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Well I've been tinkering with this one for a bit now. And I decided to give it a write. Here's part one of Four (Obviously) of my new fan fiction. I hope you enjoy it yada yada, as always- Comments are appreciated.

Edit

Part 1- Fantasies of youth and the Earth.

Jason the Dragon slayer. There he was in front of the dragon’s cave, staff in hand and a spell under his breath, preparing to end the foul beast’s existence and save the princess. Yeah, that sounded good. Or Jason the wandering Sage. That sounded good, too. Or Jason…

“PAY ATTENTION!”

The sound of his teacher brought Jason back to reality like the cracking of a whip.

“Wha? Huh?”

Jason’s head shot up from his shoddy wooden desk in the back of the class like a rocket.

“And I suppose, in your infinite knowledge, that you already are aware of the properties of wart root?” his alchemy teacher sighed.

Jason looked disorganized for a moment and dug around in the pile of scrolls in his sleeves and around his desk before pulling one out and reading:

“Among the ability to restore paralysis, the wart root also has the ability to rule the Cornerian Empire with an iron fist from….”

Jason stopped as he realized some of his adhesive algae had leaked into his pack and stuck two papers together. The whole class laughed as he slunk down into his chair, hoping to hit the floor and keep going until he was out of sight.

The Alchemy professor sighed again and shook his head.

“Mr. Tarwell, I suggest you pay more attention in the future. Get your head out of the clouds.”

With that the Professor returned to his lecture.

“So you see the thing about wart root is….”

Just as quickly Jason returned to his day dreaming.

After class he quickly started back for his chambers to study his alchemy. He despised alchemy as it was. Life at the Rustav academy for the dark arts wasn’t always easy though. Jason looked a lot like the other five hundred students there; large blue robes, a big floppy hat that covered his face in darkness, and a pair of sandals. Only he was a lot shorter and smaller than most of the students, so his robes flopped down on the floor and often caught his feet and tripped him as he walked. About half way to the dorm this happened and Jason fell down in a pile of crumpled scrolls and smashed potion bottles which leaked all over, causing a smelly bubbling mess that melted the cobblestones.

This, of course, brought laughter from the other mages, hustling and bustling about the school grounds, who it seemed had somehow found time in their busy schedules to stop and laugh at poor Jason. Grumbling, Jason collected himself and took off briskly heading for his cell in the curtain wall of the university. It was more of a castle than a school, truth be told. It had all the makings of a castle with a curtain wall, towers and barracks, etc. But the difference was that instead of soldiers it housed mages. The castle itself was located just north of Corneria, hidden in some woods past the temple of fiends. Jason had felt most pleased when a letter had come to Melmond, telling him that he had been chosen for the academy. However after living on campus a few months he was homesick for his little cabin with his parents outside of town. It didn’t matter much at this point. Now he intended on making it through and becoming a Mage like his grandfather was before him. He even had his grandfather’s staff with him. It was a withered old thing with a gnarled club at the end which held a dull glowing orb. Students of course were not allowed to carry weapons around with them unless a class required it. So at the moment it was sitting next to his bed.

As Jason entered his small room, the would-be mage sighed a deep sigh. He slammed the door with his foot and fell down on the bed. He needed a good sleep and he could feel it, unfortunately his workload said otherwise, so he quickly sat up and lit an unlimited torch with a simple fire spell. His room was now illuminated with some light, besides the narrow shaft that fell through the arrow slit that they passed off as a window.

A few hours later found the room illuminated completely by the torch, as it was now pitch black outside and Jason with his head down on the desk snoring noisily, while he drooled on his Alchemy homework. Apparently saliva was to be an ingredient in an ether. A sharp knock rang on the thick wood of his door and he shot up from his desk trailing drool on the side of his face. He quickly wiped his face and in a shaky voice still unused from sleep he croaked, “Who is it?”

“It’s us, you idiot!” a voice shouted.

“’Us’, who?” Jason inquired.

“’Us’, Trell and Yared! Now get up, we got some business to do tonight!”

Jason groaned and sat up. He looked out his window and by the position of the moon it was probably around midnight. He still couldn’t understand why his friends wanted to mess around this late, but against his body’s will he stood up, stretched and grabbed his staff from next to his lumpy straw bed. Wiping his eyes with his left hand, he used his right to open the door and stepped out silently. This was breaking curfew, after all.

“You guys could have woken the dead out here with all that shouting.” Jason mumbled.

Trell giggled a bit and began to speak, “Yeah, well, sorry, but this is exciting. Yared’s found somethin’ big!” he shouted again.

“SHHH!” Yared spat. “I suppose you want the professors down here pretty bad, chowder head,” he whispered, “but yeah, I found something big. I was diggin’ ‘round for mushrooms for alchemy the other day, and I stumbled across a neat cave about a mile from here. It goes pretty deep, but I only scoped it down about a mile. Could be Redbeards lost pirate cave. Who knows?” Yared licked his lips.

Jason was a bit skeptical however, but before he could protest Trell had him by the arm and was dragging him out the door.

As they crept across campus, Yared put a sound dampening spell around them and led them to the wicker door at the east wall, which was in a horrible state of disrepair. A tribe of Ogres were to blame, who had come knocking a few months back and had gotten naught but death for their trouble. As they crept out the door, the three boys looked like murderers tiptoeing in the moonlight across the grass. Once they had crept around to the north side of the castle, they took off into the woods leading Jason like a dog. About a mile and a half later they were in front of a thick tangle of bushes that, it turned out, concealed a cave.

“Ladies first,” Trell hissed.

Yared insisted that Trell go first based on that, but Jason was too tired to argue and went in first mumbling. As he entered, an utter darkness enveloped him. The cave must have been enchanted,, because the moment he entered, he was instantly unable to see the moonlight from the entrance.

“Weird,” he muttered, and produced an unlimited torch from somewhere within his robes.

As he lit it, the cave suddenly appeared before him, along with the entrance where Yared and Trell were still arguing over who should go next. The firelight danced on the walls as the torch flickered in the gusts of wind that came from deep inside the cave.

“Just come on, ya wargs,” Jason screamed.

They heard, and walked in together.

“Creepy…” Trell muttered, and for once, Yared agreed.

The cave was indeed creepy. Strange symbols were carved into the walls, and the floor was comprised of some strange black soil.

“Well, let’s hurry up then.” Jason sighed.

So the trio started into the cave step by step. And slowly they went down further and further into the earth. The further they went, the stronger the wind became, and the more they felt at unease. Where would wind be coming from inside a cave? Scared as they were, none of them would admit it. After what seemed like ages on the same path, the cave opened up around them. The little torch was too small to show the whole room, so Trell used his illusionary arts and lit the room with a big ball of light which he suspended on the ceiling. What they saw now astounded them. In the room was the largest stockpile of gold any of them had ever seen. But not gold coins, or gold bars, or medallions. The gold was raw gold still in the walls. The walls almost looked like it was made of nuggets, and as the boys saw them they sucked in air with disbelief and greed.

Yared grinned beneath his hat, but the white of his smile somehow appeared through the black.

“Well boys,” he chuckled, “looks like we hit the mother load!”

Trell, however, said little, but his eyes grew wide as he took a mental inventory of the gold and rubbed his hands together greedily.

“Hehehe!” he managed to spit out.

Jason just stared in wide eyed disbelief at all that lay before him.

“OK, guys, enough gawking. Now let’s get to work!” Trell shouted.

As Trell and Yared ran to the wall to try to pry the gold out, Jason still was stunned with disbelief and sat down to take it all in. This was a good move on his part, because Trell and Yared never made it to the wall. As they came within three yards, all the gold on the wall seemed to turn into lead. The two stopped dead in their tracks perplexed, but didn’t have enough time to contemplate what had happened. Before they could think, the cave rumbled and all the ceiling around the walls within fifteen feet collapsed.

“NO”
He wanted to shout, but all that came out of his mouth when he opened it to shout was a high pitched squeaking noise.

Jason was paralyzed with shock and sat bewildered as he watched his friends die screaming beneath a pile of boulders.
It was a crippling mental blow. In an instant where there had once been laughter and joy, there was now only death and sadness.

Shortly after, the cave began to rumble again, and this time Jason managed to get up and he ran sobbing all the way back to the cave entrance as the path behind him crumbled to nothing. As he neared the entrance the cave, he threw his torch out and took off with his remaining energy. Running full speed he leaped out the cave door.

Exasperated, he sat down and watched as the rest of the cave collapsed in on itself. Unfortunately for him, a spare rock fell clear of the cave and smashed down right where
he was sitting, knocking him on the head and crushing his staff.

When he awoke with an awful headache some hours later, (presumably before dawn, as the moon was sinking below the trees and the sky was turning a pale red) the first thing he noticed was that the grass was starting to die around him. Not completely dead, but it was definitely dying slowly.
The next thing that ran through his mind was the realization that his best friends were dead. Suddenly impacted with this realization, Jason began to sob uncontrollably. Trell and Yared had always been there for him. Even on his first day at the academy when everyone else had made fun of him because his robes didn’t fit, and he was a total klutz. They had been there, and now they would never speak again. It simply wasn’t fair.

He wanted to cry, he wanted to feel bad, and most of all he wanted revenge. The emotional blast left him in a daze.

He sat up, still only half aware of the world around him, and searched around for his staff, which he found a few feet away undamaged except for the fact that the orb had popped out of the head.

That, he found another two feet away, except now, the ball no longer glowed. He remembered his grandfather telling him that once the ball within the staff had glowed with an incredible brightness, but over the years it had faded. Jason scanned his mind and could not remember a time when the ball had completely stopped glowing though. Just then, the sun broke over the treetops and cast a pale morning light on the ball in his hands. Suddenly an inscription was visible on the ball, which he had not read before as it had been on the side of the orb which was tucked within the staff. Jason held his breath as he read through his tears:

The Earth begins to rot…

And beneath it was the word:

Corneria

Somehow, Jason knew the part of the story that was supposed to come next.

Edited for content on the 13th of march 2005. Suggestions implemented.

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 14th March 2005 04:29

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

There seemed to be some awkward sentences in there, such as

A few hours later found the room illuminated completely by the torch, as it was now pitch black outside and Jason with his head down on the desk snoring noisily, while he drooled on his Alchemy homework.

The begining part of that is confusing and looks like a fragment.

Also, the deaths of his two friends are pretty conspicuous. Lilke, he watched them die, and the story ended. He should do a little more thinking of them, right?

Otherwise great story, and I hope the other stories will be just as excellent. Keep in mind I'm best at pointing out bad things, not good things. =(

Edit

I forgot to add I love the word choice you use. The adjiectives are very descriptive.

This post has been edited by FallingHeart on 24th February 2005 06:39

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

A few things:

>...enchanted or something ...

- Phrases like this should normally be avoided, it makes the writer sound like he's unsure and doesn't really know or care. Suggestion "seemed enchanted" "may have been enchanted" etc.

>“Hehehe!” ha managed to spit out.

- I think you meant "he managed"

To expand on what Fallingheart said: it's clear that you have Jason get the heck out of there because of his own danger, but you should add some writing about that. Obviously, he would want to stay with his friends, or at least try to get their bodies out. Write more about his feelings, his initial reaction, and why he ends up running out so quickly. I know the skeleton of it is there, but you need to fill it out.

Otherwise, this looks promising.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.