poenitudo: (Default)
poenitudo ([personal profile] poenitudo) wrote2017-03-01 11:56 am

. history & worldbuilding .

It's a world of fire and ash. It's a world of sadness; hiding away all sins beneath a layer of grime and dirt. It's a world loved by many, oblivious, and it's a world hated by many, all too aware.

There is evil lurking, in shadows and alleyways. In the chirpy ringtone of your brand new phone.

[...]

But that isn't Jaden Cosgrove's reality. His reality is all too normal, one of the oblivious, happy people. At 15, he's a popular kid on the edge of a growth spurt, with well-off parents and a tiny brother that worships the ground he walks on. A football player with aspirations to play varsity. A bunch of friends. Average grades and attendance.

His world tips on its axis. One November night, Jaden comes home from a house party to a scene straight out of a horror movie. Blood everywhere, painting the walls and permeating the air with a metallic smell, burying itself under his skin. He falls, knees buckling under his own weight, as he takes in the sight of his parents and brother, chests open, their hearts missing.

Jaden never goes back to school.

[...]

He's attacked on the verge of his sixteenth birthday. A normal night, by all accounts - Back Bay is surprisingly quiet, and maybe it should have been his first warning sign. The attack is a swift, uncompromising. They want him dead. It's a group of wolves - what are wolves doing in the city? - and they're merciless, clawing and biting at Jaden for what feels like forever but is really only seconds. And just as fast as they appeared, they're gone, leaving Jaden for dead.

At the time, he wished he was. He only has broken memories of what happened after; the first clear thought happens a week later, when he wakes up in the hospital. He breaks out of it only a few days after he first wakes.

[...]

The tattoo artist doesn't say anything about the scars - the jagged claw marks running down Jaden's arm and side, the prominent bite on his neck. He just says, "I'll do what I can."
It doesn't look like much of anything - starbursts of black ink, galaxies relating to Jaden's history - but he doesn't need it to.

[...]

At 17, he is angry as all hell, and lashing out at everyone and everything he meets. He's gone through his expected growth spurt, growing almost a foot in a mere few months, ending up at an imposing 6'4'' mountain of an almost-man. The life he leads keeps him in peak physical shape, which shows in the overall size of him, even if his frame was never meant to be small.

He's still learning how to shift, how to hunt, how to keep himself from attacking humans when in wolf form. He hates everything about it, but uses his new powers to the greater good, discovering the underworld of supernatural creatures and how happily they'll pay for jobs to be done for them. He becomes a bit of a bounty hunter, and survives the dangerous world of the supernatural.

He learns about the Other World, too; a parallel universe in which supernatural creatures reign over mankind, accessible through portals.

[...]

When he meets Ephram, he's 20, still angry, and still hating everything he is. Ephram doesn't help much, at first, with his laid-back attitude and total control. But he becomes invaluable in a few months, and quickly becomes Jaden's best friend.

Ephram's mother is in the Other World and he is determined to follow. Jaden has found out, through his myriad of odd jobs and contacts, that the people responsible for his family's massacre also live in the Other World. They decide to join forces.

[...]

Meanwhile, turns out the demons responsible for the deaths of Jaden's family knew he would be one of those to take them down, through augury and the gift of Sight. Which is why they tried to anticipate and kill him as a kid, and ended up killing his family, sending the werewolves after him later. Jaden has to live with the knowledge that his family dying is his fault.

But the question remains: if his family hadn't been killed, would Jaden have turned into the man he ends up being? Would he be hell-bent on destroying those who took his family from him? Or would he be a normal kid, with no care in the world but his football career?

[...]

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