Chapter 1: Tragic Beginnings.
Kalaren strolled to the shiny new playground.
One week ago, time seemed to have disappeared. Time itself had no restraints, causing histories to repeat itself, futures to become past, presents to not exist. Everyone has their own sense of time now. "5 seconds for me is something entirely different for someone else." His life had been changed, and it had been some time since he had been able to relax. However, today was his 13th birthday, according to himself, and he had asked permission to take a walk to the new playground. His sisters, Sarah and Lucille, would join him after they finished cleaning dishes.
The only thing that marred his relaxation was that his father was ill with a sickness called "Maelstrom Infection". Some sort of space disease that originated from far away. It was interfering with his father's work as Ankoria's foremost Swordsmith. The doctors would not tell much to Kal or his sisters. The doctors would spend a lot of time with their parents...
But he was not supposed to be worrying about that now. Mother had said to enjoy himself.
As he rounded the corner of some trees, he saw smoke.
"A barbecue!" he said, pleased. He hurried to it.
As he neared it, he realized it was anything but a barbecue fire. Rather, a fire from torches and siege weaponry.
It was a barbarian raiding party from the prehistoric ages. This was not the first time this week that barbarians had appeared in downtown, but this time... they had space-age weaponry as well. And they knew just enough to be as maximally dangerous as possible.
One of them swung up onto the top of some monkey bars, and let loose a honorary war-cry, which Kalaren recognized from the news reports.
"HOOOOGA!"
As distracting as the sight of a kilted barbarian with a laser rifle and space miner's helmet yelling 'Hooga' was, Kalaren noticed something else.
A quite more civilized character with a black cloak and sword, in matching red and black armor. He walked around the general chaos, but Kalaren noticed how the barbarians made way for him. They did not look at him, but they went out of their way to not interrupt his passage to...The general direction of ...
His house!
He ran after the cloaked man, hardly noticing the barbarians as they attempted to detain him with fist and knife. Kalaren's heart suddenly felt very cold and achy. Something terrible was about to happen. He knew it for a certainty. Even as he ran as fast as he could, the dour man got further and further out of reach, even though he went no faster than a businesslike stride, till he was out of view. Kalaren realized that his sense of time was getting slower than the mysterious man's, and there was nothing he could do about it...
To be continued. "SOONâ¢"!
-Kalaren Grimfire