2/12/2018

Hello guys! Wow, its been ages since I posted anything in this book, but I decided today why not. I have a few stories I wrote for university this semester, both of which I have decided to post up here.

This first one actually comes from a book idea mine, a series I'm eventually going to write called 'The Broken Talons Saga'. This is the beginning... maybe, or at the very least a small exert from the first book called, 'The Dragon of Broken Talons'. Enjoy.

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The abyss was thick with darkness, a void of near absence that could not logically hold a single living thing. It was timeless and infinite, stretching as far as the eye could see. It was cold and heartless, promising to swallow anything that dared to enter into its depths. It was all there was.

At least, that's what it felt like for the creature dwelling within the abyss. There was nothing. Nothing except for the acrid smell of rotting flesh and degrading waste. Nothing except for the boiling heat as thick as the darkness. Nothing except for the constant dripping of a liquid that forced its way inside.

For the most part, this was all the creature had. But sometimes there was a screeching and a grinding, and then the light would appear. A circle of blinding brilliance. This light confused the creature. It didn't know where the light came from, nor why the light was there. All that it knew was that it was grateful toward the light. The morsels that it dropped down kept the crushing and desperate grumbling at bay. So the creature sat and waited, looking for the next time the light appeared.

The creature didn't mind the silence, nor the darkness, the smell nor the heat. These things were familiar. But as time passed by the creature began to find an uncomfortable yearning. This feeling was abnormal, as the creature had not yet experienced such things before. The yearning had begun small, blossoming at the first strange noise that it had heard, a noise that was outside the abyss. This noise was different then the painful screeching the light made whenever it revealed itself from above, and different from the noise the creature made when dragging itself across the ground.

The more the creature listened to this noise the more differences it managed to pick up. Sometimes it was a rhythmic thumping the vibrated up through the ground of the abyss and echoed like the thumps of the morsels that were dropped by the light. Sometimes it was the loud bang similar to the light disappearing. Sometimes it was softer, like the grunts and growls that the creature produced with its own mouth, though this other noise was more exact and more focused, more meaningful. All these differences the creature recognised, though it still could not fully comprehend what the noise was, nor where it came from. It was so distant, so disconnected from anything that happened within the abyss. But the more the creature heard this distant sound the stronger the yearning grew.

There was another way the creature heard these sounds, though it was often harder and more difficult to produce. This way required the creatures own light. There were often many downsides to using this method, as it often temporarily dispersed the liquid that it relied so heavily on and it caused pain to the creatures usually blind eyes. At the same time however it often soothed the yearning, at least temporarily. This light sometimes lasted longer, as occasionally it caught on something within the abyss.

The creature decided that it would summon this light again. It had been a while since it last had, and the yearning was getting far too strong to resist. Slowly the beast crawled to its feet. It opened its mouth, and breathed. A heat spread upwards from the creatures chest, then through its throat before finally reaching its jaws, where the heat finally poured out in a splendid array of light.

This light was different from the light that dropped the morsels. It looked strange. Instead being circular and linear, it moved, dancing every which way. Instead of simply appearing in the abyss, this light chased the abyss away, leaving the darkness clinging to the very edges of the now visible dome-like room the creature was in. Instead of sucking up the heat, this light produced it, flooding the room with it, and encasing the creature in its beautiful radiance.

This couldn't last however, and the creature snapped closed its jaws, and the light was instantly evaporated by the abyss, the darkness struggling to take back its territory. However there was one section it couldn't reclaim, not yet. A small flicker of the light remained, bobbing up and down near the wall that surrounded the darkness.

The creature felt another strange, but this time satisfying feeling as it stared at the light. Pleased, it dragged itself over to where the light remained, laying its head to stare directly into the hypnotising array of patterns and swirls, inviting the creature deeper and deeper into its depths. Before long, it began to make out other shapes, other arrays of movement that stood out from the norm.

These shapes moved in a much more pointed and sharp fashion. Not the random flying and flickering the light was otherwise making. And, if the creature listened hard enough, these shapes made noise, a noise similar to the noise it heard from the outside of the abyss. This noise was much like the shapes, sounding and feeling like it had much more meaning. The noise dipped and swayed, the shapes reacting to the minute differences within it. It sometimes came from one of the shapes, and sometimes from the other, as though the shapes were making the noise in response to each other. The creature listened in fascination, but it couldn't last forever.

The creature blinked sadly as the light suddenly flickered and disappeared, the abyss finally taking back its territory. It hadn't been long enough for the creature to really listen to the noise. But it had recognised one noise. It was a common one, one that it had heard both in the light and beyond the abyss. A noise of meaning. Another strange yet utterly unique feeling swept through the creature. It rumbled softly, its whole body vibrating as though it were trying to calibrate itself toward a certain note.

Slowly it opened its mouth, tasting the sound itwas making with its tongue and feeling the sound with its throat, before it letthe sound slide out, the one that had held so much meaning, "Hel....lo."