This is a fantasy story I've been working on for a few months now. I think it's okay, but I'm pretty sure it needs some work. This is the first chapter...
Chapter 1
The Parts of the City
“Kry. Kry! Mr. Narlas!”
Kry looked up from his book to see his brother, Ivnar, standing in the doorway. “Dad needs us,” he said, pointing toward the front door of the house.
“What’s he need us for?” Kry asked, setting the book in his lap.
Ivnar shrugged. “I don’t know. He just told me to get you and come outside. He wants to show us something or have us help him with something or something. I’m not really sure.” Ivnar stepped away from the doorframe and walked back down the hall.
Kry sighed and set down the book, it was
The Black Abyss by Celn Vryce, the classic story about a man who fell into a deep cavern while walking into town one day and found things from fascinating hidden cities to terrifying bizarre monsters to talking plants. It had been written over a hundred years before, just after the print press was invented, and had circulated around the world ever since. It was a long book, but Kry was determined to finish it before he reached the Age of Manhood in two months.
After stretching a bit, Kry turned off the oil lamp he had been using for reading and left his room. The narrow hallway led him past a the kitchen where his mother was making a late supper and then through the door that opened to the world beyond his house. He lived in a town not far from the city of Torev. In some parts of the town it was probably pitch black at this time of night, but here, in the craftsmen’s district, lights shown from the windows of nearly every house and from candle-posts every ten paces. This was the richest part of town and it showed.
When Kry stepped outside he looked around to find his father. First looking to the right, and seeing groups of people, huddled together, pointing up at the sky and talking to each other. Before looking to his left, Kry glanced up at the sky for but a second. When he saw what there was to gape at, he stopped. Hundreds of stars shot across the sky, flying though the heavens. It was not like when he had briefly taken up astronomy and saw that a few stars moved unusually, these stars seemed to be flying about at hundreds of staffs a second.
“Kry,” said a voice to his left, “over here.” It was Kry’s father, Brinlar, and he was standing in the street, staring up at the shooting stars. Ivnar was standing next to him, his mouth open, gaping at the, to him, impossible sight.
Kry quickly ran over to them. “What’s going on?”
“Remember the story of the Crazy Mage?” his father asked.
Kry nodded, he knew the story well. It told the tale of a magician by the name of Yill Haripsal who had gone to hide away in a forest to protect himself from other people. He practiced magic for a few months, but then, after casting a few too many spells, he went insane. Yill left the forest and came to a city. In one motion he created a giant tornado that sucked the entire city into the sky. In fact, he shot it so high up, that nothing ever came back down. Yill, after realizing what he did, then killed himself out to grief. Now, the parts of the city floated through the sky and could be seen some nights, flying about. “Are you saying that those are parts of the city Yill Haripsal destroyed?”
Brinlar nodded. “They are. I’ve even seen one of the stones from the city once. Apparently fell from the sky and a person picked it up. ‘Course, I’m sure he was lying, but the rock did look odd, like it’d been burnt or something. He also showed me a hole in the ground where he claimed it landed. Looked real, but he probably just used a shovel. Well, anyway, doesn’t matter. The point is: now you’ve got more proof that magicians really did exist, and still do, mind you! For all you know, your best friend could be one! And if a magician found out that you knew he, or even she, was one, they would turn you into water and boil you till you were nothing but steam! Then, they’d kill you!”
Kry and Ivnar both stared at him. “You can’t be serious,” said Ivnar with a laugh.
Brinlar gave them both a hard look, “Don’t you see the parts of the city flying right over your heads?! That is the proof! Believe it or don’t, but by the land, it’s the truth!”
Kry gulped. “You’re saying that all magicians are evil?”
Brinlar looked at him, “You think some might be good? You think Yill Haripsal or Broak Mynra or Zaar the Fierce were all just nice fellows! They’d turn your bones to flame, and then laugh as you danced about trying to put the fire out! Magician, mage, wizard, warlock, witch, whatever land you are in they have a name and in every single land people fear them. You think they are all afraid for no reason? I was alive when the magician Noth Ral tried to take over the Grilmos Court! You think that was just a hoax?” Brinlar shook his head. “The other parents in town told us to pound those magician stories into your heads, but we didn’t listen. Told you them once or twice, then let you be. We should have told you them a dozen, no, many dozens of times, over and over until you had it branded in your head: Magicians are bad! Evil, if that word suits anything in this world, describes them better than any word!”
“But,” said Kry, “magic wasn’t always illegal, didn’t there used to be good magicians? You know, before Zaar and such tried to take over?”
Brinlar gave Kry a look so stern that Kry had to look away. “When you reach nineteen, then you can have your own opinions, but till then, you are my responsibility to raise. I would hate to beat you just two months before your Manhood ceremony.”
Kry gazed up into the sky just as the pieces of the city stopped shooting across the black mass.
Not all magicians are evil, he thought.
I’m sure their not, because I’m not evil.
Kry Narlas
