Enter a World Unlike Any Other
Anogwin is a realm incomparable to any other. Here, The Sophic Species, Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Dracose, and many other sapient species have pressed innovation to the furthest limits. Magic is now far more than a mysterious force held by a talented few. Circuit boards of quartz, silver, gold, and Mythril are found in millions of different forms of technology. The raw elemental component of magic, Myst, is used to power everything from day-to-day appliances to vehicles, weapons, War Machines, and so much more. Yet in a world of advanced cybernetics, Zero-G cars, and wonders beyond imagining, there is still strife. Racism remains strong, gangs run whole districts of hive cities, monsters roam the wilds, barbarian tribes raid small towns, drug addiction runs rampant through the weak-minded, mega-corporations tread over the impoverished just as the puppet governments, and there is more than one organization operating from the shadows. Tensions are tight between nations across the globe, and the threat of war looms over the horizon. Do you have the strength and wit to thrive in this world?
CHAPTER 1
Deep within the settlement walls of the hive-city of Grimvale walked a distinctly out-of-place figure. The city, spanning hundreds of miles across, dwelled under a perpetual paul of smog that had been gushing acid rain for more than a day now. In the jungle of neon-lights and concrete, a cowled figure swathed in silk and tanned leather pulled his hood farther over his head, and hurried down yet another decrepit alley.
The tight space was ripe with the stink of dissolving rotten food, ozone, and bodily waste. Dozens of spent and dead crystals littered the ground. Many of these were off-handedly kicked out of the figure’s path to settle into any of the patchwork of potholes and pocked cavities of the asphalt.
A warbling canine howl slashed through the sound of falling and sizzling rain and the figure quickened his pace. The absolute last thing he wanted was to be caught in a dangerous downpour by a pack of mange hounds. Those Death Magic-infused monsters would make a quick meal from Tave.
Not for the first time, the half-blood wished that he had some way to defend himself. But he had so thoroughly embraced himself during his Adventurer Entry Exam that he would never try anything that physically taxing, ever again.
Another howl cut through the air, this one was much closer. Tave gave up any pretence of calm or dignity as he broke into a frantic sprint toward the next intersection. He reached the first space he could find where two alleys intersected and quickly used a thought command to pull up his therra-nodes Heads Up Display to check his map. The translucent street map popped into his vision and he traced his GPS guide route to his destination. One more alley and one more turn. Then he’d be safe.
A quadrupedal shape blurred by the alley mouth he had just fled from, and it was much bigger than any house dog he had ever known. With true panic setting in, he followed his needed path with pounding feet and frantic breath. His messenger back bounced wildly at his hip beneath the acid-proof leather cloak.
Tave broke into an open space that had once been a parking lot several lifetimes ago. Occupying center of the concrete courtyard was a three-story structure of stained and aged wood that appeared immune to the caustic downpour. Above the front door was a dancing illusion or hologram of a wood tankard frozen in mid-spill with an enraged face on the mug. Above the image were three dancing, and jumping words. The Cantankerous Tankard Tavern stuck out in this city like a cadaver at a wedding. But Tave couldn’t have cared less, because it was protection.
Tave rushed through the entry door. He stepped into a homey interior. The lighting was low, not so dim as to interfere with patrons’ sight, but low enough to accommodate those with sensitive eyes. The source of the lighting was a series of faux gas lamps mounted to the walls every few yards; no two were styled the same. Oak paneling stained a dark red-brown walled the interior. Decorating the walls was an odd assortment of monster trophies and scenic paintings from across the globe. The space of the open room was filled with an odd assortment of mismatched tables and chairs. The ceiling was high enough for the taller species like Dracose or Orcs, but a lower ceiling of smoke hung in the air that smelled of pipe tobacco and burning herbs.
The tavern was all very pleasant, but Tave was more concerned about absolute bedlam going on in the space. Tave jumped in panic as a Human man struck the wall beside the front door and slid to the floor with a moan. When Tave turned back to the rest of the room, he saw a tan-skinned Wood Elf lunge with a dagger at a dark-dressed man who stood beside the bar. The dark-dressed man drives his elbow into the attacking Elf’s solar plexus with enough force to throw him backward several feet to lay prone across a vacant table.
As the dark-dressed man righted himself, Tave noticed a pair of menacing horns growing from his brow. He was a Darkling. Someone with the blood of a demon, devil, or similar being. Before Tave could examine the Foul-Blood any closer, new members of the fight assaulted. A Dwarf, Human, Dracose, and Orc joined the fray. The Canyon Dwarf with clay-colored skin hurled a bar chair at the Darkling. As that chair flew, a lizard-like Dracose man with a sturdy build raised some kind of magic energy rifle. At the same time, a Human woman pulled two kinetic sidearms loaded with physical bullets and drew aim at the Darkling. The green-skinned and massive Orc started closing the distance with reverberating footfalls as she readied her fists, which happened to be wearing metal-plate brawler gloves.
Everything after that jump-start moment happened so fluidly and quickly Tave almost couldn’t track it all. The Darkling pointed a fist at the Human woman with the sidearms. A spike four inches in length shot from the fist, expanding mid-flight into a claw that latched onto the woman’s shoulder. Her body seized up with uncontrolled muscle actions as sparks danced from the claw. The Human wasn’t even struck with the bolt when the Darkling made his next move.
He aimed that same arm at the chair flying toward him. A strange six-limbed, squid-like apparatus shot from within his sleeve and latched onto the chair, launching it back toward the Dwarf that had thrown it, but with a good deal more force. The Dwarf raised his hands in guard, but the chair broke his guard, then broke his nose in short order. It wasn’t until the Darkling thrust his arm to his side that Tave noticed that the squid apparatus was still tied to the man by a wire cable. The chair flew off the Dwarf and struck the Dracose with the rifle in the side of his head. The Dracose was tossed from his feet and his weapon tumbled to somewhere else in the room.
The only one left was the Orc woman, and Tave did not see how a six-foot-tall man could win against a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall Orc built like she would bench-press small cars. His assumption was proven wrong shortly after, when the Orc woman closed the distance only to be launched off her feet and against the wall beside Tave on the other side of the door than the first Human. The wood buckled and splintered under her weight and speed, and Tave was having second thoughts about this “great work opportunity”.
When Tave turned back to the Darkling, he found some kind of collapsable battering ram retracting back into the sleeve of the one arm that had done all this damage. Tave finally got a good look at the Darkling and gave an audible gulp of nervous fright.
This man looked every bit the villain. From the floor up, he was dressed in all black. Black combat boots with a single bladed spike on each toe. Black cargo pants with an absurd amount of pockets in addition to reinforced padding on the shins and knees. A black t-shirt with the design of a bleeding mechanical anatomic heart, with what might have been a smattering of actual blood. Over all that was a wide mantle leather duster with installed spell circuits giving a dim multi-colored glow. What should’ve been his left eye was covered with a three-strap eye patch. His other eye was a phosphorus green eye with a disturbing X-shaped pupil.
The intimidating Darkling gave a single look around the remaining patrons, all of which appeared unperturbed, before turning and sitting at the bar. “This must be the man I’m looking for.” Tave muttered under his hood before nervously approaching the bar.
“Excuse me, sir.” Even Tave could hear the quiver in his voice. “You wouldn’t happen to be Mr. Maverick? Would you?”
The Darkling half turned his head to Tave, only glancing sidelong. “Well, that depends on who is asking.” He turned to face Tave fully, looking his slight frame up and down. “I’m willing to bet you’re not an organ harvester, debt collector, or adventurer, from your dress. I doubt you have any beef about the mega-corporation toppling spree I went on a while back. Did I wrong you? Maybe killed your secretly evil brother or parent?”
“What? No no no.” Tave lowered his hood to reveal Half-Elven features. A young man with slightly pointed ears nestled in a mess of chestnut hair. His skin was pale, only barely touched with the color lavender, and he had a boyish face set with eyes of silver irises and gray sclera. A half-breed Star Elf. Beneath his leather cloak was fine cut, if rumpled, green silk vest over a black t-shirt emblazoned with a stylized blue font that read ‘To the winner go my pages’. He wore a crisp pair of clean blue jeans that were well pressed, and a black and blue pair of travel-worn sneakers. Perched atop his nose was a pair of square-framed glasses. “We spoke two weeks ago via email. I’m here to write your story.”
Tave pinched a small rune on the inside of his cloak, causing the article to bend, warp, and reshape into a brown leather duster, similar to the Darklings, if much less villainous. “I’ve got to say, Mr. Maverick, you're a hard man to find.” Tave said as he took a seat on his subject’s right side, the side of his remaining eye.
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“Please, not Mr. Maverick. That was my bastard father.” The Darklings voice rang with tiredness and old pains.
“Oh.” Tave got another spike of nervousness. He would rather not upset this man. “What should I call you? The Pale Raven? Horned Raven? The Shadow of Justice?”
The tired man visibly flinched with each name. He took a deep breath before answering, “Iver. Just call me Iver.” At the same time, Iver waved down the Dwarven bartender. The red-bearded Dwarf approached with a single raised brown in quiet question.
“Something as foul as my blood. Crux Coast Rum, Sickle’s Spirits, Hound’s Haire, and… Muled Mead.” The barkeep only gave a nod before setting to pouring and mixing. But Tave noticed several other patrons eyeing Iver with panic, disgust, and worry. “What did you just order? Some of these people seem…offended.”
Iver gave a one-shoulder shrug even as the glass was set before him. “Let them be offended. I’ve spent too long caring what others thought. But to answer your question: This,” he raised his whiskey glass and jingled the ice, “Is a mottled concoction of potent liquors from around the globe, and None of them were meant to be mixed together, by the decrees of Mortals, Gods, and others. Think of the most foul liquor you can imagine. Now multiply it by ten, mix it with bleach, and increase that all to a new order of magnitude.” With that, Iver took a sip of the drink and kept a completely straight face. “Tastes like my childhood.”
“I…uh…okay?” Tave was baffled by this man. “Anyway,” He clambered for a topic change. “What was that fight about?” Tave thumbed toward the people Iver had demolished who were only just picking themselves up and moving to leave with their tails between their legs.
“Just some mercs that saw a price tag on my head. It’s a fairly regular thing these days, now that my identity is out on the net.”
That got Tave leaning in closer. “Is that why you want me to tell your story?”
“No, kid. You found my info and contacted me about my story instead of putting crosshairs on my neck. I was honestly half-convinced that you were going to try something stupid. And I’m still not totally discounting it.”
Tave pulled a notebook and pen from his bag and leaned in even closer, like an over-eager child. “Why would I try anything? I want your story. Your whole story. We’ve all heard the whispers and tall tales of deeds of The Pale Raven, The Shadow of Justice, The Blood Fiend, and The Bloody Nightmare, just to name a few of your collected titles. There are rumors about you being part of the winning party in the Gore Games that year that those terrorists attacked. Or the ones about you being caught in a death game with a mass-murdering phantom in cyberspace. I’ve done my research on anyone that could’ve possibly been you. Though, of course, I did throw out all those outlandish ones about you killing Gods and Titans.”
“Outlandish, uh?” Iver asked with a note of mild amusement. Without warning, the Darkling threw back his drink, set down the glass with a firm hand, and double-tapped the bar with two fingers in a signal for another.
Now that Tave had calmed down, he got a close look at this man. It was hard to spy in the dimmer lighting, but Iver’s exposed skin looked…strange. He had an olive bronze complexion, but every inch of bare skin had threads of ivory white, like the veins in marble, only the color of bone. At the base of his neck, on the right side, just peeking out from his shirt, was what looked like a black ink tattoo of a sun burst made of black veins around a vicious, circular, white scar. Iver’s right hand, the one that he had exclusively used during the fight, looked stranger than the man’s skin. The hand and the arm that could be seen appeared to be made from some alien black material halfway between robots and organics. A cybernetic? Tave even noticed a serpentine tail hanging off the bar stool, mostly hidden under his coat, but an arrowhead-shaped tip waved slowly back and forth.
“In the spirit of honesty, kid-”
“Tave. Tave Nightfall.” The Half-Elf quickly interjected.
“Okay, Tave. In the spirit of honesty, I’ll tell you why I’m letting you write my story. I’m tired. I’m really, really tired. Everyone seems to have a piece of my puzzle, but just a piece. Almost no one living knows where it all started or where it all went very, very wrong, let alone the whole story. I guess I’m just fed up with dacker half-brained nuts thinking they have it all pieced together when they’re missing four-fifths of the wretched saga of my damnation.”
“Saga?” Tave squeaked in a mixture of excitement and worry.
“Fraggin right, kid. What I’ve got to tell you will fill plenty of books.”
Iver propped his elbow against the bar and took on a thousand-yard stare as he sighed into his knuckles. “Where did it all start? Before I started a war, even before I lost my arm,” He pulled back the sleeve of his right arm to reveal the disturbing limb, “It all started with a box when I was an infant. That box came into my life only a few times, but when it did, it was a disaster every time. I feel like I could blame that black box for everything that went wrong in my life. But before I really start the tale, I need to apologize in advance if things get a bit … melodramatic, especially this first bit, since I only heard about it from my father, so I filled in the blanks with my own details.”
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Night cloaked the thick woods, drawing forth the sounds of midnight under the five moons. Owls, wolves, and insects all sang into the night, little more than wary of the sound of pounding hooves as a cloaked rider drove her steed harder down the road toward the cabin in the woods. Thunder sounded a speedy approach as the looming clouds rolled over the moons, only letting a spare few beams of light through. Lightning lit the ominous cover overhead, startling the mount. The rider of the dark steed was swathed in a large, thick cowl, her features hidden from the few beams of light from the five moons, yet the shape in her arms could not hide its strangely patterned skin from the nocturnal lights. The sparse light shone down upon the face of a dreaming infant, the nubs of horns rising from his brow, the pallor and pattern of his skin sure to make him stand out among the masses. Kella pushed her dark steed even harder as she tried to coo to the child in its sleep. Kella passed around the bend, and she caught sight of electrical light shining from cabin windows in the near distance. As she pulled her steed to a hard stop, the beast reared up on its hindquarters with a distressed whiny, proclaiming their arrival. The harsh braying of the horse shocked the infant awake; its pitiful wails were almost drowned out by a peal of thunder, and the rain patted down as if Neiria, the Titan of Water, wept for the pain that would come this night.
Shadows moved from within the cabin even as lightning flashed nearby; the rolling thunder could be felt in Kella’s bones as she pulled herself down from her dark mount.
With a child cradled in her left arm and a messenger bag bouncing at her opposite hip, she took a moment to ready herself for what was to come. The bag at her side was weighted down with something deep within, a hard and dark shape that was the source of almost all of Kella’s worry, and the very reason for this panicked trip.
The bag bounced off her thigh as she stormed up to the cabin. Kella landed three heavy blows against the oak door before it swung in to reveal a male Wild Elf. The Elf stood in the door frame, about average height for his species at 5’ 11”, his short night clothes barely hiding his tanned skin and toned physique. His long black hair hung loose to frame his delicate features, and his triangular teeth were on open display to show his breed of Elf. The Wild Elf, Fermose, rested a wary hand on a dagger at his hip in an unspoken warning, demanding the identity of the figure beating down his door. The rainfall intensified from a light pattering to a drizzle, warning worse was yet to come. The shadowed figure pulled back her hood to reveal pink-purple skin in the shape of a fair woman’s face set with worry, her jade eyes bright with fear, and a pair of horns rising from just behind her hairline.
“Kella?” Fermose gasped as he took a step back in shock. “My love, it’s been two years since you vanished from me. Now you return with a babe in hand that is not of my blood and a look of true distress in your eye. Tell me, my sweet, what do you need of me?” Fermose spoke from his heart, seeking to aid his lost love. Kella was the first woman to see him as more than a brute. The two years that she had been gone for were a little over two weeks to the Wild Elf, his lifespan reaching much farther than that of his Darkling lover. “I can provide you with food and shelter, Kella. I will guard you against whosoever comes after you if needed. Please, tell me what you need of me.”
Her motions displaying obvious panic, she shoved the young babe into Fermose’s arms. Frantically, Fermose juggled the infant into the crook of one arm.
“I am sorry for this, Fermose, but time is short. I need you to raise and guide him. For his own safety, I can not come back for him.” She whispered before reaching into her messenger bag to pull free a square, flat box of pure onyx, its corners rounded. No latch or seal shown from the dark shape. “Watch over and protect this. No one can know that it is here. I do not exaggerate when I say this could mean life or death, not only for my boy but for untold thousands more.” Kella rasped as she shoved the strange box into Fermose’s free hand.
Kella turned from her former lover, her newly born son, and the device of her destiny as she mounted her Night Charger. “I’m sorry, darling, but you will never see me again. Raise him well.”
Without another word, she spurred on her mount, galloping off into the night even as the rain grew from a drizzle to falling in sheets.
Fermose turned away from the door after a long moment of watching his love flee his sight for a second time. He kicked the door shut as he turned away. Fermose threw the box in an old armchair, caring little if what it held was fragile, before setting the babe down on a couch in front of his roaring fireplace.
“This is insane. This is as mad as Kassidan’s parade.” He paced the length of his living room, thinking aloud with gestures just as much as his external ramblings. “She was only gone for two years and comes back with a babe in arm.” He offhandedly gestured to the infant, who was hypnotized at that moment by the dancing flames within the hearth. “Who is its father? And why does its skin look so strange?”
Fermose halted his pacing and tried to organize his thoughts with a few deep breaths. This wasn’t like him. He had to work with what he was given. And he was given a nameless infant and a strange box.
“I can take care of that damned box later; learn how to open it if I’m lucky. But right now, you,” He said, pointing at the young babe, “Need a name. Kella never told me your name, so If I’m gonna raise you, you’re going to need a name.” Fermose perched his chin atop one hand as he eyed the fledgling. “If you came from Kella and are going to be raised by me, you’re going to need a strong name, a powerful name. You need to be a warrior, able to face down any challenge. How about I name you... Ivor?”
Almost in answer, the babe cooed and gave a burbling giggle around bubbles of saliva.
“You know what, you right, Ivor is too set in stone. What if we change it to... Iver?