Islands in the Sky Poison on the Ground

Just a short project I was working on but never continued! Comment if you know what two things I based this off of!

Islands in the Sky Poison on the Ground

Written by: Branden A. Giese

 

Chapter 1: The Caves

            “It looks like a chunk of the Kuobos was suspended above the ground. A city sized ray of light beamed from the bottom of the structure to the surface of the wasteland; keeping it up, but not letting it float away.” Alexander stood fixated at the mound in the sky like it was a piece of heaven that was at hands grasp. But in stone cold reality, there is no way of getting to it. Only the superfluously rich had a chance of getting on board, everyone else was left to die on the barren land that once was called Kuobos.

            The Islands in the sky are the ultimate refuge. Refuge from the apocalyptic land were toxic clouds and waves of radiation emit from the very soil itself. Everything on the surface will either kill you, or turn you into an abomination in an instant. Thankfully, some of the radiation and poisonous fumes have settled into the ground and have been dormant, but most still plague the planet, corrupting anything that comes its way.

            As night started to fall, Alexander decided it would be best to find a spot to camp for the night. “I should try to scavenge for any supplies, or anything salvageable that was left behind from anyone that could have been here before me.”

            Entering the mouth of the cave, Alexander immediately saw a wooden matt that was very chipped and stained by some sort of dried substance that gave off an interesting stench that Alexander recognized but couldn’t put his finger on. Random things were strewn about. The whole scene looked as if someone had left in a hurry, and never returned. This concerned him, but it was getting dark, and the Serpent Ethereals were going to be coming out soon. Serpent Ethereals are the fiercest of the monsters that were created from the nuclear incident; and the end of civilizations across the globe.

            Serpent Ethereals were originally peaceful creatures that would mostly hunt mice and small rodents at the dead of night, but not anymore. At least that’s way they say, since all of our records before the fallout, were destroyed. Now they hunt human sized prey, prey that can never get away, unless their luck is extraordinary. Thankfully, Alexander is.

            Looking out into the horizon, Alexander saw something he wished had not. A dust storm, but not an ordinary gust of dirt particles roaring about, no, this was radiation central. All of that nuclear waste that had settle down, is blowing straight at Alexander like a charging bull ready to impale with its horns, but instead of horns, this storm had toxicity. Realizing that he had to act fast, he quickly ran deeper into the mouth of the cave. After passing a few bends, Alexander decided that was enough for the storm to get blocked by. He could hear the storm picking up behind him; blowing against the mountain side, chipping away at the rocky walls. Finding a patch of smooth rock, Alexander laid down to rest. Hearing the sounds of the wind blowing past him outside was almost soothing to him. While he was drifting asleep he thought he heard scraping of something hard on rock, but he was already too fast asleep to realize that he had ran away from peril but right into his demise.

 

 

            “Where’s my torch?” Alexander mumbled to himself as he fumbled with the opening of his torn up satchel. He had woken up at the crack of dawn of the first cycle of the Star Athea and near the third cycle of the planet Lephire. This was the first time he felt rested in days. After some time of fumbling with his bag, Alexander was finally able to unclip the flap from the body of the satchel, but in sheer aggravation he made a hand sized whole in the side where he had recently patched up a tear, which in turn, spilled all of the contents onto the dank cave floor around him, Including his torch. “Really.” He said under his breath with a very sarcastic voice. Starting to feel his way around with his hands on the ground, Alexander found some of his snacks that he holds most dear to his heart. If I didn’t find these, I would starve; he thought to himself. Skrrreeeek. Standing up from his huddled position on the cold ground, Alexander realized that he had made a very big mistake coming into this cave. Thinking back to how the entrance had looked like it had been ransacked by some animal, Alexander stood still, petrified by what was to come. He had no weapon, he had no light; he had no armor to protect himself; he had nothing. SKRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK. It was the sound of claws scraping against the rocky walls that would soon be his tomb.

            “I have to run!” Sprinting as fast as he could through the darkness, Alexander went around a corner and face planted into a huge stalagmite that was jutting out of the ground. Dazed from the impact, he stumbled, and fell backward, unfortunately right down a muddy slope to a pit of water below. The coldness jarred his brain back into action. The murky water was about waist level high. Still feeling off balanced, Alexander stutter stepped, almost falling over; then he saw something that could be his salvation.  SPLASH! “Uh-oh.” It had followed him in!

There were glowing shrooms on the ceiling above; allowing Alexander to see what was chasing him. It was a four legged creature that had no eyes and a bulbous head and protrusions out the back side, its skin was as dark as the night sky, and pointing out like jagged horns-an abnormally large set of teeth set the hairs on Alexanders neck tingling. This thing quite frankly terrified him. Grabbing what he had found under the surface of the water, he pulled out the dagger and tried franticly to swipe at the monster, but the monster was too fast for him, so fast that he could barely keep track of it. Without warning, it disappeared. Doing a three-sixty, Alexander couldn’t see the abomination anywhere. Becoming even more anxious than what he was, he flicked his eyes from every which way trying to find it, and then he looked up and saw it.

            It leaped from the overhang that it clung to, straight at Alexander. Looking on at the sight of the creature with its jaws open ready to clamp down on his head, Alexander was filled with courage from the thought of purely not wanting to die. Something happened to the dagger he was holding at his side. It became a little heavier but Alexander didn’t notice. All he was thinking about was survival. He flung his whole body into the swipe of the dagger. THWACK. Thinking that he had died Alexander stood still for what seemed like minutes, but when reality hit he heard another splash and he looked down and saw what he had done. What he thought was going to kill him, was actually headless, floating in the water at his waist.

Looking at the dagger in amazement he saw that it was a dagger no more, but a broadsword with a spiral handle and a hinge and gear on the butt of the blade. It seemed as if it had two separate blades that could extend or fold in on itself that way it can become a dagger or a sword on command. Flipping the blade around in his hands Alexander thought he may have seen something, "No, that can’t be right." Inspecting it further, he saw that it was indeed had an engraving of a Dragons Tooth on the backside of the handle grip. “This was made by the Dwarfs of The Fallen Dragon Way! I don’t believe this! Could this be where they could have fled too; to escape the wrath of the king?"

Filled with his newfound excitement and joy, as well as adrenaline, Alexander almost forgot that he was standing in a pool of disgusting water with the creature’s blood starting to accumulate around him. Putting the blade into his scythe where his old scabbard use to be, which was unfortunately stolen by a bandit who just so decided to rob Alexander when he was asleep, he made his way to an edge of the body of water. Thinking to himself, "Well great. I just found an extraordinary artifact that could be hundreds of years old, and I have no idea how to use it. Ill figure it out when I can see better." Being in the darkness for some time, Alexander's eyes were able to adjust to the dim lighting from the shrooms above. Seeing a thick stalagmite at the bank, Alexander started to pull his upper body up over the edge onto the muddy ledge above the water. Bracing himself against the wall with his other hand, he flung his legs up underneath him onto the solid ground. Rolling over to his side so he didn’t fall back in, Alexander saw a glimpse of something moving in the water. Still thinking about how he could have gotten the dagger to turn into a sword, he didn’t really recognize the movement.

Standing up he looked around and decided he should probably follow the bright blue glowing shrooms, since they might lead him deeper into the cavern and just maybe, he could find something else just as magnificent as this sword that the dwarves may have left behind.

 

 

 

Chapter 2: The Vault in Time

 

            “That’s one ginormous vault door!” It seemed to be controlled by a set of key modules that could fit into four different padlock slots. Each padlock had a different symbol on it. The biggest of them, was the Dragon Tooth, Representing the whole Dwarven Kingdom of Fallen Dragon Way. It was engraved into the center of the vault door, but it had rust and corrosion wearing it down, making the whole thing look like it was a million years old. “I wonder how I’m going to get this open. Well I obviously need the parts to unlock the padlocks from the main frame, but then what? Will it just open? It has to be more complex than this.” One of the keys were already in one of the locks. The symbol right above the opening for the key was of ocean waves and a hydra’s head. Since the incident with the War head had dried up most of the water on the planet, only the deepest of ravines at the bottom of the ocean still contained water. The only body of water that you could even call an ocean would be the Dread Expanse, where the Qlems Sea used to be. Only the most ferocious and blood thirsty creatures could live there, such as a hydra. “I would never go through the trouble of trying to get that key if it was still in the Dread Expanse, even if this holds the most treasurable of artifacts. Thanks for the help whoever put that there!”

            The Dwarves had a very unique talent for smithing. The king himself and his armies only used the finest of weapons, which were all made by the Dwarves, but when the Dwarves betrayed the King and tried to overthrow his power, war broke loose and half of Sacliynus fell into chaos. Thankfully for Alexander, he was not born in that time period. Any child that was born under the kings rule, were to be sent straight into war under the kings command at the age of sixteen. Alexander is about to turn seventeen, so he would have been fighting in the war for almost a year. The war lasted a hundred and fifty years. The dwarves knew that they were going to lose, for they built the very weapons that were being used against them. So they fled into the mountains. No one knows where, until now. “It’s been supposedly a thousand years since the Dwarves fled into the mountains. I bet everything I own that they are still alive; they have to be. They are the smartest race on the planet!”

            Not knowing what to do, Alexander poked around the area trying to find any clues or hints to where they modules may be at. After searching for a while and to no avail, he gave up and decided to check if the storm had passed.

 

Reviews

[Ellis Hastings]

Interesting story. My main suggestion is that you put this in double space format. When it's single space, at least for me, the lines sometimes seem to morph together and I find it easy to lose my spot. However, the story itself was fine. I noticed a few grammatical errors but those are easy to fix. You've got a vivid imagination. I'm curious to see what else happens to Alexander. Keep it up.