On a completely different note...

I have been working on the first few chapters of my very first book. Well the very first one I intend to finish!

It would be great to get some feedback. Here goes nothing:

Prologue

Where am I?

It's dark.

Wait, are my eyes open?

I'm cold.

How long have I been lying here?

What's that strange smell?

Is there something is burning?

Fire, yes there was fire. It was coming right at me.

I have to get away! Did I get away?

Am I dead?

I was running and then there was nothing, nowhere to go...

I jumped and then... nothing...

Why is it so dark?

Footsteps, I think I can hear footsteps...

“Sleep now. Rest.”

“Memi, Memi, Kierenan is coming home and he has something on his mount, it looks strange... Memi, come quick”.

The little girl jumped up and down at the foot of the steps that lead up the tree to her home. The late afternoon sun was low but strong and dazzled Lorianna as she stepped out of the front door. After wiping her hands on a piece of cloth she lifted one to shield her eyes.

“Look Memi” Kita said pointing westwards.

Lorianna squinted and followed her daughters finger. There was a lone rider coming over the hill with what seemed to be a body draped over the front of his mount. “Go fetch your father and then get some water from the well, quickly now my dear” Lorianna told Kita then turned to step back into her dwelling. She started gathering little pots and flasks and some herbs, a clean linen sheet and some bandages. Checking everything over again she made sure she had everything she would need, then hurried down the winding steps that spiraled around the huge, old franen tree.

At the bottom there was a large wooden table covered in dried moss and leaves.

She spread the linen over the table and used the wooden clamps to fasten it. On a little stand next to the table she laid out the earthenware pots and flasks with care, then pulled out the knife she wore in a beautifully patterned sheath at her belt and went over to the brazier to sterilize it.

A man came running to the tree, his bow still in hand.

“What is it Lori? Has something happened to Kier? Kita said...” He stopped as he saw his son approach through the shallow creek that flowed past their home. The body the mount was carrying looked lifeless. He rushed to his son, who was dismounting, and helped him get the body down.

“A woman... a human...?” Kalen had a grim expression in his face

“Father, I... I could not leave her there...” Kierenan tried to apologize but his mother waved him quiet and gestured them to bring the woman to the table.

She closed her eyes, holding her hands out over the body. For a few seconds nothing happened then she opened her eyes, her voice wavering from strain.

“Her condition is truly grave. She has been badly burned and her life strings are worn very thin. She needs your strength”, her eyes moved to meet her husbands “and yours, or she will not survive the treatment”.

“But Lori, she is human...” Kalen said with furrowed brow.

“She is nature's child, just like we are, Kalen. And we are here to do nature's bidding. We don't get to choose who gets put on our doorstep. Are you to deny life to one of Shandra's creatures?” She stared into his eyes with a steadfast gaze. Filled with nothing but love and understanding for her husbands turmoil it pained her to force him into this.

Kalen swallowed down his anger and then slowly nodded. Stepping up to the table, where Kierenan already stood, he stretched out his hands over the near lifeless woman. He closed his eyes and started murmuring a low and rhythmic chant.

Lorianna could sense her son's energy in the woman. He had been feeding her a little bit of his life force for the last two risings and settings of the sun. She touched the white hair, or what was left of it, somehow knowing that it was once black.

“There is something very strange about her...” Kierenan said, then his voice trailed off. He pulled his shoulders back, took a deep breath and then followed his fathers example. Soon Kalen and Kierenan's chant sounded as one and Kita, who brought the water from the well, knelt quietly on the stairs watching her mother clean the burns on the woman's face and torso.

The clothes she wore were unlike any Kita had ever seen, the colors and the pattern where so alien. She watched the life energy draining out of her father's and brother's hands into the stranger and she saw the unfamiliar tendrils of energy flowing back into them. After a while she went up to the house and started brewing some herbs, for she knew that her family would desperately need cleansing after this was over.

So dark.

Voices... do I hear voices?

“Yes!”

It's not like anything I ever heard before.

Am I dead?

“No.”

Something's different, so strange, there is order here...

Are the gods going to punish me for what I have done?

“No!”

It would only be right...

Pain, so much pain...

“Rest! Sleep!”

“The worst is over but now we have to see if she can fight the chaos in her body and mind. We have done all we can do for her physical form” Lorianna whispered and sat down. They were all exhausted. Thankfully she took the the herbal brew, Kita had brought for them. It would slowly cleanse the chaos they had absorbed from the woman.

“Father, I...” Kierenan tried to say but Kalen turned and, without saying a word, slowly staggered towards the woods.

“Give him some time Kierenan. He has his own demons to battle, you know that” Lorianna softly touched her sons arm to comfort him. She was concerned about the chaos she could sense in him. He had absorbed too much of the human energy. She felt him withdraw from her mental approach.

“I will be fine mother!” His tone was almost brusk. “I am strong, I can fight it. I just need some rest. I will sleep on the ground tonight, under the stars. Shandra will watch over me”.

“Do not trouble yourself my son. I shall watch over her”. Lorianna looked at the human woman lying in front of her. She was so frail. Her face and upper body were now covered in bandages. Would the order she had infused into the charred skin would be enough to minimize the scaring? She must have lain on ice when Kierenan found her as the heat had been drawn burns. But ice also did its own damage to the skin on her legs and arms. In addition she was covered with little cuts and bruises that seemed older. Some of them had already begun to heal. “Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing so far north?” Lorianna thought to herself as she sat on a stool next to the woman.

Kita came down the steps and sat on the ground. She laid her head in Lorianna's lap who began singing a song to the Earth Mother Shandra while absentmindedly stroking the soft scales on her daughter's neck.

Chapter One

Abryn could feel it in his whiskers! Today was going to be his lucky day. Today HE would change his fortune. They would finally give him the respect he deserved!

“I can just imagine Orkin when he has to come up to me and apologize for all the mean things he said about my invention“ he thought to himself as he was carefully adjusting the sensors on the O.S.H.I.T (Ore-seeking-high-intensity-transporter) or Os-Hit as he lovingly liked to call it. He had invited everyone who was anyone for his big presentation today.

HE would change mining as the Uropians knew it, forever. All they would have to do from now on, was push a button. No more digging, no more blasting and drilling, no more broken drill heads. He was going to save the U.M.C (United Mining Corporation) a fortune and maybe make one in the process. His whiskers twitched a little with excitement.

“Abryn is a loner, Abryn is a loner” he heard some children in front of his workshop window. He hated that term ever since his parents brought him along to the first big assembly. He must have been about 40 cycles. Instead of working together with the other children in his team he had built the hot water maker all on his own. People looked at him funny said things like “You gotta watch out for that one, he is a bad influence” and “Watch out Ermi, don't get too close, maybe he has singlelytis” (a totally made up disease that parents would scare their little ones into obedience with) .

That the H.W.M (Abryn loved Acronyms) had later blown up in Elder Kuunu's face and left him with a star above his right eye did not help the situation in the slightest. The other kids started to whisper when he came near and called him “loner” behind his back. After a while his parents stopped taking him to assembly.

Abryn had to pester his father for many months before he agreed to build him a little workshop in the back of their dwelling.

His mother kept objecting to the entire affair.

“Tis not good for young folk to want to do mechanical workings on their own. How is he gonna learn to be a good worker? Take this Time teller for example. All the piece need to fit and work together properly else it wont run smoothly. One odd cog, I tell you, one odd cog and all falls apart!”

He could still hear her ranting and raving, it seemed so real to him that he turned to look in the chair she used to sit in. She'd bury her face in her hands and cry incessantly until he agreed to go to yet another “Group work support meeting”.

Those usually ended in him being asked, yet again, to not come back. He was obviously an “unhealable” (was that even a word) case that would only give others that had difficulties with conformity a “very bad example”. His “blatant display of independent thought” and his “inability to adjust to age old and proven work methods” so Elder Kuunu (who happened to be running the G.W.S.M's) “render Abryn unfit for a normal working environment”. In other words: Stay away before you blow something else up.

“Bah” Abryn thought “age old and proven work methods... Kuunu is so old he probably came up with them in the first place. And his son Orkin...” Abryn gritted his teeth when he thought about him.

Orkin had been the bane of Abryn's existence since childhood. Always the first to call him names, the first to laugh at him and generally the most condescending giant rock worm's posterior going. Once he even offered him to work in the sewer system making sure the pipes had no leaks. The sewer system! The nerve of the guy!!!

“No, thank you very much!” Abryn had said to himself later on when he had managed to overcome his “temporary speechlessness” brought on by his flabbergasted state over so much cheek. The sewers? Him? The nerve!

Orkin becoming chairman of the G.W.O.C (group work oversight committee) about 20 years ago when his father decided that it was about time to retire. Truth be told Kuunu was “really” old and going blind by then.

At the retirement celebrations Abryn had proudly presented him with a pair of T.V.E.G.F.V.I's (thermal vision enhancing goggles for the visually impaired) that he had improved. Kuunu had skeptically put them on and people, even now, still swore that they could hear the echoes of his screams. Unfortunately the T.V.E.G.F.V.I's worked just a little better than anyone expected although Abryn didn't think that being able to see the heat signature of every creepy and crawly in a radius of 50 cubits was such a bad thing. He used them quite often now to make sure there where no infestations on any of his equipment, like the S.R.B's (seriously ravenous beasties). S.R.B's did two things, and both were a great concern for U.L.H.C (United Light and Heat Corporation). They caused the pipes to leak and gave the oil a rather horrible smell.

Abryn, who had very finely developed olfactory senses got very tired of the foul smells in his dwelling and started work on a process to get the S.R.B's out of the Oil. He made a machine, using three different chambers that caused the oil and the vile stuff to separate.

He did however come up with another use for the horrible yellow powder after a few years of trying to find ways to get rid of it. He ended up with a substance that, after having been secretly disposed of in his mother's mushroom garden, caused her to win the biggest mushroom competition 9 years in a row.

But back to the here and now. His great moment. He checked over the Os-Hit one more time, making sure that all his calibrations were right and that every nut and bolt was tightened sufficiently.

If only his parents where here to see it. His father would finally be rewarded for years of unwavering trust in his son's abilities and his mother might actually shut up for once. That thought made Abryn smile. He was sure that if there was an afterlife, she would tell some poor soul there about how her son was a failure.

Even on her deathbed she had looked at him and mouthed “Why?”. His father for years after had tried to tell him that she must have meant “Why do I have to leave you my beloved child” but Abryn knew that she had meant “Why were you not a better son to me you ungrateful boy”.

A knock on the door broke him out of his unpleasant memories. He quickly got up and pulled a large sheet over the Os-Hit. With gusto he opened the door expecting a great crowd of people and there where exactly 3, Orkin, a young Uropian Abryn had never met, that introduced himself as Gelgin, apparently the newest member of the U.D.R (Uropian Daily Report) and Boma. Boma was Orkin's second in command in all things regarding the Work Force and Abryn disliked him almost as much as he did Orkin.

Disappointed, but only for a moment as surely the news of his great success would draw in more spectators soon, he bid them in and offered them some refreshments. Gelgin took one of the little cakes much to the disapproval of Orkin and sat down in of the chairs Abryn had prepared for the event. Orkin and Boma stood at the back of the room looking smug yet anxious.

“My fellow Uropians”, Abryn started his carefully prepared speech, “I would like to welcome you to THE event of this Cycle. Today I will revolutionize mining as you know it. Never again will you have to use heavy machinery to get though cubits and cubits of hard rock, never again..”

“Just show us what the stupid thing can do” Orkin interrupted harshly.

“Never again... you wont... drill heads...”, Abryn was flustered, frantically trying to recover from the interruption. He had practised this speech numerous times and now his mind was blank.

“Abryn looks clueless and stutters, seemingly intimidated by the presence of the great Orkin” Gelgin muttered to himself while writing it down.

Abryn frowned.

“I give you the O.S.H.I.T” he managed to almost scream at his tiny audience and whipped away the cloth from the machine, hoping for maybe an “ooh” or an “ah” but all he got was an incredulous look from Orkin and amused chuckles from both Boma and Gelgin. “Does he actually realize...” Boma started saying but was cut short by a sharp look from Orkin.

With “Let me tell you how this works!”, Abryn started his presentation, slowly regaining his composure. “You aim the Os-Hit at the area you want to drill into. Then you set this dial here to the volume you would like to transport.” Boma looked rather bored by now. “Then,” Abryn continued, “we have to adjust these dials here to height, width and depth required. Let's set it to a cube 10 cubits to a side. Now it is ready to use. I have prepared an area outside, so if you would please follow me.” Abryn had built the machine on a platform with wheels so it would be easy to move into its location. He had also included an on board tool kit, should there ever be any repairs necessary. He made sure to point that out to Orkin as he wheeled the Os-Hit out of his workshop into what used to be his mothers mushroom garden. Boma now seemed slightly interested.

Abryn moved the machine into position.

“Ready to be amazed?” he asked and pushed the button which turned on the Os-Hit. And turn on it did, making enough noise to wake a sleeping rock worm (which apparently was a difficult thing to do) and shaking vigorously.

Orkin and Boma looked a little scared yet utterly fascinated at the obvious display of madness. Gelgin frantically tried to write everything down and not miss anything that was happening.

A loud bang and a bright flash and... there appeared a section of stone with a large pipe running through it. A foul smelling, dark brown liquid oozed out of the pipe quickly spreading across the former mushroom garden and over the shoes of the dumbfounded onlookers.

“What, by Harthan, is this?” Boma said his grimaced face expressing disgust. “Oh...” Orkin looked furious, the veins on his neck pumping

“Abryyyyyyyn you imbecile. Explain yourself right this instant!” His voiced echoed back from the surrounding rock walls. But there was no Abryn, no machine, just a cube of rock and sewage pipe.

“Oh my” Abryn thought “I must have miscalculated something. Where am I and what is this?” There was a rushing, gurgling sound of running water. Trying to get his thoughts together he took a deep breath... And then he knew, maybe not where but what it was that he and his machine were standing in. Overcome by the intense stench of effluent he tried desperately not to pass out but failed.

His last thought was “The sewers? Me? Orkin!” as he collapsed between two open sewage pipes where there seemed to be a piece missing.