Chapter One

In which Cain meets a conqueror

Chapter Two

In which the forest is described

Chapter Three

In which Cain meets with the children

Chapter Four

In which Jarrod flies to the desert’s edge

Chapter Five

In which Cain is granted a power

Chapter Six

In which the forest alludes to Cain’s future

Chapter Seven

In which Cain is born and born again

Chapter Eight

In which Cain travels to the resting place

Chapter Nine

In which Cain is reunited with Abel

* * *

ONWARDS TO THE SECOND ARC

There was an obvious mount of dirt raised up off the forest floor – obvious only because Cain was drawn to it, for it was just the same as almost all the rest of the soil where ages old roots twisted through the dirt making tiny hills and gullies almost in mockery of the great plains to the west.

So Cain looked down on this ordinary mound of dirt, and he recognised it as a grave only because no grass grew there. He recognised it as a grave only because he had watched someone die there.

A crackle of leaves and twigs, the rustle of underbrush being moved aside, made him turn. Through the branches of a low bush padded the great lion, king of desert and jungle – his mane was not the sky here, it was not the canopy. He had none of that power in the forest. Cain held that over him, and when he straightened his back, he seemed to stand taller than the trees, and the crown of his head hid high in the clouds.

King Lion did not raise his head too high. He stared at the ground as he stepped up to Cain’s side. They didn’t make eye contact. The King’s great head was behind Cain already as he said, “Good evening, Cain.”

Cain did not return the sentiment. His voice turned steel and he said, “Does the forest know you’re here?”

“Of course,” said King Lion, “I never left.”

And his mane became a giant flame, cracking with electricity, and his entire body turned from tawny fur to the colour of the earth.

His tendons stood out obvious under his skin, gnarled and knotted like the roots of the birch trees in the forest.

Cain gasped at his transformation, shocked more that King Lion was able to hold his lion’s form while he stood there, one with the forest.

The king of the desert and the jungle roared, and it was a sound so full of sorrow that Cain began to weep.

“What does it mean?” Cain asked the king.

“I did not conquer the desert or the jungle, boy lord of the forest,” he said.

“You didn’t?” His surprised could not be masked by control, and his rage at being called a boy simmered just under the surface of his gaze.

“I inherited it from the previous King Lion, Cain.”

There had never been a previous King Lion. Cain knew that. Jarrod had told him so. None had come before Jarrod. None had come before Lion. None had come before any of the greater beasts of the world.

“Do you think I am a liar, Cain?”

Cain looked down at the earthy beast with a mane of cold fire and lightning. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know why you’re here, for starters.”

The lion sighed, a deep sound in the lower part of his throat, almost in his belly, and Cain stood back, thinking at first that it was a growl. “I shan’t tell you the truth then, boy, for you surely wouldn’t believe a word of it.”

“Tell me the truth of why you want the forest, then,” Cain said.

Lion laughed, and stood up out of his skin, fully human. Soil slid from his skin and muscles, and before him stood the most spectacular man that Cain had ever seen, wearing only a long white tunic spun perfectly from magic.

“I do not want the forest. The forest belongs to my brother,” he said – he grinned large, and he still had all his lion’s teeth – and then he continued, “I want the land of men under my control, brother.”

He said this last word with all the sardonicism he could manage.

Cain stuttered over his words, barely managing to begin speaking at all. “I- I don’t know what  to- to say. Where is Jarrod?”

“He’s gone, Cain. I told him to leave. You need to understand the truth, brother.”

There’s a pause that doesn’t last long. Cain speaks the true name of King Lion, and the man smiled broadly; a happy smile that was too infectious for Cain to ignore, and he had to smile back.

“Take me through the forest, little brother,” said Abel.

“To the lands of men?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Who is buried here?”

That made him pause. “My own predecessor.”

“King Lion,” Cain whispered.

The sun began to rise over the grove of birch trees, and Cain sat on the mound of dirt with his older brother.

“How did you survive?”

“I never died. I became one with the forest.”

“And now you are one with the desert and the jungle.”

“I am one with the world. And you can be too.”

* * *

END ARC ONE

Of course, Cain did not know where he was travelling. He let instinct guide him to the place he had felt in his dreams, to the place where King Lion had touched that baby.

He dropped to his knees, clutching his head. Watching the great big lion lick that baby while the world burned pained him, though the image existed only in his mind.

Who was that baby? he wondered. It was a mystery to him, truly. He did not know that the grave which he sought was that of his baby brother, whom he had killed with the fire of his birth.

It may not have affected him anyway. Jarrod was Cain’s only familial connection after the forest which Cain knew he had to have grown from.

He took step after step. Roots pulled out of the ground and swiped at his ankles, attempting to deter him, but it was as though the forest didn’t want him to really fail.

In the past, when he had been against the forest’s will, it had readily yanked him off his feet. This… this was not a full attempt to hold him back, and Cain stepped up his speed and began to -

He walked on, and on, but he couldn’t run. He could barely leap. He tried, and found that his hip ached terribly, and he had to begin to hunch over.

The backs of his hands tingled, and when he looked down at them, he recognised his body was aging madly. Wrinkles formed, and liver spots dotted his forearms.

He let out a whimper, and heard his voice crack under the pressure of centuries.

TURN BACK NOW, commanded the voice of the forest.

“I need to know,” Cain whispered.

TURN BACK NOW, it commanded again.

Cain pulled one of Jarrod’s feathers out of his pocket.

“I wish, I wish to be free of this curse of old age,” Cain said.

A minute passed, and the feather dried up, and as it did, he exhaled heavily. The world began to turn again, and the pressure on his legs alleviated, and he turned his power against the forest and began to run.

Turn back now.

turn back now.

turn.

back.

The forest’s voice weakened as Cain stepped into the grove of birch trees. This place had been untouched for years, he could tell. No animals trod here. But some animals didn’t need to tread on the ground to travel.

It was definitely the place from his dreams, but he had no idea where the large tree was that he had been trapped within.

He began to work his way toward the centre of the grove, but he barely took a single step before a great wind picked up and began to push him back toward his home.

“I am Cain Crowson, and I command this forest, and it is my wish to pass through this place untouched by your foul magics!” he yelled.

And he immediately regretted his command as he felt the searing heat against his thigh as both the feathers in his pocket burnt at once, drying out their magic.

A great lightning bolt landed on Cain then, falling out of the sky as though by divine providence. There was no warning thunder clap, and so Cain screamed in fright as his clothes were burned from his person and he was left surrounded by a radiant glow.

And when he opened his eyes, it was day, for he wished it to be so. And there was a trail of light weaving through the trees to where he now knew his baby brother lay in wait.

Cain clamours for comfort, waking with a sudden outburst from his dreams. Lion stalked him through the woods and he stood imprisoned within a tree, unable to move away.

Jarrod was nowhere to be seen. The old crow wasn’t flying high in the sky, in front of the moon or anywhere, and there was no glint of his shiny black beak in any of the trees surrounding the clearing.

In truth, Cain had no idea where Jarrod roosted overnight, or whether he slept at all. It was not often that he woke in the middle of the night, and usually when he did, it was Jarrod who was rousing him.

Cain struggled to remember his dream. What had happened?

He’d been standing in the forest, but he’d been trapped inside a tree. Or he had been a tree, and he could see a baby, and the whole world had burst into flames when he looked down at that baby, and he could feel searing hatred charring his flesh and then a great big man came up to them and he could tell that it was Lion looking down at him, but then he was standing outside and the man was a lion then and he was licking the baby’s head and the baby faded away into the soil.

He jumped out of his bed and raised his arms above his head. The flowers rose up on thick vines, curling around his legs and pulling his pyjamas off, and the boy-king of the forest stood naked in his bedroom clearing.

The moonlight clothed him in perfect white, and when he scrunched his eyes up tight, he felt the clothes becoming real on his skin, flowing about his body. He touched one of the blue flowers growing by the bed post, and he placed his whole hand on his shirt, watching as it turned sky blue.

He repeated the action with his pants and watched them turn into brand new blue jeans.

He’d mastered the magic of clothing himself easily, and Jarrod had been proud, calling down a brilliant lightning strike to clothe Cain in light for a week so that the whole forest would know he was king.

Jarrod had slept all that week, so tired was he from calling down lightning from clear skies.

Cain stopped smiling at the memories. There was work for him to be doing.

The forest wasn’t that forbidding at night, even though the children of the forest never ventured between the trees. Those children who had grown up had grown into the beasts of the forest, and those who grew up even older would turn into great trees that would sprout many younglings who would then populate the clearings with the other children.

That was what Cain knew. In fact, it was what he had experienced. He conversed with the beasts of the forest regularly, and he knew each of them by name, and by the face of the child whom they had once been in what was practically another life.

But it was not what Cain felt. Stepping through the wall of lavender felt like he was committing an awful sin against the forest. The lavender seemed to scratch at his arms, knowing what he was planning to do.

The forest laid silent while Cain prepared to find his brother’s grave.

The forest wept all the way from the sky to the thick, soft bedding of leaves on damp soil.

The tallest, oldest tree – which sat at the furthest corner of the forest, nestled in against the elbow of a great river, across which lay the lands of men – creaked and rustled in the wet weather, almost seeming to stretch its limbs to their very extremities, shaking individual leaves of water as it rolled down through the foliage.

Its name was Herman, and it was the father of all the creatures in the forest. Its oldest son, Jarrod, sat in the highest fork, cawing at the sky. A few seconds later would come the crash of thunder, and lightning would break the sky in two parts.

His wings were shiny and soft, and Herman creaked in appreciation of Jarrod’s crow magic.

A final caw, the loudest, brought down lightning on Herman’s tallest leaf, and it lit up in flames as the rain stopped.

Herman shook, and the flames spread.

Jarrod flapped his wings at the flame, and they grew. He cawed, calling down another lightning bolt from the last clouds, and they set Herman’s entire body alight.

Herman creaked in pain and anguish, and Jarrod sang a mournful song as he watched his father die.

In the ashes, Jarrod watched a tiny man form – just a child, Jarrod was sure, though he had never seen one.

He pulled his feathers back onto his shoulders and stood up as a man himself, and he leaned over to pick up the baby. The baby was perfectly bald at birth. Jarrod took a handful of red hot embers from the surface of Herman’s grave and he smeared the red ashes over the baby’s head, and from there grew the most beautiful blonde hair, radiant as the sun.

“Lion,” Jarrod’s already hoarse voice croaked. It would be years before he had a world-weary hunch, before he would need to lean on a stick to walk as a human for any long period of time. It would be years and years again before he would lose all faith in the tiny human in his arms.

Lion grew up to be courageous and mighty. Each year, on his birthday, Jarrod would walk through the forest with him, and Lion would find a beautiful tree. It was his special gift that he could always find the oldest, most powerful tree.

And with a mighty death scream, Jarrod would bring down a bolt of soundless lightning, vaporising the tree, leaving in its wake a small man-child, and Lion would name them.

It was his eighteenth birthday when Lion birthed Cain. He had been greedy, and he had stalked the forest in the weeks before his birthday finding the perfect target.

The largest birch tree in the entire forest was large because two trees had grown perfectly together.

And it was the twin targets that Lion decided he would like to take down.

So on his eighteenth birthday, Jarrod called down a bolt of lightning on the twin trees. The first of them was vaporised, leaving a perfect little boy behind, but the other was lit from the embers of the first, and though it burned quickly, it burned imperfectly.

Lion stepped into the wreckage of those twin trees and smiled at what he saw. A tiny little boy on one side, and his twin, dead by his brother’s unholy fire.

“You’ve done a wrong thing,” Jarrod had said.

Lion continued to smile a toothy smile, brushing his fingers through his long blonde mane of hair. “Abel,” he said, kissing the burnt child on the forehead.

The sun rose high over the clearing as Jarrod flew in from the west.

“Where were you, old friend?” Cain called out as Jarrod closed in.

Jarrod cawed loudly, swooping down to land. “I was surveying the desert, young one. The King no longer camps there.”

“And why is that?”

“I cannot be certain why, but he left not long before the dawn.”

Cain thought about this for a moment and sat down on the edge of his bed. Jarrod hopped, flapped once, and landed on one of the corner bed posts.

“I have a gift for you, Cain,” Jarrod said, and he cawed once more, louder than sound, so loud that Cain could still hear it all even when he blocked his ears, and the echo in the clearing lasted, the sound bouncing off the trunks of trees, all the wind stopping to listen to Jarrod’s greatest, most powerful feat.

When Cain opened his eyes, he was on his knees by the bed, and Jarrod hovered in the air just above and in front of him.

“I submit, Jarrod,” he said. “I do.”

“It is not your submission I require, young man. It is your belief,” the crow replied. “You must take care that you do not end King Lion. Find some other way to keep the forest safe, please.”

“Why must I do this? What reason could you possibly give me to believe you?”

“This, Cain,” Jarrod said, and he presented Cain with three feathers. “This is the reason why you will not do it.”

“I’ve told you I would not take your power for myself, Jarrod, and still you suffer for me.” The young boy let out a world-weary sigh, entirely unfitting for someone of his size.

Jarrod cawed lightly, his equivalent of a sigh, and his breast swelled and contracted, and the bird looked tired, even further beyond what Cain was, and Cain had not slept in two whole days, since King Lion had wounded his home.

“I give you these three feathers that you might use them for three great feats, Cain.” The crow’s voice began to crack, and he shrank in size until he was just the same size as a sparrow.

“That is not the reason I shouldn’t try to defeat King Lion. You’ve avoided my question entirely.”

“Yes, Cain, I have. One day you will understand,” he said.

Cain finished, “when I grow up,” and he hung his head and said no more.

Jarrod plucked the three feathers out of the air where they hung suspended, and he pushed them, quill first, into Cain’s tiny hand.

It was times like this that the old wizard realised how much of a little boy Cain really was. His hand was barely big enough to hold onto the feathers. They were giant, longer and wider than his palm at their widest point.

Jarrod cawed and flew into the sky, flapping hard and fast with sparrow-sized wings. Cain shifted up onto his bed and curled into a ball, and slept.

The great desert began on the western edge of the forest. Its sands were where the sun went to die every night.

It was night as Jarrod flew over the treetops to the desert’s edge, where he knew King Lion would be waiting with whatever powers he had brought with him. It could have been the desert snakes, or scorpions or even monkeys and birds of the jungle.

None of these were correct, Jarrod realised as he gained on King Lion’s position, and he looked down to see the brilliant radiance of the sun. King Lion held its light in his mane, and it radiated out from behind his face like a beautiful halo. But the area inside that circlet of light was empty and devoid of all emotion.

King Lion roared at the sky where he saw Jarrod soaring down, and Jarrod was knocked back.

The two old, magical beasts grew in size until King Lion stood up on two hind paws and swallowed the sun within himself, and the power of the sun turned him into a man.

Jarrod hit the ground practically head first, and the puff of dust he sent up obscured his transformation until he was just a wizened old man hunched over and covered in a cloak of black feathers.

“It has been long since I last saw you, Jarrod,” King Lion said.

Jarrod grinned, but it was not a happy expression. It was menacing, and it bared his toothless gums at the strong king.

“It has been long enough, my king,” he cawed in his hoarse voice. “Long enough for a lifetime.”

“I’m glad you still remember your place in my court,” King Lion said. He stood proudly, a mane of blonde hair stretching out behind him, his hands on his hips. He was a vision of strength and maturity.

Jarrod still hunched and stumbled over the dunes. “I have renounced my place in your court as you know. I simply remember my manners,” he said, then added, with a hint of derision, “my king.”

“Does your boy know that you are here?” King Lion said.

“No,” Jarrod replied, sounding more and more like a crow the longer he stayed in his human form.

“Does your boy know that you’re dying?”

“No,” Jarrod said again.

“Then you’ve lied to him, what, his entire life?”

“Not at all.”

King Lion sighed. “I’m taking this forest, Jarrod. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Jarrod laughed, and from that laughter, feathers spewed forth from his mouth and settled on the desert floor, the only proof of their parley there that night.

“There is everything I can do to stop you, but it’s not up to me. Cain will destroy you.”

“And in doing so, he will become me. Does he know that?”

“Cain would be a better King Lion than you. He takes care of the children of the forest better than you could.”

King Lion stepped back, his mouth wide open.

“It is him? Cain is the finder of lost children?”

“I think it best if Cain destroys you, Lion. For Cain could swallow the sun even in the day to shepherd the weak through the valley of darkness. Cain is his brothers and sisters’ keeper.”

Silence grew between them. Jarrod shivered in the wind of the desert, and King Lion looked thoughtfully up at the moon.

“Then he will know my name when I lay my own vengeance upon him,” King Lion said finally, and he turned back into a Lion and flew across the desert in great bounding strides.

Jarrod was left alone amidst a pile of his feathers.

“Assemble the children, Jarrod,” Cain had said. “I need you to gather them in the village.”

And so Jarrod had flown up and away, at the size of a regular crow and he had gone in the direction of the village, which could change when it needed to. Only Jarrod knew how to find the village of children at will. Even Cain’s command of the forest was not yet that good.

The children of the forest stood in haphazard formation, each of them staring up into Cain’s eyes with a look of such pure innocence that he had to look away.

He’d given his own innocence away in order to understand the forest better, to be able to keep the children from harm, but Cain was below that threshold, and so he could be hurt. But Jarrod trusted him, and listened to him.

“There has been a threat from afar,” Cain said. All of the children heard him. They always listened when Cain spoke – he was their brother and their keeper. None of them betrayed his sense of calm, and he was glad. They retained their sensibilities. Nobody gasped. They didn’t even widen their eyes in alarm.

“King Lion of the jungle and the desert has come into this place and threatened our peace. It is my solemn promise that the forest will prevail against any invader, but I have to ask something of you.”

They continued to listen until the youngest – Gregory – asked, “Why?”

Cain smiled at the little boy and said, “Because you are the sole inhabitants of this forest. Because when you grow up, you will be the trees,” – with this sentiment, he stared at the tallest girl, Jenny – “and you will be the mountains,” – this time, he stared at Peter, who was broad of chest and had a really hard head and a pointy hat – “and you will be the animals,” – with this last, he grinned down at Gregory, who bared his tiny teeth in wolfish manner – “and so you will be the forest. If the forest is to prevail, then it must be your decision as to what we do about this foreign threat. Do we allow King Lion to call this place his land, or do we use the power of the forest to repel him at every turn?”

The children were not silent this time. They called out their ideas, no matter how half-baked they were, and they yelled over each other and louder and louder until -

Jarrod’s caw was heard by all, so loud that they all had to look up into the sky where he momentarily fluttered, blocking out the sun intermittently so that the children had to blink. A second caw set Gregory crying and Jarrod fluttered down, still too big to be a regular crow. He scooped up Gregory into his wings and cradled him.

Cain spoke aloud: “All those in favour of surrender, I ask that you raise your hands now.”

And the children were sombre, silent, and still.

Cain gave the ultimatum: “All those in favour of war, raise your hands now.”

Again, nothing changed.

Cain grinned, and asked, “All those who wish to continue as we do now?”

And the children almost jumped into the air, so excited were they that their opinions considered.

Jarrod cawed, not so loudly this time, and even sang a little to calm down Gregory, who joined in the cheering as soon as his feet touched the ground. And Cain and Jarrod exchanged a look that showed they understood each other.

The forest was in turmoil after King Lion’s visit to Cain and Jarrod’s court. Songbirds all over filled the sky with their music, and it was a bittersweet melody. No one animal was sure what King Lion’s visit meant, and no one animal knew why it was so short.

Jarrod was all aflutter, soaring hither and thither, cawing, “What have you done, Cain!?”

The old crow’s voice was naturally hoarse, but by the time he finished flapping and settled down on a low branch, he could barely manage a single word.

Ragged breaths flowed from the crow’s beak as his chest thrummed and drummed, his heart beating too fast in his chest for Cain to even recognise it as a heartbeat.

“What have you done, Cain?”

“I did what I needed to do for the forest, Jarrod. We can’t have King Lion padding in here and taking over. Look around you,” Cain said, gesturing at the land around him.

Jarrod stopped, finally calm, and looked around the clearing that was Cain’s bedroom, and he despaired for it was in ruins.

There was a blight on the land, beginning with the tall stalks of lavender that grew up around the edge, where Lion had pushed through.

Long, long strands of tawny brown fur were stuck on the plants, and strange, noxious fumes rose up off them, burning the lavender, but the scent it released was sickly, not sweet.

The flowers of the lavender plant itself were turning from indigo to pink, and finally to a loud shade of red, before the stalk shrivelled up and collapsed on itself.

And the paw marks! Great in size – almost twelve inches across – and they blackened the ground. The flowers had been crushed, and a swathe was cut through the grasses. It was a threat, they were sure.

King Lion promised to leave the forest in his wake if they did not simply comply and let him conquer.

But Cain would not. Cain could not. “What would you have me do, Jarrod?” he asked.

The crow simply cawed. It was no word. It was just a sorrowful sound, and Cain hung his head in shame.

“The forest will prevail,” he whispered.

It would, for it had prevailed for years and years before. It had prevailed in all the times before that any conqueror had ever come and tried to become its lord. But it was impossible to be lord of the forest unless the forest itself chose you.

They guarded that secret closely, for they did not wish for anyone to unseat them. Cain and Jarrod were unsteady in their power over the forest, but they treated it as well as they could, and their subjects led happy lives.

The children of the forest would surely come to their aid.

The children lived even deeper in the forest, and they were humans like Cain – children of men and women alike. King Lion would never come near enough to the children of the forest to unsettle them, for they were steadfast in their love of Cain, who was once their brother.

Jarrod fluttered up to the sky and looked out over the entirety of the forest.

“What do you see?” Cain called out.

Jarrod did not answer, for it was painful. He saw his entire life, but split down the centre to where Cain stood below.

He had to wonder, is this it? Is this where it all comes to an end?

The greenery of the forest held a single black strip. King Lion had not weaved about trees or moved from his straight ahead path a single time as he walked towards Cain. He had levelled entire trees with his teeth and pushed over a small hill with his mane. Such was the destructive power of King Lion.

Jarrod was not ready to let this happen.

In a time not so long ago, in a forest just outside of the world, there lived a boy named Cain.

His bedroom was the most beautiful clearing in the entire world, set directly in the centre of his entire forest. It was carpeted by pink and blue flowers, and at the edge of the clearing grew tall lavender plants whose scent you could smell from the next kingdom over. His bed was carved from an old oak tree that had fallen before even his best friend Jarrod was born, and Jarrod was the oldest creature the forest had ever known.

The clearing was lit by a lamp that was powered by Cain’s love of life, and it was so with all of the clearings in the forest. The forest was one of the brightest places anyone could ever live, and those who did live in the forest with Cain loved it there.

And if it was to rain, Jarrod would fly down from the sky and hover over Cain’s clearing and he would stretch his crow wings out and block the rain from falling on Cain’s head, for Jarrod was no ordinary crow.

Cain and Jarrod were the best of friends, and they ruled over all proceedings in the forest with a benevolent hand and a benevolent feather.

But one day, there came a foreign king to Cain’s court. It was the king of the jungle and the desert. It was King Lion!

King Lion was a fearsome beast, and his mane held up the desert sun in the driest times and it became the jungle canopy in the wettest times. Though King Lion was a good king, he was not a good lion. He provided for all his subjects equally, but he ruled over them with an iron claw.

He stepped through the lavender ringing Cain’s bedroom clearing, and set forward slowly, shoulder blades moving in a rhythmic motion. He stopped at a respectable distance and bowed his head, but still he was taller than Cain, for his mane was well-groomed and stood out from his face without a single knot or tangle.

Cain stood still, and Jarrod sat on a log next to him, holding firmly to his position as Cain’s advisor. If he so wished, Jarrod could simply pull out one of his feathers and use its crow magic to send King Lion far away. In a different life, Jarrod had been a powerful wizard. But Cain would not let him sacrifice any of his feathers; he understood that the time they took to grow back was too long and the method was too painful.

Instead, Cain stared down the tawny foreigner who stood so proud and tall in his court and said, “I don’t think it was wise of you to come here, King Lion. We have a peace treaty with you, do we not?”

And King Lion roared at Cain, because it was impossible for him to speak as a human speaks and retain his lion form at once.

So Cain spoke again: “I will not surrender to you, and this forest will not become your domain.”

In Lion’s next roar, Cain thought he could hear all sorts of dreadful accusations, but not a single one of them was true.

Jarrod fluttered by Cain’s head and whispered in his ear, “Perhaps it is unwise to taunt him, young Cain.”

“Not to worry,” said Cain as Lion retreated. “The forest will prevail.” It was inevitable that Lion would return, and he would bring with him conquest, war, famine, and death. But the forest was strong.

* * *

Cain and Jarrod is one of my favourite stories I’ve ever written. Writing it makes me incredibly happy, which, to me, is what writing should be.

                THUD! THUD! THUD!

TTTHHHUUUDDD!!!

These sounds have been going on for years now. No one knows what the cause of it was. Everyone just assumed that someone else would stop it. They were…never mind. I know that you still don’t even know who this tale is even about…so I will answer that…sometime in this story thrice before mine.

There was a girl, who was waiting for the right time.  She was at a bookstore. She was concentrating hard and hard for the right time.  She planned to steal from the bookstore. One book.

It’s a good thing that past inventions like barcodes, scanners and basically every other thing that causes you to get caught is gone, to the extent that they only exist as pictures, except for one form of security, she thought.

 Security, security which was in the form of people. People had always watched her, glaring from eye to eye, and pretending to not look at her when she looks at them. She even hates getting any attention at all, good or bad. She looked at the stars in the night sky, and imagined them taking up arts and crafts during an inconspicuous blizzard. Then she realized she was distracting herself, so she decided to focus on her real task.

She needed this book, for a reason. She was in the simplest of words was trying to get what was in the book. Her name was Ezeriazl. Her name was pronounced ay-zer-AY-ee-uh-zul. She sometimes just shortened her name to Ezira, which, in turn, was pronounced ez-ER-uh.

She needed that book to find the truth. The book was the key. She knew that electricity went out somewhere. How she knew was partially by instinct that there was use of electricity. Seemingly contradicting however, she knew that electricity wasn’t used now.

Reader, if you think now that electricity is making the THUD! noises somehow, you are wrong. She then seemingly went away from the bookstore.

The underground passages always work, she thought. She was looking for the passageway. One which she used so long ago…She saw things of seemingly fiction…

She was looking for the passageway. Sure enough, to her unlucky delight, it was there. She just had no way of going there. She saw the house of horror, one of great demise. She remembered the dark tales of the house. Everyone saw it, no one just came in. Except for her, at least that’s what she thought.

She decided to remember the tale which she would rather read right now.

Vazerol, pronounced Vaz-ER-ull. She was curious one day. She then went to this house. Everyone told her not to go, because it would get you in trouble. Simply, this house held and still holds great danger and treacherous demise. She then went into the house. She, as if in a hypnotic trance, got buried in a coffin and buried twenty below the ground. It is said her spirit haunts this house to this day. Don’t go in. I warned you…

She however, knew that the house was the location of a secret passage. She was searching for the passage and then looked at the centre. A message in dust lay; Avhzalorhe is the answer. She was shocked at how she didn’t notice this message before. This house always seemed to put her in a trance. Avhzalorhe. Vazerol. Simply rumors must have been the cause, but she was sure that legend was the right word. She then wondered who put this on, a question which she never had answered. She tried to go to the passageway which she found, but it was blocked. So she decided to look outside and saw an empty room with a closed door. She then went through the door, and saw there were stairs leading down. She went in and then rushed back up.

Who puts monsters in a shack?, she thought. She needed something to survive the dangers in that dungeon…simply shack wasn’t the right word.  She then looked at the shack.

In that monstrous dungeon, there must be some way of surviving its limits.

Great, a dungeon that will kill me and I have only one life. Well, I guess this is the negative side of a permanent death, Ezira thought.

She was looking for some way of finding hidden weaponry. If there was that dungeon hidden with monsters that could kill her, she needed protection. She knew how to use weaponry; it was a backup because she was a thief and survival of the most adept. Or is it survival of the most adaptable? That was a question she simply didn’t ask. She found that a hidden button released a wide array of weapons.

Avhzalorhe must have kept these for emergency, Ezira thought. She hated being out in the open, for she despised the eyes. She could imagine those eyes, glaring at her, as if a cold, dark presence was among them. In the view of Ezira, she thought they were the cold, dark presence.

She then went back into the dungeon and tried to destroy the slime mold that could kill her. She failed. But the anger of that fail made her go berserk.

Curse you slime mold! Die! Face the berserking wrath of a berserking wrath! she thought, with great anger, because she had simply gone berserk over the slime mold. The slime mold died an unfortunate, but fortune to Ezira, death. The slime mold then spat out gold, and the corpse disappeared. She felt like she was in a game, but she wasn’t. Though she didn’t know it at that time, she was…never mind. She then theorized that the slime mold must have eaten those gold pieces.

She then looked around. She found a torch. She held the torch up.

At least now I can see most of the dangers that come, Ezira thought, unaware then that there was a trap door near her. When she noticed it, for she decided to get another torch, for the flame was raising high, and she put the torch inside the trapdoor.

Hopefully I don’t become a pyromaniac because of that, she thought. She saw four, or what she thought was four, shadows of the second torch which she made. For shadows come, and be revealed later.

Now I need to find some entrance or something, one that isn’t near that fire I caused, she thought. She unfortunately, got what she wanted. Four of them. She then thought these must be the four shadows that she had seen before.

She then noticed they all lead to the same room. She found a safe place…and then fainted out of a lack of hunger for the time being…

She woke up, still feeling dazed. She felt like it was a dream. But it wasn’t. She found that out when she found that she was in a house…in a dungeon.  She had lost all her supplies…except her gold. She didn’t even know how to wield a weapon.

Why is it that I didn’t take the chance to master weaponry when I wasn’t in this dungeon? Ezira thought.

This house which she was in was empty. She found a note, a vital clue. She however couldn’t read it.

What language is this in? she thought, for, to her, it seemed like it was a future language. A language placed out of time.

That is the most which I can give you right now. I won’t be giving that much detail on the reasons yet.  You could find it out later, or you already have. Time is out of space, like it always has.

THUD! THUD! THUD! TTTHHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUDDDD! TTHUD! THHUD! THUUD! THUDD!

Suddenly, she heard that thud sound again.

Wow, this is what I get for investigating that electrical mystery, Ezira thought, while thinking that she should have exited this dungeon, but she couldn’t because she lost the entrance…and a map.

She found a shop…finally. While she wondered who would sell items in a dungeon inside a shack near a house, she decided to tell the shopkeeper what items were sold. She just couldn’t tell who the shopkeeper was.

                “What can I buy with this amount of gold?” She asked.

                “Gold! That’s worthless! You can have this cheap spell book. It’s old anyways.”

She then chronicled her adventures and many quests which she had in the dungeon, including learning how to master weaponry. But this story isn’t about those segments, because in the next paragraph, she was at the end and more ahead of time. She had spent days, and those days became weeks and…never mind. I dare not say how long she spent in the dungeon…for she had lost the entrance.  She had then found the entrance.

She conquered the dungeon, with only one life…without even losing it and suffering a permanent death. She then looked at the exit…but the shock outside enveloped everywhere. There was an underground civilization which used electricity a lot. She decided to talk to a person.

“Why is this underground? I just exited.” She said.

“Underground? There’s nothing underground! That entrance is a medium.” he said.

“Medium?! It was hard!!”

“Not that type of medium, it contains an entrance to another world.”

“Well, how come everyone here uses electricity? The thuds must come from here also.”

“Those thuds come from the worlds being connected though they aren’t. Only certain entrances connect to your world. No one knows why, they just do.”

“But you don’t control electricity the same way my people used to.”

“Your word for that is…technomancy.”

                “Who…or what…are you?!”

                “This is the Order of the Clockwork Gears.”

The constant sound of “THUD!” was reaching all over the place where a portion of this story takes place. The city has gone through countless names. One of them, at the time where the story which takes place, was highly emphasized in such a way, it seemed like it was the only name this city was ever given. I do not know the name of this city at that time, and the characters seemed to ignore it. There was a recent disaster, but I am going to take action about it, but it doesn’t involve you in it, because…never mind. You will however, know when it happens and it involves…never mind. You will know when you receive certain change. That is all.

EDIT: EXCEPT FOR THE STORY FOR WHICH YOU ARE READING, which is all, but look carefully and notice how the story goes…

I have other tasks to finish off…

You are evidently reading on…

And on…

And on…

And

on…

There was a certain legend spreading through city like rumors. No one knows who started this legend; it just treaded slowly into the city and merged. It involved a tale of a deadly ghost girl, called Zhavarohel, whose name was pronounced Zah-vuh-row-will, who haunts…yet no one knows where. They don’t even know whether or not one of them is Zhavarohel, according to legend, you have to call her Zhavha, which must be pronounced Zah-vuh.

There was one person who thought he knew the truth. He was named Naxhar, whose name was pronounced Nah-ksar. He always thought the rumor was false and even decided to hear it once…and thought it was ridiculous. He always thought that everyone else was simply ignoring him, especially when he claims that where they are is fictional and that there are probably some readers/viewers/“whatever-form-of-viewing-ers” were viewing segments, if not entirely, all of everyone’s lives, all possibly in different realities, at different times. Though he knew what he thought he knew, and he thinks that possibly every second, people might be viewing him. He was right at the time interval for which this story takes place because otherwise there’d be a different story…or no story at all. He forgot what the word for that was…

He was in the Tilted 8, a building which seems like it never ends. Immediately when he walked in, he noticed that the ceiling was raised so high, it reminded him of fractals. He went to the stairs and stopped when he felt like he should. There was a shop.  The shop was little, and it was even called THAT LITTLE SHOP.

As he slowly went to the shop, holding great leisure, he thought that whoever or whatever that made this building must have taken all of their own time, because creating this big of a building would have taken hours. Apparently it have been made a few years before he was born, but this was, in fact, according to the people who stated this to him, who mainly were involved in all rumors, but he only knew that because of the rumors that generated, which he didn’t trust in the first place.

According to a book of ancient symbols, the symbol “8” meant a number, one which used to be rendered into words as “Eight”. Well, this was according to a book which he found in THAT LITTLE SHOP, which, eccentrically, seemed small on the outside, and yet seemed big on the inside. He also thought that the store might puke him out from being too overloaded. He flipped through the pages, and decided to skip the part that explained ancient languages like English as well as every other language that was at that time, known, unknown and/or ancient. He stopped at a page and glanced shockingly at an image which lay delicately on the page.

He could have gasped, but was in such a state of shock that was too shocked to even gasp. This building was called the Tilted 8. The image appeared to be “∞”, and it, according to this book, that symbol was called “infinity”, and meant never ending. This building was called the Tilted 8. Infinity bears resemblance to a tilted eight. This building was called the Tilted 8. He knew then that he had to get away from this building as soon as possible.

He ran slowly and cautiously across the store. He darted his eyes. As soon as he stepped outside of the store, he dashed. As soon as he was near the entrance, he took the steps out slowly, holding great curiosity and danger.

He went outside, and he saw that the view outside looked different. He looked up. The date was apparently a thousand years before his time. He looked around, everything seemed so ancient. He even saw a girl going suspiciously into a store called Cybertronics. He was shocked, too shocked to gasp. The legend must be true. He decided to check. He went back into the building and immediately stepped back out.

No wonder it’s called the Tilted 8, he thought, referencing to the fact that this building survived forever.

He decided to follow the girl, from a distance that she wasn’t seeing him. He thought that she might be thinking that someone is following her and from the moment in which she left her house, he crept into it, though it was somewhat hard to locate.

Inside the room, not in the centre, but right beside the centre, was a book, which was closed. Naxhar read the first lines of the introduction;

My reader, for which has stumbled upon this book, is possibly reading this very sentence right now. You probably have some ulterior motive for trying to track me down, or you noticed my house, empty. If you are reading this, however, I might already be died. For this is the book which you have stumbled upon in ways I don’t even comprehend. The book, technically an autobiography, entitled Avhzalorhe: The Autobiography of Her Life, and a Possibly Blank Section Thereafter Because You Probably Have a Story of Your Own But You Can Also Shorten This Really Really Long Title of This Book Into “The Avhzalorhe Autobiography…and Yours Possibly”.  You might wonder why I chose such a long title, but that is something which you might never understand. Detailed, from my own point of view, sometimes in third person, are the recordings of the adventures I had and if you find this and read the contents of the following with this paragraph inclusive, I strongly suggest to you that you destroy all traces of this book after you are done reading these contents and memorize this. Whoever finds this book might possibly—

He stopped reading. He thought the girl was named Zhavarohel. He then noticed that Zhavarohel was simply an anagram of Avhzalorhe.  He also that those facts do change over time when rumors are involved.  He then decided to write his story in the end of it, up to the part where he was writing the story which he was writing. He made a message with the dust there; Avhzalorhe is the Answer.  He then decided to hide the autobiography of Avhzalorhe someplace which no one else could find. He found a crawlspace and at a certain point, the crawlspace evolved to a tunnel.  He then blocked off the tunnel with the desired materials which were, by a coincidence that was too much of a coincidence, he got beforehand.

It’s like she planned everything out…except her death, Naxhar thought. He decided that at least once he asked about that rumor. He didn’t at that time, however, think it was true. He was reminiscing…

It was a dark and scary night. Then that night passed. It was a boiling hot morning of terror. Then that morning passed. It was a cold shivery noon. Then that noon passed. For it was after noon, at afternoon, that he decided, out of curiosity, what that rumor was about. He personally thought it was more of a legend than a rumor. So he asked a random person what the rumor was about.

Naxhar was thinking that he was reminiscing of a story-within-a-flashback-within-a-story [which might be in turn, within-a-story]. Naxhar then thought he should remember the rumor of legend which isn’t legendary.

NOTICE: This is a rumor based on an in-universe life of a girl. Consider this in the same light, or dark, as a parody, for it gets many inaccurate details. Also, consider this story in the same light, or dark, as a story which some people [Parent’s especially] use to tell kids to be truthful and nice.

                Once upon a time, there was an evil, young, rotten girl named Zhavarohel. She meanly bossed around people saying her name was Zhavha. Furthermore, she insisted that Zhavarohel was pronounced Zah-vuh-row-will and that Zhavha was pronounced Zah-vuh. She was in such a bossy mood one day that she decided to go into a store which people say is suspicious. She went in right after she lied to her parents and died such a horrible death that people dare not to talk about. The moral of this story is that telling the truth keeps you out of trouble, don’t go anywhere suspicious and don’t be mean, bossy, evil or rotten. It is even worse when you are more than one of them! So don’t!

                Well, people do think I am curious, rotten, mean, evil, young, a liar, bossy and suspicious, partly because I didn’t believe the rumor, Naxhar thought.

It was then that he glanced around and saw a red button. Instincts were telling him to not press the red button. So he pressed the red button. The only change that happened was that the button was pressed once more. Angrily he kept on pressing the button over and over and over and over and over and over, until the 32^nd time he pressed the button, something finally happened. He landed inside a room. He saw batteries, and something which required batteries. So he put the batteries in the battery-operated machine. He ended up in another room under the room.

Medium awareness, Naxhar thought recalling two words that defined the fact that he knew he was fictional, but didn’t know what form, which did this, or even who watched him. If he knew how, he could break the fourth wall more often. He, in the room under the room, saw a trap door…which was placed in the dead center of the room. However, when he went on it, he failed to fall.  Clearly, this was the most obvious way to get out of the room. Naxhar was shocked. He found how to get out. It was so obvious it was unrecognizable. He took the battery-operated chainsaw, with the batteries that were conveniently placed, and sawed the trapdoor. He then decided to enter through the trapdoor. He entered through the trap door.

                What?, Naxhar thought, right when he went inside the trapdoor, looking at where the trapdoor had led him. He was back at the Tilted 8. The trapdoor had led him to the Tilted 8, but he was tilted. He went out, and collapsed at the ground.

                If the Tilted 8 disappears again, will the trapdoor be empty? Naxhar thought. He then went to the entrance, again.

                I need to get back to the future, Naxhar thought.  In the end, Naxhar got what he wanted. Clearly, this isn’t the end, though it will be the end at the end.  Naxhar, before he went out, decided to put the battery-operated chainsaw somewhere safe. Right where the trapdoor led to, and then he went to the entrance, again as if he was in a trance at the entrance.

                Naxhar went outside, as if it was the first time in years. The sun was blazing as if a heat wave or drought had arrived as if for the first time in years. The Tilted 8…disappeared…as if for the first time in years. It is a mysterious inconspicuous building, after all.

                He then decided to look at his surroundings.  A girl came to him, because he was so confused of the surroundings and for the first time during the events of this story four times before the currently nameless narrator, Naxhar spoke.

                “Apocalypse, Armageddon, Ragnarok…Did you witness a Cataclysm?” Naxhar said, for these were his first lines in this story.

                “Wow! Is that what you think?” She said, clearly not revealing her name. “I just saw you walk out of that mysterious building that mysteriously appeared. Now it mysteriously disappeared.”

“So this place isn’t post-apocalyptic?” Naxhar said, referencing the fact he thought the world had ended…except for her…and him.

“What place did you get that idea from?”

“Never mind. Wait, do you believe medium awareness?”

“It must be a coincidence…but no, I don’t.”

“How much of a coincidence?”

“A lot, but not a parking lot.”

“Why?”

“You see, this isn’t the first time someone mysteriously appeared.”

I don’t exactly know why or how I remember these things, I just do. I also don’t know why people stare and gasp when they see me. Since I was a child, people who knew my parents always asked if I was adopted. I’ve always been called an angel, or demon in disguise, or just a plain old beautiful person. It really depends on who you ask and their faith.

Goodbye Zero :(

Your blind devotion to your beloved Kurohime will be remembered for eternity.

Super DUPER Brief Summary

Kurohime was still fighting Lord Shinigami when the god took Zero’s soul hostage. Dodging the raining bone spears, she started a new attack that focused on confusion.

Such a tactic failed to work…

The death god just attacked everyone with lances shooting from the ground, hitting his Angels who chose to stay still out of loyalty. When asked why he did such a thing, Lord Shinigami revealed that he could care less for any non-god being.

As for the dying Angels, they realized that this was their duty, to give up their lives for their god. However, they didn’t want everyone to die, for the Shinigami Angel Army to end this day. So they decided to transfer all their remaining life force to Soodo.

The first thing Soodo did was strike at her leader, slicing off one of his bone blades in her surprise attack. Though she understood that her life as a servant could be taken away at any time, Soodo was unsure why Lord Shinigami would view them like “ants” when they were so loyal. The diety retorted by saying that her unclear feelings (attacking him even though she admired him) was filthy, driving the shinigami angel more confused.

Then, a rapid succession of bullets strike at the god.

Zero took the opportunity to have his soul return into his body. Working together with Kurohime, they launch a synchronnized attack.

Lord Shinigami, one of the most powerful gods, was defeated.

Kurohime collapses due to her injuries. There was a nice romantic moment when Zero cradled her in his arms… but their victory would be short-lived as the River Styx continued to rise.

The boatman from before returns. However, he poses a problem for Zero since, even though he was willing to give up his spot, the boat could seat only one. Any more weight and it might capsize. Seeing that only one of them will live, Zero decides to embark on a selfless task, to push the boat while the river eats away at his body.

Love will be the driving force that would save Kurohime.

His actions touched the heart of the boatman, who felt obligated to give his name even though Zero was doomed from the start.

Once on the other side, Zero’s body finally ran out. Asura just happened to arrive as well as Onimaru (his transformed body is immune to the River Styx). The former gunslinger turned lizard woke Kurohime up just to witness Zero’s last moments.

xxx

xxx

What follows are Zero’s last thoughts before his existance was corroded away into the afterlife.

Impressions

It was a given that Lord Shinigami was going to die, typical of any action series. Even his betrayal of his own angels was predictable since the series protrayed the gods as evil or at the very least, ignorant of suffering. I’m pretty sure Soodo is still alive since she’s immune to the River Styx and could fly away. I’m not sure about her allegiance though, whether she’ll go after Kurohime for revenge or work with her to bring down the gods.

As for Zero, I expected a fairy-tale ending with the two escaping safely. Sadly, I was proven wrong and it proved quite a shocker since… Zero was the main character at the start. I suppose that means the story will take on a road of vengeance, ironic since Himeko (her cursed form) was the embodiement of such. Even after reuniting with the other half, her fate is still the same. Onimaru and Asura will probably join her in Kurohime’s crusade (Onimaru being the comedic mascot of course).

So ends… the first arc.