took the watch in his beak.

Silence. He turned to the distance, finding sparse dunes towering above him.

‘There is no life here...’

Murmuring bursts of artillery flashed in the far distance, mixed with the storms of exploding bombshells.

Tremors.

What was that?

The sound was dense and massive. It reverberated across the ground before magnifying into seismic levels. The tremors got louder.

The sand dunes exploded! Flying off with his new possession, the eagle watched as an army of creatures emerged, spreading like liquid to the horizon.

‘Phiran.’ Discovered as a completely new race on Centarum Earth during the mid-century, they were soon recognized as a completely new and alien race.

Many thought them to be vile and destructive, humans who were completely warped and mutated by the planet’s hostile conditions.

They shared the same blood as humanity, along with the same hunger for power and dominance.

Lights glowed from the nearby mountains of Manasseh, its saturation casted shadows on the forests at ground level. Its majestic intensity and hue erased all visible distinction of the mountain contours. Deep within its core, levitated a singular entity known only as the ‘Doom Horn.’

The eagle’s attention turned to the increasing luminosity of blue from the clouds behind. Spacecrafts bearing the logo of hostile phiran nations darted ahead of him. Their hulls were of grey and scorched metal, armed with an array of energy weapons. He must search faster…

***

A falling sword hit the hard grills of a floor. Five soldiers emerged from the battle littered with dead bodies and blood splats. Live wires dangled from the metal skeletons of pillars. Walls were fragmented concrete riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. Icy wind blew in from the mountains, reminding the men of the extent of the altitude: a communications tower with a platform 800 meters above ground. It contained no walls at the edge, nothing but a straight plunge into the abyss below.

The leader carried an energy shield with a scoped rifle while his men held onto larger weapons.

“This is it?” The leader looked up at the pinnacle. His words were short on energy and breath.

“Doom Horn’s just up there.” The navigator tapped a device on his head. “We have about an hour to destroy it before permanence.”

“Why not let’s make it a celebration?” One of them tossed his shield aside, slinging his shock rifle. “Swords only!”

“Swords it shall be.” The leader gave a sign to advance. “Morbent, I need you to update me on your end of the field.”

The eagle’s device ticked and sounded the exact words. He landed on the arm of a younger man with hair in the color of burnt redwood, mixed with a tint of molten gold.

“Do you really want to do this?” Morbent’s voice was deep, yet troubling.

Silence. The leader watched as his men climbed the stairs in songs and sounds of celebrations. He hesitated to move.

Morbent knew the answer for too long. “Make it quick. Four ships have flown in from the west.”

The leader’s eyes narrowed. A tear rolled down. He looked up at the immense sphere that clouded much of the Horn’s glory.

“A sacrifice is always needed. Remember the baton is now in your hands.”

The eagle took off once more and dived into the sea of clouds. Morbent heard the device cut. With a slouch in his back, Morbent turned around and held back the tears in his eyes.

He recollected the events that led up till now. Assigned as the head for scouting in the operation, Morbent was the master of using trained eagles to be the eye of the battlefield. The men under him were the elites of his organization, chosen specifically by name to assist the offensive team while remaining completely invisible under the harshest terrains of the frigid Manasseh highlands. Morbent and his men had to account for all air armadas within the 100-mile radius of the mountains. Their abilities to sense the battlefield and utilize the natural landscapes were impeccable.

Great change comes with a sacrifice.

Morbent recalled that very same line during that final briefing. The leader for the operations had told him before departing for his mission.

Fate was never the merciful master.

He had explained only to the leader how the sorcerers who had developed the Horn had designed it with a protective sphere of anti-matter. Any physical contact with the core will cause it to self-destruct and annihilate anything within a 40-mile radius.

Light emitted from the reaction of anti-matter within was very intense. Morbent knew the warlocks had to cloud its sphere to prevent people from going blind. He knew, because he had been there…

Winds began to unite in one orientation. Leaves took off from their branches while snow and frost turned from solid to gas. Morbent’s squad sought cover in their trenches and behind erected force shields.

The glow within the clouds began to increase in luminosity.

Clouds around the sphere cleared in a complete vacuum.

Morbent realized what happened: ‘They used their swords…”

Trees began to bend. The canopy flooded with millions of debris and icicles in the wind. Clouds vanished around the core of the Horn, displaced by the sudden nova of light.

Morbent’s team could feel the shockwaves; tremors magnified into earthquakes when they hit the mountain cities.

Matter from the surrounding mountains was sucked back into the rising updraft, snaking skywards within the immense mushroom cloud. The plume broke through the atmosphere and kept on rising.

Morbent managed to only catch a glimpse of a beam of energy shooting through the cloud layers. He knew the Doom Horn was not destroyed, instead it would have reverted back into its original state: the Horn of Peace.

Soldiers took off their helmets with solemn mourning. Some wept for their brethren, others looked down with regret, knowing well that the entire five-year war will be a pyric victory.

***

The eagle landed once more. Wastelands spread to the point where the arsenic earth meets the sulfuric skies. A tiny tear fell onto the ground, and on a dead man’s hand. Charred and burnt, his battle scars were only those on his sword.

Isolation, the eagle stood between a broken arch of stone in the middle of a thousand corpses.

For ten long years, the sense of victory diminished, and the Collision War itself stood like a mere myth.

Humanity stopped remembering, choosing denial and delusion. They never forgave, they merely forgot.

Past identities were all lost in time.

***

How could all this be possible? The seeds of the wicked in a distant planet have begun to bear fruit on the earth of origin.

Lives will change, and many will face inevitable disasters.

A CARTWHEEL OF FATE HAS TURNED.