Phantasia

“Dude, that thing’s growing more wings every year!”

Dante grunted a chuckle and pulled the drawing closer to him. Even Joel, his best friend, wasn’t privy to his secret fantasies.

“You should design tattoos,” he continued, “That’d be awesome on your back!”

Dante frowned, thinking of how silly it would look to have a twelve-winged shadow sprawled across his back. Joel would love it, as would Ravens like him, but that wasn’t Dante’s scene. He preferred the silence, those solitary moments when he didn’t have to endure the banal trivialities of human behaviour, when he was the only person who existed and everything else was just a painful memory.

A different type of silence descended upon the cramped classroom. Their History teacher, the rugged Mr Haan, had just walked in, his weathered trench coat flowing behind him. Dante continued to scrawl shadows over the lined page as Mr Haan welcomed the students to their second year, took the register, and then perched himself on the edge of his desk.

“Last year, we concentrated on modern history and the wars of the past century. This year, we’re going back a millennium. To a time of religious persecution and civil unrest. An age of darkness.” he moved to pull the whiteboard down, revealing the large screen behind it, “It just so happens that some of us have had a busy winter holiday, and have cobbled together a bit of a treat for you kids,”

He was smirking. He always made that expression when he had something ‘entertaining’ to show. The rest of the class never noticed it. They would gossip afterwards about how Mr Haan enjoyed his boring presentations too much. Only Dante seemed to notice his self-depreciating humour.

The room darkened and Mr Haan took at seat at the back of the class, where he would watch for signs of inattention. Joel was already passing notes over to Kaori again, while Lysander and Angelo were whispering away. No doubt Mr Haan would pick on them later, when he started asking questions about the presentation. Dante would pay more attention to his imagination than what was going on, but unlike the rumours said about certain other teachers, Mr Haan couldn’t read minds, so he would be safe. As he drew his imaginings under the irregular light of the staccato images and videos, he managed to at least pick out a few shreds of details.

21^st Century. Terrorism. Occupation. Economy.

How boring.

Environment. Technology. Understanding.

Just sounds like present day. Nothing ever changes.

Lunar Colony established.

Dante stopped drawing for a moment. He was fascinated by the white monolith that swept through the sky and dominated his dreams.

Lunar Colony sabotaged. Breakout of violence. Violence on the increase. International conflict. Martial law. Civil war.

And back to the boring stuff. Dante drifted back into his daydreams, where the moon hung low and black clouds covered the skies.

Tower of Babel.

His eyes glanced upwards. Though the report was going on about how this tower was the largest structure the world had ever seen, it paled in comparison to the mountainous city of Malkuth to the south. People back then were amazed by such petty things. As the montage resumed its downbeat spiral, Dante returned to his notebook.

Artists purged.

Joel nudged him, almost ruining the final wing. Dante was going to glare at him, but as his eyes were rolling from page to lanky, red-haired Raven, they were caught by the images on screen. For a brief moment, it was dominated by the image of an entity with twelve wings stretching out like grasping fingers, and at the centre of the darkness sat a malevolent face.

Appearing across the world, religious leaders are calling it demonic propaganda and are warning people to be vigilant of those who may be connected to this “cult of Erebus”.

Then the image flashed away to be replaced with more news reports, scenes of giant craters and mushroom clouds, streets filled with dead bodies, black clouds sweeping across the sky, lines of refugees heading towards the skeletal beginnings of the technopolises built around the Babel towers, grainy, zoomed footage taken by gibbering amateurs of monsters prowling the streets. The growing moon. Then darkness.

The lights flickered back on and a sombre Mr Haan hid the screen away. Dante could feel the fresh ink imprinting on his palm, but he didn’t want anyone else to see it. The rest of the class were muttering to themselves.

“And that,” began their teacher, “was the end of the Old World.”

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