Birth Chp 1-2

With this document I a trying to find out if my writing is good. I welcome any and all comments as to how to improve this story. I would also be interested in finding a publisher, if you think I can write. There are some 70 more pages that end the first book in a series (The (Re)Birth of a God) that I have been working on. This is chapter 1 and 2 together to introduce 2 of 3 antagonists in the book. Thanks for reading and for commenting. DJO

THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS THE PHASED BUBBLE FOR SURVIVAL WILL ENDURE THE TESTS TIME LOVES TO APPLY BUT THE WAY OF THE KRAFT WILL LEAK OUT THROUGH BLOOD IN THE DARKNESS OF THE LIGHT BY THE FIRE OF FURY WITH SWORDS CROSSED AND BORDERS BLURRY THE AGES WILL COME TO YOUTH’S CHAGRIN ONE WILL TEETER AFTER ALL HAVE BEEN PICKED THE SAVIOR OF THE COUNCIL IS THE ONE THAT MUST BE FOUND A NEW LIGHT THAT IS OLD WILL DIMM ALL OTHERS Tsrantin raised a dust-covered hand to an equally dust-covered forehead in order to shade his dust-covered eyes as he looked balefully at the white-hot sun just starting down from its crest. How could anyone live in such a dry place and not just go mad! He smacked his dry lips together and discovered that the water he had just used to rinse the sand out of his mouth had been wasted. The sand was either still there or had replaced itself in short order. Grinding away at the irritating kernels of sand, he continued walking down the dirt road. Sweat ran down his body like rainwater, taking some of the sand with it. One drop threatened his left eye and without thought Tsrantin rubbed the eye, causing tiny grains of sand stuck under the lid to grate against the eyeball. With an indecipherable curse he stopped and closed his eyes to let them tear the dirt out. The unwanted break was too much for him to resist and he again began to curse The Council that had brought him into this situation. Of course it was The Council’s fault. This ‘search’ of theirs was becoming ludicrous. The time and energy spent waiting and searching for the ‘sign’ was alone bad enough. But the ‘sign’, as it is always referred to, had no description. Nobody even knew what they were looking for, let alone how they would recognize it. But when the Council says “Jump!” you jump, and the Council had said “Tsrantin, jump!” and here he was. The pain in his eye began to give a little and Tsrantin dared to open them to a squint. The white-hot light of the sun was like a knife in the hands of an over-worked butcher trapped in his brain. Squinting his eyes even tighter together, he ground his teeth against the sand with a vengeance and stomped on down the road.

The scraggly trees that lined the dirt road were only recognizable as trees because of the dried and curled leaves that clung to the thin branches in the desperate and futile hope of receiving water. On both sides of the road, behind the trees, was nothing but parched and cracked fields with bits of last year’s crop sticking out of the dirt like the bones of the dead. The fields went on as far as the eye could see, flat and featureless. The bones too. The road was well traveled, although there was not a house to be seen in any direction. It was just a track really, with two wheel ruts on either side of a long island of brown scraggly grass that ran down the middle, again, as far as the eye could see. There were large holes as well as large rocks that interrupted the smoothness of the tracks. Tsrantin could imagine that with a wagon he would have bitten through his tongue within the first five minutes. As it was, his knees and robe were both shredded before he had discovered his feet’s natural attraction to said rocks and holes. Tsrantin dared another look into the pale blue sky and saw that the vultures were still circling overhead. They had been there in the same place for the last three days, never moving outside of the circle that they drew in the sky. They were too high up to see clearly, but Tsrantin knew what they were and why they were there. He spat again in an attempt to rid his mouth of some of the sand as he cursed The Council again. Three days! He had been wandering the flat prairie land now for three days and had not seen a damned thing. The few people that lived here were unfriendly and hard. They were superstitious and poor. They had no future but to hope that they would survive another year. The way the sun beat down on them, Tsrantin thought that the survival of a week was almost an impossibility. Three days ago he had been Dimension Doored here from the chambers of The Council. It had been recommended that he come in the early morning hours because of the heat. Upon his arrival, he thought that he had somehow had a temporal accident. There was no way that the land would already be baking itself before the sun came up. But after a quick check around and a couple of location spells, he knew without a doubt where and when he was. The Flatlands, as they were called. It was here that the realms received the food that they needed to survive. It was the only place where war was never allowed. That had been agreed upon by all the city-states of the realms after its destruction over 4000 years ago in the Red-Robe Wars that had left the entire realm without food for almost two years. During these two years, famine, plague and anarchy had ruled the lands, cutting the population of the known world down to about an fifth of what it once had been. The nearest town was Agrinlan, and it was some 50 km away, at the beginning of the road. Behind him, some 200 km south, were the Lower-Jaw Mountain ranges that ran in a half moon from east to west, cutting the entire continent in a third at the southern point. This was the southern point because some 25,000 km to the north, beyond even the Greater Worm River, were the UpperJaw Mountain ranges. These formed a half moon pointed in the opposite direction as their southern counterparts and cut across the continent at the northern point. These two ranges were then, on the western edge of the continent, joined together by the Inferno Hills, which sat on top of Krammar’s Cliff. Krammar’s Cliff is a shear 300 meter drop to the ocean below. This effectively cut a huge 26,000 km diameter bowl out of the natural climate system. Supposedly, the weather between the mountain ranges was mild and good for growing all sorts of crops. But for the last two years, the southwestern area had been experiencing an unusually hefty drought. Evidently the southern Flatlands were faring no better. Tsrantin saw, up ahead on the left side of the road, a small grove of almost dead trees. They had just as many leaves as all the other trees (that is, almost none), but their branches seemed to have weaved themselves together to form something resembling shade. Tsrantin stumbled towards it, the thought of relief from the blazing orb overhead pushing all other thoughts and concerns out of his head. Roots stuck out of the ground here so high that Tsrantin, of course, tripped over the first one that he came to. It was OK, though, because he landed inside the circle of shade that the trees provided and was amazed at the drop in temperature. The air went from hot, heavy and unbearable

to hot, heavy and slightly-better-then-unbearable and Tsrantin closed his eyes to rest. That lasted only about ten minutes though . Suddenly he felt a burning sensation as the shade’s border moved with the sun. Moving unwillingly and with the groans of a dying man, Tsrantin pulled his knees up under himself and began crawling towards the center of the shade. He was forced to open his eyes to navigate between the roots. Then he stopped in amazement. He had seen starving men before, how their skin was molded to the bones, how there were no soft lines on their bodies, how their skin was so parched and chapped with an unhealthy color to it. He saw it again now as he looked at the earth between the roots, parched and cracked, without tone or color. He closed his eyes and felt his way blindly to the middle to rest. But without the constant need to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and the uncomfortableness of the sun momentarily set aside, Tsrantin had time to think. Immediately his thoughts went to his present situation and how he had gotten into it. It was a little bit more complicated than a simple order from The Council. Gods, why had he talked to that man, Barthow the council had named him, in the tavern. Of all the dumb things he had done in his life, that was the only one that he really regretted. If he had just ignored him in his own misery, then he would not be in this unbearable situation. About six months ago he had finished his shift in the Search and was recovering in his local bar. He had, of course, not found anything and had had to write a report for The Council the next morning. The trip had not only been futile, but he had been robbed, attacked and basically mishandled by almost everyone he had encountered. Some trips were like that, and everyone was used to having them, although during and directly afterwards it was not so easy to have such a flippant attitude. He was only a half hour back and was still too sober to have forgotten how it was. He had just ordered his fifth brand and rice beer mixture that he liked so much when a man sat down at the table before him. Tsrantin turned slightly blurred eyes in his direction, but it took awhile for him to focus on the face. He had never seen him before. That was not, however, unusual. Most of the people who came through the doors to this bar were strangers to him and that was why he had chosen it. He didn’t want to be disturbed. "Have ya lost schomthin’?" Tsrantin slurred as his head wobbled back and forth on a brandyneck. ‘Maybe he was drunk enough’ was the only thought that seemed to make any sense in his head. "You come from your Duty?" asked the stranger with a voice like the whispering night wind. Somehow he made the word ‘duty’ sound almost as a joke. Tsrantin thought about smiling, but that was too much work at the moment when coupled with the attempt at keeping the stranger’s face in focus. Instead he replied with a simple grunt of assent and took another pull from his beer. He hoped he gave the impression that he wanted to be alone. Whether it worked or not, he would never know because the stranger seemed to have his own agenda. It didn’t include his wants for the evening. "Ahh!" said the stranger, "A particularly hard one I see. Were did they drop you off this time? By the Northern Horse Tribes? Or the Fish-Island pirates? Or maybe in the Flatlands?" Tsrantin didn’t say anything. If he answered it would only encourage the stranger and he would have to spend the whole evening with him. But the stranger was not to be deterred from his plan of action. "Tsja, I guess that it really doesn’t matter were you were, I assume the Search must continue. Or did you find the Sign?" The stranger left the question hanging in the air like he expected an answer. What for? Everyone knew what the answer was and nobody asked anymore. The Duty was just that, a duty. Everyone had to participate, but people just didn’t speak about it anymore. Oh, sure, sometime at the beginning there had always been talks about it. You could go to any library and check out the old texts over the subject. But after a few thousand years, you tended to leave the unanswerable questions unasked. A ridiculous amount of time had already elapsed and the stranger still waited for an answer. Was he a dim wit? What did he expect, a different answer? Tsrantin grew nervous under the

stranger’s stare and began scratching at imagined itches in order to have something to do. Finally he could take it no longer and blurted out "Whas’n tha woorld’a whaant’a nows? ‘Course ah idn’t find’a shign! If’n I’ad, ah shoore wudn’t’ee ‘ere, wud ah?" The stranger smiled and bowed his head in acknowledgment. "You are, of course, absolutely correct. If you had, you wouldn’t be here." The stranger seemed to contemplate a sudden thought that had occurred to him. Then, as if it was a question to himself that he happened to speak out loud, he asked "I wonder what you would do if you found the sign?" After a short pause in which the stranger seemed to be thinking of an answer to his own question, he shook his head as if waking from a dream and looked around the bar at the other people pulled up to tables in small groups and talking quietly together. Finally his eyes fell onto Tsrantin and stayed put. There was a moment of silence as Tsrantin tried to read the stranger’s stone-like expression. Then the stranger said, "Sorry to have bothered you, sir. Have a pleasant evening." Bending at his waist in apology as he rose from the chair, his face seemed to show no trace of the words that had just been uttered. They seemed to say, ‘Think about it.’ though Tsrantin could not, for the life of him, think of what it was that he should be thinking about. The stranger was already halfway across the room as his sluggish mind finally registered that he had gotten up and left. With a grunt he turned back to nurse his beer and forget the memory of the Search. The next morning as he opened his eyes, though, he had only one thought that seemed to come through the fog of the morning after. ‘What would he do if he did find the sign?’ Putting the unanswerable, or more importantly, irrelevant question out of his head, he got himself ready to face the day and wrote his report for The Council. He had a meeting with the Search office and then he wanted to get back to his studies. There just wasn’t time for such silly questions. But after the, as usual, dry and boring meeting at the Search office and as he sat in front of the pile of books that constituted his studies, the question surfaced again. Pushing one of the tomes to the side, he placed the chin of his still slightly foggy head into his hand and thought. There had to be an answer to the question. There was, without a doubt, a protocol for such an event. Undoubtedly, he had had to learn it, but with the years of no hope behind him, he had forgotten it, if in fact he, at one time, had known it. Sighing, he got up and went over to the shelf on the far wall of his office. Somewhere on this shelf was the ‘travel guide’ book that every searcher was supposed to take with him on his search. He had laid his here some thirty years before, as it took up too much room in his pack. The shelves were simple boards nailed into the wood walls, over stacked with books and parchments and other odds and ends. There was a sack of rocks that he had found interesting some five years ago. He had collected them during a Search, though which one he couldn’t say. Through the years, though, he had simply moved the sack from one end of the room to the other as he found more important things to do. The shelves here were the usual last stop resting place for things that were still too valuable to throw away. He searched through the shelves, moving a small statue of a dog here, a wooden tablet there, a miniature set of encyclopedias from fifty years ago and on and on. Finally, stuck between an anthill farm and a book of customs from the northern Horse tribes, he found it. The thin book was no bigger than a normal book made from thin paper, but bound in treated leather so that it could survive severe water damage. Outside of that, the book was bound with a magic word to keep non-magic users from opening it. Thumbing through it, he found, on the last page, a paragraph on what a searcher should do in the case of the discovery of the sign. "In the case of the lucky Searcher who finds the Sign, he should immediately report the find to The Council and prepare for a life of ease. This Searcher is then relieved of all duties to The Council and the citizens of the Phased Cities for the rest of his life. From this point on, he will be cared for like a king. The goal of every Searcher is thus, the rewards reaped for the utmost of duty."

Ryan took the shiny metal lid off of the garbage can and held it in front of his chest like a shield. It would do perfect. This time, however, he reminded himself to put the lid back on the can when he was done. Last time he had gotten in real bad trouble because he had forgotten. Then he turned and ran quickly to the back yard. Today was the day. He ran past a broom that was leaning against the wall of the shed in the back yard. Skidding to a stop, Ryan spun around on his left foot, barely catching his balance from the quick change of direction, and snatched the broom up. He grabbed the end by the bristles and took a couple of swings with it. "Too hard to control," he thought, and he put it back in its place, almost exactly how he had found it. He needed a sword, but one that fit him. Then he remembered that his father kept some useful stuff in the shed. But he wasn’t allowed there. He looked at the door of the shed that was made of flimsy wooden panels, it was not built to keep anything out but rain, and that ability was limited. If he went into the shed, his father would be very angry. That had already happened once, and Ryan’s behind still hurt with the thought of the spanking he had received. But today was an especially special day. He could not afford to be presented to the knight’s order with shabby equipment. Stealing a look at the house to be sure that nobody saw him, he dashed through the door of the shed. It was dark inside and he had to stop for a second to let his eyes adjust to it. There was no light in the shed, because you could see everything with the door open. But Ryan had no other choice. He had to keep the door closed to prevent his father from seeing him. To the left was a workbench that was piled high with scraps of wood and metal that his father worked with almost every day. Straight in front of him there was an old black stove for heating the shed in winter when his father had to work on something. It was dirty and slightly to the left. The pipe that led from the top of it to the roof was everything but straight. Ryan could look at it for hours and laugh the whole time because it was so funny looking. But he didn’t have time for that now. He had to get his stuff together. To the right of where he stood, just inside of the door, was a pile of wood, some of it worked on and some of it not. Running over to this pile, he began digging though it, trying pieces and tossing them aside when they weren’t exactly what he wanted. After about five minutes of digging through the pile, after he had found two splinters in his left hand and jammed the pointy finger of his right hand and he had dug to the dirt floor of the shed, he discovered that nothing would work. Sitting back on his heels, he looked around in the dim light that seeped through the cracks in the walls. Along these walls were different things that his father had hung up out of the way. Saws and shears, and other things that Ryan could not name. There was, in the far corner, a ladder that he had never seen before. It led up into the darkness of what looked to be a loft of sorts. Curiosity overriding the time pressure he was under, he scrambled to his feet and went to the ladder. It was made of rough wood that had only been polished smooth where it had been stepped on by his father. Nails stuck out of it at odd angles as if his father had hammered it together with a blindfold on. That thought made Ryan giggle and he had to clamp his hand over his mouth. Suddenly he remembered where he was and that he didn’t have time for imaginings. Carefully, he began picking his way up the ladder, avoiding the nails and keeping his hands only on the smooth worn spots. At the top of the ladder he looked down, just to see how high up he was. There was a moment of vertigo that thrilled through his body at the height and he gripped the ladder just a little tighter. Forcing his eyes back above him, he saw a door stuck in the ceiling that he had never seen before. He took one more rung of the ladder so that his head was bent under the door and pushed with his shoulder. The door moved, but it was extremely heavy. He pushed harder and, slowly at first, it opened wider. He paused for a second to regain his bearings and felt the cool clean breeze of a well-ventilated enclosure. He pushed again and finally got enough room between the door and the floor of the room above to stick his right arm through. Prying the rest of the way up the ladder, he snaked his body through the opening with the door painfully rubbing along his back. As he finally pulled his foot

through the opening, the door slammed shut behind him. The silence that followed seemed to speak of things unseen. There was laughter just beyond the silence that he could almost hear. The thunder of hooves on wet dirt and the ring of swords clashing with one another. There was the beautiful song of a woman as she washed in a river. But the sounds were not really there, Ryan couldn’t hear them, but he could. Suddenly he remembered why he was here and shook his head to clear it. He cast around with his eyes in search of possible swords, but only found a wooden box in the corner. He crawled to it, being careful not to scratch his knees. It was long, almost as long as him, but thin. He would have trouble trying to fit into it. There was a clasp on it, but it was already open, so his father was not trying to keep him out. He pulled the clasp and pushed the lid open. Inside he found several wooden sticks, ‘like fence posts or something,’ he thought. They were of different sizes, some as long as the box and some as short as his forearm. He reached in and took the longest one out of the box. He tried to swing it, but it was so heavy that he only managed to drag it along the floor. He put it back and took out a smaller stick. This one was about as long as his leg and fit perfectly in his hand. He could swing it comfortably with one hand. It was perfect. He got back down on his hands and knees, shut the box and crawled back to the door. He pulled on it, and got it to move, but that was all. He put the stick down so that he could use both hands, but he still couldn’t open it. He was stuck. As he sat there thinking about what he should do, he realized that to be late for this appointment could mean that he was not invited to the knight’s table. For the first time, he became nervous. Here he was, the new hero of the kingdom of Darth and stuck in an attic. "This won’t do!" Ryan said to himself and stood up with his new sword in hand and thought about the shed under him and disappeared with a light clap of thunder and a wisp of smoke.