Tree of Life Book III

Part II - Chapter 08

TREE OF LIFE BOOK III – PART II

CHAPTER 08

They called themselves the Nephilim.

Children of the Spirit.

Men and women who knew of them and about them, feared them. It was so from the beginning. Out of fear, they shunned them. Drove them away. Out of fear and loathing, they fought them. Called them warlocks, witches and a hundred other names. They were different from men and so must be put away, lest their difference, their uniqueness might taint the men's lives and make them harder to understand or make sense of.

Thus was ever the way of the world.

And so, the people of the Nephilim left and moved away from the company of men to find peace and a new place for themselves. A new home.

There were less than a hundred of them all told. They wandered out together and founded a village halfway up the mountain and kept it a secret. There, they lived together, worked together. They prepared for battle together, getting ready for the day when they would be attacked again.

Over time, they found, they were not all the same. Some were different. And the key to the difference, it appeared, was in the generation from which you were born.

There were the Firsts. These were the children born directly from spirits and humans. They were taller and bigger and lived far longer than the others.

And they had powers.

They could manipulate the elements in their environment by sheer force of will. With nothing but their minds, they could pick it up, move it around, rip it apart and then put it back together again. It didn't matter the size, the weight or how hot or cold it was.

There were only two limits to such power. The first was in that individual's strength of will and concentration. The other, or at least with all the Firsts they had encountered so far, was that each could only work with one element and one element only. They had assumed that this was due to the nature of the gift itself and so had never expected otherwise.

Until Annie came along.

Annie was special. She was unique in this.

She could control it all.

All the elements. All at once. And all, it seemed, with less effort than what it took to crinkle her brow.

Such were the Firsts.

The Seconds, then, were all the children of the Firsts and all their children after them. They had no powers over the elements and lived far shorter lives, though their years upon the earth were still much longer and they were stronger and bigger than your average human at their most robust. The only feature that seemed to be shared between the Firsts and the Seconds were their blood-red eyes. The eyes of the Nephilim.

In the village on the mountain, Oberon, of the iron-grey hair, was their leader. He was not a First, though he was older than the rest. No, he did not have powers, but his military genius more than made up for it. The villagers depended on him for their defence, their combat training, for their very lives.

Malchus was the boy that could work with stone, the one with the messed up hair. He was a First, though young and a new addition to the group back then. He was still very much in training.

Along with the rest, they were a close-knit community. They shared everything. Their home, their lives and a common defence against a world that would not hesitate but to see them hurt, see them killed.

Together, they were a family.

A family to which my little Annie now belonged.

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