Chapter 1- A Cloak of Shadows

If the age of the world is to be measured by the history humans have shared awareness, within it we would be a brief spark on the existence of time, but barely a flicker in the universe. Human lives flare like bright flames in the night to burn hot with fury and then puff out as if they never were there. Civilizations are born and they die, time flows like a river but the world we live in is but a small rural stream compared to the massive watershed of eons.

Because of our nature we tend to forget the past. Soon it becomes buried and forgotten as if it never was. The heroes that defined who we are fade into myth, into a time magic was said to be free and wild. Perhaps it isn’t our history I traveled to, but the future and we are on the threshold of a new chapter in the epic tale of our existence. I don’t even know If I was on earth. All I know is what I saw and my part in its chronicle is a tale worth telling. Because heroes are part of us, whether we want them to be or not, even if their lives burned brief and quick in the tide of the universe and even briefer when compared to our own merest awareness as we learn at birth to craw, then walk then we learn about the world. My story starts shortly after that point on the streets of a city called Lancaster.

The midnight air was humid and sticky, but a relief after a blistering day in the sun. Steam rose from the asphalt of the streets as the brief summer rain that evening was boiled by the heat leftover from the day creating a kind of fog that hid the child as she held onto the shadows like a cloak around her shoulders.

In the distance she could hear the wail of the sirens as the large and strange vehicles arrived at the site of her portal. To any casual observer it looked like crater in the middle of the park, perhaps given a mundane explanation such as a meteorite or an exploded gas line. No one in this world had ever seen magic and because of that would never attribute it anything or to Taniban, or Tani as she liked her few friends to call her back in her home which had been stolen from her in a flame of horror and death.

If she would have known anything about this world she would have looked like what we would call an Elf, or even dressed for the part in a small leather jerkin with colorfully painted clay beads woven into the chest as armor and spelled to ward away deadly magical castings and curses. If she hadn’t been wearing the tattered remains of an arming cap anyone who saw here would have remarked about her curiously shaped ears that had a small point to them.

Tani was tired, her magic exhausted from the worldcasting spell that had flung her to the safety of this strange place. And she was scared. It wouldn’t be long before her pursuers would find out what had happened. She would have to cast herself again to lose pursuit once again, but she was too weak to do so. Terror and panic thudded in her body marching in time with the beats of her pounding heart. She needed a source. She needed someone who had latent ability she could awake. She didn’t care what havoc it would cause all that mattered was the safety of her cargo she carried. If they got it the universe would end.

Shadows piled around her, following her form, as she ran past tall and strangely built structures that glowed in the night brighter than any foxfire lamp or candle, and made her running form seem like a fast moving blot of ink slinking along the corners of their vision as people sat on chairs outside enjoying the relief of night that can only be appreciated after a long hot day that had melted asphalt.

No one paid any mind to her. I didn’t even see her as I ran in my faded army pt shorts and jogging shirt, at least not at first. Even when I did I really didn’t understand what I was seeing. My sweat soaked through and dripped off my weighted training vest I always wore, since I could no longer wear a full combat vest. That had been turned in when I had left the Army a year ago. It had taken a long time before I could run more than two miles again and I took pleasure in my new found power in my legs which only months ago had been wrapped in bandages and a brace.

I was free, from everything but my nightmares. My headlamp lighted my path before me so I wouldn’t trip over the spots in the dirty and broken street, that hadn’t had their street lamp serviced since I was in diapers.

My legs ached but I ignored them, as I had over many long years of military discipline. I ignored the cramp in my side that told me I had drank too much water at my last stop. Stupid, I told myself I deserved that cramp for being foolish. The bright light of my headband bobbed back and forth in front of me and somehow it became a searchlight as I played it over a large desolate desert plain dotted with pathetic attempts at bushes and large boulders. A glint and a flash and I hit the ground in reflex, my I gasped in surprise as skin was stripped from my bare knees, why wasn’t I wearing kneepads? Where was my rifle, I had to return fire and change my position. Did I drop it somewhere?

Bam… I was back to reality as my mind grasped at the fact that I was no longer in Iraq. I was in Lancaster Pennsylvania and I didn’t have a rifle anymore and as far as I wanted I never was going to touch one again. Groaning as I sat up and looked at my knees I noticed what a bloody mess they were. Instinctively I wanted to touch the wounds but I knew not to do that. I needed to wash it out quickly so It wouldn’t scab the grit of the pavement into it. Looking around for a faucet, I remembered that I had been running through a shabby part of town and most of the people in this part of Lancaster kept their gates locked and the lights on to ward off would be burglars.

This city had gone bad since I had remembered it as a child. Somewhere along the way it had turned from a pleasant, if sometimes rowdy neighborhood to a den of gangs and daily shootings. No one bothered me of course. I had taught them better than that in the first week I was back on leave a year ago.

They thought I was a crazy traumatized soldier who carried a large knife on his running vest in the hope I would get to use it someday in self defense instead of dishing out a simple ass stomping as I had on the group that had tried to mug me one night during a limping jog I had had when I still wore my brace and bandages. I’m still not sure if they are wrong.

Why the idiots thought a person jogging would ever carry a wallet I don’t know although upon pondering the situation later I think it may have been more of a territorial dispute than a monetary one. I had probably been lucky that they didn’t have a gun or a knife on them only baseball bats and a long metal pipe. Now I always carried my long K-bar knife on the front of my vest for show and my more well worn and combat proven ranger knife concealed in the small of my back under the training vest.

Yes I admit it, I’m paranoid. Two combat tours will do that to a person. Perhaps that’s how I saw her when so many others had missed that blot of shadow scampering down the street. More accurately I felt her. I knew someone was watching me. Instead of showing it I tried to identify who and where the set of eyes was peering from.

The first thing I did was turn off my light and blink to let my eyesight adjust to the darkness. I knew that the light was helpful but it was potentially lethal if it was a sniper, and it blinded me to see in the far corners of the alleyway and trash covered sidewalks that could be cover for attackers. I didn’t see her at first. But movement out of the corner of my eye is what gave her away. That and the faint rattle of beads on the sticky night breeze.

Any normal person would have run or froze up in terror but my instincts weren’t even the same as other soldiers. Months of pulling detainee duty on my last trip to the sandbox had made me as twitchy as a Doberman and with the same reactions as one. My knife in my hand, I faded into a dark corner my night sight had judged to be empty and I circled around the figure cloaked in darkness following a vine encrusted metal link dog fence trying to determine if it was a threat. She stood slumped against the corner of a building where the meter box was, offering a deep concealing darkness to hide in.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I gaped as I realized what I was actually seeing. Around her like a vortex of darkness spun a black cloud that faded with her every gasping breath. Her face was white as a sheet and she looked like she was in pain.

There was a thud as she hit the ground hard and the cloud evaporated as if made of mist.

I would appreciate some feedback on this one, I sorta coughed it up in a few mins, and I guess it will be interesting to see where this story takes me over the next few weeks. I only have this one chapter done. I hope to have another soon but I want a reaction on this before I continue to see what you guys think.

This seems clumsily worded when I read it. For starters, instead of saying,

"If the age of the world was measured in the history humans have shared awareness with themselves,"

I personally would put,

"If the age of the world was measured by the history humans have shared in awareness with themselves,"




The flow seems a bit off with this sentence too. I'd only really add a comma here though for a slight pause,

"Human lives flare like bright flames in the night, to burn hot with fury and then puff out as if they never were there."




Small issue here with the typo (omitted 'l' in world), but I thought I'd point it out.




Should probably add 'of' after because.




Doesn't make too much sense when reading (though I know what you meant by it). You probably want to change it to something like, "soon it becomes buried as if it never was."




Forgot punctuation in here, along with capitalizing letters that shouldn't be (bolded everything). However, "I traveled to but the future," doesn't make much sense (I'd say take out 'but'). I assume you were just thinking two different things and didn't realize you already started going one way with the thought before switching over right away.




After "all I know is what I saw", you should put a comma since the 'and' is linking two similar thoughts, but which aren't part of "the same" thought (if that makes sense).

I would take out 'because' in the next sentence though. It's usually not a good word to start because in most cases the sentences become fragments.

The part I bolded, 'then', I'm assuming should be 'when'.




You don't really need the comma after "asphalt of the streets as the brief summer rain" etc.




After "perhaps caused by a meteorite or an exploded gas line", you should put a period and start "no one in this world" etc. as a new sentence.




Those were in just the first three paragraphs. I'll let you go through the rest to weed out and fix that stuff. Mostly it's just proper comma usage and making sure you don't leave sentence fragments (or run-ons).

Also, in some places, you start multiple sentences with the same word. For example, you'll start two sentences with 'she', go to "I', go to a different word, then go back to "I" for at least five sentences in a row. It gets dull reading something when everything starts out the same way. The guts of the sentence may be interesting to read, but it gets bogged down by the fact that it starts out the same way, leaving no room for sentences to continue off of the previous one in the sense of painting a picture.

Aside from all that, and now as far as actual content and ideas go, it's interesting to read. I do think you should keep up with it. =).

hmmmm I did think the first sentence was a bit off. If the age of the world is to be measured by the history humans have shared awareness, within it we would be a brief spark on the existence of time, but barely a flicker in the universe. changed its wording a bit. I will probably need more tweaking but I think its ok now but I still need to decide what to do with the commas.

Perhaps it isn’t our history. I traveled to but the future and we are on the threshold of a new chapter in our existence. I don’t even know if I was on earth. Changed to: Perhaps it isn’t our history I traveled to, but the future and we are on the threshold of a new chapter in the epic tale of our existence.

I think its a bit over done, but it fits a bit better now.

In the distance she could hear the wail of the sirens as the large and strange vehicles arrived at the site of her portal. To any casual observer it looked like crater in the middle of the park, perhaps caused by a meteorite or an exploded gas line, no one in this world had ever seen magic. And to Taniban, or Tani as she liked her few friends to call her back in her home which had been stolen from her in a flame of horror and death.

I replaced with:

In the distance she could hear the wail of the sirens as the large and strange vehicles arrived at the site of her portal. To any casual observer it looked like crater in the middle of the park, perhaps given a mundane explanation such as a meteorite or an exploded gas line. No one in this world had ever seen magic and because of that would never attribute it anything or to Taniban, or Tani as she liked her few friends to call her back in her home which had been stolen from her in a flame of horror and death.

I did many other similar changes in grammar. Any other time I feel like it I will probably do more, I know that I have a hyperactive comma placement problem, so I don't think that the problem will get fixed in one or two posts. I'll catch the small grammatical errors in continual revision so all my story posts gets edited a few dozen times even if other people don't notice the subtle changes I do. Hopefully with your help I'll put out there something that is both fun and easy to follow.

Anyways I'm done with chapter two and I'll post it in a second after I look over it.

Chapter 2 - The Elf and the Amulet

My knife immediately went back into its sheath in the small of my back, and I dashed over to her. Crouching down I could see she was out cold, her breath coming in deep slow gasps. Sometimes I wonder to this day about my next decision. Would my life still be the same now, if I would have banged on the closest door and asked them to call for an ambulance, but something stopped me. It held me like a puppet dangled on the ends of a marionette strings. My will fought briefly and lost to fate.

Lifting her up and onto my back in a fireman’s carry I was surprised at how light she was. Her small form didn’t even stir. My running circuit was at its midpoint and my apartment was only a block away. I had carried heavier loads miles farther than that I reminded myself. And in blistering heat, that would suck the spit right out of you mouth before it hit your tongue if in fact it wasn’t full of sandy grit first.

I had the whole top floor of an old worn out Victorian mansion that had later been converted to first a boarding house than an apartment for people who could pay their slightly inflated prices. The extra money paid was worth it in my eyes for all the space I got. For years I had been used to living in a room barely bigger than your average walk in closet, and a whole floor was more than what I knew what to do with.

Pushing my building key into the lock I pushed the door open and peered around the empty hall of the ground floor of the building to make sure the landlord’s family was in bed. The hall was silent. Into the silent building pushing the door shut and making sure the door was locked behind me I crept up the stairs that creaked ominously with the extra weight of me, the twenty pound training vest and the girl. On the second floor landing I groaned silently as I heard the faint sounds of music drift to my ears.

The person living on the second floor was a composer and had a supposedly soundproofed studio but sometimes it had faint leakage. I crept past it knowing he didn’t ever poke his head out of his apartment even when he sent something to his publisher.

I put my key into my own door as I felt a sense of relief I hadn’t any trouble getting her home. Sitting her on the long black and metal framed couch in the main living room I unfolded the couch into a bed and dashed into the kitchen to fix something up for her.

I finally decided keeping her cool and comfortable was probably best. But I put water to boil on the stove and threw in a chunk of ramen noodles from a massive stockpile in my pantry and sat two packets of chicken broth seasoning into it. Continuing on I grabbed three eggs out of the fridge and popped them into the microwave to cook so I had some protein to add to the soup. It wouldn’t be fancy but it would help her out.

As the soup boiled I heard noise from my lair. The lair was my room where all my computer equipment was setup. One of my friends was on the main view screen which was a large HD tv, and was trying to get my attention. I flipped a covered switch on my desk marked “Scrambler” and a little box lit up on a wire covered shelf and blinked green. I waited until it was red and then my webcam flickered on and put on my wireless headset.

“What is so important bro, that you had to get my attention now?” I asked Chan.

“Dude, you didn’t see the news? There’s a crater in LCP!” He blurted out. LCP, or Lancaster Community Park was only a few blocks away. I did recall hearing Fire trucks and police sirens in the distance as I rounded 5th Street, but I had ignored them I always had since they were so common these days in the city. “Its on the lower end right in the middle of the soccer field!” He continued.

Chan was lived right on the edge of the park, he would have had front row seats in this little incident. “Anyone say what caused it?” I asked.

“Well, the fire department spent a while putting out a little grassfire, I mean the ground was so dry all the grass was dead and burned easily, but they aren’t sure what it was. The story now is that a meteorite impacted but I wish you could see this, because it don’t look like any meteorite impact I ever saw!”

Among other things Chan has and active imagination, if It could be explained any other way other than a mundane gas leak, a rock from space, or anything else he would doubt it in favor of government cover ups and aliens. I excused myself in disgust before he could give me the standard government plot theory as I put down the headphones and turned my back he lifted his webcam and shook it to get my attention. I wasn’t in the mood.

A timer beeped and I went out into the kitchen to finish the soup and add the cooked eggs to it after I had chopped them into little pieces. I checked in on the girl and propped her head up with a pillow, and got a cool wet towel for her forehead. I considered getting the smelling salts from my first aid kit and decided against it. She had looked like she needed rest.

Inspecting her small form better in the light of the room, I decided she was only about twelve or thirteen, small and thin with strong looking arms and legs. I took her odd padded cap off to dab cool water on her forehead with the towel and stumbled backwards in shock almost tripping over my sweaty training vest I had left on the floor as I had come in.

Her ears were pointed! I gulped as I brushed back her copper-red locks and uncovered them to inspect one properly; it was real not some latex or plastic modification. What was she? Frowning in puzzlement I inspected the rest of her clothes. Yes, I could see she was dressed very strange as well, sort of like a cross between a native american and a cast member from a fantasy movie. The construction of the beads on her chest was very curios too, as if they were an armor of sorts.

Around her neck on a silver chain was something even stranger. It was a ball of black misshapen glass, and as I leaned down to peer at inside it I could see a sort of flickering inner fire. I reached down and prodded it, and a set of long bright lighting sparks shot up my arm, yanking it away with a yelp I shook it out, feeling a sensation of pins and needles like it had fallen asleep.

My heart thudded in my chest in horror as she stirred and opened her eyes at the touch. They widened in fright and she let out the beginnings of a scream.

Well, here it is in its rough and slapstick glory. Typically with me, everything i write is mostly under constant reworking as I modify it to flow better with following chapters or fix clumsy mistakes and wayward commas. I'll probably have the next chapter for you tomorrow or later on today if I have a chance to work on it. What I'm doing with this story is telling it from more than one person's perspective but in two different ways. The main character's perspective is told from first person as he is sort of like the narrator or the person who recorded the events. Everything else is told from third person. I'm not sure if most of you have a lot of experience writing a story like that, much less reading one but I like the challenge and I think its fun.

I like what you've got so far. I don't have too much to say on it yet though. Usually I have to wait until farther in on the story before I can think of something to actually say about it. I'm kind of slow that way. >.<.

And I guess to throw it out there, would you want me to help with editing like I did for the first chapter? I find that even when I finish writing something and look it over numerous times, someone else will always find something that I've missed. Not that I'm trying to be presumptuous or anything like that. I just thought I'd offer it, and it's fine if you say no.

Anyway, good work so far. Looking forward to the next chapter. =).

Chapter 3- The Steadfast Tower

Taniban knew she was dreaming, but she wanted it to go on forever and to never wake up. She talked her dream into it just so she could feel as if nothing had ever happened to her, that she would never wake up and never leave the safety of the Lighthouse.

She knew it to be a lie. A lie though that she was more than happy to go along with just to see the faces of dead friends again even if she had to watch them die. So she enhanced the dream with a ward within her mind and strengthened it. As she did so she fell into the main character, herself as she lay on the floor of the Library of the people.

The carpet was soft and inviting to her head as she stared upwards at the dome of the massive library her outstretched finger tracing the god’s circle of life as it depicted the birth and death of the people. On her chest sat a thick tome that she was sent to find an hour ago. The sides of her soft bed were shrouded in massive shelves filled with scrolls and books from thousands of years and many lands around the world. Her finger still marked the place in the book she had been reading. She sighed belatedly wondering about the future and her place in it.

Taniban was a mere novice. Her father was the high priest of the circle. She knew her future was meant to be lived completely behind these walls, but the lands beckoned her thirst for adventure more than her desire to hold such an honor as the position of high priestess. Her father and her mentors held this desire within her in contempt. Her friends scorned her for it, and even her best friend laughed every time she saw her daydreaming of the lands beyond.

She had always felt caged in by the high walls of the fortress, her wings clipped. She had secretly mastered the art of Worldcasting behind the backs of her father and friends but Cally had still found out. It had taken years of self-teaching to cast herself but just last month she had finally managed it.

A shadow fell over her prone form, blocking out the daydream that had been forming above her eyes, replaced by the scow of an initiate who had been sent to find her. Her eyes focused on Cally’s amused and slightly annoyed expression and she sat up clutching the book to her chest she did so.

“You can sleep on your own time not our Master’s. I’ve been sent to bring you to the Observatory.” Cally spoke with a rumble that passed for good humor with him.

As she spoke the Fortress shook violently a shudder that knocked books off their shelves and in the distance she could hear the crash of glass as something shattered. “So, they still at it?” Taniban asked.

“The just started back up again an hour ago, but the Barrier is holding.” Cally said with a worried glance a very tall bookshelf that had ripped itself from its moorings and was tottering perilously a few feet from them.

Tani needed no encouragement she followed her friend at a running bound as another shudder rocked them as they climbed the giant stairway outside the Library. Behind them they heard a great crash and a scream. Still holding the book, Taniban looked behind her to see a billowing cloud of dust wafting out of the Library’s door far below them. “Keep going!” Cally huffed breathlessly as Taniban was torn between her summons and the scream she had heard below her.

They emerged only minutes later at the top of the tower, the pinnacle a thousand feet high on the mountain ridge called Observatory. The glass wall that enveloped them as they entered throwing the eye-splitting cloudless sunlight from above the peak of the world blinded them for a few seconds until their eyes adjusted and far below them they peered, watching the armies of the Wraithlord wither and squirm like a giant snake that had its length wrapped around the fortress mountain known as the Lighthouse of the Circle, or just Lighthouse to its inhabitants.

The master was sitting at a large raised chair his eyes peering into the depths of the massive telescope giving range and fire instructions to the long line of Battlefires outside the glass on the parapet of the observatory. As he spoke through the tube next to the eyepiece, Taniban watched as the three hundred strong lines of men and women Battlefires charged their staffs and aimed. The Master barked and a massive line of light stretched out as one from the observatory and impacted the coils of the snake with a flash of light and fire far below them.

She saw in horror as a return volley erupted from the attacking army and smashed into the barrier surrounding the fortress, shaking the glass walls and the whole tower. The Master grimaced and looked behind him to the shining stone that stood on it’s alter in the raised center of the observatory. The massive heartstone shown proud defiance towards the night, its lighted beacon shining over the land and fueling the barrier.

Around it a circle of Heartfires stood, their hands raised and power sparkling from their fingertips repairing the barrier that was the only hope to everyone in the Lighthouse of the Circle.

In horror Taniban watched as one of the Heartfires suddenly stopped casting and fell to her knees, her power drained. Two novices ran forward and helped her up and to the elevator that would take her to the infirmary many floors below. Another Heartfire, one who was barely older than Taniban herself nervously took the woman’s place and raised his hands to feed the stone his lifeforce.

“That was Heartfire Grissa!” Taniban whispered a worried look on her face as she braced herself for another volley from the battlefires. The master beckoned to them and pointed at the eyepiece and gestured to Taniban.

Surprised, she walked quickly over the telescope and peered through it. Below her she could see, as if she stood next to them the line of warlocks with their grisly warstaffs charging, they had to be more than seven hundred strong she guessed. A sickly, pale green barrier flared up bright as day as the Battlefires from the Fortress smashed their power against it. All around them where the barrier didn’t touch was a blackened glassy plain, interrupted by the efforts of a large train of runner beasts pulling a cart that had a tarp over it towards the barrier. As she watched the cart went through the green barrier and the warlocks stopped their attack and rushed to the cart to start unloading and stetting up whatever it was.

The Master spoke into my ear. “Taniban, I know what that is. It’s a godscaster. With that they will shatter the barrier and the Lighthouse against the darkness will fall.” He spoke in his shaken but still warm and comforting voice she had known since she was an infant.

Tears sprang from her eyes and she looked from the eyepiece to the Master of the Light and shook her head in disbelief, not wanting to accept the truth. “NO! There has to be something we can do!” She cried her tears flinging away from her face as she shook her head violently with every word.

She had lived her entire life here. Everything she loved, everything she knew was here. Abandoning her friends, her family and, the Master was more than she could bear.

“My dear child, the winds of change are blowing across the land, and we must follow a new path. The lighthouse may fall, but the circlestone must be made safe. His piercing look towards Taniban spoke of his knowing of hidden abilities. Only one person had known she had mastered worldcasting. Taniban glared at Cally and he lowered his head in shame.

She had been betrayed by her best friend. Now she would have to stand back and watch as everyone she had ever known was slain before her eyes while she ran like a rabbit from the wolf. She clutched her heartfire stone under her tunic as new tears of rage and betrayal shuddered from her eyes. Her fist lashed out and struck her friend violently in the face, just as the world turned into fire.

The Lighthouse’s stone exploded into a thousand fragments, the shockwave shattered the glass wall and slammed her back head over heels off the railing that held the telescope in place so it could ride around the length of the large room. She dangled in the air, forty feet below her she could see the missing balcony where the battlefires had stood. Now a giant gaping hole was there in its place, and fire billowed out of it from inside the tower.

Her fingers started slipping on the rail, her feet scrabbling uselessly on the smooth stones that had been placed there by builders dead a thousand years ago. A strong arm reached down out of the window and clasped her wrist and pulled her up back into the shattered remains of the observatory. Cally stood there panting as he pulled the girl to safety, blood trickled from his mouth as he spat out a broken tooth.

The telescope had collapsed, and from under it she heard a moan. Cally raised his hands and blasted a jet of light at the large telescope and flung it out of the observatory to crash down the side of the tower over the parapet. Under it the broken form of the Master of the Lighthouse looked in horror at his shattered legs.
With the barrier fallen, warlocks started teleporting themselves inside the temple in teams of a dozen or so, their green fire blasting and scouring the walls as surviving battlefires fought them. And at the top of the tower, a dark cloud started to form.

The Master reached to his collar and ripped open his tunic with one old, but strong hand. And revealed a golden disc with a stone set in it embedded into his chest. Without speaking Taniban knew what was expected of her.

She shrugged off her tunic and revealed her own bare chest. As the Master reached down and pried the disc off, she leaned forward. A searing pain and a rush of power and her own heartbeat meshed with the heartbeat of the universe as the circle was placed between her breasts and it sunk deep into her flesh to embed there. Taniban Roc’ Aiserma was now the keeper of the Light.

The dark stone lit up inside the disc and shot a beam of pure amber light into the dark thunderheads forming over the Lighthouse, and they fled before it for a few seconds then came together and built in power as they started to lower towards the observatory. Taniban looked above her at the lowering clouds and saw that a man in a dark cloak was riding them, as if they were runner beasts.

Her body froze in pure terror as the hands stretched out for her, wanting to rip the newly implanted disc from her body and possess it. She screamed as the hands stretched impossibly long to cover her mouth as she tried to weave a spell and she could hear the sinister bark of laughter from his mouth as he claimed his prize…

Yep, as you can see this chapter is a bit rough too. It will need a great deal of work but its here. I think I'll have the next one soon for you guys too. It should be done around the 4th, or earlier if I have time to work on it.

Sorry for such a late response, but after the 4th came and passed I figured I should get something up (though I myself am about twenty days late. D= .) so you know I've still read it and I'm not ignoring it or anything. I do like what you've got going with it so far. Do keep working with it, because the ideas you're putting into it are nice. =).

ya sorry about the technical difficulties in getting the next chapter up. The thumb drive I used to transfer it from another computer is MIA and I got sidetracked by the new story, but don't count me out for this yet. If I have to drive back into the city to get the original I will, so I can put that chapter and the next up.

Chapter 4 – Things that go Bump in the Night

I knew she was going to scream as soon as I saw her open her eyes and take a deep breath, I clasped a hand firmly but gently over her mouth and put a finger to my lips and shook my head. I don’t know what else reaction I was expecting but it wasn’t a blinding flare of light from the strange stone and a sudden feeling that I had taken impromptu airborne lessons.

I flew back from the sofa and slammed into a wall high up near the ceiling then slid down it, a comical expression of bewilderment on my face followed by a grimace of pain as I impacted the floor with a shudder that shook the room. I’m not exactly a featherweight.

My vision swimming, I watched as three terrible elf girls stood up from three couches and peered with three heads at me in pure curiosity. I blinked and the elf girls merged into one and my dizziness faded abruptly. I wasn’t the kind that passed out from a simple head blow.

Stumbling a bit as I stood up, the world reeling for a second I took a breath and decided I had better recover sitting down. Slumping back onto the floor I tried to push my mind into gear again. The girl was standing on the couch and tucking away the shining stone pendant. As the light faded and disappeared she leapt down from the couch and inspected her surroundings in wary suspicion.

I took another try at standing up and this time it held. I felt behind my head to see if my thick head had taken a dent and felt a slight bump and looked up at the skull shaped impact in my plaster next to the top of the door. I grimaced, that was going to be a chore to fix. It was good the stuff was cheap.

“Tessiaa weenasss meina walksass mekior?” She inquired as she walked over to me and looked defiantly up. I chuckled, and her eyebrows went together in a scowl.

“Do you speak English?” I inquired, even as I expected it to be a lost cause since nothing else seemed to register.

A look of pure bewilderment appeared on her face and her scowl deepened.

Sometimes in past reflection I don’t know why the whole time between being thrown against the wall like a rag doll by a strange force, and nearly getting my brains dashed in by a thirteen year old girl it never occurred to me to be afraid. I mean I had plenty of cause to be but the thought to try and escape or attack her or even defend myself never even entered my mind.

It was one of those times that you know that getting angry or afraid wasn’t going to change anything. I’ve always prided myself on being a practical kind of person and because of that trait I think that’s why my mind has always been the kind that was flexible towards strange situations. This was certainly one.

First things first, I thought to myself as I walked around her and into the kitchen where I picked up the large bowl of soup and grabbed a fork from a drawer.

The smell of food in my hands seemed to change her attitude. She didn’t use the fork for the noodles though and left it lie there while she produced a long thin knife from under her beaded clothing. She ate by twirling the noodles around the knife and dangling them in front of her mouth and chomping off small bites from it. Shaking my head I went back in to make up an ice pack.

There was a knock on the door as I was trying to dislodge ice from the dispenser tray with my K-bar, as all the cubes had frozen into one of those annoying giant blocks of indestructible ice. Tucking the knife into my back waistband, I walked over to the door and made sure the chain was on and opened it. Saw empty space for a second until I looked down at the little Japanese composer who peered out of the hallway with a worried expression on his face. I smiled and took the chain off.

He was wearing giant headphones on his neck and from his open door I could hear the flow of music from somewhere. “You okie? I heard big cresh!” He clapped his hands together as if to illustrate the point. “Ya, it was nothing serious, I lost a dispute with the wall, nothing major.” I said knowing he probably didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. He always had a problem with that concept and I never tired of rubbing it in his face. “Ah you make joke yes?” The little man said in a slight frown as he stalked back into his room as I waved goodbye to him. I also suspected he talked like that sometimes because he wanted to not because he couldn’t speak English properly. Nosy little chink I thought in disbelief in how he ever noticed with a “soundproofed” room and headphones.

Turning back to the girl who still was stuffing her face and slurping nosily as she drank the soup as if it was her last meal and looked disappointed the empty bowl for a second and then laid back on the couch, her head propped up by her elbow staring at me as if I was a bug under a glass slide.

“t’cia amira Taniban, erawka yekerin? She said pointing to her chest.

I sighed hopelessly. I knew only one other language other than English, and even that in only parts useful to a soldier and that was Arabic. I basically knew how to ask for the toilet, to tell people to get on the ground and put their hands on their head and a couple hundred other completely pointless phrases and swear words in that dialect.

It was strange that I had spent almost three years in that forsaken dirt patch and I couldn’t even hold a conversation in Arabic, how could I possible get her to understand me?
Well, I thought as I pointed to myself and spoke my name. “Hawk” I spoke slowly, even though that was my last name it was what everyone knew me as. Her eyes perked up at that obvious introduction and she spoke again and I realized at that time that Taniban was her name as she mulled over my own name as if it sounded unfamiliar to her. No surprised there.

My first name was actually Sparrow, sort of a joke from my father, who had a bit of Powhatan in his blood, even if he never even cared for what he called the “old ways” he still liked a joke or two. The family legacy was that my skin had a bit of a dark tint to it that helped, because I rarely got any sunburn.

Still it was not a bad name either way. And if we had to start somewhere that seemed to best be the place to begin.


As I went back into the kitchen to resume my attack on the ice block I remembered about Chan. He had been a translator in Iraq, and he spoke quite a few different languages. He would probably be able to help me. Chan has a photographic memory and an IQ that makes me look like a turtle in comparison to his cheetah fast brain.

I gave up on the ice and swallowed a few ibuprofen from a medicine cabinet marked “Ranger Candy” that held all my painkillers and prescriptions. I walked back into my Lair, and looked for his webcam on my wallscreen. I spotted it; he was not paying attention and was working on something I couldn’t see. I was about to forget about the inquiry when he looked up at his screen and saw that I had stepped back into my cam’s line of sight. He promptly gave me the finger. He knew how I held his conspiracy theories in contempt. I smiled and put on my headset. “Yo bro, how good are you at keeping a secret?” I asked him with a smile.

Don't have much to say, just posting that I've read it. Looking forward to more as you're able to get it up. Keep up the good work. =).