《[Abandoned]》 A Light Start - Part.1 (Fantasy) This is a Side-Project on my break period from another novel I''m writing (which you can check up here: http://royalroadl.com/fiction/7822). I''m doing this because I feel like I still want to write something else, while at the same time improving my narrative skills and my english. So I will write various One-Shots (always in the same Fiction Page) to try some things out. If you find any errors or have any suggestion for my writing style, then comment below. Or PM me. Ready? Here is "A Light Start", to start with something fresh. I tought this up in just a couple minutes. Enjoy! -Narrator POV- Angels are creatures said to escort souls to the High Planes, where the Gods will judge you, either accepting you in their light embrace or throwing you in the darkest pit, where the most ferocious and terrifying creatures spend their lives hunting down mortals. Angels are said to be the purest of creatures, and while most believe them to be just myths, they actually live in communities, similar to ours, on floating islands that navigate above the clouds, unreachable to humans and other creatures. Our story is about a young one, living on one of these islands with his brothers and sisters, in peace and harmony. -First Person POV- ¡°Herm, wake up, today is the grand day!¡± Uh¡­ eh? Oh, right, today¡¯s the day of the ceremony¡­ ¡°Another... five¡­ minutes...¡± ¡°AH?! Come on now, get out of bet or you will be late for the Initiation!¡± Wait¡­ Oh for the Great Gods, the Ceremony! I have to hurry! I jump out of my bed as fast as I can, while also trying to reach for my clothes on the other side of the room. But my blanket goes in the way of my wings and I lose balance, falling face first. ¡°Ugh, that hurts...¡± I try to get up, but the blanket is still there, fighting to keep me down. It¡¯s a hard match, but after some minutes I¡¯m finally free to move and I start dressing myself. ¡°Are you not ready yet?!¡± ¡°I¡¯m coming!¡± I finish adjusting my shirt and start descending the stairs. I immediately rush to the kitchen, where my mother prepared breakfast. She¡¯s still at cooking though, probably preparing lunch. Like I wouldn¡¯t know you¡¯re preparing a feast to celebrate for when I come back at lunch. Seriously¡­ ¡°Come on, move, you¡¯re already late.¡± I stare at her, looking in her eyes. She has the most beautiful gems in the whole city, of a deep blue that seem to suck you in when you look at her. She¡¯s a loving and caring mother, and, if I may say, she raised me pretty well even without my father, who most of the time is busy with work. ¡°Yes? What is it? You should go now.¡± ¡°Oh, yeah¡± I take a red apple, breaking eye contact, and fly out of the door. Literally. ¡°Pay attention!¡± Yeah, yeah. You don¡¯t have to worry. Seriously, I¡¯m already grown up enough to know to pay attention while flying around the streets. Though, today is really busy. Even if the sun raised not much time ago, the roads are already filled up with people flying around to do their own errands, stalls set up to sell food and mothers watching after their excited kids. I suddenly take a really sharp turn and bump into someone. We both fall to the ground, but we weren¡¯t going at high speed and were almost at ground level, so I stand up immediately. I look at the other party, and I realize I¡¯ve bumped in to a child. And it seems like she¡¯s going to cry. This is bad, I don¡¯t want to pass from someone bad after making a little girl cry. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°O-ohi, are you all right?¡± I try asking, using the most gentle tone I can pull out. It doesn¡¯t seem to work, she really seems to be going to cry¡­ ¡°Ehi, come on, don¡¯t cry¡­ oh, yeah, here, take this!¡± Using my last resort I pull out my apple and rise it up under her nose. She raises her heads, looking at the apple, then at me, then again the apple. I near the fruit even more, and after some time she slowly takes the apple, thanks me and runs away towards someone who seems to be her mother. Oh man, that was close. Wait¡­ am I forgetting something here? Uhm¡­ oh. The Ceremony! Now I¡¯m definitely going to be late! I rush upwards towards the roofs and after looking around, seeing that my way is free I turn towards the academy and start flying at full speed. I seem to have arrived just in time, as they are going to start it any time now. I make my way through the mass of people that are going to assist to the Initiation, finally reaching the other young angels behind the curtains. Just when I reach my spot it starts, the High Elder makes the introduction speech and they start calling us, one at a time. Finally my turn comes. I¡¯m sweating bucks for how nervous I am, barely managing to contain my self while walking up to the Elders, at the centre of the scene. The High Elder looks at me, with his usual soothing and all-knowing eyes. It almost seems like he knows what you¡¯re going trough in the hardest times of your life. He reaches out with his right hand, presenting me my certificate. But suddenly, without any prediction, a thundering roar rips the peaceful event apart. We freeze. The spectator, the other candidates and me freeze on the spot. The elders prepare their canes, bringing them to the ready. The High Elder puts down my certificate and starts looking at the sky. After seconds that seemed hours, a shout break the silence. ¡°DRAGONS! They¡¯re attacking us!¡± [Guard] ¡°Prepare for battle, evacuate the civilians and the students!¡± [High Elder] Suddenly, the crowd starts going crazy, people scatters away, some flying, other running. Some guards try to direct them, while the Elders, the High Elder and other guards fly in formation, directed towards the intruders. I¡¯m still standing on the stage, too many thoughts running in my head. ¡®What is happening? Why would the dragons attack us? Are the others doing fine? My mother¡­ mother is in danger! I have to fly home as fast as I can!¡¯ Thinking so I start running towards the city, mixing with the mass. Suddenly, a shadow appears, and cover us whole. A dragon penetrated the defences and is now flying just above our heads. The crowd now panics, people start pulling a pushing, trying to run or fly away from the inevitable. I try to lift myself from the ground, but I fail. I¡¯m too scared to move. I don¡¯t want to die. Someone, save me¡­ [Warning! From now on, I will try my hand at some Gore scenes! If you don¡¯t like those, then stop reading here! Same goes for the next Part] But no one comes, and the dragon starts blowing out his mortal breath, which covers the mass of people trying to save their lives. The luckiest die fast, while the others are roasted to death, and then carbonized in a matter of seconds. The stink of burned meat spreads in the air. After watching the death it brought, the beast flies away, towards the city, to bring more despair and purge the inhabitants with his flames. A Light Start - Part.2 (Fantasy/Economy?) This is the second part, which wasn''t supposed to exist, but now is. It''s short, but I wanted to put in some lore to this, while also trying out Economy. Which I never really studied much. Well, enjoy. The next will be tomorrow evening, and will also be tha last for this story. ¡°Year 523 of the Empire calendar. After almost twenty year of peace, the fourth emperor of the Kalaust Empire, Franco the Fourth of Calenda, decided to start a new war to satisfy his own thirst of power. But, even though he may have been an oppressive bastard, who would decide to break off any pact with other nations and shed the blood of his now citizens for his own profit, he was not an idiot. He knew very well he had to prepare for that, as the other powers would probably not stay put while he destroyed them one after the other. So, he decided to wait for another three years, so that he could gather resources and put his enemies one against the others. Now, we won¡¯t dig much in the political warfare that he started, even if it sure was a good fight he put on in those three years. No, we will now talk about how massive the operation to gather materials (and build weapons for his army) became. Franco did something that no ruler ever did, as they always put their pride over everything. He decided to trust the matter to the Adventurer Guild. He sent his messengers to all the guild branches to up requests for materials at double the normal price. Thus, the adventurer job in all of Kalaust had a boom, with everyday more and more people joining in the association, and adventurers from other parts in the world coming to set in the empire. This was also an advantage for Franco, as not only did the revenue of materials increased, but he could also recruit all of these people as mercenaries for when the war started. So, in only three years his army doubled in numbers, and became ten times as strong compared to before. And what baffled even more the people from those times, was that the income that the Empire got didn¡¯t decrease at all, but it got even higher! Even with all the money the Empire had to pay to support the rewards for gathering requests to the Guild, they only got more and more money. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.But that is only normal. As more and more adventurers came to Kalaust, merchants also followed, to sell their products. And of course, many immigrants, searching a job also came, bringing more manual labour, which raised the food production, increased the expansion of cities etcetera. But, this is not all. It also brought new technologies and inventors, further increasing the life standards of even the poor people. One of these inventors, called Juan, was personally hired by the emperor, thanks to one of his projects. Juan had in fact come up with a bizarre machine, which he called gravitational ship. It was a normal ship, which could fly by exploiting a rare kind of mineral called gravitone. This material was found on the flying islands of Astri and had the peculiar ability to levitate. Juan wanted to use his invention to improve the exportation and importation of goods, but Franco had other plans in mind. After stealing his projects he decided to lock away Juan in the deepest part of his dungeon, to make sure that no one would ever discover his new, secret weapon. He immediately ordered the construction of the gravitational ship, but he still lacked the most important component: the gravitone. Just around fifty square centimetres were enough for a ship, but he wanted to build an entire armada of those. He could have bought it from the inhabitants, but even though Angles were generous creatures, he knew for sure that they wouldn¡¯t be much willing to sell their only safe Eden. So he decided to take it whit force. The next night, the Dragoon Division of his army took off to the Astri Island. Their mission was to slay the native population and gather as much gravitone as possible, leaving no witness behind. The next day became what we now know as the ¡°massacre of the pure¡±, one of the most brute slaughter that took place in the long war, without including the fall of Escariot. But that is another story.¡± Extract from the ¡°Epics of the Long War¡±, wrote by the Ember Sage not many years after the end of said war, in the year 864 of the Empire calendar.