RolePlayGateway™

In an effort to fuel my creative urges, I have decided to write a story - short or long based upon feedback - to publicise onto RPG. Similarly, I will take times to explain the nature of the world in question as the story continues, for any of those interested.

As such, I present to you the start of "Of Cause And Effect", written, formatted and proofread by Providence, formerly known as Alvaron.

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Tick, tick.

The clockwork time keeper echoed throughout the darkened apartment room only accompanied by the ever incessant beating of the night time rain upon the windows which ran the breadth of the room facing upon the city several stories below. Occasionally, a crack of thunder would drown out the monotony of sound as flashes of lightning scorched the cloudy skies and illuminated the contents of the building in question. The room, as liberally as the word can be applied could vaguely be recognised someone’s bedroom, scattered across the floor were piles upon piles of notes, diagrams, books of the strange, unusual - with some slightly more mundane office hand outs interspersed - were strewn like leaves in the wind. No doubt one of the windows had been left open earlier. The only indication amongst the researcher’s squalor of this being a bedroom in fact was the bed half buried in the papers in one corner, amongst the flashes of lightning the occupant was illuminated briefly.

The man was obviously awake as he laid on the bed, eyes glued to the ceiling, on closer inspection his gaze was not aimed at the ceiling but the hilt nestled within his hands. The hilt in question seemed old, one might fathom old beyond old from the condition, battered and near broken, yet it still remained intact despite the ages gone by. Few, if any would be able to recognise the design and clearly the man didn’t, in ways, the man – whom we shall refer to Michael from hence forth –would run his hands over it, gazing at it, in ways that people talk to animals in some mentally therapeutic manner, Michael had spent hours with it, soul searching in a manner.

Michael’s thoughts turned back during his examining of the hilt, as they always inevitably did to the moment in time during his childhood in which he attained it, on a night all too similar to this one where the skies poured down with rain, where thunder and lightning assailed the senses.

“I’m sorry...”

The words hung with him, he mouthed them, spoke them out loud as he contemplated, the hilt and those two words were all he had when he awoke in the sterilised, white sheeted hospital bed at the age of six. How he got there? No one knew, found in the A&E room of the cities hospital without trace or entry nor what brought him there. Amnesia he had been told, from severe mental trauma was the guess by the doctors. With no name or origin, he was put up for adoption as soon as he was mentally capable considering his distinct lack of physical injuries.

As he grew up in foster care he was given a name that oddly fitted him along with an education, care and the amnesties of a childhood. However during this childhood Michael would often break into fits of lethargy, collapsing suddenly only to be assailed by dreams that weren’t dreams, he later realised this was a glimpse into a past that at times he wished he could forget, yet he couldn’t, wouldn’t. Even though every time he woke up sweating and panting; rubbing burns and scars on his body that weren’t there, the two words that were all he had along with the hilt which had stuck with him despite any events that took place.

Just what do the words mean? Whose words were they in the first place? Why were they said? The same questions assailed him from all sides in the empty confines of his room.

Tick, tick.

Michael glanced away from the hilt around the dim room, looking at his scattered research notes as he chased memories he didn’t have. For all his searching, he couldn’t find any trace or any information on the hilt or his own past, the latter being more acceptable considering his lack of information in the first place. Despite what methods lay available on the year in question – which informatively is 2010 - analysers couldn’t date the hilt to anything despite its obvious damage and weathering. It never accrued any scratches or marks beside what it had, it even seemed to stay clean despite what happens. Similarly, its design wasn’t recognisable to any era, or the materials used, effectively it was foreign to the world.

Heaving a sigh, Michael rubbed his brow in disappointment and wonder as he rested the hilt on his bedside table, wondering idly when his most recent contact would return with the same response, ‘Sorry; we couldn’t find anything for you’. He was twenty now - nearly twenty one – upon his eighteenth birthday he managed to move away from the foster family that despite their care and affection had not been able to answer his lingering questions of the past. Away from the family that wasn’t a family in his mind, Michael spent the three years until this point chasing the ghosts of the past.

However Michael’s own intuition, whenever he contemplated such actions, always warned him otherwise. You see, Michael either through experience or general foresight has a knack for knowing when something happens or is going to happen, if it is good or bad for him. By this, he has managed to lead a relatively safe life, despite the nagging at the back of his mind that something unavoidable will eventually come up.

Tick, tick.

Moving from his bad, Michael felt sharply aware that something bad was about to happen, what - he didn’t know, except what was about to occur would occur. The feeling of foreboding that was encroaching upon him was so heavy and striking that his head began to throb. He felt that if it continued he’d die before whatever occurred would occur. However, the pain suddenly stopped as soon as it started, had the threat passed Michael wondered idly, his hand reaching tentatively for the hilt for reassurance before a sudden crash shook him to attention.

With a crash louder than any crack of thunder that echoed that night, Michael was thrown away from the windows as the apartment quaked and the windows of the bedroom shattered, shards of glass flying in the room as the metal frames buckled. Something had come and instinctively Michael knew why. At first, all Michael saw was a hazy blur in the air, as if his eyes weren’t attuned to the presence before him, with several blinks he stifled a cry as he gazed upon ‘It’. ‘It’ stood like a gorilla, hunched over from its own height into the room, its skin was thick and heavy, drooping like tar off of its frame and with the same colour and probably the consistency, bony, bat like wings sprouted from its back, their pallid form casting shadows, blocking out what little light the moon granted across the gaps where the windows used to be as they scraped the ceiling.

‘Its’ voice was guttural and broken, speaking several times in a long dead tongue to man, advancing with each word until it towered over him, finally as the thing froze in place, gazing at him and not at him, the beast spoke in a more understandable, but still broken and frightening tone, “Found you... at last...”. ‘Its’ arm outstretched, club like fingers extending to grab at him, crush him, Michael knew nothing of what ‘It’ was, or why ‘It’ was here, all he knew was he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to die before understanding why he was here in the first place.

Wonderful.

I'm very pleased to read an Alvaron production and I hope to read many more. I'm liking this Michael character and I am guessing he's either from the past, space or another dimension. Waiting for chapter 2, =3

Cheers for the epic feedback Para, adapted it in as best I can while keeping my own modus operandi. :-)

Bit shorter than expected, but I folded the end of the chapter into the start of no.3, so expect that one to be a bit longer.

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Chapter 2 – Arrival And Departure

“... In Existence there is Balance ...”

Time.

It was something that rarely crossed the mind of this particular entity, an entity whose existence seemed somewhat detached from the world we all know. Looking at it from an all too odd perspective, never paid heed beyond what usual forms of attention might apply for it itself was in a form that garnered little interest, that of a battered sword hilt.

It, or she – for the mind of this entity was most definitely female – despite all outward appearances could think. Mentally active, if such a term could be applied to her and for the past few months? years? – not that it mattered – had spent much of that if not all of that watching the steady progress of a boy grown steadily into a man. Occasionally, the lull of life was broken by some sudden turn of events for good or bad but never once did she ever sense or feel the tell-tale feeling of danger nearby.

Until now.

The monotonous ticking of the clock which was her only bearing on the passage of time in the room was shattered as sharply as the windows were. Perhaps by chance or fate, the lumbering creature successfully managed to knock everything over and anything near the window out of it except for her – the sword hilt – which remained safely in the room, albeit on the floor. From this vantage point she watched, or more acutely felt what happened around her as the beast she faintly recognised approached Michael.

She knew with certainty that Michael was going to die here and now if she did not act, for the years Michael had kept her in his possession she had acted as the watchful guardian, waiting for moments such as these in which her role would be fulfilled.

Mustering herself, the battered hilt upon the floor began to visibly shake, obstructed from Michael’s view by the lumbering monstrosity as it raised a club like hand in preparation to strike. Not only did the hilt shake but it began to glow softly as if it were gathering what little light that was offered in the room. Faint wisps of azure and indigo floated and massed upon the metal, one attuned to the movements of mana and magic would feel the strange sense of tranquillity and foreboding like that of the calm before the storm.

A storm it was.

The mana that had gathered upon the hilt suddenly collapsed together into a focal point before exploding outwards, throwing the creature liberally over the head of Michael and through the apartment wall – and several walls after that – whilst leaving him relatively unaffected, if rattled. The scattered energy in the air slowly began to draw together again giving form to substance, to her. Returning to reality after several years, she looked to Michael still stumbled against the floor in shock and awe and in a voice fit for heaven’s choir, she spoke.

“I am your sword.”

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“I am your sword.”

Beautiful, it was the only word that came to Michael’s mind as he looked up at the woman who had just saved his life from that... ‘thing’ which had nearly brained him to death a moment ago. He couldn’t for the life of him take his eyes off of her, not that he wanted to for all her grace and demeanour, she was stark naked. Perhaps the distinctly male part of his brain had won over his logical thought processes but not for long as the rattling sounds of rubble shifting behind him drew his attention; he could gawk later after he checked if that thing was dead.

Pushing himself up on shaky legs, Michael grabbed the edge of the hole in the wall for support as he glanced along the tunnel that had been carved through the building. He could count five walls that the monster that been flung through before coming to a stop, how he’d explain this to the landlord he had no idea. Glancing back at the woman he shakily asked as the panic began to slowly dim, “Is it dead?”

A quickly shake of the head in response, her vibrant blue hair swishing slightly across her skin as she did so only to intone in her musical voice, “It isn’t dead but its injuries are severe, it will vanish into the ether for now knowing I am here”.

A smile crept onto her face briefly as she finished, only to vanish as suddenly as she had appeared whilst her tone of voice grew more worrisome as she stepped towards him, “Did it injure you at all?”. The question set his nerves at ease as he smiled in response, “Fortunately not, I’m just shaken by whatever just happened”. His smile quickly blanched as she continued to advance on him with intent, whilst he was aware of her current attire or lack of it, she was either blithely ignorant or uncaring until he coughed quietly and averted his gaze.

Taking that as a subtle queue as something amiss, the woman glanced at herself and one could the brief facial expression as surprise before a nimbus of light wrapped around her – where it came from, Michael wasn’t sure – before turning into a set of sparkling white plate armour which wouldn’t have been amiss in the middle ages. Despite the oddity of her apparel, Michael appreciated the courtesy of her actions as he looked back to her as he breathed deeply.

“Could you kindly explain to me just what happened and who you are...?”