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Morgan ZIM
Space Jawa
Joined: 01 Oct 2009
Posts: 536
Location: I am here -> *
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 Posted: Tue, November 22nd 2011 11:46pm Post subject: The First Chapter of Space Jawa's Science Fantasy Novel |
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Ok, here's something OT for people to discuss. You know how Alexus has his science fiction book he is/was working on that he posted about?
Now it's my turn. Here's the first chapter in the Science Fantasy novel that I am currently writing.
| Quote: | From within one of the outer towers surrounding the key feature of the spire-world of Trethius, National Intelligence/Security Directive Agent Karl Remlord scanned the crowds in the local dock town below through a spyglass. It was not an overly thick gathering of people, yet was still large enough at the moment to make picking the individual in the crowd and to keeping track of both his associates no easy task. His latest run-through of the scene below having failed to find anything out of the ordinary, he removed his derby hat to wipe the sweat that had formed on his brow and took another look towards his teammates.
The first was his partner from the NI/SD, Ollie Verrick. Slowly traveling through the crowds, he searched at angles that allowed him to see things that were blocked from Karl’s position. Occasionally, Ollie would look up towards Karl for any messages about if he had seen anything, and listen for vocal cues his partner might provide him with. The second, El’wal’Har, was a Mist Elf from the Lorreth Kingdom. Trained in the Mist Elves’ school of Light Magic, his prescience would no doubt make a significant difference in the outcome of the mission.
However, that both assumed that the man they were looking for would actually be here and that they would be able to find him. While the NI/SD had dispatched Karl and Ollie to Trethius as soon as the Atinamu Union had received intelligence indicating their target would be located there, the source of the information was not entirely reliable, nor had it provided them with anything about the individual himself other that they didn’t already know. As far as Karl was concerned, they were running blind, seeing that about all they really did know about him was what he looked like.
As he ran this information through his mind for the umpteenth time, Karl again questioned why they were even here. Ostensibly, their target was the only known link to a recently thwarted plot to break apart the Violeese Alliance of which the Lorreth Kingdom was a member. As far as Karl was concerned, however, this was nothing more than a goose-chase. They had accomplished their mission, their only lead was questionable at best, and they had no reason to believe they would get anything out of the man even if they caught him. Had it been up to him, the two of them would have been back on Lucoro, preparing for threats to the Atinamu Union that they had credible information on.
“Well, what do you know?”
As if to prove him wrong, the Karl spotted the target down below. He wore a cloak that concealed most of his body, but a turn of the head to look behind him resulted in the man revealing the face they were looking for. Letting out an innocent sounding birdcall, he got the attention of both Ollie and El’wal then used his mirror to flash the information to them. Confident that they would be able to keep tabs on the man till Karl could join up with them, he proceeded to make his way down to street level.
As he traveled down the tower, Karl double-checked the situation as he reached each level, and until about half way down everything appeared to be in order. Both his partner and the elf were in position, keeping close tabs on the targets movements and preparing to cut off potential escape routes. However, as he came closer to ground level, he noticed something out of position. Ollie was jumping the gun, closing the distance on the target before they were ready.
“Draxt it…” Karl exclaimed under his breath, and hastened his pace substantially. As he neared the bottom of the tower, the situation went from bad to worse. As he looked out the window of another level of the tower, he noticed that the man seemed to realize that something was amiss. The answer to how this was came before Karl had much opportunity to think about it. There was a faint but unnatural darkness permeating from around the eyes of the man, which was soon shared by the end of a short staff the man pulled from beneath his cloak.
All together, it formed a picture that was unmistakable to Agent Karl Remlord – their target was a Dark Wizard.
“Draxt it. Draxt it all.” Karl thought to himself as he pulled his weapon – a newer model eight-shot revolver – and aimed for man, hoping to get a shot off and neutralize the target before he could become a real problem. “You couldn’t possibly have made this easy, could you?”
But his aim was thrown off as the wizard held his staff into the air and let loose a brief flash of energy. Its effects only lasted for an instant, but the result was devastating. Not only had Karl lost sight of their target, but the crowd had begun to panic. Most of the people present had no idea what had just happened, and half of those who did either weren’t quite sure what it was or were too startled to care. The result was people moving in every which way as they tried to get to safety from the perceived threat.
Things did not improve when the wizard revealed himself again. From half way across the array of people, a bolt of dark energy shot out towards El’wal. The Elf was vigilant enough to detect it and erect a protective barrier, but the power of the attack combined with the limited span that El’wal had to protect himself meant that he was sent flying over the heads of the crowd and into the side of a building. Odds were he was still alive, but it was poor start if the trio still hoped to accomplish their original mission.
Thinking he was close enough to the ground to take a faster route, Karl pulled himself through the window and dropped to a canopy below. As soon as he hit it, he rolled out, dropped to the ground below, and tried to weave his way through a crowd that was now fully aware of what was going on and determined to get away from it.
“Move! Out of my way!” Karl shouted as he tried to push against the flow. As he leapt to try to get a view of the fight, he could see that Ollie had opened fire, only for the wizard to raise some of the cobblestones from the street to block the path of the bullets, then fire the stones in Ollies direction. The immediate result of the counter attack was unknown to Karl, as his further attempts to see what was going on were hindered by the crowd beginning to pull him backwards.
“I said move!” He shouted again, and fired his revolver in the air. It did nothing to calm the crowd, but it did convince them to back away and give him the space he needed to continue towards his teammates. He again aimed his weapon at the wizard as he approached, but once again he was prevented from getting a clean shot. Before he could pull the trigger, the wizard turned in Karl’s direction, and the next thing he knew, the agent was flying backwards through the air.
The moment Karl recovered from the shock of having no control over where he was going, he realized that the wizard had catapulted him by swiftly lifting the ground under his feet and let the momentum of his initial movement do the rest. With no means of directing the rest of his flight, all he could do was pray for a safe landing.
As his flight path took him towards the docks that were stationed around the edge of the planetoid, Karl landed across the roof of a storehouse. His momentum caused him to keep moving at a roll, and he let out a short series of curses as he bumped and bounced his way along and tried to bring himself to a halt. His path continued as he rolled off the building and hit a pile of grain sacks located on the ground, which slowed him just enough that he was able to catch himself as he began to fall off the edge of the world.
The Agent was unable to prevent himself from letting out a shout of pain as his arm nearly popped out of its joint. But as Karl held on for dear life, his grip lasted long enough for him to reach his other arm up, allowing him to will out enough strength that he was able to pull himself back up to safety.
“Are you alright?!”
Karl looked up from his place on the ground to see two individuals standing over him. They were dock workers, from the looks of it, and had probably run over after seeing Karl’s initial landing. Around him, he could hear that there was a commotion growing around the docks, no doubt a result of people trying to flee the wrath of the Dark Wizard.
“No.” Karl said with brutal honesty as he began to pick himself up. He began to reach for his gun, but quickly realized the futility of it – he had lost the weapon while trying to save himself. It was no doubt located on the bottom rim of Trethius by now, if it simply hadn’t flown towards the endless atmosphere beyond. He would need an alternative means of fighting. Preferably one that didn’t involve him dying.
Trying to ignore the pain in his arm, Karl quickly began searching for a new weapon. His attention was quickly drawn to a vessel nearby that prominently featured a number of cannons along its sides. That meant there would be cannonshot. If only Ollie and El’wal could keep their foe occupied and distracted, perhaps he’d have a shot of surviving the fight after all.
“I need a lifeboat filled up with solid cannonshot!” Karl barked at the two men as he headed towards the ship. “Now!”
“What’s going on?” Asked one of the men.
“Now, wait just a minute now!” The other said. “Just who do you think you…”
Karl turned back towards the second man and used his good arm to grab the dock worker by his shirt.
“There is a Dark Wizard causing mass panic back there!” Karl shouted in the mans face, using his head to indicate towards where the Wizard was located. “Now you will help me load up a lifeboat with cannonshot, or so help me, if we do not stop him, when this is all over I will personally relieve you of everything that makes you the man you are, right down to your very manhood! And I will do it even if I have to bring both of us back to life to pull it off!”
As Karl took a brief moment to catch his breath, he took note of how the man he was shouting at was frozen in terror. That was a good sign – it meant Karl could count on his full cooperation from this point out.
“Now are you going to follow my orders, or not?!”
“Yes SIR!” the dock worker replied at the top of his lungs, and rushed off to do as he had been told. Karl could only sigh as he continued to ignore the pain in his arm and focus on what needed to be done next.
*********
“Naxxt!” thought Agent Ollie Verrick as he watched Karl get thrown backwards into the air, his ultimate fate one that Ollie preferred not to think about.
The man, still hiding inside the building he had ducked inside to avoid getting pummeled by the Dark Wizards flying rocks, peeked the rest of the way around the doorframe to see where the threat was now. Ollie had never faced a faced a Dark Wizard before. He had certainly read up about them, especially the briefings that the NI/SD had provided him with during training. But it was beyond clear to him now that none of it had properly prepared him for the real thing at all.
He took solace in the idea that he likely wouldn’t have to face the dark one directly. While he may have been unprepared for this scenario, El’wal was a far different story. The elf was a wizard himself, after all, just not an evil one. What Ollie had to focus on was providing as much of a distraction as he could to make El’wal’s job that much easier.
Popping out from behind cover, Ollie opened fire on the dark wizard. Though he had El’wal on the ropes, forcing the elf to barricade himself behind a shield of magical energy to protect himself, the dark one was still able to spare enough attention to deflect the bullets off along random pathways. His first effort a failure, Ollie ducked back into the building for a moment to prepare to give it another go. However, he was distracted by a noise that was coming from all around him.
“Why don’t you come out where I can see you!?” The Dark Wizard taunted from outside.
Looking around the room, Ollie could see that the building was starting to collapse in on itself, courtesy of the wizard. He quickly ran out of and away from the building in time to avoid getting crushed inside as the structure fell apart. A bolt of dark energy sped by him as he ran out into the open, but narrowly missed as the agent hit the ground. He was saved from getting hit by the next one when El’wal intervened. With the dark wizard properly distracted, the elf was able to convert the defensive shield into a shockwave that knocked his opponent head over heels backwards.
“That’s what I’m looking for!” Ollie exclaimed as a feeling of success began to grow inside of him. But this feeling quickly subsided again when the Dark Wizard rose the ground up beneath him and used it to stop his flight path and re-align himself as to be right side up. The end result left the Wizard standing upon an elevated chunk of land and more than prepared to deflect the bolt of light energy El’wal had cast at him. The bolt instead flew in Ollie’s direction, forcing the agent to dive behind a very recently abandoned food stall.
Ollie was quick to get back up on his feet, and once again aimed his gun at the Dark Wizard. Just as quickly, a motion from the foe knocked the gun out of his hands and lifted the agent into the air, leaving him struggling to grasp for something to pull himself back down with. But in the time the wizard had focused on Ollie, it had given El’wal time to form an energy blade that protruded from his staff and charge at the Dark Wizard with it.
With the energies holding him up in the air once again focused on El’wal, Ollie dropped to the ground with a thud. Undeterred, he picked himself up, grabbed a trio of melons from the stall he had hidden behind, and threw them at the evil wizard. This had little effect – the wizard, having pushed back El’wal, simply stopped them in mid-air and then re-directed them at El’wal. Two of them were easily deflected, but a flash from the Dark Wizard caused the third to go through and hit El’wal flat in the face.
Pressing his initiative, the Wizard knocked El’wal’s legs out from under him, sent him flying backwards, and rose a wall out of the ground only a few feet back for the elf to crash through, leaving him sprawled out on the ground in a pile of rubble. Ollie, realizing he had just help make things worse, leaped out from behind cover and rushed into the battle. He didn’t get far before the ground cracked apart beneath his feet, dropping him into a shallow pit.
“Draxt’it!” He shouted as he picked himself up off the ground. As quickly as he could, he tried to climb back out, but it was not as easy a climb as it looked. By the time he had secured his arms and was half-way out of the hole, it was too late. El’wal was on the ground, a misty aura extending from his hand and encompassing the dark wizard’s head, but to what end Ollie could only guess. Whatever effect it had, it did nothing to stop the wizard from using his staff to impale the elf through the chest.
“No!” Exclaimed Ollie, and he doubled his effort to finish climbing back to level ground, but it was made moot when he once again found himself floating in the air.
“Yes.” The Dark Wizard said as he walked towards the agent. “First your friend, then your wizard, and now you too shall join them. But first, I think I’m going to have a little fun.”
Catching something from the corner of his eyes, Ollie looked up to see something that turned his feeling of hopelessness into a sense of imminent victory.
“Question: When’s the last time you were flat-out wrong about something?” Ollie asked.
“What?” The wizard replied, confused what Ollie was talking about.
“Answer: How about right now?”
Before the Dark Wizard could respond, a lifeboat full of cannonshot dropped out of the sky above his head, it’s source of flight having been cut off. He took notice that something was wrong just in time to look up and see his imminent demise coming. As Karl leapt from the boat to the nearby rooftops above, the wizard rose his arm up into the sky in a failed attempt to shield himself just before the boat hit. The source of power flattened, Ollie dropped to the ground.
Anxious to discover if the attack had killed the wizard outright, Ollie rushed over to where the broken boat and pile of cannonshot lay on top of his body. The initial picture was not pretty. Other than a bruised and battered arm stuck out from underneath the load, there was no indication that there was any life left in him. As he reached the pile, the agent rolled a few of the cannonshot away until the Dark Wizard’s face was uncovered. The discovery that he wasn’t quite dead yet came with it.
Like his arm, the head was battered and bloody, and his eyes were closed. However, as Ollie leaned in closer, he could see that there he was still breathing. It was faint breathing, but still a clear sign that the wizard had found enough time to pull off some kind of spell to keep himself alive. Then, with a blood-filled cough, the wizard slowly opened his eyes.
“Not so fun now, is it?” Ollie said. “Now how about I start asking questions and you start giving me answers?”
To his surprise, the wizard laughed. It was a weak laugh, made up of equal parts coughing and actual laughter, but its intent was still clear.
“Questions? Answers? What reason…do I have to tell you any…anything?”
“Because right about now I hold all the cards.” Ollie replied, trying to play tough.
“You me-mean, my imminent death? Oh, you…fool. Soon, very soon, death…shall…come for you as well. All th-that you know is about to be sh-shat-shattered. And in its place sh…shall come a new ga-lactic…order.”
Ollied tried to ponder the words, and the wizard’s head began to sag to the side as if he was breathing his last.
“Oh no, you do not die on me yet!” He said as he reached out and brought the broken man’s head back up.
“Remove your…hands from me!”
Concentrated on finding a way to get the wizard to talk…or at least keep him alive long enough that they could get him to talk, Ollie failed to notice that there was an aura of dark energy beginning to form around the man’s exposed hand. What he did notice was a bullet that flew past him and hit the wizard right in the face.
“Woah!” Ollie exclaimed as he rapidly put a safe distance between himself and the now very-dead wizard. He stood frozen as two more rounds buried themselves into the wizards head. When he looked towards where the shots had come from, he saw Karl standing nearby. Ollie’s gun was in his hands, and despite the weapon being empty, Agent Remlord continued to pull the trigger, as if doing so could possibly make the Dark Wizard any more dead than he already was.
“I think that killed him.” Ollie said, then realized what it meant. “You killed him! He was down! We had him where we needed him! He was our lead! We needed him alive!”
Karl slowly pulled the trigger on the gun one last time, then let the revolver fall to the ground. He let his arms fall free soon after.
“You’re right.” Karl said, his focus still fixed on the dead man. “He is dead. Just like he needs to be.” |
Now...DISCUSS!
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Morgan ZIM: Bounty Hunter, Gun for Hire, Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, Cybernetic Scoundrel, and all around disruptor of the normal order of things. |
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Ams Jendob
Moff
Joined: 14 Jun 2009
Posts: 1579
Location: The Gala
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| Posted: Wed, November 23rd 2011 12:09am Post subject: |
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Is everyone writing a novel? 
EDIT: Interesting. Fantasy elements... and do I detect a touch of steampunk?
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Emperor Ams Jendob, Ruler of the Imperial Remnant
----"Moff", CMAC Dreamcrusher, Official Administrative Waldorf and Statler---- |
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Morgan ZIM
Space Jawa
Joined: 01 Oct 2009
Posts: 536
Location: I am here -> *
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| Posted: Wed, November 23rd 2011 04:40am Post subject: |
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| Ams Jendob wrote: | | EDIT: Interesting. Fantasy elements... and do I detect a touch of steampunk? |
Possibly. I wouldn't doubt if it matches up with the genre on at least some level.
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Morgan ZIM: Bounty Hunter, Gun for Hire, Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, Cybernetic Scoundrel, and all around disruptor of the normal order of things. |
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Lucas Pallanén-Davad
Alex
Joined: 01 Aug 2009
Posts: 1153
Location: Aboard the Blight Leaper
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| Posted: Tue, December 27th 2011 01:13pm Post subject: |
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| I like it! |
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