Prologue
It has been said, many many times, that every story begins somewhere. This particular story begins here: far far above a huge island that is, in utter defiance of every known rule of physics, floating thousands of feet off the ground. It is, in fact, one of many islands just like it, every single one of them slowly drifting in the air, far above the dense clouds.
Strangely enough, nobody knows what lies below those clouds, since those few brave explorers who ventured below have never actually returned to report what they found, and are presumed to be very dead by now. Some speculate that there was nothing but a vast sea, while others solemnly proclaim the realms below the clouds as the place where all dead souls go. There are also those who believe that anyone who tries to go beyond the clouds will simply fall off the bottom of the world, and then keep falling for a very, very long time. Nobody knows for sure, and so the speculation goes on.
But on this particular island.. well, it was a very strange island, probably the strangest of them all. Vaguely bowl shaped, it is the largest known island in the entire world, and right in the middle of the bowl was a very very tall, phallic-shaped mountain, extending miles and miles into the sky like a gigantic rude gesture aimed at the rest of the world. In any other world, it would have been a civil engineer's nightmare, since such a structure would seem unlikely to remain upright for more than ten minutes in any kind of weather. Fortunately, as you would probably have guessed by now, the law of physics here was an extremely flexible thing. This particular geographical spike was known to everyone as the Spire, and the entire civilisation on the island clustered around it like fungus clinging to particularly sweet piece of candy.
Fungus is, of course, a very appropriate analogy for this island. The island was essentially one huge city around the base of the Spire, and it had a decidedly fungus like quality. The citizens divided themselves neatly into two districts: there was the City, which is slightly noisier, slightly busier and definitely slightly bigger, and then there was the Undercity, which introduced all sorts of creative ways to die a horrible death. The Undercity was home to all the misfits and outcasts who did not quite fit into the City, and so they left and formed their own fringe community, which soon grew into a festering den on the edge of the City.
And of course, there was those who lived inside the Spire.
* * * * *
From far, far above, the island looked like a big bicycle wheel spinning slowly in the sky. Airships orbited gently around the central spire, the lifeblood of trade between here and the many smaller outlying islands. Right at the top of the Spire was a spinning vortex of clouds, punctuated by the occasional flash of lightning, said to be the source of all magic in this world.
Imagine...
...as our view hurtles downwards, and the island grows larger and larger in our vision. The smaller details leap into view: the sprawling houses of the City, the smoke from its workshops, the airships appearing to move faster and faster across the sky. Watch as we sweep past the craggy peaks of the Spire, but there, right at the top, was a fortress like no other, balanced against all odds on the very peak of the world.
Of course, in any typical fantasy realm, there is ALWAYS an extremely large castle/fortress/tower/underground dungeon built in the most inhospitable of places. So large, in fact, that most of the space had to be filled with traps, contraptions, mazes and monsters of all shapes and sizes. In a slightly-less-magically-inclined world, anyone who stumbles across such a place would wonder, for example, which idiot thought that building a huge (and probably very expensive) fortress right next to a smouldering volcano would be an EXCELLENT IDEA INDEED.
However, this was not such a world. And so, there really WAS an impossibly BIG fortress built on the tallest peak in this world. Anyone who wondered aloud regarding construction logistics, particularly how several hundred tonnes of bricks were apparently carted several dozen miles off the ground, will be answered by a lengthy and decidedly stony silence by the narrator. It just WAS there. If you had to persistently wonder how it actually GOT there, then you should start with wondering how a million tonne island stays afloat on thin air.
Anyway.
This particular fortress was home to the Ancients, an ancient (no surprise there) and no doubt noble race that had lived there for centuries. So ancient, in fact, that there were only five of them remaining. And since all five of them were male, they probably will not be ancient for very much longer, mainly due to the inconvenient fact that it's hard to be ancient when you're extinct. But they were very very powerful beings: oh yes. They had a lifespan many times that of a normal man, and it also helped that they could, if they so choose, move faster than a speeding arrow, punch a rather large hole through several dozen inches of solid steel, leap higher than a moderately-high-thingie, and of course they were impervious to most damage and had no obvious weaknesses (such as a potentially fatal aversion to certain types of glowing green rock).
They also looked like a bunch of gorgeous hunks, with well-toned bodies and shoulder length jet-black hair. They spent their time sunbathing, playing tennis, and included healthy green vegetables in every meal. Their names were long forgotten many ages ago, but for convenience they called each other Ancient One to Ancient Five. Names were so hard to remember after the first hundred years.
And it is here that our story begins.
next chapter
Strangely enough, nobody knows what lies below those clouds, since those few brave explorers who ventured below have never actually returned to report what they found, and are presumed to be very dead by now. Some speculate that there was nothing but a vast sea, while others solemnly proclaim the realms below the clouds as the place where all dead souls go. There are also those who believe that anyone who tries to go beyond the clouds will simply fall off the bottom of the world, and then keep falling for a very, very long time. Nobody knows for sure, and so the speculation goes on.
But on this particular island.. well, it was a very strange island, probably the strangest of them all. Vaguely bowl shaped, it is the largest known island in the entire world, and right in the middle of the bowl was a very very tall, phallic-shaped mountain, extending miles and miles into the sky like a gigantic rude gesture aimed at the rest of the world. In any other world, it would have been a civil engineer's nightmare, since such a structure would seem unlikely to remain upright for more than ten minutes in any kind of weather. Fortunately, as you would probably have guessed by now, the law of physics here was an extremely flexible thing. This particular geographical spike was known to everyone as the Spire, and the entire civilisation on the island clustered around it like fungus clinging to particularly sweet piece of candy.
Fungus is, of course, a very appropriate analogy for this island. The island was essentially one huge city around the base of the Spire, and it had a decidedly fungus like quality. The citizens divided themselves neatly into two districts: there was the City, which is slightly noisier, slightly busier and definitely slightly bigger, and then there was the Undercity, which introduced all sorts of creative ways to die a horrible death. The Undercity was home to all the misfits and outcasts who did not quite fit into the City, and so they left and formed their own fringe community, which soon grew into a festering den on the edge of the City.
And of course, there was those who lived inside the Spire.
* * * * *
From far, far above, the island looked like a big bicycle wheel spinning slowly in the sky. Airships orbited gently around the central spire, the lifeblood of trade between here and the many smaller outlying islands. Right at the top of the Spire was a spinning vortex of clouds, punctuated by the occasional flash of lightning, said to be the source of all magic in this world.
Imagine...
...as our view hurtles downwards, and the island grows larger and larger in our vision. The smaller details leap into view: the sprawling houses of the City, the smoke from its workshops, the airships appearing to move faster and faster across the sky. Watch as we sweep past the craggy peaks of the Spire, but there, right at the top, was a fortress like no other, balanced against all odds on the very peak of the world.
Of course, in any typical fantasy realm, there is ALWAYS an extremely large castle/fortress/tower/underground dungeon built in the most inhospitable of places. So large, in fact, that most of the space had to be filled with traps, contraptions, mazes and monsters of all shapes and sizes. In a slightly-less-magically-inclined world, anyone who stumbles across such a place would wonder, for example, which idiot thought that building a huge (and probably very expensive) fortress right next to a smouldering volcano would be an EXCELLENT IDEA INDEED.
However, this was not such a world. And so, there really WAS an impossibly BIG fortress built on the tallest peak in this world. Anyone who wondered aloud regarding construction logistics, particularly how several hundred tonnes of bricks were apparently carted several dozen miles off the ground, will be answered by a lengthy and decidedly stony silence by the narrator. It just WAS there. If you had to persistently wonder how it actually GOT there, then you should start with wondering how a million tonne island stays afloat on thin air.
Anyway.
This particular fortress was home to the Ancients, an ancient (no surprise there) and no doubt noble race that had lived there for centuries. So ancient, in fact, that there were only five of them remaining. And since all five of them were male, they probably will not be ancient for very much longer, mainly due to the inconvenient fact that it's hard to be ancient when you're extinct. But they were very very powerful beings: oh yes. They had a lifespan many times that of a normal man, and it also helped that they could, if they so choose, move faster than a speeding arrow, punch a rather large hole through several dozen inches of solid steel, leap higher than a moderately-high-thingie, and of course they were impervious to most damage and had no obvious weaknesses (such as a potentially fatal aversion to certain types of glowing green rock).
They also looked like a bunch of gorgeous hunks, with well-toned bodies and shoulder length jet-black hair. They spent their time sunbathing, playing tennis, and included healthy green vegetables in every meal. Their names were long forgotten many ages ago, but for convenience they called each other Ancient One to Ancient Five. Names were so hard to remember after the first hundred years.
And it is here that our story begins.
next chapter
posted by nerdook at 11:16 AM
2 Comments:
Hello fellow M'sian!
I like your writing style. Funny and entertaining :P By the way, choose should be chose unless you wanted it in the present tense, in which case could should be can. I think.
"Their names were long forgotten many ages ago, but for convenience they called each other Ancient One to Ancient Five. Names were so hard to remember after the first hundred years." - Haha, that's awesome!
hey thanks.. :) hehe, i think if you look hard enough, you'll find a lot more grammatical errors inside the chapters. i apologize in advance, will go through everything later to clean it up.
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