Prologue
Nobody expected there to be a World War 3, when it did come, everyone knew the terrible truth. No world leader would give up willingly.
Missile defense systems, foreign and otherwise, were designed to withstand nuclear attacks from without, rather than within.
Greedy politicians and foreign dictators, spoiled in their positions of absolute power, simply refused to lose to one another. Rather than roll over and admit defeat, several decided that their toys, were only for them and no other. That is how The Annihilation came to be.
In the end it was spoiled children sitting on thrones that destroyed civilization as we know it.
Civilization winked out of existence. An atomic onslaught brought mankind to its knees. Broken, humans turned to their most basic survival instincts. As decades passed, mankind became clusters of warring clans, their traded commodities became food, weapons and women.
No gender, nor race, could be suppressed to complete servitude. That is how it came to be that the Feminine Monasteries were formed.
Five capitals formed across the North American continent, they were first known as safe havens, places advertised for women to seek safety. It wasn’t long before women began to fade into myth and legend. Centuries passed, men aged and died, and the population was supplanted with young monasteries, but women were no more.
The Feminine Monasteries became religious symbols of breeding, eventually becoming large cities. The only cities not controlled by clan, but by religion instead. And at the center of each city, women hid behind walls, weapons and creed. They became known as breeders, and few men ever set eyes upon them.
Chapter One
Most Beautiful One
“For that which we name them, they are destined to become. Name them sorrow, and that is all they shall ever know. Name them justice, and so shall they deliver.”
page four, verse 10: Righteous Breeding
Ansel crouched under the massive oak tree, sheltered from the torrential rainfall. Below him there was an open meadow, unprotected from the rain. He had been tracking the men that were spread out below. He didn’t really have a reason, he was just nosey. After three days, he still didn’t know what they were after. They moved tirelessly, intent on their prey, it had to be important. Ansel himself was growing weary from their unrelenting pace.
There were five of them, barely 100 yards away, he watched them intently as they circled a deadfall. The tangled mass of fallen trees and limbs must have served as a hiding spot for their prey.
It was at that moment that Ansel saw her, she burst out of the deadfall like a bird on graceful wings. Movement like that only came from years of practice and training. He found himself blinking, unsure if what he was seeing, was it real? Or sleep deprivation playing tricks on his mind. She was tall and slender, her beauty, stunning. Her clothes were tight and form fitting, but not the clothes of a woodsman, nor that of a soldier. They were gossamer, unlike anything he had ever seen, intimately clinging to her wet feminine form. Once white, they were now dingy and soiled with mud and forest refuse.
Ansel stared at the first woman he’d ever seen in his life. He was frozen in place, in complete shock. He watched as she darted for an opening between the men surrounding her, but she wasn’t fast enough. Caught by a handful of her clothing, she was thrown from her feet.
Ansel twitched at her impact on the ground. A powerful sense that he was witnessing something irrevocably wrong and evil, gnawed at him. These men were not just hunting, they were intent on taking something that was not theirs to take.
The men closed in on her, lithely she got to her feet, her curly hair plastered to her head. The ground at their feet had become churned and muddy, she crouched in the mud, and she fought. She fought unlike anything Ansel had ever seen. It was a dance of fury and rage. It was beautiful.
When restrained from behind, her head had whipped back, cracking her attacker in the nose. The loosened grip became a weapon as she bent low and tossed the man, who must be twice her weight, over her head like a bundle of wood. When grabbed by the hair, she spun and lashed out at a face, attempting to blind her assaulter. Feral screams and unintelligible curses, came from her lips with every exertion.
Ansel’s feet started moving of their own accord. “Aye, what am I doin? This isn’t my fight…” his thoughts were slow to catch up to him. He didn’t know why he was getting involved. True, he had never seen a woman before, but all that could mean, was trouble, lots of trouble. Ansel was a large man, barrel chested and bull-necked, his thickset body was the result of years of hard work and healthy diet. But he did not fancy himself a fighter. He hated to fight, the thrill made him half sick, and hung over him like a black cloud. He also never ran, except for now, he usually moved with the lumbering pace of a sleepy bear, but like a bear, he could also run with a speed unnatural for his size. He moved through the waist high grass with deadly purpose, his knife already drawn, held edge up in his fist.
The woman had been stripped of her clothing during the battle. The men ripping, cutting, and clawing their way to her flesh. They had abandoned their humanity and were filled with lust. Her pale skin was scratched and bleeding, bruised and torn. Ansel nearly tripped over himself when he saw her naked chest, heaving with exertion. Her breasts were beautiful globes of supple flesh, they bounced as she struggled, and were capped with large pink nipples. His eyes violated her body further, following her frame to her long legs, they were delicately muscled, flexing with strength. He felt a stirring from within.
Ansel had never seen any human with such delicate and perfect features. She had the face and body of an angel, moving with the grace of a mountain lion. At the moment though, her face was held in a sneer of contempt, her lips peeled back from her teeth, which were red with blood. Her eyes met his, and her attacker, noticing her eyes averted, turned to look, too late.
Ansel barreled into the man from behind, his massive forearms smashed into the attackers back. A sound that would make any grown man’s stomach turn, shattered the air as his back broke. Ansel watched as the limp body rebounded off the ground, folded in half, backwards. The attackers moved away, regrouping, and all eyes were on Ansel. He was a formidable mountain, made into man. At once they attacked, their anger flashing in their eyes. They were trained soldiers, and harried him as a group, working together they moved as one.
She struck one of them from behind and sank her teeth into his neck. The sound of the man’s flesh tearing and the sight of her, naked, face bloodied, nearly drove him mad with bloodlust. Ansel fought with a fury and righteous anger he had never felt before. The thrill of battle saturated his senses. He stuck his knife through the abdomen of one, ripping it upwards, deep under his ribs. The man’s bowels fell to the ground, the spark flickered in his eyes. Ansel pivoted sideways turning and reversed his grip on his knife. He slashed at the next man opening his throat. Together they destroyed the remaining men, they fought with a single purpose, as if they had trained side by side, together they could decimate the world.
Ansel stood panting with labored breath, the thrill in him subsiding. Rain hammered down on their heads, unrelenting in it’s punishment. He looked through heavy lidded eyes and once again their eyes met. She had green eyes and they were filled with bloodlust, mirrors of his own.
“What!?” She cried with unbridled anger, she crouched, ready to attack. “Have you come to take what they could not?” She gestured at the dead men at their feet. “Have you caught my scent…” She stuffed her hand between her legs as she spoke, inserting two of her fingers inside of herself. She ripped them out and held her index and middle finger sideways at him, as if to attract him with her scent. “Has the smell of my cunt tainted your feeble mind with lust!? That you should slay all those before you to… to… rape me!?” She cried out the rest through tears, her words neither question nor statement, but somehow both.
Ansel stood humbled by her spoken word. It was clear and precise, and it was unlike any speech he had ever heard before. She had no clan accent and used words he’d never heard before. Like “cunt” and “feeble”, and some others were lost on him as well, though he could puzzle out her meaning. He stared at her, naked, bruised and battered. Blood left streaks of pink all down her pale skin as the rain pelted her. Her breasts heaved with her labored breathing and she stood ready to defend herself.
“Aye…I must be mad, runnin down here’n all.. to help you.” Ansel said. “But not mad over you, just mad up here” he pointed at his head, then held his hands up, palms towards her. “I don’t intend to hurt you.”
She relaxed visibly, and fell to one knee, she began to tremble. The rain continued to hammer them, its stinging rebuke slapping those that would oppose it, a constant reminder of the danger it represented. Steam rolled off Ansel, the strange woman, and the corpses around them. She collapsed and fell forward into the mud, shivering. The cold of the rain finally overcame her. Ansel sighed realising she must be exhausted from her pursuit. “Nothing good would come of this.” He thought.
Ansel scooped her up into his arms. She dangled there, draped across his massive forearms, limp and lifeless. The only assurance that she still lived, was her body trembling with involuntary shivers. Curious he smelled her fingers that she had proffered earlier. The smell was sweet, musty. He was not sure why it should drive him mad, he felt pretty normal. He held her against him, trying to provide warmth, and carried her. She lay limp, and unconscious all the way back to his camp.
She lay by the fire, wrapped in his arms, her chest rising and falling with her steady breathing. He had been worried that she would die from exhaustion and cold. It had been a chore to find wood that would burn. Even as the rain finally let up, the canopy of the forest was still wet, and droplets of water fell on them. He peered into the low overhanging branches above them, hoping they would filter the smoke from their fire and not give them away. There had been no time to waste. She had become hypothermic, and he needed real heat and fast. Building a fire had not been enough. He had stripped off his shirt and coat, and pulled her in to him, sharing his heat with her.
Ansel moved from under her and carefully, like a child, placed her on the ground. He covered her with his oilskin jacket, and began dressing. He didn’t want her to be startled when she woke. He hoped his unexpected arousal would abate as well. He went to search for firewood, his thoughts were long and distant.
Ansel had heard of women, they were something whispered about around a fire, maybe after a few drinks, when inhibitions were low. Sometimes a man, bold with drink, would brag about having seen one or even laid with one. Nobody ever believed such a braggart, now Ansel questioned his disbelief. There were stories of monasteries in the mountains, small civilizations that centered around sects of women. Women that nobody had ever seen, that never showed their faces, used as breeders. The only proof that they existed being the children that were handed out, to be raised by their followers, or sold to surrounding clans. Only boys made it out of these breeding grounds, it was told that the girls were raised as slaves inside the sects, to be used as breeders for the future of humanity. Ansel chewed on his thoughts as he returned to camp. He carried what wood he could find, that was dry enough to burn.
She sat by the fire, awake, tented in his jacket, it was large enough to cover her entirely. Small slender fingers peeked out of her shroud where she held it fast around her. Her hair, its curls having dried, stood out from her head, reminding Ansel of the tumbleweeds on the other side of the mountains. He found himself chuckling.
“Have you been named?” She asked him, it was the first time he had heard her true voice. It was now vacant of the rage and bloodlust that had dominated it before. Beautiful and harmonious, her tone was clear and melodious, not unlike the strum of a stringed instrument.
“Aye, I am named, Ansel” he proffered, and was only met with silence. He raised his eyebrows in question. “My friends call me Ani.” He said it with emphasis on the word friends.
“Kalista” she said simply. She glanced away from him and eyed his pack. Ansel looked over. “No man is a woman’s friend.” she sounded sad.
“Aye, you are probably hungry, eh?” He gathered up his things, digging through his pack. He produced some jerked venison, and handed it to her. A long slender arm broke free from his jacket, baring a shoulder and her shockingly delicate neck. Kalista accepted the food and bit into the jerky, ripping a large chunk off with her teeth. She watched him like a trapped animal while she feasted on the salted meats.
Between a mouthful of food, barely intelligible, she spoke, “Your accent, you are from the Motherless clans, east of the mountains.” It sounded like an accusation more than a question. Ansel decided not to respond.
“You have come all this way, and chosen to help me… Why?” she asked, staring at him contemplatively.
Ansel sighed outwardly. “I have heard about a body of water so great that the eye cannot see where it ends, or where it stretches to. Water full of salt and undrinkable, poisoned, Have you seen this?”
Kalista giggled. “It is called the ocean, and no, I have never been.”
“If you’ve never been, how do you know of this thing?” Ansel asked, his doubt rumbling deep in his chest, insulted by her laugh.
“I have read about it.” She said nonchalantly. She wrinkled her nose at him, her mouth still full of food.
“Read? I don’t know this word.” Ansel pulled an oiled skin out of his pack, one he used for a blanket, it was supple and soft, well oiled and waterproof. He began working at it with his knife.
She eyed his knife. “No matter.” She said. “It is real, I should like to see it myself as well.” She smiled wistfully, her eyes distant.
“Those men, there’ll be more I take it?” Ansel asked.
She looked at him, fear plain on her face, she averted her eyes again. “I hope not…” she whispered.
Ansel stood, shaking out the hide. He had cut a hole through one end, and slits along the sides. He had several leather strips that he had cut from the length of the blanket. She shrank back as he approached, but he made a soft sound with his voice, as if he were calming an animal. He placed the hole in the blanket over her head. Drawing her to her feet he tucked the material around her. She stood there, her face inches from his, and allowed him to clothe her. He drew the leather cord around her waist while tucking the material in behind her. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. The blanket draped to her knees, and tucked around her waist, But her back was left exposed, he tried not to stare at her shoulder blades or the arch of her back. His arousal disturbed him, and he did his best to hide it.
“Thank you” Kalista said, her eyes still shone with fear. “You truly do not intend me harm?” She asked, gently.
Ansel stepped back, and returned to his side of the fire. “Truly” he said simply.
She stood there, hair wild, draped in a buckskin blanket, and still she looked regal. A strength emanated from her that was far more than physical.
Ansel’s memory flashed before him, seeing her naked, and bloodied, projecting that same powerful presence. He had never felt so attracted to someone, he chided himself, and squashed his arousal, once again, ignoring it.