Post by loremaster8953 on Jul 21, 2008 23:08:04 GMT -5
Larok turned the corner to find a pile of bricks clean from sand which told him they had just been piled up. He knew these things as sandstorms came every forty five minutes, which left sand piles on everything. A boy who looked the age of twelve came from behind him with three bricks in his hand. Without so much as a glance, he piled the bricks on top of the ones already there, and ran back to where he came from to get, as Larok presumed, more bricks. Larok walked closer to the brick pile. Was he trying to bury anything? Or was this just a boy playing with bricks? Why such determination? What was his motive?
He stood next to the brick pile and waited for the little boy to circle the corner. Sure enough, no more than a minute later, the boy returned with three more bricks. Larok stopped him, and in a Gurelian accent asked him why he was doing what he was doing. The boy looked instantly saddened, or Larok just now took notice of it. He looked up directly into Larok’s eyes and with an unshakably burdened demeanor said, “My mother has died and went to heaven. I’m building my way to heaven so I can see her again.”
Larok was at that moment shocked and now stuck with the question, “Should I let this boy deal with the loss in his own way or try and tell him his idea wont work?” He went with the first option. He was twelve years old. He nodded to the boy and reached in his pocket to give him some leftover’s from breakfast. The boy reached out and took the stale bread and smiled. He thanked larok and picked up the bricks he had set down to answer Larok’s question. and set them in designated places on the brick pile.
Larok Smiled, this will make an interesting story to tell his spell-working instructor*. Which reminded him he was probably running late. He mumbled some words under his breath and instantly a sundial was carved into the sand. He had a mere four minutes to get to his class. Larock pulled out his wand and summoned an air concentration beneath his feet which allow him to hover his way to class, most likely making it there in a faster time than if he was walking. He weaved his way through the alley ways of the rugged town, making his way towards a dome shaped building that dwarfed the surrounding buildings. It had a large blue tapestry draped over the top of the dome with a darker blue insignia and white accents. As he made his way to the door he could hear his instructor’s lecture echoing its way through the class. The class had already begun, Larok was late. He took a moment to shed every ounce of self-blame off of himself and onto the inadequacy of the air-concentration as a traveling device, even though it was presented to him as such.
The class continued on - he was not a part of the class yet and every other student was just as important as he.
Larok pushed the door open, its rusted hinges doing no justice to Larok’s ideal silent entry. He took a bow to the class before him, then to the teacher, walked up the stairs to the nearest seat which was not taken ( which happened to be a seat, to his inconvenience, only one row from the top) and sat down.
His instructor glanced at Larok then continued, “Remember students what your primary focus should be in conjuring your scout. So often I find students trying to call when their focus’s are in this realm, when they forget that this spell can only be completed by focusing your attention away from your surroundings. Let your mind wander into your own world. Then visualize a flying creature. It is true that some students’ scouts will be falcons, while others might be butterflies…”
Larok turned to a student next to him and asked her what he had missed. Preoccupied with what the teacher was saying and wanting to respond undetected, she said out of the corner of her mouth, “Nothing really, but your lucky his lecture had such a long introduction. He just started getting to the important stuff moments before you walked in.”
Larok thanked her and pulled out a scroll from his pocket to take notes. He checked the other pocket for a felt pen but none was found. He promptly clasp his hands together and opened up a worm-hole reaching into his room. With a sound like that of lightning he had his pen. Of course, such a sound disrupted the class-room immensely. That took precedence over blame for his lack of preparedness. The instructor cocked his head at Larok in a sort of confused irritation. Larok raised his hands, knowing it probably wouldn’t cushion the blow enough, “Sorry, I forgot a pen”
His instructor remained aggravated, “That is the second time you have interrupted my lecture. Perhaps Larok you should save such insufferably annoying behaviors to the insects who will eat us alive when as walk out the door today.”
Larok gave him a dirty look. It was like he was trying to be funny and demean him at the same time. It didn’t have the impact his instructor clearly anticipated. The girl next to him was looking around to see the other students expressions. They were similar to larok’s. He countered, “ Im sorry for interrupting I just didn’t have a pen with me. By the way, I’m surprised you speak of annoying behaviors with such contempt. They certainly serve their purpose on the battlefield.”
“Oh cheese-fiddles not in the context of a class-room…just hush up.”
Larok nodded. He almost instantly went over what he said in a sort of nervous revisit of the moment. Of course, being annoying in a class-room truly had no correlation to being annoying on the battlefield. He had not turned red this entire time but as he realized this he felt the blood rush to his head.
He just tried to forget about it and get through the lecture. His instructor carried on,
“Students please…no fiddling around with this one. Visualize an entirely different world which holds the very essence of your person. Construct it with your mind…go ahead little inexperienced blokes close your eyes.”
Larok reminded himself that his instructor was over 1000 years old, and was surely dealing with some form of senility. He gave him a break. He knew the minimum requirement for the class was 25 years of age, not so little, but in comparison with the instructor, very much so. Larok cleared his mind, and closed his eyes. At first, nothing came to him but the back of his eye-lids. But as he began to journey farther inward, fragments of his person began to manifest themselves in a world he had felt and dreamed of but never had witnessed fully. His instructor said something but he didn’t catch what it was. He wondered briefly if this was what he was supposed to do, but was so entertained, and intrigued, that he assumed he was doing as instructed.
Indeed this world of his was something else. He would think a thought and watch the sky turn different colors, each corresponding to the nature of each thought. Each color was so mesmerizing and attractive he felt as if he would fall into it. He looked at his surroundings and noticed he was on a shore, whose waters were the lightest turquoise he had ever imagined. He could see to the very bottom, examining the activities of the sea-life on a whim. A loud noise that penetrated the sky’s told him something was wrong. He assumed, though it didn’t make sense, that he had run out of time and his teacher was yelling at him to hurry. He did, then, as instructed, imagining a flying creature whose span was that of the entire school room. It was interesting, he noted, that he did not intentionally imagine such a creature- it was simply the first one to come to mind. The deep hue’s of the creature materialized in front of his eyes, the sun reflecting off its armored head and gold- plated wings and feet. It wore an armored chest-piece that was black and seemed deceptively heavy due to its sheer size. Though as he looked closer he realized it was porous so as to not bog the creature down during flight and allow the armor to breath. Its wing span ran the length of the beach, and simply dwarfed and made dull the splendor of his surroundings. He took one step towards the creature when he was suddenly shaken out of his world to the stretched and upset contours of the teacher’s face. “That is enough. This was meant to be a short procedure. Unless your summoning a crazy zeppelin of a bird…Unlikely…” He motioned to the rest of the class, who mostly had butterflies, humming birds, and pigeons, “Then it shouldn’t take that long. I suggest you practice more, it seems you’re a bit behind.”
Larok at that moment was struck with disappointment. He had, in fact, summoned “a crazy zeppelin of a bird”, and if it wasn’t that he thought it should be called something much greater than that. He would certainly seek to summon him after class was over. Perhaps he could even ride it. Of course, he would have to land once the sandstorm picked up, but for the few moments he could be with this creature, he would take.
The instructor walked to the front of the room and announced, “Ok students either cage the animals or release them the same way you summoned them. And if it happens to die, it will have to be re-summoned, but its important to note your soul-creature never truly dies unless your imagination dies…this can happen various ways. We will talk about this next lecture the day after tomorrow at the same time. Good bye faggots.”
The students followed suit, gathering their things and walking down the steps towards the door. Some stayed in their seats with their eyes closed, presumably seeking to release their creature rather then caging it. This didn’t take long- a mere fifteen seconds, Larok observed. He knew in hindsight that his definitely took longer than that. Well, he would think about this more when he returned home. He heard sands spraying against the few windows positioned at the top of the dome, and he knew another sandstorm had struck. No longer meant much to Larok as he knew of several spells to keep the sand away from him. As a child, though, the sand was menacing and gave him nightmares for several days afterwards. It was the relentless presence of sand so thick you couldn’t breath without breathing in mounds of dirt. He dared not open his eyes, he remembered, for the velocity the sand was traveling at would certainly tear his eyes and even damage his vision. Even the wind made standing a challenge for a young boy. Though, when he had reached the age of 16 he was taught a spell that would keep the sands at bay, and in this he was granted permission to travel about as he pleased. He had taken advantage of this freedom frequently since then, had developed this spell since that age and traveled during sandstorms regularly. He opened the door and instantly covered his face, uttering a spell under the protection of his arm. Immediately a force field surrounded him. The relationship between the safe, and unsafe always reminded him of a fish-tank, how the fish were protected in their own surroundings and the tank was transparent, much like the force-field, so both sides, or dimensions, could view each other clearly . He walked casually through the violent winds and sand, viewing them as a mere specimen in a detached manner, rather than being engaged in the fearful, “What if’s” . Years of doing this gave him this ease. Summoning the orb of wind beneath his feet crossed his mind but he figured it would be disrupted by the winds. He was also not in a hurry. He passed by the pile of bricks the child he had met stacked up, which had grown significantly since he first saw it. Something out of place caught his eye resting just a foot away from the bricks. It was a tuft of fabric which could easily be taken for a piece of trash. Though if it were merely a piece of trash it would be covered over with sand. He walked closer to it. As he did so a chilling thought crossed his mind. The boy. He instantly got down on his hands and knees and began shoveling the sand away with his hands from the body. Though the sand storm was so thick that it seemed to replace any sand he moved away. His stress levels exploded he could feel it in his chest, he could not let this boy die. Larok knew he didn’t have much time to save him before the pressure of the sands would become so great it would literally strangle the boy to death. He tried plan “b” there simply wasn’t enough time to physical dig him out. He recalled a spell that was taught him not longer than a year ago, and raised it to the highest tier. It would take a powerful spell to force such volumes of sands away from his body. With a shaking voice he uttered the spell and a deep explosion penetrated the depths of sand around the boy and caused what seemed vaguely similar to a tsunami. Though his focuses now were on the boy, whose body seemed at the time lifeless. He felt the need to hope that he could save him still, but something didn’t seem right. The worst part of it all, something which had just made his stomach curl into a knot which would not be undone anytime soon. The boy lay sprawled out, face up. This was no accident, he had committed suicide. He turned away from it in despair and lumbered away from it. Perhaps not towards home, just away.
The sandstorms still raged on, relentless, like time itself. He didn’t bother to look back at the boy’s corpse which , within seconds, had disappeared under the sand. He remembered how he had tried to help the boy, remembered giving of himself to lighten his grievances. Though it seemed it wasn’t enough. Would it have been worth it to skip class to stay with this boy? Would he be willing to sacrifice that much to a complete stranger? Larok knew better but he could not but help feel responsible. He also knew he could not meditate on this for long. He needed good, strong energy so that he could visit his scout again. Scout, he thought in jest. This was no scout, this creature could destroy armies clad with even the finest armor but he had not the slightest clue how to direct it. The uncertainty fueled Larok’s intrigue.
Ok so this is a short story-no where near finished. I want it to be about 10 or 12 pages long. I presume ill be able to end the story given that number of pages. So, tell me what you think, good or bad...tho remember constructive criticism is ideal. oh and also, this is a rough copy...there are errors in it and those wll be fixed at a later time. Thanks,
Loremaster
He stood next to the brick pile and waited for the little boy to circle the corner. Sure enough, no more than a minute later, the boy returned with three more bricks. Larok stopped him, and in a Gurelian accent asked him why he was doing what he was doing. The boy looked instantly saddened, or Larok just now took notice of it. He looked up directly into Larok’s eyes and with an unshakably burdened demeanor said, “My mother has died and went to heaven. I’m building my way to heaven so I can see her again.”
Larok was at that moment shocked and now stuck with the question, “Should I let this boy deal with the loss in his own way or try and tell him his idea wont work?” He went with the first option. He was twelve years old. He nodded to the boy and reached in his pocket to give him some leftover’s from breakfast. The boy reached out and took the stale bread and smiled. He thanked larok and picked up the bricks he had set down to answer Larok’s question. and set them in designated places on the brick pile.
Larok Smiled, this will make an interesting story to tell his spell-working instructor*. Which reminded him he was probably running late. He mumbled some words under his breath and instantly a sundial was carved into the sand. He had a mere four minutes to get to his class. Larock pulled out his wand and summoned an air concentration beneath his feet which allow him to hover his way to class, most likely making it there in a faster time than if he was walking. He weaved his way through the alley ways of the rugged town, making his way towards a dome shaped building that dwarfed the surrounding buildings. It had a large blue tapestry draped over the top of the dome with a darker blue insignia and white accents. As he made his way to the door he could hear his instructor’s lecture echoing its way through the class. The class had already begun, Larok was late. He took a moment to shed every ounce of self-blame off of himself and onto the inadequacy of the air-concentration as a traveling device, even though it was presented to him as such.
The class continued on - he was not a part of the class yet and every other student was just as important as he.
Larok pushed the door open, its rusted hinges doing no justice to Larok’s ideal silent entry. He took a bow to the class before him, then to the teacher, walked up the stairs to the nearest seat which was not taken ( which happened to be a seat, to his inconvenience, only one row from the top) and sat down.
His instructor glanced at Larok then continued, “Remember students what your primary focus should be in conjuring your scout. So often I find students trying to call when their focus’s are in this realm, when they forget that this spell can only be completed by focusing your attention away from your surroundings. Let your mind wander into your own world. Then visualize a flying creature. It is true that some students’ scouts will be falcons, while others might be butterflies…”
Larok turned to a student next to him and asked her what he had missed. Preoccupied with what the teacher was saying and wanting to respond undetected, she said out of the corner of her mouth, “Nothing really, but your lucky his lecture had such a long introduction. He just started getting to the important stuff moments before you walked in.”
Larok thanked her and pulled out a scroll from his pocket to take notes. He checked the other pocket for a felt pen but none was found. He promptly clasp his hands together and opened up a worm-hole reaching into his room. With a sound like that of lightning he had his pen. Of course, such a sound disrupted the class-room immensely. That took precedence over blame for his lack of preparedness. The instructor cocked his head at Larok in a sort of confused irritation. Larok raised his hands, knowing it probably wouldn’t cushion the blow enough, “Sorry, I forgot a pen”
His instructor remained aggravated, “That is the second time you have interrupted my lecture. Perhaps Larok you should save such insufferably annoying behaviors to the insects who will eat us alive when as walk out the door today.”
Larok gave him a dirty look. It was like he was trying to be funny and demean him at the same time. It didn’t have the impact his instructor clearly anticipated. The girl next to him was looking around to see the other students expressions. They were similar to larok’s. He countered, “ Im sorry for interrupting I just didn’t have a pen with me. By the way, I’m surprised you speak of annoying behaviors with such contempt. They certainly serve their purpose on the battlefield.”
“Oh cheese-fiddles not in the context of a class-room…just hush up.”
Larok nodded. He almost instantly went over what he said in a sort of nervous revisit of the moment. Of course, being annoying in a class-room truly had no correlation to being annoying on the battlefield. He had not turned red this entire time but as he realized this he felt the blood rush to his head.
He just tried to forget about it and get through the lecture. His instructor carried on,
“Students please…no fiddling around with this one. Visualize an entirely different world which holds the very essence of your person. Construct it with your mind…go ahead little inexperienced blokes close your eyes.”
Larok reminded himself that his instructor was over 1000 years old, and was surely dealing with some form of senility. He gave him a break. He knew the minimum requirement for the class was 25 years of age, not so little, but in comparison with the instructor, very much so. Larok cleared his mind, and closed his eyes. At first, nothing came to him but the back of his eye-lids. But as he began to journey farther inward, fragments of his person began to manifest themselves in a world he had felt and dreamed of but never had witnessed fully. His instructor said something but he didn’t catch what it was. He wondered briefly if this was what he was supposed to do, but was so entertained, and intrigued, that he assumed he was doing as instructed.
Indeed this world of his was something else. He would think a thought and watch the sky turn different colors, each corresponding to the nature of each thought. Each color was so mesmerizing and attractive he felt as if he would fall into it. He looked at his surroundings and noticed he was on a shore, whose waters were the lightest turquoise he had ever imagined. He could see to the very bottom, examining the activities of the sea-life on a whim. A loud noise that penetrated the sky’s told him something was wrong. He assumed, though it didn’t make sense, that he had run out of time and his teacher was yelling at him to hurry. He did, then, as instructed, imagining a flying creature whose span was that of the entire school room. It was interesting, he noted, that he did not intentionally imagine such a creature- it was simply the first one to come to mind. The deep hue’s of the creature materialized in front of his eyes, the sun reflecting off its armored head and gold- plated wings and feet. It wore an armored chest-piece that was black and seemed deceptively heavy due to its sheer size. Though as he looked closer he realized it was porous so as to not bog the creature down during flight and allow the armor to breath. Its wing span ran the length of the beach, and simply dwarfed and made dull the splendor of his surroundings. He took one step towards the creature when he was suddenly shaken out of his world to the stretched and upset contours of the teacher’s face. “That is enough. This was meant to be a short procedure. Unless your summoning a crazy zeppelin of a bird…Unlikely…” He motioned to the rest of the class, who mostly had butterflies, humming birds, and pigeons, “Then it shouldn’t take that long. I suggest you practice more, it seems you’re a bit behind.”
Larok at that moment was struck with disappointment. He had, in fact, summoned “a crazy zeppelin of a bird”, and if it wasn’t that he thought it should be called something much greater than that. He would certainly seek to summon him after class was over. Perhaps he could even ride it. Of course, he would have to land once the sandstorm picked up, but for the few moments he could be with this creature, he would take.
The instructor walked to the front of the room and announced, “Ok students either cage the animals or release them the same way you summoned them. And if it happens to die, it will have to be re-summoned, but its important to note your soul-creature never truly dies unless your imagination dies…this can happen various ways. We will talk about this next lecture the day after tomorrow at the same time. Good bye faggots.”
The students followed suit, gathering their things and walking down the steps towards the door. Some stayed in their seats with their eyes closed, presumably seeking to release their creature rather then caging it. This didn’t take long- a mere fifteen seconds, Larok observed. He knew in hindsight that his definitely took longer than that. Well, he would think about this more when he returned home. He heard sands spraying against the few windows positioned at the top of the dome, and he knew another sandstorm had struck. No longer meant much to Larok as he knew of several spells to keep the sand away from him. As a child, though, the sand was menacing and gave him nightmares for several days afterwards. It was the relentless presence of sand so thick you couldn’t breath without breathing in mounds of dirt. He dared not open his eyes, he remembered, for the velocity the sand was traveling at would certainly tear his eyes and even damage his vision. Even the wind made standing a challenge for a young boy. Though, when he had reached the age of 16 he was taught a spell that would keep the sands at bay, and in this he was granted permission to travel about as he pleased. He had taken advantage of this freedom frequently since then, had developed this spell since that age and traveled during sandstorms regularly. He opened the door and instantly covered his face, uttering a spell under the protection of his arm. Immediately a force field surrounded him. The relationship between the safe, and unsafe always reminded him of a fish-tank, how the fish were protected in their own surroundings and the tank was transparent, much like the force-field, so both sides, or dimensions, could view each other clearly . He walked casually through the violent winds and sand, viewing them as a mere specimen in a detached manner, rather than being engaged in the fearful, “What if’s” . Years of doing this gave him this ease. Summoning the orb of wind beneath his feet crossed his mind but he figured it would be disrupted by the winds. He was also not in a hurry. He passed by the pile of bricks the child he had met stacked up, which had grown significantly since he first saw it. Something out of place caught his eye resting just a foot away from the bricks. It was a tuft of fabric which could easily be taken for a piece of trash. Though if it were merely a piece of trash it would be covered over with sand. He walked closer to it. As he did so a chilling thought crossed his mind. The boy. He instantly got down on his hands and knees and began shoveling the sand away with his hands from the body. Though the sand storm was so thick that it seemed to replace any sand he moved away. His stress levels exploded he could feel it in his chest, he could not let this boy die. Larok knew he didn’t have much time to save him before the pressure of the sands would become so great it would literally strangle the boy to death. He tried plan “b” there simply wasn’t enough time to physical dig him out. He recalled a spell that was taught him not longer than a year ago, and raised it to the highest tier. It would take a powerful spell to force such volumes of sands away from his body. With a shaking voice he uttered the spell and a deep explosion penetrated the depths of sand around the boy and caused what seemed vaguely similar to a tsunami. Though his focuses now were on the boy, whose body seemed at the time lifeless. He felt the need to hope that he could save him still, but something didn’t seem right. The worst part of it all, something which had just made his stomach curl into a knot which would not be undone anytime soon. The boy lay sprawled out, face up. This was no accident, he had committed suicide. He turned away from it in despair and lumbered away from it. Perhaps not towards home, just away.
The sandstorms still raged on, relentless, like time itself. He didn’t bother to look back at the boy’s corpse which , within seconds, had disappeared under the sand. He remembered how he had tried to help the boy, remembered giving of himself to lighten his grievances. Though it seemed it wasn’t enough. Would it have been worth it to skip class to stay with this boy? Would he be willing to sacrifice that much to a complete stranger? Larok knew better but he could not but help feel responsible. He also knew he could not meditate on this for long. He needed good, strong energy so that he could visit his scout again. Scout, he thought in jest. This was no scout, this creature could destroy armies clad with even the finest armor but he had not the slightest clue how to direct it. The uncertainty fueled Larok’s intrigue.
Ok so this is a short story-no where near finished. I want it to be about 10 or 12 pages long. I presume ill be able to end the story given that number of pages. So, tell me what you think, good or bad...tho remember constructive criticism is ideal. oh and also, this is a rough copy...there are errors in it and those wll be fixed at a later time. Thanks,
Loremaster