These Ancients lived back before the Ice Age, only we humans don’t know anything about them because when—every so often—humans find one of their skeletons, it’s similar enough to a human one that they usually figure that it’s just a person who had some sort of minor defect. Or else, if someone thinks the fossil record is showing them something amazing and new, then someone who knows they’re right about that sneaks in to mess up the study.
Also, there isn’t much evidence of them because at the end of their Golden Age they started fighting with each other and vaporized practically all of their civilization. From what the Petrovskis said, it seemed like the Ancients were really smart, really thoughtful and artistic, but also really powerful and in the end dumb enough to start WWIII. Or, I guess it was more like WW-1.0.
After this big, terrible war, everything they had built was destroyed and the survivors (there weren’t so many) were poor and weak and felt like it was hopeless to go on. Oh yeah, and the weapons they had used on each other started the Ice Age. I don’t get how that could be possible, but Mrs. P gave this explanation about shifting axes and changing air quality, and she made it sound like it made perfect sense.
The only survivors were a few leaders who had managed to protect themselves, and their servants and vassals and guards and such. Everyone else was gone. The leaders didn’t have the strength to protect their people or make new cities in their destroyed world, so instead they decided to go to this power store that they had turned into a sort of magical bomb shelter during the war. They made themselves special beds so the energy all around them would slowly feed them over time, in a kind of suspended animation. They decided that while everyone else slept their guards would stay awake in the real world, to keep their location safe and secret until the world heated back up and they could start working on restarting their civilization.
There were about 30 original protectors, and the Ancients called them the Waking Guard. For close to a century the Waking Guard all hung out beside the power store full time, just waiting. But this was around the same time that humans were starting to make a mark on the world, and after a while some of the WG would go out travelling and meet with humans. And after a while, one of the Guardians fell in love with a human.
The rest of the WG was really upset. But then, they were probably getting pretty inbred by that point, with a couple generations (they had longer lifespans than humans, but not by too much) of having kids with each other and just having about 30 of them to start out. Still, they were really against the idea of adding human DNA to the mix. When the couple had a baby it didn’t show any signs of having the power of its WG parent, so they were all like, “See told you—bad!” But then when the kid got older its parent tried training it anyway, and managed to call out this power that had been hidden inside the kid all of its life. So the kid joined the WG, and it turned out to be even more powerful than the purebloods.
Mixing with humans. It’s all downhill from there, right? Kidding.
Pretty soon all the WG were living around humans. They kept their eyes on the power store and remembered their duty and all, but a few more generations and the whole WG was mixed race. And they had a lot of kids who didn’t grow up to be WG, who couldn’t pull up any power, so the question of who’s who started getting kind of complicated. (Mr. P says that most ancient cultures have some sort of legend about the early WG. When I said we didn’t he told me to look up this 1 part of Genesis, um, chapter 6, and all I’ve got to say is I sure don’t remember that stuff coming up in Hebrew school.)
But then the Ice Age was ending and the WG got together and decided that they didn’t actually want the Ancients to wake up and try to take over. Last time the Ancients were in charge, they had almost destroyed the world, so it was better to let them sleep. The power store was in Antarctica, which just so happened to be the South Pole after the Earth realigned itself, so it wasn’t like the Ancients were going to figure out on their own that the world was getting warmer.
So the WG scattered all around the world (a lot more than 30 of them by this time), passing on their powers from one generation to the next. Lots of times it was parent to kid, but then sometimes a WG would notice someone with a lot of power and be all like, that’s my replacement, and just turn on the switch inside that person and say “Surprise! You get to help defend the world!”
A little warning would have been nice.
I had some serious problems with this system, but the Petrovskis said it’s how things have worked forever.
Oh, I just kinda jumped from “keep the Ancients safe” all the way to “defend the world,” didn’t I? Part of the connection is the WG being afraid that the Ancients waking up would mean bad stuff for the rest of us, but the WG have also picked up a sort of Hippocratic Oath along the way. Just about all of the WG have some sort of nature or healing power (you know, the organic stuff), so for thousands of years we’ve done what we can to help crops grow and keep water supplies clean and heal people—not to mention bigger stuff like negotiating countries out of wars and all.
(C&I are both all about the weather powers, and we’ve learned that in the old days, when the WG were the only people making storms and calling down sunshine etc., that they actually knew what they were doing enough to not cause disasters. Nothing like the crazy climate change we’ve had since the Great Awakening.)
Mr. and Mrs. P also gave us background info about how they had grown up in some city in northern Russia, and not long after they got married (and they were like, teenagers then), Mr. P’s granddad and uncle passed their titles as Waking Guardians on to the 2 of them. (Mr. P had known enough about the family business to marry someone with a big power potential.) They had met 1 or 2 other WGs when they were younger, but hadn’t seen any for a really long time. And they’ve been looking.
Actually, right after the Great Awakening the Petrovskis sneaked out of the Soviet Union to look for other WGs. I don’t think they told us this story during the retreat—it came up later—but they actually felt the moment of the Awakening, when power just exploded outward and did about the same thing that the weird ceremony in the clearing did, only to 100,000s of people. It flipped the switch inside of bunches of mixed blood humans, only they didn’t have anybody to teach them what they were doing. And… well, you were alive way back then Daddy, so you know all about how not long after the Awakening the governments in the world started rounding up peeps with powers and being all hush-hush, planning to use the supers to help them win the Cold War.
Back then the Petrovskis had an idea that some of that stuff was going on, because of the power burst and the little snippets of rumors they would hear every once in a while. They figured that if they were somewhere with a free press they could learn more and find out if this had anything to do with the rest of the Waking Guard that they didn’t know how to contact.
I’ll bet you’re getting bored by now, huh? I kind of am, and I’m telling the story, so I’ll finish the history lesson and go on to the good stuff. (You know, the parts about me.) Eventually the Ps came to America. And all the govts in the world realized that they were all hiding the same secret and it wasn’t so useful after all. So, they let the supers run around free, causing trouble—but none of the supers that the Ps have ever met knew anything about the WG. The Petrovskis decided they were getting old enough that they had to pass their powers on pretty soon so they could train their replacements. They were already teaching at my school, so they kept their eyes out for a couple strong candidates.
And of course the 2 they decided to choose were me and the 1 person I couldn’t stand. Just more proof that the world is a messed up place.
I kid.
Before we went back to camp, the Petrovskis gave us our official “seals of office.” Mine was a silver band that looked like a clingy bracelet (just how detailed does this written description need to be, anyway?), with a gray-white glowstone that kind of vanished into the design when I wasn’t using it to focus wind energy. We didn’t talk much on the way back to camp. I think everyone had way too much to think about.
(Continue.)
