Sveinn Benónýsson
Jul 16, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Chapter 1 Strangers
It was peaceful and silent in Fairwood Forest that day, with the occasional sound of a bird singing and the breeze playing gently at the tips of the branches, as the sun tried its best to shine down between the leaves onto the thick covering of the forest floor. Egny stood still and listened to the sounds of the forest. She was tracking a deer she had spotted earlier that morning. She took a deep breath of the pleasant forest’s air. Her aura was suddenly shattered when she heard the rapid pounding footsteps traveling in her direction. On the forest path below her, she saw a man running by, and close on his heels followed two armed men, one with a sword in his hand, the other carried a double-faced battle-axe. The refugee suddenly bent off the path and down to a nearby creek. He tried to jump over the stream, but lost his balance and struck the ground on the opposite bank. He turned his head and saw the men jumping towards him, he tried to run down the stream, but it was too late.
One of the men struck his sword at him, but he managed to move away from the impact, falling on his back. He saw the other one raising his axe at him. He could not move, yet the blow never came. The man froze, and a tip of a sword stood out of his breast. He looked down to his chest and saw his life’s blood trickling from the tip of a shining steel blade. Then he fell face down to the ground. The refugee tried to stand up, terrified as he saw where the other attacker was, but he was diverted, fighting someone else. The attacker struck his sword against his rescuer, but he defended himself with a swift move. The rescuer then stabbed the attacker in the chest with a knife that he grasped in his left hand, and the attacker fell dead to the ground. The person that came to his aid stood still for a moment and then turned to him.
“Are you wounded?” he was shocked, it was a female’s voice he heard.
“No, I do not think so, only bruises and some cuts,” he muttered as he pulled himself up brushing the pieces of forest floor from his clothing, aching after the fall and weak after the exertion and strain of his flight. He discovered that he was trembling from shock and fear.
William Andrews
Jun 17, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
The Age of Strife is an important historic time in the world, it is when the entirety of the known world was consumed in conflict. Through the recorded histories and the deeds of individuals and nations there is much to learn. The men of the Reiken Empire and the Ramahg Kingdom have always been under attack and in a state of conflict with Beast Men, Green Skins, and Hill Tribes who often dwell in the vast forests that cover their continent. Many of these forests have legends and stories with almost all of them being dark and foreboding.
While the men in the deserts and dry lands to the south have taken the religion of these men after the last Crusade over a hundred years ago after losing severely. The desert men are the Sultanate of Karadcus and they are also under constant threat from beast men although the tribes nearest to them are far more agreeable and often serve the Sultanate there is still the occasional battle against tribes that feel used by the Sultanate.
Between these two continents are the Border Princes, small nations that know only of the danger of men, nestled and surrounded by vast mountain ranges they have found a haven from the Beastmen and the Green skins. Three nations formed in the Border Princes and although they are not mighty their proximity to the mountains have enabled them to pull large amounts of valuable ore from the earth. With this wealth and the peace from constant attacks they flourish and are widely considered some of the safest and most sought after places to live by the common folk of other nations.
Reiter
Jun 9, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
Voltaire
Prologue (I)
Somehow… the game continues!
There were so many memories etched in the Light; painful memories, because defeat and near destruction seldom conveyed any measure of joy. Life, as he wanted to call it, continued for him, even in his diminishing form.
So close! He had come so close and the human adage regarding proximities and when they count seemed now only to gnaw at the last of his sensibilities. What he had composed and orchestrated had been neither a horseshoe nor a hand grenade, and while many of his targets had perished, the overall symphony had fallen resoundingly flat. Humanity still existed! Such had been the saga of Old Earth and the Elders, when he had been called Baron Nomed.
The Binadamu had always been so scattered; indifferent to one another over appearance… hostile to one another for any variation of culture… often hiding from one another in order to circumvent involvement as such could lead to indifference or hostility. Regardless, they should have been easier targets to obliterate, but they were not alone.
Elders!
Gods, Angels, the Maior Nathu, it did not matter the name; problematic was something they were good at being despite what title they had taken for themselves. At one time, Nomed had been counted among them; the one everyone considered to be Sere’s replacement – for when the old one would finally cycle to the Next Light. It became clear the Old Master would not take that step, not while Nomed was his successor.
That was when war had been declared, when the cards were dealt and the game started. Nomed had looked at his cards and felt, with just a little strategy, he could easily win. He was wrong, and in the aftermath of his defeat, Nomed had to contend with his own destruction; a destruction at the hands of the very things he had intended to destroy. In the end, an improper term at best, but a definition to which the mortals of Earth subscribed. In his form’s final moment, Nomed found he had only one card left to play, and as he started to merge with the universe, Nomed smiled and played it.
His will abandoned his dying form and hurled itself into the cosmos, with absolutely no consideration of destination, acting out of a growing sense of desperation and futility. All that remained of Nomed was now a pocket of nearly invisible gas, floating through the vacuum of space, spinning about itself. It slowly degraded, losing more and more of the impressions that so many lifetimes had logged within the seemingly countless folds of its mind and soul. “Who am I?” became a question he could no longer answer as he slipped into to a mode of existence that could not choose between he and she.
It clung only to its perspective and its pair of ambitions: self-preservation and the eradication of the Binadamu! Without its casing, however, it was truly dying, and Death yearned to taste this morsel once more.
Contact!
An unexpected touch and the near-lifeless form was quick to react and reach out, taking hold of whatever it could find. The first touch was cold and dead, possessing only enough living matter to be felt by the diminishing dark-willed thing. Still, within that cold shell there was warmth, incredible warmth. It was a nearly forgotten feeling, registering on what was left of its senses. But it was enough! And though the living shadow did not have a mind with which to remember, the sensation was still familiar somehow.
It surged! At the end of its reach there was a form, unaware of the shadow which now crept inside its body. The dying form found life, and the means to sustain itself. There was very little conflict; the resistance the object put forward to prevent the invasion was negligible. It was hard to fight, after all, a malefactor one could not perceive. The body was indeed weak, but Death had been turned away from her barely cursory hunt. It could hear the White Maiden laugh ever so softly as she took her leave from it… for now. Only for now!
Terrene A. Davenport
Jun 9, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Prologue
Briellyn
Her face is barely recognizable. It’s morphed into something much darker, more demonic. I don’t know this face. The wind beneath her sweeps her long dark locks straight up into the air yet I feel nothing.
I’m panting, clearly afraid of the situation. My heart beats so fast and hard that I can feel it in my ears. I don’t know what to make of it though. Two men kneel before her. They mean something to me yet I can’t see their faces. Her long, dark claws dig into their shoulders on either side of her, keeping them subdued.
“Leave them alone,” I yell out to her, staring into the eyes of this creature that strikes a sense of fear and loss within me.
The darkness inside her has consumed her entirely and there’s no humanity left within her.
“You get to choose who lives. Or if they both have to die. You can only choose one though, if you see it fit.” Her voice sounds serpent like and has a faint echo.
The room around is so dark that it’s difficult to see much of anything.
“Why should I have to choose? Please just let them go.” I cry out, fear and worry dripping from each difficult word.
“One may live if we make a trade.” Her tone is delighted by her offer.
“Will you take me in their place?” I huff audibly. I’m willing to make the sacrifice for them both.
E. J. Dawson
Jun 9, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Captain Katarina Salisbury stared at Commander Patrick Ederyth and waited for him to confess it was a request made in jest.
She repressed the urge to tap her foot impatiently on the wooden floor and recrossed her legs.
The spring skirt of grey tweed sat snugly across her hips, the matching bolero carefully hung on the chair in which she sat. Black boots and a waistcoat lent the feminine suit the more serious tone her position required. At her throat a froth of soft lace was held in place by a brooch of silver shaped like a fox. By contract her auburn hair was in a neatly pinned braid; her green eyes were brighter against the neutral tone of her dress. She didn’t need to wear a uniform unless she was on active duty, but it never hurt to dress well, and to the rank and stature at which she was held. Especially before the man in front of her.
Commander Ederyth commanded the attention of his subordinates through his unshakeable character. He sat across from her in his navy uniform, buttons all polished, the markings of his rank across his left breast. Grey observant eyes watched her, one through a monocle, while his lips pursed behind a salt and pepper walrus moustache.
He leaned back behind his large wooden desk, the leather top littered with papers and correspondence. It was all neatly framed by the heavy drapes behind him, pulled ajar to let in the morning sunlight, sickly as it was, still held back by smog. The rooftops of Osborn could only be seen dimly through the haze, occasionally overshadowed by the busy port’s thoroughfare, airships departing with the morning wind to travel who knew where.
Which is what Kat should have been doing. Her crew were preparing to set off for wherever their next assignment was, still lazy form their month’s shore leave, but keen for more adventure.
‘Do you need your instructions in writing, Captain?’ he prompted.
‘No, I wish to discuss the necessity of civilians on board.’
‘I don’t see their presence as a difficulty the Iron Lady can’t accommodate.’
‘I understand you would like me to rescue villagers from a potential catastrophe,’ Kat said. ‘I don’t understand the necessity in taking Lord and Lady Lindon with us. It should be a relatively short trip, and the Drezusk Mountains are not for the inexperienced. They will mostly be confined to the Iron Lady.’
Kat knew well and full that any lord would not like to be detained on her vessel at her word, even if it was the law whilst on board.
‘For the same reason you are going, Kat,’ Ederyth said, using her personal name gruffly, a gesture of fondness, yet also a reminder of her purpose. ‘Technically that village is within his fiefdom, and there is enough of his kind at the moment worrying about bad press over wage rates.’
‘Wouldn’t he be better off changing his wages to match then?’ she said tartly.
‘Your purpose there isn’t so illustrious to allow you the snobbery of turning his lordship away.’ His countenance was chiding but there was a glint in his eyes.
‘No, our purpose is fairly simple: destroy avalanches to stop them collapsing on… goat herders, wasn’t it?’ She resisted the urge to make sarcastic comments.
Tahlia Newland
Jun 3, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
A strange black shape flitted past the window. It could have been someone in a hooded cloak silhouetted against the street light, except that it appeared to glide rather than walk, and no one could possibly be on the side path of Ariel’s house in fancy dress.
Despite the balmy evening, a flash of cold shivered down Ariel’s spine. She raced to the window, stuck her head outside and looked down the path. Whatever it was had disappeared into the darkness—if it had been there at all. Ariel suspected it was merely the result of tired eyes and an overworked brain.
She slid the window closed, turned her back on the mystery and glared at the books strewn across the dining room table. Tension squeezed her skull. Its cause, her Maths book, lay open, its jumbled symbols exposed by the stark circle of light cast by the reading lamp. She slumped into the chair and switched off the too-revealing beam. It only illuminated her never-ending work load.
The street light cast an eerie glow into the old dining room. The wooden sideboard, almost invisible in the dark, hugged the wall, and the chairs clung to the table like shipwrecked sailors to the remains of their battered ship. They floated, but she sunk. Darkness closed in around her and dragged her down with the weight of final exams only two weeks away. It wasn’t fair. She deserved a life. Something, anything, other than exams.
