((Alright, well I'll slap down what I've written insofar, did it in about two hours between interruptions at work one day.))
Altheras stared out at the sea of ash, frozen by the terrible beauty. The ash was belched out by the volcanoes that marked every island nearby, and had been active since before his village had been founded three hundred tides ago. Nobody knew where the ash or the volcanoes had come from, or even how they continued to spew forth their contents, as not even the dwarves had found magma unless directly beneath the volcanoes themselves. It was a mystery that no one could solve, and would probably never be solved within Altheras’ lifetime.
He remained frozen until he was startled out of his reverie by a face coalescing within the ash, a face that he recognized immediately as his mother’s face. His hands shot up to his ear muffs, making sure they were snugly fit over his head. He checked the bindings around his ear muffs one by one, making certain all twelve were there and still taut before he finally breathed a sigh of relief. The enchanted orichalcum amulet hanging around his neck might protect him from the poisonous atmosphere, but that wouldn’t save him if he heard any slight murmur from the souls caught within the ash. He hurried along, away from the beach, going back to his task, scolding himself for his stupidly dangerous flights of fancy.
Altheras was out on this beach to scavenge anything that might be of use to the village in the center of the small island that he lived in. The ground was sandy, with small patches of soft soil, throughout the entire island, except right next to the volcano, allowing for easy farming, but solid rocks and ore were scattered few and far between. The village had already exhausted the small quarry they had, and elves just weren’t built for building too deep within the ground. They would’ve hired on a small band of dwarves tides ago had it not been for the exorbitant prices those maggot-men charged to move people back and forth through the seas.
Altheras grimaced at the thought of the maggot-men, they were unpleasant to deal with even on the best of days. They had no eyes that he had ever seen, but they always had an uncanny way of knowing exactly where they were and where you were. Their skin bulged and writhed, always in motion even when standing still. Their mouths were just a circular hole filled with teeth, seemingly impossible to speak out of, yet that’s exactly what they did. They also flaunted their immunity to dangers of the world, wearing nothing but that gaudy loincloth, and only then because they had been beseeched by all of the races to do so. A terrible race of hideous, greedy bastards that would only be satisfied by wealth.
He kicked a small rock out of disgust, and saved his life by doing so. The rock shot forward, into a clearing that he would’ve walked directly into since he hadn’t been paying attention to anything he had been doing. Almost instantly small tendrils shot out of the ground and wrapped around the rock, pulling it towards the center of the clearing before he could blink. He had nearly walked into a carnivorous tree’s clearing because he had been day-dreaming. The tree would’ve grabbed him as it did the rock and dragged him into the ground beneath the tree, breaking all of his bones and suffocating him, then it would slowly devour him over a tide. It didn’t matter that the tree hadn’t grown anywhere near its full height, even as the sapling that it was it could mangle him. He backed away from the sapling slowly, and decided it would be safer going the other direction along the beach. He’d tell the people that he found a sapling when he returned and they would decide to either leave it alive to use it as wood later, or uproot it tomorrow.
After two brushes with death in one day, Altheras decided enough was enough and kept alert and focused while returning to the village. He was shuddering at the thought of telling the elders that he hadn’t found anything useful when a hand clamped down on his shoulder, and another over his mouth. He was forcefully thrown to the ground and a hand was placed on the back of his head to keep him there, struggle as he might, he wasn’t able to move against the strength of the hands that held him. He started for a second, realizing that there were more than one set of hands holding him down, and that they were keeping away from his ear muffs. If they had wanted him dead, all they would’ve had to do was simply rip off the ear muffs and push him towards the ash sea, who were these people?
After he had laid there face down in the sand for what seemed an eternity, he was picked up by the arms and set on his feet. After shaking his face and eyes clear of the sand, he twisted his head to see his attackers, and found himself gasping by what he saw. Three members of the Mould were gathered around him, two holding him, and one clearing their tracks that seemingly emerged directly out of the ash sea. The members of the Mould were immediately recognizable by the masks that covered their face and by the suits they never removed. The masks were an oddity, with a weird triangular piece of metal sticking out of the tan waxen cloth that covered the rest of their bodies. It also had two small metallic pieces where their eyes were, covered with a crimson lens that was made of some sort of crystal. These members were currently wearing dark grey cloaks that would’ve camouflaged their passage through the ash sea. What laid underneath the suits were an enigma to all, except for the Moulds themselves; they never removed their suits or masks, even within their safe havens. The Moulds’ suits would allow them travel through the ash sea and the world in general for a short time, but they would have to stop and clean their filters or mend their suits before they could set out again.
These thoughts flitted through Altheras’ mind, though foremost of all was the fact that the members of the Mould would not kill him unless he gave them a reason to do so, which meant that the Mould either saw him as a threat, or saved him from one. His eyes shot to his right, out into the ash sea, where he saw the end of a truly monstrous tail disappear from sight.
((Feel free to yell at me about grammar or inconsistencies so I can fix them. I'll probably end up revising a bit of this anyway. I had him placed in a small village on one of the outer islands, where it would be secluded and slightly more primitive than modern elven society, where he would have originally lived before this.))
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Topic: Let's create a setting. (Read 25031 times)