Hello everybody! Since I'm an author and all, I figured I had better hurry up and get my stories posted! I'm starting off with a bang here with Healing Wings ch 1, the single greatest work of art to come from my hands yet. Please support my future as a writer by giving me feedback, particularly of the critical kind. If I can make my best better, who can tell where I can go? And I really, REALLY hope HTML works here. <i>test</i>
DAMN!
Healing Wings Chapter 1
Lightning crashed and thunder roared, echoing through the trees. The constant torrent of rainfall turned the earth to slosh and the abundant plant life slick, shining in the flashes of electric light; the pitch black clouds turned noon to midnight.
While the creatures of the forest hid in their burrows and trees, a single man in a drenched, hooded brown robe ran with all his strength. His lungs burned, clawing for every scrap of oxygen they could grab. His legs felt like they had been dipped in gasoline and lit afire, threatening to give out at any moment. A small bundle of white cloth was clutched to his heaving, gasping chest.
"I heard something, follow me!" A deep, gruff voice boomed through the air, uncovering a hidden store of energy in The Man. His legs pumped harder, torso rocking from side to side in time with his steps. Squelching boots sinking into mud, crashing thunder and the filtering of insectoid wings all came together as the symphony of the chase. A new note sprang up in the orchestra, a high pitched and constant wail, broken into two second long segments; an infant's cry. Horrified, The Man unwrapped the bundle from his arms and held it with his large but soft hands, and began to shake it violently.
"Shut up, shut up! Be quiet, monster!" His yells served only to make the cries louder, so he snaked his hand under the cloth and covered the child's mouth, bringing his other arm back around the bundle and towards his chest again. Before he realized it the rhythmic squelching of boots turned to the sharp tapping of steel soles and stone tiles. <i>The outskirts… just a little further!</i>" He couldn't see ten feet in front of him for the white sheets of rain falling like waves on a vertical ocean. Were it not for the optical overlay in his right eye –and the map it streamed to his mind- he would be hopelessly lost.
"I see him! Hurry!" The voice from earlier returned, flooding The Man's blood with adrenalin, but to no effect. His body was already giving all it had. <i>Just ten more yards. Just ten. Come on!</i>"
"Gahh!" He cried out in pain in tandem with the sound of cracking and fell, legs no longer obeying his commands. He twisted his body; narrowly avoiding falling on the child by landing on his left side, now facing the direction he was fleeing from. His momentum carried him far over the nearly frictionless stone. No longer focused on the ground in front of him, The Man could see in the brief flashes of lightning the dark silhouettes of his pursuers. Five giants were off in the distance, flying on four insectoid wings, and a sixth was leading them, close. <i>Very</i> close. He came to a sudden and painful stop when his back slammed into a flat surface. Still gasping for breath, he looked up and behind him. His gaze was met by a large stone pedestal, followed by a giant stone-like circle. He almost cried out in joy, but a blood-thirsty cry drew his attention back to his pursuer. The creature that had chased him was nearly there, ready to devour him. The man closed his eyes, expecting death. There was a crack of thunder.
"Urck!" and a sizzle. After several seconds of not being dead, The Man opened his eyes. The Fairy was lying on the ground, smoke rising from his back. Its right hand slammed on the ground, arm forming a vertical angle; the other mirrored the motion. It pushed itself up, raised its head, and pulled one leg underneath it. The leg's muscles flexed, and the fairy launched forward. From the tower at the ring's left a bolt of lightning was cast, colliding with the fairy and knocking it back. Realizing he was finally safe, The Man began climbing up the stairs of the pedestal with one arm, holding the child in the other.
"Wait." The man continued climbing, ignoring his pursuer. "Wait, please!" The Fairy's deep voice washed over The Man, ineffectual. With no more reply than a clenched jaw he placed his hand three steps up from him, pushed himself off the ground, dragged himself forward, and let himself drop. He repeated the process again and again, legs exploding in pain each time they hit the hard stone.
"I said wait, damnit! Don't take her from me!" The Man's head jerked downward, nearly hitting the stair beneath it. He stayed there, frozen, for several heartbeats then resumed his slow, agonizing climb.
"I'm begging you, stop! <i>She's my daught-!</i>" The Man was suddenly turned around, the movement to fast to see in the storm. His teeth were barred; the bridge of his nose was crunched in half as his face contorted in rage.
<i><b><u>"AND SANDRA WAS MY WIFE!!!</i>" Lightning crashed in the distance, accenting the man's desperate cry. A sob escaped his lips and he bent his head down, checking his emotions. Barely a second had passed before he flung his head into the open, tears indistinguishable from the rain. "But that didn't stop you, did it!?" Both men sat where they were, clearly seeing each other for the first time in this long chase. At his distance and size, all the fairy could see was six bright glowing red bars lined along the iris of the man's right eye, radiating out from the pupil like spokes on a wheel. The Man, however, could see everything on the fairy. He was on his hands and knees, staring at The Man in shock, gasping for breath from the tower or the chase. His body was the dream of any body builder, defined by hard lines and tight muscles. His arms were wide and slick with rain and sweat; even human sized he would be able to best most men. His face was hard and rugged, purely muscle and narrow at the jaw. Clumps of dark green –almost brown- hair fell between his nose and eye. Streams of water flowed between each giant strand, down his lips, and over his chin to the ground below. A raged brown line of dead flesh -wide at the top narrowing to a point, and cut deep into his face- ran from his forehead, through his left eye and ending mid-cheek in clear contrast with his lightly tanned skin. That eye was pure white, an unseeing clump of meat and dead nerves. The Man's eyes shifted down and to the left, followed by his head for a short distance.
"It didn't stop you…" His body turned, facing the stairs again, and he resumed his climb.
"You…" the fairy whispered, then shouted: "No! What will you do with her!?" The man answered, but didn't stop climbing.
"What you did! I'll kill her! In a pool of acid!"
"<i><b>No!</i> Please, give her back! I'll do anything!" The Man ignored him. "I can make you grow! Or shrink! Or, or I can grow something else!" One push at a time, he slowly got closer to the top. "Plants! You humans love plants! I'm a nature fairy, I-I can enchant soil so that anything you plant will grow!" <i>Grab. Lift. Pull. Drop.</i> "Or information! I know a lot about this world, I can tell you anything you want to know!" The Man's hand slammed down on the last step; he had reached the top. "Shi- <i>I'LL KILL MYSELF!</i> An eye for an eye, right!? A life for a life! Just spare her, plea-!"
"<i><b>I don't want those things!</i> I want justice! Complete, and total justice!" He crawled closer to the giant ring on one elbow, tenderly holding the baby girl not out of care but out of habit, screaming into wind. "I want you to watch as I take away everything that's precious to you! For you to offer everything, <i><b>everything</i> that you have to give, and it not be enough!" He was at the ring. Using a large stick near the base as a cane he pulled himself up. His right leg was weak, but with the cane's aid could support his weight. His left leg however was useless, dragging limply behind him.
"You sowed the seeds of despair. Now I want you to reap anguish." There was a flash of light and a boom of thunder. The Man was gone, leaving The Fairy alone. He arched his back and tipped his head, facing the pitch black sky with eyes clenched in grief and bellowed in pain. His cries reached up to the heavens, sung by so many before him; the Nocturne of Misery, the Bolero of Bawling , the Sonata of Sorrow.
The Song of Felarya.
Subject: Healing Wings 
Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:52 pm
