penguindude515
08 December 2007, 11:08 PM
A little short story I did for school in the replcament of a comparitive essay (Our teacher is the best).
I'm planning a sequel, hence the "chapter one", and yes, I know the whole ending is lame.
The sun had been peeking its way up through the long, thick blades of dusty grass for hours. The little boy of Beatur had sneaked out of bed early to watch the legendary sunrise of sempre-non. The bedtime stories had told that once every one hundred years on this one day the sun would rise from the south and set in the north. Reg had decided to call the conceived bluff. He had gotten help from his older sister to figure out on what day this event would happen, and finally he was sitting down on the little green hill where the sunrise could only be viewed.
---It was a glorious sight. Rays of scarlet light could be seen slashing through the misty clouds that hovered pleasantly above the sun. You felt as though sitting only but a few inches apart from the sun, seeing the curved beams leap out, trying to escape their own magnificent prison. The sphere of light seemed as though it were dashing up with the speed of all the men on the Earth together, as though it would only take one second for the mass to rise, travel over the whole stretch of land and set, but it still took what seemed like an eternity to come up barely inches from the ground. When you looked at the sun, you were forced to close your burning eyes even as every thought that had come to your mind had told you to keep them open.
---So there was Reg, enjoying his last moments of the semi-darkness before he had to go back home and carry out his own daily day-long chores when his eye-lids dropped down a notch. “No! I can’t be tired! It’s only five hours after midnight! I’ve got a whole day left to stay awake”, he thought. But he couldn’t hold it back. Within seconds, his sleep overcame him.
---Reg woke up behind the hill that he was sitting on, lying on a small pale-sanded beach facing the deep, but not dark, blue rippling lake. He noticed the sun was reflected across the whole body of water, and the sky was not light. Reg suddenly feared that he had slept through the entire day when he noticed an unusual glint in the water. It was not far from shore, so he decided to investigate. He took off his weak footwear and dipped his toe into the water. It was very cold, but Reg thought that like most cases, the water would feel warmer after he got in for thirty seconds, so he gradually waded into the water. The sand in the water felt well clutched between Reg’s toes. Once the water was waist deep, he took a brisk plunge forward under the water. As he approached the object that he saw in the water, the glint faded away and he could see the large prize of his little efforts. It was the blade of a broadsword. On the blade it read “ut exsisto instituo”, which meant “to be found”.
---“The sword!” he thought. “The sword from the bedtime story is here!” Reg had forgotten all about the rest of the legend when he was looking to watch the sun rise in the south. The special rising and setting was all really just to help find the sword, but he did not believe in that part. Although he thought if one part of the story was true, why not the other part be true? After all, the sun did rise in the south, and it was setting in the north as he thought it would.
---He decided to pursue the rest of the legend. He grabbed hold of the sword and swam back to the beach. It had become much darker than it had been before he dived in to get see what was causing the glint. He wanted to go home, but he knew how much trouble he was going to get in because he was gone all day. Somehow he had to get the book that had the legend written in it, and decided the best way to do it was to ask his sister to get it for him. He would wait until she came to the edge of town and call her. So that’s what he did. At one hour after midday she was sweeping the crisp stone road that winded its way in one end of the town and out the other.
---“Hey! Proficia!” he called. She looked around and saw the face of her own little brother. She ran towards him and gave him a quick worried hug.
---“Reg, where have you been? It has been a day and a half since I last saw you! You are not hurt?”
---“No, no, I’m fine. See, I found the sword that is told of in the legend!”
---Proficia gasped when she read the inscription on the blade.
---“I think the whole legend is real!” he said to her. “And the sun! It rose from the south! The whole legend must be true! I think, I think I might be the one who restores the peace!”
---“But how do you do that,” asked Proficia, “when there is not any trouble?”
---And just as she said that an arrow stuck itself into the head of a citizen.
---“Isaac!” someone called out. “Isaac has been shot! We are under attack!”
---Within seconds the scene was in action. Men were falling helplessly to the ground, children were calling for their parents, women were running out of town.
---“There’s trouble now!” yelled Reg over the great sound of clashing swords as he ran into the array of battle.
---“Reg, no! Come back!” yelled his sister after him, but by the time she was finished Reg was already fighting with his newfound sword.
---Konk! Reg was hit with the sword hilt of another as he was fighting.
---Reg gained consciousness on a cold stone surface one hour later. He got up. It was clear to him that no enemy was around. He dusted off his shirt and took in his surroundings. He had been lying on crisp grey stone bricks with rubble and bodies around him. What was left of the houses was black fragile sheets of wood. You could just lay your finger on the wood and the whole house would fall apart.
And then it dawned on him. This was his very own home, Beatur. He started to feel very heavy and his tears parted from his flat cheeks like a missile launching and exploding as it hits a building, with the force of the missile propelling him back. As his tears fell to the ground, you could hear the air making its way around the cold white liquid. They came down as heavy and frequent as you would find in a hurricane.
---“I must find who did this!” he thought to himself, so he got up, held his sword tight in his hand and started running after the tracks in the grass. He went on for about two hours when a rough stone citadel started looming over a hill.
---“This must be the place,” said Reg to himself.
---He decided he had to somehow sneak in to get a word with the leader, who he suspected to be at the top tower. Some of the large stone bricks were loose and Reg pulled them out to create his own footholds. After thirty minutes of climbing, he finally came to the most highest tower window. He peeked in, finding five armed men looking down at him. They grabbed Reg’s arms and hauled him into the castle.
---The king was sitting in a grey throne before him. The throne had sharp swirl patterns on it, with black flame rising above the throne which seemed to actually move if you weren’t looking directly at it, giving the king a much more triumphant look. The flames also seemed to be glowing, but only because there was another window behind the throne that wasn’t visible from the front, giving light to the flames and silhouetting the king.
---“Hello, my friend. I know what you seek. Your village has been burned to dust, and your people killed. I can give it all back, but you will have to find something for me,” said the king.
---“How did you know I was coming?” asked Reg, ignoring what the king had just said.
---“Oh, we were you pulling out the bricks, and your heavy breathing tipped us off too. I myself am very, very glad for the ‘do not look down’ tip, as if you had looked down, you would have seen my men spying on you sooner or later,” said the king.
---“I’m laughing hard,” explained Reg sarcastically.
---“Me too,” said the king. “Now back to our bargain –“
---“Wait,” interrupted Reg, “I still have one more question.”
---“As you wish,” he replied.
---“Why did not you kill me, back at my town? You obviously saw me, but you left me alone,” asked Reg.
---“I knew only someone in your position would find the cup for me.”
---“What cup?”
---“Well, that just bring us back to our bargain,” said the king. “You see, I am looking for the Opulentia Cup. Whoever has the cup has instant everlasting riches, but getting the cup is very dangerous mission, and none of my soldiers are brave enough to find it for me, and that brings me back my earlier point that nobody except someone with a very strong drive would get the cup for me. That’s where you come in. You know that if you get me the cup I can restore the village, and that’s exactly what you want.”
---“But I do not know that you can restore my town, and then there’s the matter of all the people you killed. Nobody man could ever bring dead to life,” said Reg.
---“Let me show you something,” said the king, and he took a torch and burned a wooden chair to the ground. With the flick of his finger, the chair flashed back to its state before it had gotten burned.
---Reg gasped. “So you can do that for a whole town? And what about the people you killed? Obviously you can’t get them back. So there is no bargain.”
---“Ah, but we did not kill all of your people. We have slaves working in the castle that came from your village, waiting for someone to come along and free them. Did not you notice there was not a village full of bodies lying in the village?”
---“Show me,” said Reg.
---“As you wish, I will take you down to show you myself,” said the king.
---After Reg was satisfied, he agreed to find the cup.
---He was escorted over to the spot where the cup was waiting to be found, where a red leaved tree stood. The tree really looked like a large amount of giant decayed crusty brown earth worms all packed in a bundle.
---“There’s a door in tree,” said a soldier. “Just twist that knot.” He pointed to an unnatural looking bulge in one of the ‘worms’.
---Reg reached out his hand and turned the knot. All in that small little moment, it seemed like all the air on the earth was being sucked into a hole that had just emerged into the tree. Reg went careening into the whole with the wind. The pain was so extremely hard to bare that Reg couldn’t scream. That or the wind just muffled his scream. And then everything was dark.
---Reg woke up to the smell of burning torches, which gave a faint light to the underground room. He was having doubts that he should ever have come down here, but he took a step forward. His foot stepped on some thin hard rod. He took another step. A ‘clicking’ sound echoed through the dark room and something moved quickly from on wall to the other. Reg froze for a couple seconds that seemed like a couple hours, and then took another step forward with another ‘clicking’ sound.
---Light flooded the room, and with it the ability to see all the skeletons of men who had attempted at the cup. He yelled in shock and stumbled backwards when a swinging axe cut off a single nose hair as it flung across the tunnel.
---“I must get up, I must get up,” he thought to himself over and over again. Finally he bought the courage to stand straight up and press on. Reg found himself facing many traps such as trap doors, mechanical arrows and walls closing in, but overtime learned to counter them all with ease. He would sometimes find worms and rats that would give him a quick fright, or maybe a skeleton hanging on the wall, but nothing more than that. So Reg pressed on through this tunneling cave.
---After a long walk he came to a split in the path. On the left there was a sign saying “go this way and die,” but there was the same sign on the left. Reg was sitting there for hours trying to decide which path he would take.
---When five precise hours passed, Reg decided to go down the right path. He took as step forward and a wall slid down blocking the two paths. On it was carved the words, “look up.” Reg looked up. There was a hole in the ceiling that was not there before. He just then realized that either path he would’ve gone down was the wrong choice, and both of the ways he would’ve died. He climbed up through the hole. On a ledge three feet up from the ground was a golden cup with diamonds circling the brim of the cup. It read on it “Opulentia Cup”.
---“At last!” thought Reg. Finally he had found the cup and finished his journey. All he had to do now was take the cup back to the king and get his village back.
---Red lifted the golden cup off of its ledge. As he held it, diamonds, jewels, gold pieces and the like started appearing and filling up the cup. When the treasures reached the brim it stopped. Reg took out a handful to amaze at the beauty of these sparkling bits. As he put them back in, he discovered there wasn’t enough room for it all to fit. The cup magically filled itself back up when some of it was gone.
---“Cool,” said Reg.
---All of the sudden, the earth started shaking. And this was more shaking than you’d thing. You see, when you’re on top of the earth, you’re only experiencing 50% of what it’s like underground, because when you’re deep underground you’ll find yourself a lot more near the cause of the shaking. Reg realized what was happening. He jumped down from the hole and started running as fast as he could. He looked back and saw the ceilings caving in. Everything was a blur. The lights that had activated went out, so he could barely see the booby traps. This made it much harder to dodge them. He was dashing along when swinging axe came hurling down at him. He saw movement in the corner of his eye and looked over. The axe tore off his right cheek. He doubled down in the pain. He turned around. There it was. The cave in that was coming straight towards him. Reg tumbled and crawled backwards in fear.
---But then the same feeling came back as he had when he first entered the cave - all the earth’s air, sucking him through to the surface. The pain was so horrible, but now it felt so good, because he knew it was about to be all over. Reg was coming out to where he should’ve been in the very first place.
---The next thing Reg saw was the king holding the cup, furious that it did not bring the riches it was supposed to bring. He turned to Reg.
---“Boy, you are sure this is the right cup?” asked the king.
“No,” said Reg.
---The king slapped him with his gauntlets. “Get back down there idiot!”
---But the tree was gone. The king yelled in agony.
---“Here! You can have the stupid cup for all I care!” As Reg held it, the treasures started filling up again. The king saw this and snatched it back up with a sneer, but it all disappeared.
---“It seems you interpreted the story wrong,” said Reg with a laugh.
---“KILL HIM!” exclaimed the king.
---“You know if you kill me, you will never get the riches you want. I can give the riches to you, but it has to come from my hands,” said Reg.
---“Show me,” said the king.
---Reg picked up the cup, filled his hand with money and handed it to the king. It did not disappear, but the king was not satisfied.
---“That’s not good enough!” yelled the king. “I need to be the owner!”
---“That’s not possible,” replied Reg.
---“Fine. Keep the cup. Keep the riches. You will have your village and your pieces back, but I still want a lot of it!” he said.
---Reg gave the king one hundred handfuls of the treasure and got his town and people back. He got his dear sister back. He was pronounced king by all the people. Everything was good, until Reg realized that the tyrant king was still at his tyranny.
I'm planning a sequel, hence the "chapter one", and yes, I know the whole ending is lame.
The sun had been peeking its way up through the long, thick blades of dusty grass for hours. The little boy of Beatur had sneaked out of bed early to watch the legendary sunrise of sempre-non. The bedtime stories had told that once every one hundred years on this one day the sun would rise from the south and set in the north. Reg had decided to call the conceived bluff. He had gotten help from his older sister to figure out on what day this event would happen, and finally he was sitting down on the little green hill where the sunrise could only be viewed.
---It was a glorious sight. Rays of scarlet light could be seen slashing through the misty clouds that hovered pleasantly above the sun. You felt as though sitting only but a few inches apart from the sun, seeing the curved beams leap out, trying to escape their own magnificent prison. The sphere of light seemed as though it were dashing up with the speed of all the men on the Earth together, as though it would only take one second for the mass to rise, travel over the whole stretch of land and set, but it still took what seemed like an eternity to come up barely inches from the ground. When you looked at the sun, you were forced to close your burning eyes even as every thought that had come to your mind had told you to keep them open.
---So there was Reg, enjoying his last moments of the semi-darkness before he had to go back home and carry out his own daily day-long chores when his eye-lids dropped down a notch. “No! I can’t be tired! It’s only five hours after midnight! I’ve got a whole day left to stay awake”, he thought. But he couldn’t hold it back. Within seconds, his sleep overcame him.
---Reg woke up behind the hill that he was sitting on, lying on a small pale-sanded beach facing the deep, but not dark, blue rippling lake. He noticed the sun was reflected across the whole body of water, and the sky was not light. Reg suddenly feared that he had slept through the entire day when he noticed an unusual glint in the water. It was not far from shore, so he decided to investigate. He took off his weak footwear and dipped his toe into the water. It was very cold, but Reg thought that like most cases, the water would feel warmer after he got in for thirty seconds, so he gradually waded into the water. The sand in the water felt well clutched between Reg’s toes. Once the water was waist deep, he took a brisk plunge forward under the water. As he approached the object that he saw in the water, the glint faded away and he could see the large prize of his little efforts. It was the blade of a broadsword. On the blade it read “ut exsisto instituo”, which meant “to be found”.
---“The sword!” he thought. “The sword from the bedtime story is here!” Reg had forgotten all about the rest of the legend when he was looking to watch the sun rise in the south. The special rising and setting was all really just to help find the sword, but he did not believe in that part. Although he thought if one part of the story was true, why not the other part be true? After all, the sun did rise in the south, and it was setting in the north as he thought it would.
---He decided to pursue the rest of the legend. He grabbed hold of the sword and swam back to the beach. It had become much darker than it had been before he dived in to get see what was causing the glint. He wanted to go home, but he knew how much trouble he was going to get in because he was gone all day. Somehow he had to get the book that had the legend written in it, and decided the best way to do it was to ask his sister to get it for him. He would wait until she came to the edge of town and call her. So that’s what he did. At one hour after midday she was sweeping the crisp stone road that winded its way in one end of the town and out the other.
---“Hey! Proficia!” he called. She looked around and saw the face of her own little brother. She ran towards him and gave him a quick worried hug.
---“Reg, where have you been? It has been a day and a half since I last saw you! You are not hurt?”
---“No, no, I’m fine. See, I found the sword that is told of in the legend!”
---Proficia gasped when she read the inscription on the blade.
---“I think the whole legend is real!” he said to her. “And the sun! It rose from the south! The whole legend must be true! I think, I think I might be the one who restores the peace!”
---“But how do you do that,” asked Proficia, “when there is not any trouble?”
---And just as she said that an arrow stuck itself into the head of a citizen.
---“Isaac!” someone called out. “Isaac has been shot! We are under attack!”
---Within seconds the scene was in action. Men were falling helplessly to the ground, children were calling for their parents, women were running out of town.
---“There’s trouble now!” yelled Reg over the great sound of clashing swords as he ran into the array of battle.
---“Reg, no! Come back!” yelled his sister after him, but by the time she was finished Reg was already fighting with his newfound sword.
---Konk! Reg was hit with the sword hilt of another as he was fighting.
---Reg gained consciousness on a cold stone surface one hour later. He got up. It was clear to him that no enemy was around. He dusted off his shirt and took in his surroundings. He had been lying on crisp grey stone bricks with rubble and bodies around him. What was left of the houses was black fragile sheets of wood. You could just lay your finger on the wood and the whole house would fall apart.
And then it dawned on him. This was his very own home, Beatur. He started to feel very heavy and his tears parted from his flat cheeks like a missile launching and exploding as it hits a building, with the force of the missile propelling him back. As his tears fell to the ground, you could hear the air making its way around the cold white liquid. They came down as heavy and frequent as you would find in a hurricane.
---“I must find who did this!” he thought to himself, so he got up, held his sword tight in his hand and started running after the tracks in the grass. He went on for about two hours when a rough stone citadel started looming over a hill.
---“This must be the place,” said Reg to himself.
---He decided he had to somehow sneak in to get a word with the leader, who he suspected to be at the top tower. Some of the large stone bricks were loose and Reg pulled them out to create his own footholds. After thirty minutes of climbing, he finally came to the most highest tower window. He peeked in, finding five armed men looking down at him. They grabbed Reg’s arms and hauled him into the castle.
---The king was sitting in a grey throne before him. The throne had sharp swirl patterns on it, with black flame rising above the throne which seemed to actually move if you weren’t looking directly at it, giving the king a much more triumphant look. The flames also seemed to be glowing, but only because there was another window behind the throne that wasn’t visible from the front, giving light to the flames and silhouetting the king.
---“Hello, my friend. I know what you seek. Your village has been burned to dust, and your people killed. I can give it all back, but you will have to find something for me,” said the king.
---“How did you know I was coming?” asked Reg, ignoring what the king had just said.
---“Oh, we were you pulling out the bricks, and your heavy breathing tipped us off too. I myself am very, very glad for the ‘do not look down’ tip, as if you had looked down, you would have seen my men spying on you sooner or later,” said the king.
---“I’m laughing hard,” explained Reg sarcastically.
---“Me too,” said the king. “Now back to our bargain –“
---“Wait,” interrupted Reg, “I still have one more question.”
---“As you wish,” he replied.
---“Why did not you kill me, back at my town? You obviously saw me, but you left me alone,” asked Reg.
---“I knew only someone in your position would find the cup for me.”
---“What cup?”
---“Well, that just bring us back to our bargain,” said the king. “You see, I am looking for the Opulentia Cup. Whoever has the cup has instant everlasting riches, but getting the cup is very dangerous mission, and none of my soldiers are brave enough to find it for me, and that brings me back my earlier point that nobody except someone with a very strong drive would get the cup for me. That’s where you come in. You know that if you get me the cup I can restore the village, and that’s exactly what you want.”
---“But I do not know that you can restore my town, and then there’s the matter of all the people you killed. Nobody man could ever bring dead to life,” said Reg.
---“Let me show you something,” said the king, and he took a torch and burned a wooden chair to the ground. With the flick of his finger, the chair flashed back to its state before it had gotten burned.
---Reg gasped. “So you can do that for a whole town? And what about the people you killed? Obviously you can’t get them back. So there is no bargain.”
---“Ah, but we did not kill all of your people. We have slaves working in the castle that came from your village, waiting for someone to come along and free them. Did not you notice there was not a village full of bodies lying in the village?”
---“Show me,” said Reg.
---“As you wish, I will take you down to show you myself,” said the king.
---After Reg was satisfied, he agreed to find the cup.
---He was escorted over to the spot where the cup was waiting to be found, where a red leaved tree stood. The tree really looked like a large amount of giant decayed crusty brown earth worms all packed in a bundle.
---“There’s a door in tree,” said a soldier. “Just twist that knot.” He pointed to an unnatural looking bulge in one of the ‘worms’.
---Reg reached out his hand and turned the knot. All in that small little moment, it seemed like all the air on the earth was being sucked into a hole that had just emerged into the tree. Reg went careening into the whole with the wind. The pain was so extremely hard to bare that Reg couldn’t scream. That or the wind just muffled his scream. And then everything was dark.
---Reg woke up to the smell of burning torches, which gave a faint light to the underground room. He was having doubts that he should ever have come down here, but he took a step forward. His foot stepped on some thin hard rod. He took another step. A ‘clicking’ sound echoed through the dark room and something moved quickly from on wall to the other. Reg froze for a couple seconds that seemed like a couple hours, and then took another step forward with another ‘clicking’ sound.
---Light flooded the room, and with it the ability to see all the skeletons of men who had attempted at the cup. He yelled in shock and stumbled backwards when a swinging axe cut off a single nose hair as it flung across the tunnel.
---“I must get up, I must get up,” he thought to himself over and over again. Finally he bought the courage to stand straight up and press on. Reg found himself facing many traps such as trap doors, mechanical arrows and walls closing in, but overtime learned to counter them all with ease. He would sometimes find worms and rats that would give him a quick fright, or maybe a skeleton hanging on the wall, but nothing more than that. So Reg pressed on through this tunneling cave.
---After a long walk he came to a split in the path. On the left there was a sign saying “go this way and die,” but there was the same sign on the left. Reg was sitting there for hours trying to decide which path he would take.
---When five precise hours passed, Reg decided to go down the right path. He took as step forward and a wall slid down blocking the two paths. On it was carved the words, “look up.” Reg looked up. There was a hole in the ceiling that was not there before. He just then realized that either path he would’ve gone down was the wrong choice, and both of the ways he would’ve died. He climbed up through the hole. On a ledge three feet up from the ground was a golden cup with diamonds circling the brim of the cup. It read on it “Opulentia Cup”.
---“At last!” thought Reg. Finally he had found the cup and finished his journey. All he had to do now was take the cup back to the king and get his village back.
---Red lifted the golden cup off of its ledge. As he held it, diamonds, jewels, gold pieces and the like started appearing and filling up the cup. When the treasures reached the brim it stopped. Reg took out a handful to amaze at the beauty of these sparkling bits. As he put them back in, he discovered there wasn’t enough room for it all to fit. The cup magically filled itself back up when some of it was gone.
---“Cool,” said Reg.
---All of the sudden, the earth started shaking. And this was more shaking than you’d thing. You see, when you’re on top of the earth, you’re only experiencing 50% of what it’s like underground, because when you’re deep underground you’ll find yourself a lot more near the cause of the shaking. Reg realized what was happening. He jumped down from the hole and started running as fast as he could. He looked back and saw the ceilings caving in. Everything was a blur. The lights that had activated went out, so he could barely see the booby traps. This made it much harder to dodge them. He was dashing along when swinging axe came hurling down at him. He saw movement in the corner of his eye and looked over. The axe tore off his right cheek. He doubled down in the pain. He turned around. There it was. The cave in that was coming straight towards him. Reg tumbled and crawled backwards in fear.
---But then the same feeling came back as he had when he first entered the cave - all the earth’s air, sucking him through to the surface. The pain was so horrible, but now it felt so good, because he knew it was about to be all over. Reg was coming out to where he should’ve been in the very first place.
---The next thing Reg saw was the king holding the cup, furious that it did not bring the riches it was supposed to bring. He turned to Reg.
---“Boy, you are sure this is the right cup?” asked the king.
“No,” said Reg.
---The king slapped him with his gauntlets. “Get back down there idiot!”
---But the tree was gone. The king yelled in agony.
---“Here! You can have the stupid cup for all I care!” As Reg held it, the treasures started filling up again. The king saw this and snatched it back up with a sneer, but it all disappeared.
---“It seems you interpreted the story wrong,” said Reg with a laugh.
---“KILL HIM!” exclaimed the king.
---“You know if you kill me, you will never get the riches you want. I can give the riches to you, but it has to come from my hands,” said Reg.
---“Show me,” said the king.
---Reg picked up the cup, filled his hand with money and handed it to the king. It did not disappear, but the king was not satisfied.
---“That’s not good enough!” yelled the king. “I need to be the owner!”
---“That’s not possible,” replied Reg.
---“Fine. Keep the cup. Keep the riches. You will have your village and your pieces back, but I still want a lot of it!” he said.
---Reg gave the king one hundred handfuls of the treasure and got his town and people back. He got his dear sister back. He was pronounced king by all the people. Everything was good, until Reg realized that the tyrant king was still at his tyranny.