Author's Note:

Please be advised that this novel may go everywhere. I currently have made no outlines or story structures, so please forgive me for that.

Also, I would like to mention that I am writing this novel as a practice, so that I could try collecting informations of what I should improve and focus myself in. As such, like mentioned in the Description, constructive criticism are very welcomed.

Why?

Although the dream may seem far as it is now, I wish to become a novelist. I am about to face my final exam this year, which will be the deciding point of where my life is about to head into. And after much planning, I found myself choosing novelist as my main ambition in the future.

It will be much of a bumpy road, but hey, life is never easy, so here we go!

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Prologue - Shot Down

The sky was peaceful. Lands of clouds hung over the sky, slowly moving forward with the wind. Ray from the sun came raining down on the land, barging through the cloud in the process. Flying by the cloud was something small, green in color and roared as loudly as it could across the sky. It was an airplane. A military airplane, to be exact.

Inside the airplane, the soldiers were talking to each other.

“Yo Aaron! Whaddya think about this mission? Hard hell, yeah?” a man asked the guy in front of him, wiping his M9 Beretta’s barrel with a dirty-looking rag.

“Honestly said, higher-ups said that we’re gonna land in a hot zone. Bullets spraying everywhere. Said that we ‘ere are supposed to back our allies up,” replied the guy with his helmet hanging over his back, Aaron.

“Well, so long as we have our secret weapon here, that ain’t gonna be a problem. Right, Charles?” Aaron continued, patting the back of Charles who was staring out into the exit door, looking at the sky through the door’s window.

Still staring into the clouds driving by, Charles replied, “If you think a single sniper like me can take on an entire armada, then I’d like you to eat back that word and go trying being one. And do me a favor. Try not to act as if we’re best buds, will you? You’re here just as a spotter, remember that.”

Charles nudged off Aaron’s arm that was resting on his back. The entire crew had their mouth zipped after the mood was killed down by Charles. He had no time to play around or talk, and he wasn’t even planning to do so anyway. He needed time to himself, for him to focus for the next mission. For him to be able to perform efficiently. And he wasn’t going to waste some time socializing around with a bunch of soldiers.

Charles used to be a cheerful person when he first joined the army to serve his country. He had this likeable aura that attracted everyone around him and made him a person that was easy to talk to and hang out with. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d also possessed outstanding skills as a soldier, most notably his sharp and precision shooting. With such prowess, he became a sniper soon enough through intense training and tough drills.

With that said, Charles’s outgoing and easy personality were fated not to last long. He got involved in multiple wars and gathered countless of confirmed kills. However, alongside with his astounding service to the country, there were also times when he had to suffer psychologically. Watching as his ‘brothers’ waved at him and suddenly having their head blown off. Watching as his comrades were captured or even murdered cruelly, and not given the permission to engage. All he was able to do was to back his finger off the trigger and… observe.

It wasn’t just his comrades. Civilians were included in the mix, when he had once seen a family obliterated in a second, with the bomb dropped down by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), just because they were the family of a highly-wanted terrorist. He was powerless, to stop the death toll of those who don’t deserve it from rising and was only ordered to be on standby as the event unfolds before him.

Charles’s personality soon enough was shaved down little by little, until nothing was left but the character of a cold-blooded killer. His former personality may perhaps survived the torture, however it wasn’t about to emerge again anytime soon, like a seed waiting for its water.

And today, yet again, Charles was sent out on a mission.

After a few minutes of silence within the airplane, it was suddenly broken to pieces with the emergence of an explosion sound coming from the front. The airplane shook hard, and the soldiers within struggled to keep themselves stable. Charles took a quick look at the front, and the cockpit was blazed in fire, the pilot and co-pilot probably already burnt to crisp…

“Dam it! Enemy attack!” Aaron gripped his MK-16 SCAR L and went running toward the fiery ring hole, situated on where the airplane’s door had been.

“No!” the previous man, whose name Charles didn’t know, tried to stop Aaron from running over to the hole that would expose himself to the enemy completely.

The airplane danced, throwing everyone within the airplane unstable. Charles, scarcely standing up, immediately grabbed a parachute and looked over his shoulder to the rest of the soldiers, some still trying to sit still in place, while the rest preparing their weapons to engage. Charles sighed and thought, ‘Seriously?’.

“Idiots! If I were any of you, I’d be grabbing my parachute by now!” Charles shouted, caring a little for the safety of soldiers by his side.

Suddenly, something flew inside the airplane and pierced both of Aaron’s arms and his heart. Aaron flung back onto the wall of the opposite side, his body stuck like a picture nailed into the wall. Blood oozed out of the places he had been hit with, however that was the least of his concern.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“I-Ice… shards? The fuck?!” Aaron exclaimed, blood dripping out of his mouth as he spoke.

Indeed, buried deep within his limbs and heart were ice shards. Light blue, cold and thick, without a doubt it was one. However, before the rest of the soldiers were given the chance to give a thought about it, the airplane danced rougher, and rolled hard like a rock tumbling down the hill. The soldiers within were thrown all over the place, as if they were clothes inside a washing machine. ‘Evacuate, now.’ Charles’s little monster commanded him.

As much as Charles wanted to assist his… ‘companies’, he knew he had lacked the necessary time to do so, and so he decided not to.

Charles gripped hard of his parachutes, timing the rotation of the airplane while aiming for the door and then, jumped out of the airplane with his sniper rifle dangling by his right shoulder. However, that was not the end for Charles. The rotating airplane tilted by a little and its blades accidentally came in contact with Charles’s upper arm. Like a knife slicing through butter, the connection of Charles’s left limb and his torso was severed in seconds.

“AAAAA!!” Charles howled in pure anguish.

Blood poured out of his limb, the tendons noticeably being torn apart in milliseconds. There was nothing he could do to prevent it. He wasn’t expecting it in the first place and the ground was dawning up fast on him anyway. Not possessing any other choices, he immediately deployed the parachute and stopped from falling, abruptly that is.

The force from the sudden tug of the parachute’s deployment had Charles cringe in pain as the pain pulsed in his wound. He gazed at the lifeless chunk of meat that dived down within the forest canopy and out of sight, something that was formerly his limb.

Charles glided smoothly in the air, the roaring of the inferno-shrouded airplane getting further and further away from him. Later, he saw a rising puff of fire, followed by the subtle and yet, obvious sound of an explosion. There was also the difference in the surrounding, the sky and the weird sun, but Charles was forced to ignore it for now. First rule, prioritize one’s own safety. If a person themselves dies, then they would become utterly useless, turning into nothing but a dead body.

It took no more than a few seconds for Charles’s feet to brush over the canopy of the forest. He couldn’t risk himself trying to avoid any obstacle in the way with his injury, not that he could do it perfectly with only one arm. Charles decided to allow the wind determines where and how he was going to end up landing whilst squeezing his wound with his glove-covered hands. He’s in urgent need of medical attention, but how was he going to seek one?

Charles couldn’t place the thought aside, as it involved his life in the matter. He knew deadly infections could occur to the wound, and to make matter worse, it would occur near his heart. That if, he didn’t die from blood lost first. Charles thought and thought, but nothing crossed his mind. Medication was simply something that he had no skill or knowledge of. Perhaps the most basic ones for survivability, but definitely not for life-threatening wounds.

Reality came crashing on Charles when he was suddenly thrust forward and dangled to the front then to the back like a pendulum. He gazed upward, and it appeared that the parachute had gotten stuck on the branch of a tree. ‘Typical way of landing when using a parachute,’ thought Charles as he stared at the parachute’s lines tangled in an odd way on multiple branches.

The forest floor was fifteen feet away from Charles’s foots, a falling distance he couldn’t be so sure to survive with the wound he was already inflicted with. And yet ironically, if he was to just hang there and hover in the air, he would also die. Two options and both contain a chance of death. No other choices, for now at the least.

Charles was at the peak of his life’s end. His condition was becoming worst, his gaze getting blurry, his thoughts turning hazy and his body going limp. Soon enough, he found his consciousness seeping away, whether he liked it or not. His little monster screamed, ‘Don’t. You will die. Don’t. This will end you. STOP!’

And then, without even the slightest bit of resistance, Charles shut his eyes, his right hand going limp and letting go of the wound. The blood continued to drip, calling Charles closer and closer to the Gate of Death.

After Charles had passed out, the bushes nearby rustled and shook. It split and emerging through it was several figures, bathed under the dark shadow of the nearby trees.

“Oh… my god…” the first figure, sounding like a male, spoke.

“No… no way… NOOOOO!!!” the figure standing beside the previous one cowered while screaming.

“Those clothes… and those equipments. Aren’t those…” another figure pointed toward the unconscious Charles.

“…from our world?”

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Author's Side :

Did you enjoy the read? Was it understandable? Was it imaginable? Hahaha... in spite of all my questions, I hope all of you enjoyed it.

Oh and don't forget, comments if you could. It keeps my spirit to create more chapters burning :D.