The Great Orion

The Great Orion - Intro

"Wake up my son," came a soft and beautiful voice.

As the boy opened his eyes, he smiled brightly as his mother's face came into view. She was tired and worn but ever beautiful to her young son.

"I saved you some breakfast," she said as she handed him tiny bits of hard, stale bread.

As he chomped down on the morsels, his happy expression changed at the reality of his world, a place he'd forget while dreaming.

He lived in a small cage with his mother, surrounded by many other cages, like a prison, all stacked together like cargo. As far as his little eyes could see in his dimly lit surroundings, cages went on forever. A vast chamber lit only by one dim bulb.

Crying, moaning, screaming, and voices of despair filled the musty air around them. Some begged for freedom while others mumbled nonsense, as if their time in this unending pit of foul stench and sickness had driven them mad. The rot of decay was fresh and old as the dead were left for days on end before removal.

The boy's expression turned to fear and despair at the sight of a disfigured woman, screaming and vomiting, desperate to be free from the prison of her captors, and her own mind. He flinched as she began to bang her bloodied and bruised face off the iron bars.

"My son, focus only on me," the boy's mother said as she took his little face into her hands, then looked deeply into his eyes. Covering his ears and drawing him close, she began to rock him as she sang sweetly to him.

He closed his eyes and nestled into his mother. No matter what horrors surrounded them, in her arms, he always felt safe.

Suddenly the mother felt a powerful vision and popped her eyes open. "Oh no," she whispered to herself as her heart began to pound. She sensed something was terribly wrong, and her eyes filled with panic. Kept safely under a cloak of her magic since his birth, the mother's sweet boy had finally been detected and was in great danger.

"Mama?" the boy said, unsure of what was happening. He could feel something was wrong.

The mother rubbed his little face quickly as she fought her tears. "Son, you need to go now, quickly."

Terrified, the boy pleaded with wide eyes. "No mama."

Just as the mother went to speak again, the sound of a large steel door clanged open, and then slammed shut. Many large and heavy footsteps headed their way. The mother quickly unwrapped a blue cloth from her neck and wrapped it around her son. "Take this with you," she said in a shaking voice as she hugged her son tightly one last time.

She raised her hand and struggled with her magic until the bars of their cage pulled apart slightly. "Go now, my son. Know that I love you, and am always with you," she said as tears fell from her big eyes.

"Mama, no!" the boy objected. He didn't understand.

"Go, son! Go hide, now!" the mother pleaded with him as she pushed him out of the cage.

Just then, many guards chugged around a corner and stopped by the cage.

The boy quickly tucked himself behind another cage and watched.

"Where's the child!?" one of the guards demanded of the woman.

The mother said nothing as she looked defiantly at the guard.

The guard looked to his comrades, then opened her cage door and pulled her out by her hair.

The boy's eyes widened as the guard smashed her with a heavy fist, then held her up.