This is a story I wrote for school, and I thought y’all would like to read it. It’s set in the world of Tripods, a good series y’all should really read. Enjoy!

Your world, no matter which one you’re looking from, is broken. Mine is not an exception. My home, or at least, what was my home, is governed by a malicious order of huge machines called Tripods. No one is exempt from their rule. No one, that is, except our side of the war.

I was like any other boy of the times: ignorant, happy, living in an illusionary world of peace. My family was as ignorant as I, and not much less happy. I was the youngest, my sisters, being twins, were both one year my seniors. Everyone I knew was either Capped or about to be, and I was, I hate to admit it, anxious for the day when I too would become a man.

My sisters’ Cappings were looming around the day’s corner, and I was as jealous as a young boy could be. I went to bed with wild fantasies of the privileges of adulthood and slept with the same. Oh, what joy my sisters would have!

Joy was only the beginning. Everything was how it had always been: the gaiety, the choosing of the Queen of the Tournament, the music, the food, I was as happy as ever and happier. What was different was the Tripods.

We had heard of their hunts before, but never had I seen one. I will spare you the full account of the horror of their torturing, for I wish not to re-live that night. I will recount to you in short, the murder of my village.

We waited in nervous awe for the boom and the tintinnabulation of the Capping call, but instead, we heard the Bells, the Death Bells. Instead of the regal tromp we expected them to arrive with, they rushed upon us with the speed of a thousand horses. Instead of peace, they came with lightning, with fire, with screaming in the air and blood on the ground.

Let it suffice, reader, that I lived. I felt horrible shame at my survival, that I had not died like my family had, like my friends. Instead, I had hid.

I think it must have been days that I cowered in the rubble of the old church. I was waiting to die, or for bravery to find me. But instead of bravery, something much better came to my aid.

“Hello?” The first human voice I had heard in ages. It startled me from my slumber, and I answered quickly. I looked up to see the silhouette of a man, looking down at me. He helped me out of the debris. It was then that I got a good look at him. He had a dirty shock of red hair growing over a strangely bent Cap, and he had the signature pack of a Vagrant. He didn’t look French, but he spoke the language perfectly. I asked his name, and he said it was “Reynard, at the moment.” I was confused at this, but the relief of rescue was too heavy upon me to question further. He asked what had happened, and I told him the story of how the Tripods had killed everyone. He nodded in solemn silence, and then asked, “Would you like to go to a land without Tripods?”

I would have asked him what he meant.

I would have gone with him.

But instead, he was slain by that devilish Tripod.

So, I had to make my own rebellion.

And that, my child, is how my war began.