Initiation Day: Briar

Initiation day was interesting.

Global warming, pollution, magical radiation - we'd been slowly destroying our world for years.

"Magical" radiation, I asked, disbelieving. My own experience - and everything I had ever learned about science - discredited magic as a fantasy. Make-believe, a game for children at best.

I felt foolish when he asked me if I believed everything I had been told.

The government had worked closely with the supernatural population to hide their existence from the public.

In exchange for secrecy, the vampires, werewolves, fairies, genies(?!), witches, and more worked to advance civilization by leaps and bounds, dragging us centuries ahead of our time. Wireless technology? More like magitek. Miraculous healing, the cure for what ails you? Actually miracles. Most of what we've accomplished for the last century was made possible only through magic.

And, he reminded me, sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Funny that I'd always heard that quote the other way around.

The problem came when the magic became too powerful.

The older powers, immensely powerful witches, fairies, and vampires mostly, cautioned against the rampant abuse of things we could not properly understand. Nobody listened, of course - who would, when we were enjoying the advances of a civilization so far beyond what our own had been?

The world became saturated with power.

The weather was the first thing to go. Or had I thought the longer winter normal? Four more years, give or take, and the winter would become permanent, heralding in a new ice age. Spring might never come again - not within our lifetime, at least!

The people were changing, too. So far, the government had kept it contained, isolated - but people were going mad. They attacked their families, sometimes. Other times, when it took them, they shook to death, their mouths frothing as their brains were simply overwhelmed.

What did any of this have to do with me?

It wasn't my charm, brains, or good looks.

The government had collected a sample of my DNA, and it proved resistant to the magical deterioration. More, it was compatible with the program.

My recruiter handed me a seed.

"Welcome to the beginning of your new life," he told me. "If you try to back out now, you'll be found, executed, and discredited as a lunatic."

Good to know.