Introduction : Hi, my name's Seaman and I would like to share with you all the first chapter of my very own fiction, Desolate World. I'll try to add new chapters every week :)
Chapter 1 : The Arrival on a Desolate World
Nobody would ever dare visit this world where the skies are always filled with thunder and lightning… a world where nobody would ever need a lamp or a torch to find their way at night as the skies would always be illuminated by flashes of lightning mere milliseconds apart. This world’s surface is so treacherous that nobody would ever need to walk as the raging flood waters fueled by never ending rain would sweep anyone off their feet within seconds. On this harsh desolate world, a cylindrical object resembling a metallic pod punches through the storm and crashes into the raging flood waters below. The strong currents carry the large metallic pod across the surface with great speed until the stream ends with a waterfall, sending gallons of water and mud gushing down into a crevice. The metallic pod takes a steep dive over the waterfall, through the crevice and all the way down into darkness. Fortunately, it crashes into a sturdy metal grate and bounces off onto what seems to be solid ground while all the flood water and mud that carried it continued on through the honey-comb gaps in the metal grates. The pod ends up rolling for a while before coming to a stop. It then crackles and hiss, opening up like a flower to reveal a large circular pad at it’s base which is pulsating with bright blue light. The instruments hum and beep for minutes, and then suddenly a bright light flashes above the pad where instantly 2 tall bulky grey creatures appear. They represent a race called the Vozthog who have been venturing into deep space from their home world, exploring everything there is to explore and absorbing every ounce of information there was out there. The metallic pod that’s now resting on the grounds of what looks like a cave is just one of many teleportation pads launched into space by the Vozthogs. Basically, they launch long range rockets from their home world at any unknown planet they want to explore. These rockets then release an atmospheric entry pod containing the pad to make the last leg of the journey to the planet’s surface and deploy the pad upon impact. Once the teleportation pad is in contact with the Vozthog homeworld, the Vozthogs teleport two of their bravest explorers out of the Vozthog home world and into the unknown.
The tall bulky grey beings each wrapped a huge cloak around their bodies to provide warmth and some protection from the elements. Goggles with red tinted glass covered their eyes, and a open faced helmet protected their head. The two Vozthogs each stood around 9 feet in height. Their heavy boots make large stomping sounds with each step that they take. Scaring away the little critters that have made a home in the dark cave. They took out a handful of transparent sticks and began throwing them about the dark cave. Suddenly, the sticks starting producing a dim light and then gradually the light started getting brighter to the point where all the sticks had fully illuminated a 12 meter by 12 meter portion of the cave. While looking around the cave they notice large cylindrical concrete beams along the walls standing 2 meters apart from each other. The discovery brought smiles to their faces instantly. They had debated long and hard with their colleagues, trying to justify exploring this treacherous world. The initial probes that they had sent out a week beforehand to this world had beamed back faint images through the crevice of what looked like an engineered structure. It was hard to tell because of all the electrical interference caused by the storm. One of the faint images was that of a plaque but it was dismissed by Rehkard’s colleagues as mineral deposits and that the other images could just coincidentally be a natural formation resembling some form of engineered structure. The only person who believed Rehkard was his female companion, Verlera. Their superiors have refused aid in the exploration of this desolate world as the images only accounted for 5% of the entire planet’s surface. As far as they were concerned, the planet was dead but they did agree to let both Rehkard and Verlera to continue forth with their exploration and allowed them to claim full credit for whatever they find there as if mocking them. Looking back on that day, Rehkard and Verlera are happy that their suspicions had been proven correct. There are structures here and not far from the muddy waterfall was a bronze plaque on the left hand side of the wall. There were symbols on the plaque which weren’t picked up by the probes. Three strange symbols stared back at them. The first was a horizontal line resting on top of a vertical line. The second was an oval shape, and the third was what looked like 2 jagged teeth pointing downwards. They couldn’t make out what the symbols meant but the third looked eerie. Verlera looked back at where their pod had crashed and bounced off the steel grating on the floor. If it wasn’t for the steel grating spread out from wall to wall, they would’ve fallen all the way down into who knows what. Far below the steel grates was a never ending abyss. Her only thoughts of it was that whoever built this place wanted to make sure there was someplace for the water to drain. Rehkard on the other hand was busy checking out the wall at the far end of the cave. It didn’t make sense. If there was a dead end, what was the purpose of the cave ? From afar, it looked as though the concrete pillars were lining the walls towards an entrance but standing before him now was a wall. He began knocking the wall with his fist from right to left until he came upon a spot that produced a hollow sound. From that spot he began knocking vertically top to bottom until he could make out that the wall is thinnest at that spot measuring roughly 2 meters high and 1 meters across. Verlera left her observation of the steel grating and joined Rehkard at the wall.
Verlera : Rehkard… There’s something familiar about that plaque on the wall. I’ve seen it in one of Master Venyard’s research publications regarding our ancestors, the homo sapiens.
Rehkard : Really ? Our colleagues would probably think of it as nothing more than mere coincidence.
Verlera : I’m sure of it. Those symbols belong to our ancestors and if I’m not mistaken, they represent the initials T.O.W .
Rehkard : I wasn’t a big fan of history especially ancient history. There’s just too many uncertainties. For all we know, the Vozthogs and homo sapiens could be 2 different species with their own lineage. But if this is really the homo sapiens’ home world, then that means there’s no living creature left alive.. Just monolithic tombs scattered across the globe. Their last remaining ship, the Exodus crashed on our planet centuries ago and Venyard’s expedition to the site in the last decade made some interesting discoveries.
Verlera : Oh yes ! I think I remember now what T.O.W means.. It’s an abbreviation for the Tomb of Water. There were many wars during the homo sapiens’ history and at one point it had gotten so bad that three quarters of the world population perished. From that day onwards, their greatest council proposed and executed a large scale project called the Tomb project. Every weapon that they had and anything that could be made into a weapon were sealed away in Tombs according to their class or type. There were five types of tombs.
Rehkard : The Tomb of Water was one of them…
Verlera : Correct ! As I was saying the five types are : Tomb of Water, Tomb of Air, Tomb of Earth, Tomb of Fire, and Tomb of Heart. But there were rumours of a sixth type of tomb called the Tomb of Rebirth.
Rehkard : Rumour ?I thought Venyard’s team dealt only in concrete facts.
Verlera : The information regarding the Tomb of Rebirth didn’t come from Venyard. It originated from somewhere within our comm-network.
Rehkard : Must be a nut job trying to get attention. You know what Verlera ? Maybe there is a connection between our race and theirs.. Our forefather’s beliefs and principals of peace must’ve originated from the Exodus’ wreck on our home world many centuries ago. That is why our race never believed in war and violence as a solution to a desperate situation. I wonder what ever happened to the homo sapiens ?
Verlera : The historical records that Venyard’s team found from the Exodus mentioned that their home world had been depleted of natural resources which had disrupted that world’s ecosystem. In addition to that, their sun was dying which made it impossible for anything to grow. So, what remained of the homo sapiens, mass migrated to the 2 planet in this solar system, terra-formed it, and settled down.
Rehkard : You must’ve gotten some of your facts wrong… The tombs are on the 3 planet from the sun right ?
Verlera : That’s right.
Rehkard : But this is the 2 planet from the sun and the Tomb of Water is here.
Verlera : I… I’m not sure… unless they built tombs on the 2 planet as well. Let’s find a way into this tomb first. Maybe there’s some answers hidden within it.
Rehkard : Let’s requisition some digging tools from Vozshia to help us get through this wall then.
After keying in some commands on their pod’s control panel, the pod started humming and then suddenly began crackling with sparks before falling silent with black smoke emanating from every crack on the pod.
Verlera : Looks like our crash landing on this world did more damage to the pod than we thought. There’s no way we could summon help from our home world Vozshia and more importantly no way for us to get home.
Rehkard : We’re on our own now for the long run. I’m sure we can find something around here to break our way through that wall.
With very little food and medical supplies in their napsacks, they now had a very strong motivation to find a way past the end of the cave. Having become nothing more than heavy junk, Rehkard and Verlera folded up the teleportation pad back into it’s cylinder pod shape and grabbed hold of either side of the huge cylinder. They backed up together towards the waterfall and then sprinted forward while pointing the cylindrical pod towards the hollow spot in the wall. As soon as the tip of their custom made battering ram penetrated the hollow spot on the wall, they let go off it and let the momentum of the pod send it crashing through the wall. What happened next was unbelievable. Chunks of rock and dirt began falling down at either side of the wall, and the whole wall began rising upwards into the ceiling. Where once stood a solid wall, now lay a passageway before the 2 Vozthogs.
Verlera : We did it !
Rehkard : Great ! Now let’s hope there’s some food and medical supplies we could find at the end of this tunnel. What we have now would only last for a few days at the most.
Verlera : Wait a minute.. Where did our pod go to ?
Rehkard : No idea Verlera.. and I’m not going wait around to find out what happened to it. Let’s go !
Before proceeding forward into the unknown, Rehkard and Verlera collected all of their glow sticks from the cave into a pouch. Satisfied, they began their trek along the dark passageway slowing down every 10 meters to drop a glow stick so that they can find their way back in the dark. All of a sudden, a familiar sound stopped them in their tracks.
Verlera : Wait a minute… Did you hear something ? I thought I heard the sound of a river but I only noticed it just now.
Rehkard : Me too.. and the sound is getting stronger and it’s coming from behind us. Opening that door must’ve triggered some kind of defense mechanism. We were never meant to enter any of the tombs, Verlera. The original architects must’ve designed the place in such way to make sure any intruders would be drowned within this tunnel. We better make haste and run for it !
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