Chapter One

Jorick froze. He held his breath and kept the bowstring tight. His muscles burned, but if he released too soon the day would be wasted. A light braid of string fluttered from his gloved hand giving away wind direction. Unconsciously compensating, he heard rustling in the foliage across the clearing. He focused on the source of the sound and spotted olive green fur moving slowly from right to left. Dark violet antlers, textured to match the tree bark, pivoted as the beast stepped into the open. He fired the arrow which scraped past the nearly dry mana dispenser imbedded in the bow. The arrow was electrified and left the faint scent of ozone as it flew. In a split second that lasted forever, the bolt struck its target. The imbued shot downed the animal immediately. The jolt would keep it stunned for a few seconds, just long enough for Jorick to sprint over the grassy clearing. He dropped the bow and drew a dagger from his belt. He could see the arrow sticking out of the karib, flickering with blue energy. He hoped the bolt had enough charge to keep it down. He was within ten meters when he got his answer.

The karib raised its head and started to stand on shaky legs. It cried out in fury, a mix of high pitched squeals and deep guttoral growls. Its solid black eyes locked with Jorick’s green ones.

The animal’s hide, especially one this old, was extremely tough. As it stood, the arrow fell harmlessly to the ground. It didn’t draw blood, but the purpose of the arrow was to deliver the imbued mana.

There were two places that his dagger would have a chance at penetrating, and there was no way he could get at an awake karib’s neck. He ran at full speed, then jumped forward and twisted in mid-air. He dove and slid on his back across the slick underbrush, aiming for the underside of the animal with his dagger ready to slice its belly.

The karib reacted and caught him in an array of sharp antlers. It lifted him into the air with ease and Jorick struggled to hold on to the knife and the antlers simultaneously. A point jabbed his thigh as he flew over the top and landed straddling its neck. He locked his legs and used newfound leverage to pull the karib’s head back, exposing the soft throat. He ran the knife across its neck and spurts of blood sprayed out. It made a final cry, then collapsed.

That was close, thought Jorick. He checked his leg and found a large bruise but no blood under the karib leather pants. As the animal finished dying he retrieved his bow and quiver. The small glass vial near the grip was empty.

Mana was expensive but made hunting easier. With the combined value of the karib hide, meat, and antlers, he could likely afford one refill from the town alchemist.

He exposed a sled hidden in a bush and pulled it to the carcass. As mean as the karibs were, the things that ate karibs were worse. The scent of death was already spreading through the forest, so he hurried to drag the animal onto the platform. He pressed a small rune embedded in the pull handle, activating four small hoverstones in the runners. With the weight of the animal they weren't strong enough to completely float, but they negated enough of the weight to make pulling the sled through the forest easier.

The wind picked up as he rolled the carcass onto the sled. The ancient vines and ferns swayed gently. A pair of birds in a high branch exchanged noises and small furry mammals moved through the underbrush. This was deeper than Jorick had ever gone into the forest. Every year the karibs were becoming scarcer. Many - Jorick included - thought that the noise from the nearby city was driving them away.

There was a gust of damp air that sent dead leaves rolling around him. He turned and noticed something in the woods. It was black and angular but mostly covered by overgrowth and dust. As the wind died down, gravity resumed control of the trees and the thing disappeared.

Jorick looked up and estimated the he had several hours of daylight remaining. I’ve got time, he thought. Maybe it’s a crystal formation, could be worth something to the town arcanists. He walked in the direction of the formation, leaving his bow and quiver with the sled. He used his dark steel dagger to cut a path through the vegetation. The ground changed and he noticed that there was a slight downward slope. He moved around a dead tree and came to a clearing, and the thing came into full view.

It sat at the bottom of a wide depression in the forest floor, maybe forty meters across. Jorick noticed immediately that there were no trees around it, and the ones that formed the perimeter of the clearing were dead or dying. At the center sat a large black box, tilted and protruding from the ground. It was a perfect cube, roughly two meters on each edge. As he approached, he realized that it wasn’t crystalline, it was metal. The surface was dull, pitted, and completely opaque. Any crystals he had ever seen were at least slightly translucent, but no light passed through this thing.

He stood within arm’s reach of the metal cube and studied it. He knew that the factories near the city used large blocks of metal to make their machines and automatrons, but he couldn’t explain why one was all the way out here. He gathered that it had been there a long time, as the low lying plants had nearly covered it. He brushed some of them away and revealed an even blacker surface underneath.

A moment later the cube suddenly emitted a low and throbbing hum. Jorick recoiled and stepped back. He drew his dagger, but wasn’t sure what the small knife could do to it. The hum grew louder and the hair on his arms stood as electricity filled the air. He suddenly felt dizzy and staggered back. The sound filled his entire perception and seemed impossibly loud. He tried to cover his ears but it did nothing. Blackness began to encircle his vision as he stumbled on a rock and fell backwards onto the ground. He felt the soft landing, then nothing.

He was awoken by raindrops. He had a massive headache and his muscles were sore. He strained to raise his head and saw the cube sitting in the same spot. The sound was gone, but Jorrick did not intend to stay and find out why. He stood and scrambled away as fast as he could.

The karib was remarkably untouched. Based on the position of the sun, he guessed the he must have been unconscious for at least an hour. He activated the hoverstones and dragged the sled out.

It was nearly dark by the time he arrived at his family's home. They lived on the outskirts of Far Basin, a small town of hunters, farmers, and metal workers. He could see faint lines of smoke flowing up from a dozen hearths and oil lanterns dotting the top of the simple log wall that surrounded the town proper. They were close enough to the city to be protected from major threats by the city guard, but they were still harassed by occasional highwaymen and raiders.

“Eugo, come help me with this!”

Jorick's younger brother crashed through the doorway of their small shack. Eugo - Jorick’s younger brother - was skinny with unkempt hair. He wore a small glowstone pendant that provided dim light around him. “You got one?”

“A big one.” Eugo helped him pull the sled into the butchering room attached to their shack. It was small but had several hooks and winches for stringing up meat. Eugo prepared the ropes while Jorick activated more glowstones on the walls.

“Can I do some this time?” asked Eugo.

“Sure, grab the knife kit.”

Jorick unrolled the leather kit on a nearby table. There was an assortment of knives and a small saw. He found the sharpest knife in the kit and handed it hilt-first to Eugo.

“Be careful.”

“This is dad’s old knife, right?” Eugo held the hardwood handle and admired the folded steel blade. The thin bands of light and dark metal oscillated down the blade’s length and made Jorick think of waves in the sea.

“Yeah.” He remembered when his father gave it to him. It had been in their family for three generations and Jorick was convinced it was enchanted.

Jorick showed Eugo where to cut. They peeled back the hide and carefully removed the stomach and intestines. This was vital, as the stomach acid would spoil the meat. Jorick took care of the bones with the small saw and soon they had the karib quartered and strung up.

“Good. We can deal with the rest tomorrow.” Eugo cleaned and re-wrapped the knives while Jorick activated a coldstone in the wall. It wasn’t much, but it would keep the meat slightly colder. “Hungry?”

“Starving.”

Once back inside the main shack, Jorick found some bread and broke a few pieces onto a wooden platter. He placed it on the small table in the center of the single room building. The walls were a mix of boards, hides, and large dried leaves. There were two small beds on a loft that extended a third of the way into the shack. A ratty carpet covered most of the creaky wood floor. Eugo threw a few small sticks into the clay and dried mud hearth sending red sparks dancing up the flue.

“How was school?” Jorick asked between morsels of bread.

“Didn't really learn anything. It's pretty boring, actually.”

“Stick with it.”

“I know, I know.”

There was a time when Jorick wanted to study and become an arcanist, just like the wise old men in the city Arcanist’s guild. He was always good with books and was on track to be accepted into the Ivory College, at least until everything happened.

“It's late, you should get some rest.”

“Right.”

Eugo climbed to the upper loft of the shack while Jorick did an evening walk around. The village was relatively safe, but with a fresh kill nearby there might be some scavengers looking for an easy meal.

Dim orange light from a set of runes fixed to the outer walls illuminated the perimeter of the building and attracted swarms of moths. The glyph carved into their surface looked like a drawing of a star but with an intricate geometric pattern filling in the middle. Jorick had never learned exactly how they worked, but he knew that the glyph channelled small amounts of mana from the air and converted to light, or cold, or whatever the arcanists designed the glyph to do.

He thought back to the cube. He didn’t think it had any glyphs on it, and it was larger than any imbued stone he had ever seen. And there was something ... different about it. Something unnatural. He tried to put it out of his mind, at least until morning. He could ask Fendrith, the town alchemist, if he knew what it was. While not trained in arcanism, Fendrith was the town’s de-facto magic advisor.

The sounds of night filled the air as the temperature started to drop. He could smell the humidity and the smoke from burning hearths in the village. As he looked up to follow the thin swirling clouds back to their source, he noticed the clear sparkling sky. Directly overhead there was a dense and slightly slanted band of stars that glowed bluish purple. Eugo had told him that the scholars thought that each point of light was a sun just like theirs.

“That’s impossible. Look how small they are.”

“But they are far away,” Eugo explained.

“And the stars move around us throughout the year. If they were so far away, they would have to move too fast. And, what makes them move?”

“They think that the planet spins, so it looks like everything moves around us, when really we are the ones moving.”

“I don’t think so. If we were spinning, wouldn’t we feel it?”

Eugo had tried to explain things to him several times, but it all sounded like nonsense. So he chose to simply admire the beauty of the night sky. That was when he noticed a new point of light suddenly appearing, bright and moving.

“What is that?” He focused on it and watched it grow and begin to take on a shape. It was larger on one end. The thin end began to glow orange. The colour quickly spread to cover the entire object and a tail of fire was soon visible.

“A comet?” He had only ever seen one once before, but it was slow with a long white tail. This was different. The fire faded and the object disappeared into the dark night sky, but Jorick felt that it wasn't gone. His feeling was confirmed a moment later when a low humming noise rose from the silence. It started as a bass tone, but quickly gained unnatural layers of rumbling and burning. He shuddered and realized that he knew that sound. The cube.

“Jorick? What's going on?” The noise had woken Eugo, who had snuck up to Jorick and was squinting into the night sky.

“I'm not sure. We should get inside.” As he put a hand on Eugo's shoulder, they were both blinded by intense beams of light from the sky. His skin tingled as the air was suddenly filled with static. Jorick picked up Eugo with one arm and shoved the shack door open with the other. They both crashed inside and took cover behind the nearest wall.

The sound grew louder and the wind felt like it could blow their shack away at any moment. Jorick could see Eugo trying to scream something at him, but their words were drowned out.

The cacophony ended suddenly with a single pulse that shook the ground. Thin beams of light pierced the flimsy walls. Jorick glanced outside and saw a colossal black shape behind a cloud of steam, roughly three hundred meters from their shack in the direction of the town. As the mist swirled around it, he made out the angular features and tried to figure out what it was.

“A spaceship!” Eugo had snuck up beside him and was looking at the thing too.

“What?”

“It has to be! They have pictures in the books at school. They said that people used to travel between planets in them.”

“In that? It doesn't even have wings, how would it fly?”

One of the dark panels opened as red light leaked out around the edges. It dropped slowly and formed a ramp to the ground. They both saw two lines of shadowy figures begin to emerge from the thing. Jorick counted at least thirty.

“That must be the crew! I wonder where they’re from.” Eugo could barely contain his excitement.

“Just hold on. We don't even know if they are friendly.” As the figures fanned out, a beam of light illuminated one of them, and Jorick could clearly see the outline of something in its hands. It looked like a long bulky crossbow, but without the crossbar or string. The figure itself was armoured, but not like the smooth metal plates the knights wore. This was pure black, dull, and angular. They wore helmets without slots for their eyes or mouths, and Jorick found it deeply unsettling.

Even as far away as they were, he could always clearly hear the town gate creak open. As it did, the lights changed direction and focused on the town. The figures turned and raised their - what Jorick assumed were - weapons. He heard the familiar clatter of metal armour and swords from the town guard and caught the occasional gleam of shiny metal reflecting through the intense beams of light.

“Identify yourselves!” The guard captain called out and solicited no response. They two groups stood in an uneasy silence roughly a hundred meters apart. “I say again, identify yourselves!”

The night erupted into fire. Brilliant red beams sprayed out from the dark figure’s weapon’s, brighter than any wizard’s spell. They crossed the field instantly and tore burning holes through the guards. The figures marched forward, firing. The guards scattered and fell. Stray shots ignited the wood town wall and the buildings closest to it. As quickly as it started, the figures stopped. Nothing was left of the guards except burning and writhing corpses.

Jorick was speechless. Eugo buried his face in Jorick’s side. He watched as the figures advanced into the town. There were distant screams as the townsfolk were met by the dark attackers.

“We need to go. They will find us. We need to go.” Eugo was panicking.

“Just hold on. We don’t know...”

He had been so focused on the battle that he failed to notice a pair of the figures approaching their shack. By the time he realized it, they were less than a meter from the front door. He covered Eugo’s mouth with his hand and pressed them both against the nearest wall. His heart pounded as he heard the dull thumping of footsteps at their door.

The figures were completely silent. The only reason Jorick knew they were still there was the lack of retreating footsteps. He could feel Eugo hyperventilating and he tried to calm him while struggling to keep his own emotions in check.

Two beams of light appeared, much smaller than the ones from the ship. The beams shot thin slivers of light through the cracks in the walls. The door shook and creaked open. Jorick held his breath and watched as a figure walked in. The light was coming from the end of its weapon and it scanned the room. Every step shook the floor. Its partner followed it in. Jorick focused all his energy into staying completely still. Eugo failed to contain a terrified whimper. Jorick’s heart skipped a beat as the two figured turned to the source of the noise.

Time stopped. A thousand possibilities ran through Jorick’s mind, none of them good. If they ran, they were dead. If he tried to fight, they were dead. He didn’t know what the figure’s intentions were, but based on what he saw at the battle, he assumed that doing nothing meant death as well. There was only one thing left to do.

He lunged at the closest one’s weapon from below. He had no chance of knocking one of them over, but if he could get some leverage on its weapon...

The metal was hard and cold. He caught the end of it with his shoulder and heaved up as hard as he could. The figure was startled and he managed to deflect its weapon vertically. The shot was silent but the heat instantly burned the side of his head and his shoulder, but before he could react the room exploded into a shower of brilliant yellow light as a glowstone on the wall took the full force of the bolt.

He had pre-emptively closed his eyes, but had no way to warn Eugo. The two figures recoiled and staggered back. The one Jorick had lunged at dropped its weapon and clawed at its helmet with its armoured hands. The other stumbled and lowered its weapon.

“Now! Go!” Jorick grabbed Eugo and dragged him through the now large hole in their shack. He scraped his burned shoulder on a smoldering chunk of wall and felt searing pain tear through him. He tripped and rolled forward while the blinded Eugo groped fruitlessly at the ground, trying to find his brother. Jorick gathered every ounce of strength he had and forced his body to stand. He pulled Eugo up by the arm. “Run!”

They sprinted away from the ship, towards the forest. Eugo stumbled and Jorick slowed to keep him upright. He didn’t know how long the trick would delay them, but if he could just get them deep enough into the forest, maybe...

A beam of light pierced the night behind them followed closely by a blast of red fire. A tree exploded and the trunk teetered and fell with a great crash. Another shot ripped a deep flaming gash into the ground beside them. A third arced just above their heads. The heat flashed on Jorick’s head and he pulled them both down to take cover. There were two beams again that grew brighter, sweeping side to side through the trees. The thumping footsteps were heavier and Jorick gathered that they were running.

“Jorick, what do we do?”

“Shush. Stay low.”

They huddled behind a dead log. Jorick’s mind ran through dozens of options, none of them good. Their only hope was to hide.

The lights vanished but the slow thumping continued. Every step crushed leaves and branches. Jorick focused and tried to place the sounds. One was a few hundred yards away, but the other...

There was a simultaneous flash of light and blast of pain as the armoured figure brought it’s weapon down on Jorick’s head. He stumbled and fell backwards. His world was spinning but he managed to turn and look towards where they had been hiding. Eugo was kicking and screaming to no avail as the figure carried him off over its shoulder.

“Eugo!” He tried to move, but his body finally failed him. He fell into blackness.

Reviews

[Miss Ithaca]

I like the mix of technology and farmwork, knowledge and sanity. The overall flow worked really well! I learned about Eugo and Jorick and speed right alongside them when the spaceship arrived. A few short ideas:

Don't be afraid of shorter sentences! Sometimes they help emphasize quick changes. For example:
"The ground changed and he noticed that there was a slight downward slope. He moved around a dead tree and came to a clearing, and the thing came into full view."
Maybe look at making it punchier? "The ground changed. He noticed that there was a slight downward slope. He moved around a dead tree and came to a clearing. The thing came into full view.
Periods make your audience really take note of the words because they signal breathes in our speech. It would really help bring emphasize to the revealing of the cube.
Same when you use the word immediately soon after. That change is so quick and so important, you may think about making the short sentence its own line.

Take out "at least until everything happened" of
"He was always good with books and was on track to be accepted into the Ivory College, at least until everything happened." We know something big happened from your great foreshadowing throughout the piece.

There are just some really little things you might consider. I really liked the chapter and want the next :D

glyph

[Jonden Chickeness]

Great, thanks. That is something I've notice when I write, is that my sentences are often too long. Must be how I think. Anyways, thanks for the review!

[dw817]

This is very well written, definitely like a page from a book you can pull off a shelf in a bookstore, so I suspect catching a few spelling errors, possibly grammar might help.

mix of high pitched squeals and deep guttoral[guttural] growls.

and estimated the[that] he had several

and automatrons (did you mean automatons) ?

he guessed the[that] he must have

that the glyph channelled small amounts (did you mean channeled, I think both are acceptable)

armoured, you've got the British spelling in here so I'll disregard all future entries of "u" in this manner.

You really have very few problems I can see.

You've got a good mix of magic and technology going here. You might check out a movie called "Wizards" from Ralph Bakshi,1977, to see this in full use - and perhaps to help you flesh out further details in your story.

[Creative_Nerd]

I love how it's Eugo that's telling Jorick all of this stuff space that's actually true, but Jorick doesn't know it.

[Jonden Chickeness]

Thanks, that's a theme I want to work with as the book carries on.

[Creative_Nerd]

You mean the fact the Eugo knows more about space than Jorick?

[Jonden Chickeness]

Yeah, and that it is unusual that Eugo knows so much about it. The world is loosely a medieval style world with relatively low educational standards, but I've got a big surprise planned for how this world relates to outer space.

[Creative_Nerd]

Relating medieval styles to outer space huh? I'm looking forward to this story.

[Jonden Chickeness]

I've got more chapters written, and I'll try to post at least one a week. Stay tuned!