Sevenstorm

[Therin]

Chapter One: A Foreword, Of Sorts.

Before I become completely absorbed in the tale I have taken it upon myself to tell, as old men such as my self are wont to do, allow me to give a brief history, a summary, if you will, of our world, our time, and the differences it holds from that which you call home. You see, our world, while it is the same planet, orbiting round the same sun, in the same galaxy as yours, is a world which is alltogether different from the one you know. To put it simply, nothing escapes the sands of time.

As I write this, my calendar tells me that the year is 14:342, three-hundred and forty-second year, fourteenth Age. An Age, as our reckoning percieves it, is of indeterminate length, meaning that an Age can theoretically last anywhere from three days to three million years. However, of the fourteen which have changed since we found a way to keep track of them, the shortest was fifty years, the longest ten-thousand. Those were the third and fourth Ages respectively, if memory serves, which it does less and less as the summers continue to pile on. By your reckoning, I believe it is the year 25,763.

The history of what we know as our world begins before the first Age, in what you would call 2047, during which year there was unleashed upon the world an unimaginable power, which cleansed the surface of the planet of almost all life and forced what was left of humankind to start over, to begin humanity anew, having now learned a thing or two what the wrong weaponry can do when put in the wrong hands. Two things came of that cataclysmic event. To this day, nearly twenty four thousand years in the future, the word firearm, along with gun, bullet, and a whole host of related words, are considered evil, bad luck to speak aloud. The most advanced projectile weapon our society allows is a crossbow, and even that is dangerously close to the line. Secondly, the elements were rediscovered. Not the three-hundred and ninety-nine scientific elements, as you might expect, but the baser elements, the six points of the magical star: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, and Shadow. Magic, long thought dead, or never to have existed, was reborn.

A century or two after that, the first dragon's egg was discovered, high atop the freezing plateaus of the mountain range the name you gave which escapes me, but which would eventually become Norwind. After thousands of years of magical hibernation, the first dragon again walked the earth. Their numbers steadily multiplied, until they were once again part of magical society.

Finally, the elementals reappeared, people born of a given element, attuned to that element and no other, linked so inextricably with that element that seperation from it is akin to death. Much, much later, in the year 13:498, the first hybrid elemental was born. She was a steam elemental, born of the then forbidden union between fire and water. That was the last day of the thirteenth age. That year is also known as 14:000.

Terry Sevenstorm, as you have come to know him, was born late in 14:320, beneath stormy skies. I suppose that as he grew, this soon ceased to be a surprise. Little is known to me of his parents, save their names, Lillian Raincalmer and Johnathan Tr'undenkannandor, a rain elemental and air elemental, respectively. He was born Terrance Johannsen Sevenstorm, and his name was given much scrutiny over the years, for Seven seems a strange compliment to his birthright, Storm. Other parents would probably have gone with something more traditional, like Stormweaver, or Summerstorm, but he was given what he was given, and to my knowledge, has always been proud of it.

-----

It began, as many things do, a simple idea, shared between two best friends. Terrance was eighteen years old, and had, that summer just past, completed his elemental test for manhood. Jack was seventeen, and was free to do as he wished because truehumans, in their arrogance, require no test for manhood. The two had been friends since they had run into eachother, quite literally, in New Thera one summer weekend of the year before. Terry was on a business trip with his father, Johnathan, and pretty much had the run of the city while his father ate with a few partners in business. So, run was what he did...

In the shade of the towering scyscrapers for which New Thera was famed, the summer heat was lessened to a cooler, more pleasant level, and at the behest of a certain young storm elemental, a light breeze ruffled the hair of New Therans young and old, as they lunched, played, or simply sat and enjoyed the the greenery of central park. Terry Sevenstorm, being the way he was even then, had insinuated himself into a game of frisbee on one of the three haphazardly placed fields which broke the treecover of the park, and dashed wildly to and fro, hurling himself into the air with vim and vigor to snatch the white disc deftly out of its arc and, with a quick flick of the wrist, send it floating off in another direction, toward one of his teammates.

Until he landed on someone. With a unified cry, Terry and the other young man crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs, luckily cushioned by the soft grass underfoot. Terry quickly rolled off and scrambled to his feet, then turned to help the other kid up. The boy, however, was already off and running.

Now, in this sort of circumstances, as you probably know, any other person would have let the kid go, maybe yelled an apology after him, and that would be the end of it, but Terry...

Well, I have said this once already, but I find it is really the only way to describe it: He's Terry.

And Terry gave chase.

His sandals thumped lightly, and then slapped heavily as he left the frisbee game behind, left the park behind, left the sun behind and dashed into the darkness between buildings, following the stick-thin boy with the lanky black hair. The unfamiliar streets of New Thera, with their towering buildings and odd streetsigns, whipped past the two sprinters, nearly empty; most New Therans were enjoying lunch back in the park. The younger boy made a quick dodge, flashed left into an alleyway. Terry came to a skidding stop at the entrance.

There was no sun down here, no light in the alleyway. The other kid knew these streets, lived on them. Terry had never been here before, and something had the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He could hear something, a low thumping that sounded ominous. He peered into the blackness of the alleyway, thought about going in, but decided on something else. He stepped back into the middle of the street and his head tilted back to stare at the sky as he silently apologized to all those picnicking in the park. Their picnics wouldn't last much longer.

As the rain began to come down, slowly at first, Terry took his eyes off the clouds to watch the alleyway, where the arrythmic thumping sounds continued. Lightning blasted down, straight through him, tearing a whole in the New Theran street, vibrating with energy, electric energy, the energy of the storm. Terry saw into the alley. As soon as he had finished, he released his control of the winds and dashed into the alleyway, aiming approximately for...

He cannoned into someone with a yell, going to the ground on top. But his purpose was not to fight. Quick as he could, he rolled off the larger man, fumbled across the ground, grabbed the skinny wrist that he found there. Without looking back, he hauled up the kid he had been chasing, and started for the mouth of the alley as fast as he could, ignoring unintelligable sounds of complaint. He heard the pounding footsteps, and threw the kid to the side with just enough time to turn back before a man much larger than he barreled into him, carrying him the way a football player would, right across the street and into the wall opposite the alley, slamming the wind out of Terry's lungs. When the large man stepped back, Terry collapsed, wheezing, to the ground, curled up in a ball. Now, however, now he was in the street. His eyes had begun to shine, to glow a hard, aggressive teal, and the winds had begun to pick up. The first raindrop struck the hulking aggressor in the back of his bald head, but was ignored. Within seconds, the street was soaked, water sluicing down the barely perceptible incline, toward central park. Terry reached up with his mind, intending to call down a blast of lighting...but that would kill. Before he could reach a decision, the huge man lifted his foot, to kick the fallen elemental, and then stiffened and collapsed.

The kid stood there, his hand still raised, rain running down his bruised and bleeding face, dripping red off his chin, staining his threadbare white tanktop. Slowly, like a statue toppling from its foundations, the kid fell forward until he was leaning over Terry with his upraised arm against the brick wall. Water ran off the kid's arm, but Terry, falling into blackness, didn't feel it.

----

Now, Jack Dawkins, for I know of no other name by which to call him, was, is, and always will remain a mystery to me. The med who picked the two of them up about an hour or so later was astonished. I sought him out, years later, and was told upon my inquiry into the subject that Jack Dawkins was dead. Or should have been, at least. According to the med, the thrashing he recieved in that alleyway should have taken his life long before the man arrived. The thug, it seemed, had been wearing spiked boots, a dangerous fashion among the New Theran underworld at the time.

Furthermore, the man had no history, no story. He had no parents, at least, none that anyone was aware of. His name appears in the city registries of neither New Thera nor any of the surrounding communities. I found one old man, a hermit who lived on the border between Sargia and Gaston, one Emeril Dawkins, but that turned out to be a dead end; the man had died long since by the time I arrived, owing to the injestion of a few too many spider mushrooms. Those few who knew him from chance encounters simply told me he was a crackpot, out of his mind but harmless, really, as long as you didn't believe a word he said.

It was as though he just emerged from the aether fully formed, ready to run into a certain frisbee-player and instigate every bit of madness which ensued from the encounter.

At any rate, whether he was godspawn or dogspawn, Jack Dawkins awoke in a clinical bed, beneath the glaring lights and hovering devices of the examining wing of the New Theran med center. The first thing to come into focus was the lab coats, because lab coats are a universal constant since time immemorial. The second, based solely upon my own experience of the man he would grow to be, was probably the door, a huge, solid, metal thing, like a cage door without bars.

[Therin]

Updated, because if I hadn't I'd have forgotten what I was going to do. Needs a LOT of work, though. Comments and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

[Lanfear57]

[Therin]

*nod* Arigatou. *goes to change it*

[Lanfear57]

Arigatou?
oh well.
I'll read this again later for more content type stuff, but dont have brain right now
...

[Therin]

Update: Completely reworked my last update. Removed Kay and Reidon because they need not to be in this story, replaced them with Linden Falmen and Marcus Delinius, and added a really big sword. Because I love really big swords. *waggles eyebrows*

Anyway. Constructive criticism. Please. If you find something wrong, something you don't like, TELL ME.

[Enon]

You have a rather interesting cast of characters. You've provided just enough information on some of the characters that makes the reader curious. But I got a litlte lost with which direction the story is flowing from POV, maybe i'm reading it too fast again. I will probably have some questions for you when I reread it later on do you want me to post them here or PM?

[Therin]

By all means, post 'em!

[Therin]

Update: Rearrangement, and added an introductory bit. Tell me if you like it.

[Therin]

Update: This one is very obvious, and not nearly completed. I will return hopefully sometime tomorrow, after I have finished pouring some more of my life into Gladius.