Paradiso: Prologue

PROLOGUE



I walked down the road as the rain poured onto the cobblestone like gunfire, the pitter-patter of the water sending vibrations up and down the street. The sound of the wind could not be heard over the roar of the downpoar, as if the gods were dropping a million marbles onto the earth below. The large palms danced in the wind, the sounds of their large fronds resemebling the tail of a rattle snake. The clouds swirled in a vortex above the brick wall houses that lined the street, waiting to suck them up in a whirlpool of surprise...

Despite this storm of gust and rain, however, the streets of Nassau were anything but quiet. Drunken men sloppily clambered through the rain and mud to their homes; women hastily walking away from them beneath their umbrellas. Shelterless canines walked through the alleyways, digging through the mountains of garbage for a lte night meal. The police drones hummed above the city, waiting in silence for any sign of trouble.

They were hulks of metal, the drones were; rounded in shape, with machine guns mounted on their bodies. They had no eyes, their visionary capabilities a complete mystery to me. They had been placed here by the government, just as they had been in every other country. The Earth was no longer safe anymore...not even in the year 4031...

Let me introduce myself first, however. I shouldn't get so far ahead of myself these days...

My name is Nathan Santiago. I'm six foot three. Black hair, sea-blue eyes, and a knack for getting into trouble defines me. I'm the son of Annabella Santiago, the most amazing woman that has ever walked this earth.

But I have a secret.

We all...have...secrets.

I'm the son of a mortal...and a god. My father is Zephyrus, one of the four gods of the wind. That's right; I'm a demigod...half-mortal, half-divine creature. Don't get me wrong. Finding out that your father is an immortal deity who can vaporize anything to a pulp sounds awesome...until it costs your mother her life.

They came early in the morning. It had been raining- as usual- in beautiful Nassau, Bahamas. I was fifteen...I remember it like it was yesterday.

Oh yeah. Because it was.

June 23, 4031.

Four minutes until my mother would've woken me up with a cold bucket of icy to water to remind that I, (unfortunatley), had been born at five in the morning. We were going to celebrate my turning of sixteen approximatley at the moment I had been born...

And they burst in. They knocked down our small, mahogany red door and shatterd our dust covered windows. They stormed our house like it was a fortress of steel...

They knew who I was; what I was. They killed my mother and burned her body...right in front of me.

My father saved me though- vaporizing them all. Be he couldn't bring my mother back from death. No one could...She was gone. Forever.

Zephyrus told me what I was: a demigod with special, rare abilities, that I would soon learn to control. He explained how those men were the first of many. They wanted me for their experiments...

For Paradiso.

What Paradiso is, I'm still not sure. My father told me with his whispy, cold voice that somewhere out there, in the cold, dark depths of the Galaxy, someone was making a threat...a threat big enough to consume the whole universe. And he had tasked me, Nathan Santiago, with stopping it.

"A group of three demigods shall banish this evil from our midst," he had said, as if were some wise prophet. "Find the two, Nate, and start your journey...my son."

He had called me Nate and son in the same sentence...as if I meaned anything to him. My mother was the only one who called me that...Mother was the only one I'd ever had...the only one I'd ever known...

So, here I was.

The end of the street.

The rain beating down on my head, plastering the sweat and dirt to my neck. It seemed as if the weather had changed with my mood- from sunny, to black and storm ridden. I looked up high into the cloudy night sky, wondering where my father was now.

Everything had happened so dark...and so fast...

I held my head higher, in honor of my mother. I had to get out of Nassau. I had to avenge my mother. Her death would not be in vain. She'd spent sixteen years of her life fighting for my protection. And now I would spend the rest of mine searching...and fightning...no matter how long it took. Two days...or two years.

I was going to save this world.

I am Nathan Santiago. This is my story.