Arise my people of ice and fire

[Kevin Kingswell]

The darkness was cold and complete. Not even a sliver of light could be found in the deepest corners. So it had been this way for tens of years a forgotten place, a hated people a time of much lost. But now it was the right time for she had returned and as if the very location was alive systems that had once lain dormant began to activate. Where there had been icy darkness thin beams of light began to broadcast as computers systems began their power up sequences, generators began to tick over to provide power and heating systems began to hum. 

 

As the temperature began to rise the first sounds of dripping water began to echo through out the once silent rooms as the ice began to melt that sound soon joined by the mechanical and electronic noises of a facility rising out of a deep computer sleep. Lights flickered and then solidified as their power was restored revealing long corridors and frost covered rooms that had once housed people and been the workplaces for an ancient civilization.

 

In the deepest levels of the facility in four gigantic caverns that had been painstakingly carved into the ice by thermal tools and converted into cryogenic sleeping chambers the power was shunted in to give it one hundred percent operating efficiency. The computer system that had only recently came online slowly began its primary purpose checking the vital signs of the frozen men and women assigned to the stage one grouping. As had been expected when the people had been put into the cryogenic sleeping pods at least forty percent of them had died as their pod's systems had failed over time but enough remained to provide a successful chance of completing stage one.

 

With loud and long hisses of escaping gas the pod doors that held those surviving members of the stage one group sprung open and the pod's control systems immediately went to work at reviving the people inside. Those men and women would find themselves jerking awake, their eyes wide in shock and coughing violently as the life sustaining fluid held in their lungs was forcefully brought up and vomited on to the floor. As they weakly climbed out of their pods still dazed and confused a section of their pod's would fold back to reveal a deep black uniform with bold red lining and on the shoulder patch was the ancient symbol of their people. Three joined arrows held tightly together to show the combined strength, loyalty and respect that was the core of their people.

 

As if unlocked by the sight of the uniform the newly awoken sleepers would reach out and begin to clothe themselves in the provided uniforms, the chill of the still not comfortably warm facility already seeping into their bodies. As they quickly changed a large screen that had been silent till this moment at the front of each cavern flicked on and formed into the picture of Valerie Klein. The picture was not live, instead it was a recording and the young woman leaned back in the high rest chair she was sitting and looked towards the camera, a pair of banners hanging behind her showing the symbol of her people.

 

"My people", she began, "you are the chosen of this world and for this we were punished and thought destroyed. This was nothing but a lie that we lead our enemies to believe. For years we have laid here asleep in our frozen home, allowing time to pass as waited and watched till we were forgotten."

 

"That time has been and gone, it is time we remind the world that we can never be destroyed. Arise my chosen few and bring the others out of their sleep. It is time for the long awaited rebirth."

 

"The Helzan have returned."