22nd November 2003, 12:10 PM
I have an idea! I can post chapters of my book as I finish them, making my book an internet novel! Which will equal fun times for all! Of course I'll probably do a lot of editing to the novel later and it'll bare no resemblence to what I posted, but oh well.
Quote:Chapter 2
Outside the house it had grown dark. The sun had long since passed below the horizon and the moon had not yet begun to rise, so it was pitch black outside except for a few beams of light coming from the inside of several houses. A shadow detached itself from the side of one the houses. It made scarcely as sound as it moved closer to Steven’s house. It lurked around the corners of the house. It also loomed, but only slightly, which is still quite an amazing feat since it was still lurking.
Inside the house Milragh was having trouble getting to sleep, so he decided to sit out on the front porch and watch the stars for a while. He sat down in one of the chairs and let his mind wander. His life had been rather hectic over the past month. He had been a professor at the Ludly Banes University of Magic and he enjoyed his job, although he admitted to himself that it had been very boring.
He had been working on an experiment to try to use diamonds to enhance a person’s magical powers. He had worked out all of the theories on the matter, but from the start the experiment was doomed to failure. The first diamond he used was blown into a million tiny pieces when he attempted to use shumarion on it. In theory the shumarion should have enhanced the diamond to allow it to retain large amounts of magic, but instead it only exploded.
The diamond had cost a fortune, but somehow he had managed to convince the Board to buy one more. This time he used a solution of bromine and glaritene to prepare the diamond. The diamond transmuted into a ruby red bird, which pecked Milragh on the nose and then promptly flew out the window. He begged the Board for one my diamond. Third time was most definitely not the charm for Milragh.
A vast assortment of chemicals and compounds had gone into this particular mix. He decided to use everything in the hope that somehow his concoction would have the desire effect. It didn’t, but the results were spoken of in hushed tones for many months after the fact. When he put the mixture on the diamond at first nothing had happened. In his disgust Milragh struck the diamond with the steel hammer that was sitting on the table beside him. That seemed to be the catalyst the diamond had been waiting for. After he struck the diamond it sucked up all the magic in the entire University and then in one horrifying moment spewed forth it’s contents in a vast explosion of lights and sounds and some very unpleasant things.
All of the spells that had been sucked up by the diamond went off upon being discharged. The devastation was incredible. One wing of the university was blown completely apart, the library was full of exotic animals, which began to fight each other, several classrooms reported golems appearing in the middle of lectures, horrifying though it was the students didn’t mind too much, the janitor reported strange sounds coming from the bathrooms but no one came to investigate, and the headmaster’s beard had caught on fire. Needless to say it was not a good day for Milragh the magician.
Reminiscing about the past always made Milragh depressed. He preferred to look to the future, unfortunately the future wasn’t going to be much better unless he could convince a certain young boy that the sword that was in his possession was more important than a few cavels. Actually it was more than a few cavels, but the point remained the same. He drummed his fingers idly on one of the arms of the chair as he stared off into space.
Something caught his attention and he quickly jerked his head toward the corner of the house. He thought he saw one of the shadows move. After a few moments of seeing nothing he relaxed. As he leaned back a loose board creaked behind him. He turned out, but could see nothing. He figured it must have the just been the house settling. Something didn’t seem right though, but before he could go any further with that line of thought the door to the house burst open as Steven jumped through it. There was a muffled “thunk”.
“Oh there you are, Milragh. I didn’t see you in your room so I thought something might have happened to you.” Steven said as he took one of the other seats on the porch.
Milragh and Steven talked for a while that night. Milragh attempted to explain how going on a quest would be a much better thing than selling the magical sword, even though it was, truth be told, worth a lot of money. It took a while.
Near the edge of town a shadow was muttering to itself. Among the things it said “stupid boy” stood out. The shadow rubbed the back of its head as it shuffled through a field going toward the east. It paused only briefly when it fell over a sleeping cow.
The next morning came with the promise of another fine day, provided that there was no whistling. Steven was running from room to room as he gathered up anything that he thought he even remotely might need and his mother was busy fixing him a big breakfast to help him get a good start on his journey. Neither seemed to be at all concerned about the potential dangers that might lie ahead. Milragh wasn’t certain whether these two were stupid, crazy, naïve, or perhaps this was just some strange way that normal people coped with things of this magnitude. He decided that it was probably a mixture of all four.
About two hours after sunrise Steven had finished packing and had eaten his breakfast. His mother had found an old scabbard that had belonged to Steven’s father. And with that they were ready to go. They stood on the front porch, unsure of what exactly was supposed to happen next.
“Milragh?” The boy asked after a moment of awkward silence.
“Yes, what is it?”
“What are we supposed to do now?”
“Well…at this point…we’re…you see we…and then…with the dungeons…I don’t really know. I never thought this far ahead.” The wizard admitted.
“Um…maybe we could…go to Varkstan?” The boy offered.
Milragh thought it over for a moment. He decided that probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. The trip would give him time to think of where their destination was and it was quite possible that they might even be going in the right direction.
Steven stopped so suddenly that Milragh almost fell over him. Steven was staring ahead at something in the tall grass. He motioned for Milragh to be quite.
“Look over there! A monster!” He whispered excitedly.
Milragh peered to where the boy was pointing. It was a white rabbit.
“Umm…it’s a rabbit.” Milragh stated.
“Shall we kill it and takes it’s treasure?” Steven asked clearly to full of adrenaline to realize that his “monster” was only a rabbit, a small one at that, and it wasn’t likely to have any kind of treasure. But…it was only a rabbit.
“Sure, go ahead and…uhh…be careful of its poisonous fangs.”
Steven grinned wildly and charged the innocent creature his sword swinging above his head. As he got within about 15 feet from the rabbit there was a sudden flash of light. Milragh rubbed his eyes and looked around. They appeared to be in some sort of astral plane. The area where they were at was roughly 20 feet by 20 feet and contained what appeared to be a section of grassland. The edges fell off into empty space.
“Steven…do you know where we are” He asked attempting to mask his rising fear, but having little luck with it.
“Oh, this is battle-mode.” Steven said matter-of-factly.
“Battle-mode? What are you talking about?”
“You see when you attack something, you go into battle-mode. I usually avoid monsters so I don’t really have any experience with it.”
“And this is…battle-mode?” Milragh asked spreading his arms.
“That’s right. Look! There’s the monster!” Steven shouted pointing to what appeared to be large white bear behind the only tree on the plane. It had very large fangs. Milragh momentarily taken aback by the sight of it, failed to notice the large bar with a green stripe that was near his feat. He fell over it. The green stripe on the bar moved slightly.
“Don’t worry, Milragh, I can handle it!” Steven said down to him.
Steven ran at the rabbit-monster his sword raised high. He swung the sword downward and sliced it in two so fast that it couldn’t react. Milragh thought for a moment that he saw a number floating in the air. He shook his head.
“Alright!” Steven yelled just as there was another flash of light. Milragh looked around fearing that they might end up somewhere worse, but he could see they were back in the field near Steven’s village. He brushed off his clothes and walked over to where Steven was still expressing his excitement.
“I’m confused.” Milragh admitted.
“Confused?” Steven asked, not understanding that there could possibly be someone in the world who didn’t know what battle-mode was.
Milragh looked at him for a moment.
“Never mind.” He finally said with a sigh.
The wizard walked over to where the rabbit had been. There was a small pouch lying in the grass. He studied it for a moment wondering whether it would suddenly turn back into a rabbit again. It didn’t. After Steven had finished his victory dance, which consisted mostly of him jumping up and down and yelling at the top of his lungs, he came over to see what Milragh was looking at.
“Just look at this! I’ve only been on a quest for fifteen minutes and I already have a bag cavels!” Steven exclaimed.
This is just weird, Milragh thought.
“Steven…let’s not do that again, okay?” Milragh pleaded with the boy.
“If we get close to a monster it’ll just happen, not much we can do about.”
“Then let’s avoid the monsters.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Steven said somewhat disapprovingly.
“I’m sure we’ll be able to find it. Anyway, it’s all ready mid-day so we’d better hurry if we want to make it to Varkstan before nightfall.”
Steven picked up the bag of cavels and the two were on their way. Milragh talked very little as he was trying to figure out how Steven’s “battle-mode” occurred and where they actually went. As best he could tell there must be some magic field covering the whole world that transported those about to engage in a battle to some unknown dimension. It also appeared as though the magic field evened the odds for the lesser opponent as seen by the gigantic rabbit.
Milragh wondered where the gold came from. If it just created gold out of thin air then wouldn’t that eventually drive down the value of it? Or did it dredge the gold out of someone previously undiscovered facet somewhere in the earth’s crust? He would need to study this phenomenon further, a prospect that he was not altogether against, for despite expressing his desire to avoid encounters like that again it was, in a way, very exciting.
About 4 hours later the two travelers arrived at the town of Varkstan. It was middle-sized and contained within its boundaries 6 strip markets near the town center. The town center in Varkstan was actually a town center. It even had a small statue, upon which a few birds were perched. There was a man trying to drive them away with a broom, but as soon as he left they always came back. Milragh watched the man for a few seconds and then glanced back at Steven. Where Steven had been there was now a very large chicken. Milragh looked at it curiously. It looked back at Milragh. Milragh poked it with his shoe. The chicken spurred him and then ran squawking toward another part of town.
“Milragh!” Steven shouted from one of the strip markets. “Over here!”
“There you are! I thought that you…I mean I looked back and…” Milragh broke off not sure whether to continue the sentence or not. The boy waited. “That is I thought that you…might like an ice cream cone!”
Steven thought this over for a second. “Are you going to buy the ice cream to go in it too?”
“That’s not…yeah, sure”
It was about six hours past noon when the two sat down to eat the ice cream at one of the outdoor cafés. Steven had ordered chocolate chip cookie dough and Milragh had ordered vanilla. A glimpse at their personalities perhaps? Actually, it probably just meant that they liked different types of ice cream. Most of the townsfolk had already gone home for supper by now, so the streets were relatively clear. A small number of people were just coming out to eat at the various cafés that dotted the town.
Across from the café where they were at was as an inn and it even looked slightly reputable. Milragh decided that they would stay there. As he went to pay for their room he found that he didn’t have any cavels anywhere on his person, even though he remembered having some just a day or two ago. Steven offered to pay from the bag of money he had got from defeating the rabbit. Milragh once again wondered about the exact origins of the pouch of gold.
After Steven had gone to sleep, Milragh drifted down into the commons room. He ordered a mug of grog for himself, using a few coins he had gotten from Steven’s pouch, and took a seat in the corner.
While Milragh was certainly not the greatest wizard in the world he did know a few things about surviving. Any thing that had happened in the anywhere would be discussed in the inn at one point or another, Milragh only had to wait and listen. After about two hours he decided he might as well get some sleep.
Just as he was about to get up a detachment of imperial troops came into the inn. They ordered a few mugs of grog and took seats about the room. While it was not unusual to see troops in a town the size of Varkstan it was clear that they were looking for something…or someone.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.