Rumble, Rumble.
“Mom, what’s that sound?” Flilorn looked up at her mother, tilting her head to the side, allowing her dark red hair to fall to one side of her face.
“I don’t know, sweety.” Her mother responded. Flilorn looked down at the ground passing below her dangling feet and listened to the wooden wheels of the carriage turn. The sun was just beginning to set in the distance. The carriage came to a stop, and the driver, her father, got off the front and spoke to the other coachmen of the caravan. The line of carriages were were all stopped as the owners of each carriage talked to each other about the rumbling sound.
Suddenly a beastly shriek came from the edge of the woods just off the dirt road. “Mom!” Flilorn panicked. Everybody knew that dangerous monsters lurked in the wilderness. “Calm down honey, we can handle one beast.” The rumbling sound became louder as more shrieks and roars joined the first. “Oh no!” Her mother began to show signs of panic. “Run!” Flilorns father came charging at them, urging.
Monsters suddenly burst out of the woods, more than she had ever seen before. All types of monsters that normally would fight each other ignored one another in their mad dash towards the carriage line. Before they knew it, the monsters were upon them. The carriage just ahead of them was hit first as it toppled over, spilling large amounts of oil on the ground.
People tried to defend themselves, using the ambient mana in the air, they pulled mana into their bodies and released it again in the form of magic spells. Some took mana into their bodies and used it to strengthen themselves as they swept melee weapons with great strength. A fireball hit a beast. The beast howled in pain as it ran away, the fire burning away its fur, revealing blackened, charred, skin. It ran through the oil-soaked ground while a burning hair fell off its body, pulled by gravity towards the flammable oil. The fire spread a great distance and eventually caught the trees as a large forest fire was created.
“Mom!” Flilorn reached for her mother, but she suddenly disappeared as a beast swept past extremely fast. She looked to where the beast had gone, only to see her mother smeared on the ground in a mishmash pile of blood and organs. “MOM!” She began to cry, then called for her father, “Father!” But he was nowhere to be seen. The fire spread around her, but the beasts avoided the flames. “Ahh, it hurts!” The fire started to burn her. She ran for the edge of the flames, but just when she was about to exit and run away, another beast passed right in front of her face, almost causing her the same fate as her mother. ‘I almost died’ She looked back the way she came. The beasts were avoiding the fire, the fire seemed to be the safest place to be. ‘I don’t want to die.’ She resolved herself and stepped back towards the center of the fire. The flames raged as they burned her skin. She shut her eyes and curled up into a ball, breathing shallowly, hoping to protect herself.
The pain was the worst she had ever felt in her life, the heat was unimaginable. ‘At least I have a chance.’ If she went out of the fire and into the tide of monsters, she would surely die. ‘The fire will protect me.’ Flilorn repeated this thought in her head many times, thousands as she tried to endure the pain.
‘Will the fire kill me?’ she had this stray thought, but quickly reaffirmed her resolve to seize this slim chance. ‘Do I even want to live?’ Thoughts of a life without her mother or father swept past her shut eyes. ‘Yes. even though mother and father are gone, I don’t want to die!’ she realized something at that moment. The realization that she would do anything to survive because she was afraid of death. Even her parents were not excused from the things she would do to survive. If she had to kill them to live, she would do it. ‘The fire will protect me.’ she began to repeat this line once more, throwing away any stray thoughts.
The fire eventually died down in her immediate area, but the surrounding forest continued to burn and the flames kept spreading. “I’m alive.” Her voice was raspy and rough from all the smoke inhalation. ‘The fire protected me’ she smiled with thankfulness. This was her last thought before she fell unconscious, her head hitting the blackened soil beneath her.
----------------------------------------
“Sir. Dentern, we have now landed on planet B-3961.” A middle-aged man standing straight like a pole wearing a tight-fitting uniform bowed towards a chair behind a desk. The chair slowly turned around to reveal an old man wearing loose-fitted robes with a crest of his country tattooed on his forehead. “About damned time! Let’s quickly get this planet sorted so we can go back to our homeworld.” The old man ‘Dentern’ was eager to get back to his planet. “Yes sir.” The officer stopped bowing and quickly left to make preparations.
“Sigh. Another planet for the empire. Do we even need so many people and resources?” Dentern ruminated about this for a while, but then thought about the war and quickly threw this thought out of his mind. ‘Anything goes in war.’ The empire had to keep expanding if it wanted to defend itself from others.
“Sir.” A young woman came into the office and bowed before standing and continuing with her question. “Sir, our landing has caused a stampede of monsters, it seems that this planet has more of them than we originally thought. Should we stop the stampede in case a village gets wiped out?”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Sigh. Don’t bother. The stampede won’t go too far, so only a couple of villages might be destroyed. But the big cities will be fine, so no need to worry. We don’t want to waste our mana batteries on just a few beasts, what if something unexpected happens? Just go back to your squad Kelsi and prepare for travel to the native city of… Kelsland, I believe?”
“Yes, Sir.” Kelsi bowed once more than left, not a trace of empathy on her face. ‘Looks like no need for extra work, thank god.’ She walked back towards her squad and ordered them to begin packing up the ship with supplies. This ship was streamlined and had two gravity propulsion devices on each of its two wings, powered by mana batteries. These mana batteries were composed of naturally occurring crystal set into a metal case composed of runes, made to draw the mana out and power various devices.
“Let’s get a move on people, we don’t have all day,” she shouted at her squad to get them moving faster as she looked over some documents in her clawed hands. This woman was commonly known as a Draken. A Draken had scales, horns, a tail, among other dragonic characteristics, but they weren’t dragons. Distantly related, possibly, but it was very, very, very, distant. There were many different humanoid races in the empire, after all, when fighting wars they need all the manpower they can get.
“The ship is packed madam.” A soldier reported in front of her. Kelsi clapped her hand together “all right then, let’s move out.” Her squad consisted of fifty people. Forty-five of these soldiers carried swords at their sides while holding a gunlike device consisting of many runes in their hands. These guns treated mana batteries as ammo. Channeling mana can be difficult for some and take a long time to master, which is why most of the soldiers carried these guns and swords. Taking in mana and holding it in your body to increase strength is much easier than channeling it into spells, that is why many of them still carry swords in this more modern era.
The five other people in the squad were the mages. They carried metal staffs inlaid with crystals and runes carved along the length to increase the power of spells. These mages were not the typical weak of body mages seen on most new worlds. The mages in the army were after all in the army, they needed to do some physical activity to stay in shape, though they were still scrawnier than the regular soldiers. The staffs they wielded were not just for spellcasting, they were all trained to use their staff as a weapon in close quarters fighting.
While the ship flew through the air, Kelsi began to brief the soldiers. It was a short briefing, as they had all done it before. “We are going to a city nearby called Kelsland, the king of this country will be there. You all know the drill. Show superiority, show the vastness of space, show the benefits, then have them sign the deal. Alright, we’re almost there, everyone suit up.”
Everyone on the ship began to pull on their armor. The forty-five normal soldiers had full body armor covered in defensive runes, powered by a mana battery at the back of their neck. They left the gas masks off to not freak the natives out. The five mages had metallic fabric clothes with a helmet on their heads. These metallic woven clothes allowed for mana to flow more easily through them and into the bodies of the mages, while still providing protection.
Just when they were about to come into sight of the city a soldier pointed out the window towards the ground and said to Kelsi “There’s a wildfire down there.”
“What!? Move over, let me see.” When she looked out the window she could see a raging wildfire burning the forest below. “Tch. Pilot, put us down.” The ship landed near the fire. “All right everyone. We can’t be having a wildfire spreading to the city, may as well put it out right now while it’s still somewhat small. Mages, use some water spells to put the fire out. The rest of you, use the ship’s fire suppression system.”
The soldiers scurried to carry out her orders. The mages began the channel mana through their bodies, creating big balls of water that flew at the fire then burst into rain. Meanwhile, some soldiers began to carry a large mana battery towards a spot not too far from the flames. They set the mana battery down, then attached multiple hoses with rune-covered spouts to the battery. Each soldier had a hose as they cranked the lever on the end and out spewed large amounts of cold water.
They fought the fire back to its place of origin, then proceeded to extinguish the rest of the fire starting from the center. While most focused on the fire, Kelsi and a couple of soldiers examined the burnt bodies in the middle, looking for any survivors.
“Looks like they’re all dead. Burned to death, the poor bastards. I wonder how the fire started?” Kelsi murmured as she looked around her. “Wait a minute, there’s a survivor!” It seemed one of the soldiers, an elf, had found a miraculous survivor. “Well quick then, get them into the emergency stasis pod! That should keep them stable until we return to the mothership.” “Yes madam.” The elf ran off, with a hideously burned small body under their arm, towards the ship.
“Let’s get back on schedule everyone, chop-chop. Into the ship.” Kelsi urged the soldiers back into the ship, then they set off once more for Kelsland city. Soon the city came into view. Fifty meters high and ten meters thick wall surrounded a grand white castle with even higher spires. “Just can’t compare to the majesty of this era. The era this world is about to enter” Kelsi shook her head as she got into the right mental state to begin negotiations. A couple of spells fired at the ship here and there, but they were all blocked by a mana-generated shield surrounding the ship.
The ship touched down in the courtyard of the palace and was soon surrounded by royal guards. Kelsi walked out first with her arms raised “We come in peace. We would also like to talk to your king.” She could see some of the guards tremble at their first time seeing this advanced technology. “Possibly sooner rather than later.” This sentence was said with a tiny bit of impatience mixed in, causing the guards to tremble just the tiniest bit more. Soon one of the guards ran off somewhere, hopefully grabbing the king. ‘First step a success, intimidation with no casualties. Seems like this will go well.’