Page 1 of Red

Prologue

As to What Was

There were certain truths everyone knew. Never wear red or any other bright color. Make as little sound as possible when going outside the protection of the sanctuary settlements. And never, ever, go out into the wilds alone. In the world as it had become, to do so was to court one’s own demise. Humanity was no longer at the top of the food chain. In fact, it was barely surviving. Old stories of long past wars that had devastated the human populations and the remnants of old technology, that were said to have remained in the wealthiest of households in oldest parts of the citadels, were all that remained of the way things had once been.

No one recalled why technology failed and its secrets forgotten. Whatever the reason, this along with the fact that male birthrates were said to have plummeted around the time just before the fall, spelled the beginning of the end for the human species.

When humanity was most vulnerable, they came.

Over three hundred years ago, aliens who identified themselves as the Feriknikal arrived, transporting primitive refugees from a dying world. These refugees, the Ragoru, required little more than the forest and wild, unoccupied stretches of the planet. It seemed like a fair request to save another dying species. And at first, humanity welcomed the refugees, but it didn’t take long before the High Council of the northern continent moved against them with brutal efficiency. The reasons for it were never entirely disclosed aside from one disturbing revelation: their apparent need to sacrifice humans.

The official statements released said that the Ragoru were like something out of a nightmare, stealing away young women. They were massive and monstrous in appearance, inspiring fear at the mere sight of them. They were utterly alien from the thick, spiked bone protrusions that protected their spines and the two luminous sets of eyes that gave them superior vision, to the four arms that gave them additional speed and striking ability. The few features that were familiar did nothing to lessen the fear but rather made them more monstrous to the imagination.

With their humanoid torsos, thickly furred pelts and faces that bore a resemblance to the wolves in old books, though of a more vicious appearance with the clear sentience in their eyes, they appeared as something akin to the werewolves of lore without the convenience of being able to assume a human form. They were described as the epitome of true monsters in the human mind. Creatures made to kill things. Creatures that bore only a trace connection to that all that was human, and yet with all the same intellect and cunning.

Treaties forged with the Feriknikal were forgotten and the Ragoru were driven to the furthest reaches where they would be in no danger of coming into contact with humans. As years wore by, few dared to enter the forests and mountains, and fewer still had seen any sign of the aliens, but whenever humans disappeared, leaving their possessions abandoned, the whispers began again. They became the boogeyman whispered of fearfully even as they slipped further and further into obscurity. In their absence, the legend of the Ragoru grew through the diligence of the Order of the Huntsmen. This order, established to protect humanity from the dangers of the world, aided the council in passing laws and upholding them to protect their citizens should things ever change and the creatures re-emerge.

With the passage of the laws and reforms, color leeched out of human life, taking all joy with it. Colorful clothing was amassed and burned—all except the bridal gown, kept in reverence to the Holy Mother, yet never worn outside under the open sky. Bright ornamental flowers suffered similar fates. Flower beds were torn up, and food crops and orchards were tended to under the supervision of guards far from the citadels and settlements out of fear that any display of color risked attracting the monsters who were known to be drawn to its vibrancy. Even bright locks of hair were scorned as a dangerous temptation of fate,

Among the settlements nearest to the wildest parts of the world, the adherence to the laws was taken up with a particular fervor as the aliens’ abilities took on supernatural proportions.

Thus, the Ragoru shaped the world as it had come to be.

Chapter

One

Arie stared woodenly down at the simple headstone that marked the fresh grave in front of her and absently tugged on her hood, drawing it lower around her face. Although the gathering was pitifully small, there were too many eyes on her for her comfort as they paid their respects to the dead.

That there wasn’t a large turnout wasn’t entirely surprising. The woman lying buried there hadn’t been popular or well-loved in the settlement. Too educated for her own good in the views of many, and too vocal against the village’s wealthy leadership, as there were few who deigned to leave the comfort of Sanctuary’s village walls.

A weathered hand gripped her shoulder in a paternal squeeze and Arie lifted her gaze to smile weakly at Miles Ferily. Reaching up, she clung to his hand for emotional support, leaning on his solid presence. One of the few men in the village, he had not only been her mother’s employer but had been a father figure to her since her own father died. It was of no surprise to her that he had been the first to arrive and now, as attendees filed silently from the graveyard, was among the last to leave. His brown eyes were warm with sympathy as he gazed down at her.

“Your ma was a good woman. Smart as a whip and a hard worker. She will be sorely missed,” he murmured, giving her shoulder another squeeze and a pat before joining the side of Old Widow Townsly. The elderly woman dabbed her eyes clearly still trying to hold back the tears that had threatened to spill over just minutes earlier when she gave her own condolences.

Arie’s eyes turned back toward the grave, a long sigh leaving her that bore a strong note of mournfulness to it even to her own ears.

“Mama, I miss you so much,” she whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know what I’ll do now that you are gone. It has always been just me and you, and now I have no one.” She swallowed, lifting her head, and choked back a laugh. “One thing is for sure; this village will never again have anyone quite like you. I suspect they will enjoy the peace,” she chuckled miserably.

An educated woman from Old Wayfairer Citadel where schools of higher education still existed beyond the basic classes taught to small children in Sanctuary and many villages scattered across the northern continent, Elizabet Maywell had stood up continuously against the mandates and superstition of the village. Of course, some of that might have been due to the fact that, unknown to those dwelling within the village, her own daughter was born with a flaming red cap of hair. A coloring inherited from her great-great-grandmother, or so her mother claimed as she fretted over the curls.

A simple matter of heredity, which would have been solved in the citadel with dyes or keeping the hair shorn off and covered, was treated as a very real source of danger and contamination within the mind of the villagers. What had started as concern over any sort of vivid color attracting unwanted attention had turned into extreme paranoia over the years, and people swore that red hair, just by the virtue of being red, would curse a community.

It was a superstition that led to more than one person being stoned as a way to ward away the Ragoru from Sanctuary.

Feeling around absently with an instinctive need to reassure herself that none of her hair was visible beneath her hood, Arie bit back a sigh. It was because of that absurd mentality that she lived in constant paranoia of anyone finding out the color of her hair. Her mother was the only one who knew Arie’s secret—other than one other who had discovered it when spying on her and had been bribed for years to stay quiet—and had helped her keep her hair trimmed neatly close to her head where it could be concealed easily beneath a dark knit cap.

She blew out a long breath. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” she whispered, dashing away the tears from her eyes with shaking hands. “But I don’t want you to worry, Mama, I’m going to be fine. I have written to grandma, remember? You insisted when you fell ill. Well, I’ve finally received her letter today. She’s sending someone to fetch me and escort me there.”

Arie bit her lip as she twisted her fingers together apprehensively. “I admit, I’m a bit nervous, though. I’ve never been away from home, and, despite all of your stories, I can’t even imagine what life in the citadel will be like. I wish that you had not fallen sick so unexpectedly so that you could have been well enough to go north with me like we planned.”

They had planned it for years, scraping together their meager savings. Arie suspected that the idea had begun to form in her mother’s mind even earlier yet when Arie’s father died. After all, he had been the one to talk her mother into leaving all she knew to journey far beyond the dark forests of Murk Woods to join a settlement beyond Ragoru territory.

Throughout Arie’s life, Elizabet had often thinned her lips bitterly as she recollected how charismatic and charming the recruiter had been. He had lured listeners in by speaking of the wealth to be had in a village founded a hundred years ago by a group of wealthy families after they’d discovered vast mineral deposits, chiefly iron, which were much valued by the Citadel. The village, Sanctuary, had dwindled and died since its establishment due to the low birth rate, but it was ripe for settlement for those who sought a better life and more freedoms outside of the rigid rules and structure that defined life in the Citadel. Though the promise of comforts to be had drew the desperate and the poor, it was that honeyed promise of freedom that had drawn in those with some small wealth as well as men like her father who were dissatisfied with their near cloistered existence within the Citadel walls.

Though Elizabet hadn’t wanted to leave her home, she’d loved her husband and had been devoted to him entirely. Perhaps it was partially because she wouldn’t have an opportunity to remarry. Though she had been permitted to marry a man of her choosing due to the station of her birth, wherein other women rarely enjoyed that privilege at all since the Citadel discouraged men from marrying to boost the population, that one was all that she would ever have. Arie loved her mother but was under no illusions that part of her decision was rooted in the fact that her mother invested everything in the one man she would ever have. Arie couldn’t even begin to imagine being confronted with that sort of choice but understood not wanting to be alone. She was alone now, and it was both terrifying and lonely. Based on that alone she understood why her mother chose to give up their comfortable life and stay by his side when he’d decided to follow the recruiter and his team south.

Her mother never spoke in detail of what happened those first few years, though she would often shudder on the darkest, quietest nights, ones that stirred memories of darker, terror-filled nights huddled in the canvas domes with the other travelers. Though she swore she had seen glimpses of what she was certain were Ragoru from a distance, it was hearing their eerie howls late at night that haunted her the most. Of those earlier years within Sanctuary, however, all she would say was that it had been clear to her that its founding so far from the safety of the Citadel had been a decision bred of foolishness.

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