City of IF

[Phang]

There had been the first chapter here...but it had been replaced with the second one somehow. Anyhoo, look down a bit and try to catch on.

[Reiso]

Well, it's remarkably brief, but interesting enough that I haven't decided to exile it to the Storygames Forum. I am intrigued by mist diamonds and the Sarva hawks. What can these hawks do? A little more information would be useful in deciding what to do. Also, what kind of factory wold be they be going through, and what exactly is the downbelow?

You have some instant suspense here, and I will have to wait another chapter or two before I am sure if that works or not, but it would serve you well to make lengthier chapters, if this can be accomplished without sacrificing tone or pace.

Your advice for the day reminds me of the old quip - practically the same, one is probably extracted from the other - 'it's not the fall that kills, it's the sudden stop at the end.'

[Ravenwing]

I would have to agree with Reiso. Its awfully short and I know you wanted to end on a decision point, but sometimes as the author you have to make the decision and go on to write another critical point. But these diamonds sound important, and the hawks dangerous. Can't wait to read more. As to what to do, I guess go Down Under. That would answer our question to what these diamonds are and/or do.

[Phang]

Now why do I always leave info out at the start? Next time and putting it all in, honest...
Mist diamonds are just rock-hard and pretty, and sometimes fall from the sky in storms. There's a rumour going round that if you manage to crack one, it will release unimaginable power...
Sarva hawks are the enemy of the Factory, giant scavenger birds that destroy homes and fly off with people, and generally disturb the routine of the Factory (the Factory doesn't really care for the humans, it just wants more workers).
The two choices...the Factory has better and better methods for repelling Sarva hawks, but it is over on the other side of the crags. Down Below, is a maze of cracks among the crags, a river (more like swamp) running through it, continually cutting deeper. The Miners and Scavengers only go down in large groups with powerful lights, and only to the places they know, and know their way around. No one really knows what's down there...

[Ravenwing]

It's okay. You probably could have put in all that information in the next chapter. Reiso and I just mentioned that stuff because we were curious what these things were, thats all.

[Reiso]

Hmm . . . good to know. In that case, Downbelow seems like a more riveting chase. Defense against the hawks seems a poor compensation for a chance at being snatched as a worker in the factory anyway.

I think it's kind of funny how the post explaining the chapter was longer than the chapter itself . . . but it's all cool.

I am a man of few words myself, and it took me a long time to get to a point where my writing became in-depth. Now of course, people can't shut me up, so all in good time.

:D

[unther]

Your story's are always kinda freaky. But thats what makes them interesting. :)

[Phang]

Freaky and intresting? Usually people just ignore me when I'm being freaky.

[Phang]

Reiso wrote: Hmm . . . good to know. In that case, Downbelow seems like a more riveting chase. Defense against the hawks seems a poor compensation for a chance at being snatched as a worker in the factory anyway.

Who said I was going to let them reach the Factory in time?

[Reiso]

Is there a poll coming up, or a next chapter?

[Phang]

I was waiting for more people to suggest what to do.

[Phang]

Ah, I'll put it up Saturday.

[Ravenwing]

It doesn't hurt to put a Poll. Also people generally give other suggestions when it looks like there could other options. 8)

[Phang]

It does hurt to put up a poll. I can't edit the bloody thing.

[Reiso]

No worries Phang, I can either delete them as needed, or edit them to your liking. PM me in any such event.

[Phang]

Thank you Reiso.
By the way, what the hell is your avatar?It looks like a cross between a cat and a wolf.

[Ravenwing]

It looks like he cut out the face of a wolf and added in a cat's. Unfortunately, the wolf's face is longer, so it makes the cat look like it has long sideburns that trail past its face.

[Phang]

I want a cat with sideburns!

[Phang]

I think the next chapter will be up tomorrow. I would put it up now but mum's just told me to go to bed :evil:

[Phang]

It's coming tomorrow...always tomorrow, never today...someday I'll get round to it...

[Reiso]

LOL guys, the only modifications on my avatar were cropping, transparencies and sizing. This is how the cat actually looks. It's a canadian lynx, and that's just how their manes are.

[Phang]

In that case...
I want a Canadian Lynx!

[Vampireidiot]

hey Phang!!!
cool story!

any idea when you will be doing the next chapter?!! :lol:
I want a cat like that!

[Phang]

I dunno...I write best at night...night is when mum moans at me...

[Araex]

shtupid parents with their moaning and groaning!

anyhoo, cool story so far. are the characters already workers at the Factory, or are they renengades. If the latter, go for the Down Below

[Phang]

Phew...we now have a full first chapter (carrying on from the supposed-to-be-first one) and then I shall post more.

[Phang]

Well for some reason the new chap appears to have popped up at the top, so to bring all you ignorant peoples here I'll just repeat it:
Tying the rope around her with her lightning-fast hands, Winger thanked the Master for giving her such speed. The others, however, had not been given such gifts when the Master had created them. Within seconds the Scarva hawks had landed, clumsily smashing rocks with their feet to reach them. Far off in the distance, Winger saw her cousin still sprinting across, until he tried to jump over a large crack in the ground. He failed and fell, but not before a Scarva hawk brutally speared him through the torso with its beak, shaking its head back and forth to dodge Stinger's tail as he clung to life. Eventually his body went limp, his tail dropped to hang by his side, and the hawk began to rip him apart, beak red with blood.

Feeling sick, Winger quickly focused on the Scarva hawks attacking her friends. The ground had been reduced to mountains of rubble peeking out from the Down Below, but her friends were safe, if a little battered and shocked. The hawks clumsiness was buying them time. "Over here! Quick!" she shouted, but then realised this was a big mistake. The hawks turned to the noise and soon all were staring at Winger. It seemed like for an hour they stood, staring, waiting, planning their move, never-endingly patient as long as they could get their meal eventually...
It seemed so sudden when they attacked. They had lulled Winger into a false sense of security and nervousness, almost hypnotised her, until the silent, staring hawks had leapt at her in full screeching fury. Paniking, she dived into the crack blindly, hoping with all her heart she was safe. Behind her Stormtail was diving into the Down Below with her, and as Winger jerked to a halt she looked round to see her falling towards her, a dart of yellow and red behind her... "Stormtail! Look out!" she screamed in desperation, but it was too late. The hawk had sliced through the rope like the flimsy trees of the forest, and Stormtail was sent plummeting down into the darkness underneath Winger. As the hawk tried to fit its beak down the crack towards Winger, she crawled down the rock into the darkness, hoping she would find ground to stand on before the rope was sliced and she fell...

Winger didn't know how long she had been crawling down the side of the rock face. It could have been a minute, but it seemed like hours, even days. All she knew was that the rope hadn't been cut, and she was ok.
Looking down to check for ground, she saw at last a glimmer of hope, barely visible in the darkness. A ridge, jutting out from the edge of the rock. She sped up and was just about to reach it, but suddenly the rope went stiff. She had ran out, just as solid ground lay beneath her! Now she wished the hawks could cut the rope-from here she would be able to guide herself safely to land with her stubby wings. But the rope was still tight as she hung suspended from high above, beyond her sight. She picked at the ties but in her haste as the hawks had attacked she had tied them to tight for her to undo without picking for ages. And when she undid a bit, she would just fall again and it would tighten.
She just had to wait...but what if the hawks had left? She could climb back up...but what if they were still there? She had no way of knowing, the Horn could have blown without her hearing, she could be beyond the known areas of the Down Below...she had no idea.
There, now GO LOOK DAMN YOU!

[Araex]

Who's the Master? And where is the first chapter?

[Phang]

Araex wrote: Where is the first chapter?

I don't know, it disspeared and was replaced by this chapter somehow.

[Idea master]

Hum diddly dum dum dum. It's the great IM himself!
*sounds of crickets*
Or maybe not so great.
Anywho...MORE! MORE!
By the by, you may want to look under the "new storygame of the month" thread... :roll:
Let's say it's a suprise gift from me to you.

[Phang]

Idea master wrote: Hum diddly dum dum dum. It's the great IM himself!
*sounds of crickets*
Or maybe not so great.
Anywho...MORE! MORE!
By the by, you may want to look under the "new storygame of the month" thread... :roll:
Let's say it's a suprise gift from me to you.

I saw. :mrgreen:

Oh by the way I have decided to risk it and put up a poll. I don't like them, they don't like me, but I have had too much Appletiser and I can conquer all!...well I think I can...

[Phang]

Ok...it would appear it's been decided that Winger should head back up. Now comes the hard part...writing the next chapter. And the even harder part...the poll. I knew I shouldn't have been allowed near the computer while hopped up on Appletiser... :evil:

[Idea master]

No doubt, like everything else that comes from you, it will be great.
Slightly demented, but great all the same.

[Vampireidiot]

Cool! Shame ididn't get to read the first chapter but this one was so cool!!!!
:D

[Phang]

Yes, at last, the long-awaited 3rd chapter. But this is only the first part. Apologies if it's bloody long, I don't know if it is or not, I'm not good at judging writing size.


Winger waited for what could have been a long time—or maybe just a few minutes. Either way, she was getting scared. Could she hear something? Or was her mind playing tricks? A dripping—was it real? Was it getting louder?

A cold chill passed and she shuddered. The dripping seemed to be right by her now, along with panting, loud, getting louder all the time. Panic turned it into a roar in her head, until she felt hot breath on her neck, screaming she span round, to see—

Nothing. Darkness. The dripping carried on, far off in the distance. Winger shivered in fear, and tried to ignore everything else. After all, it was just in her mind. The rope was jerking? No it wasn’t. Something was crawling across the rock below her? There was nothing there. The walls had started to rumble, bits of rock were falling to hit her and plummet down to the far-off ground, but she hung there, certain it was in her mind. Suddenly something happened to jolt her out of disbelief and back into fearful reality.

The whole world flashed a cold blue for a stunning moment and a scream that seemed to cause icy blue darkness itself thundered around, echoing off the rocky walls and sending huge chunks of rock down. Had Winger looked below her she would have seen a black more dreadful than the lightless Down Below swallow up the rocks, but in a split second she was sprinting up the rock face, dodging the tumbling boulders with the scream ringing in her ears. It was like she didn’t need the rope—she was running so fast she could have gone straight up to the safe normality of home and the Factory, no screams, just the Horn. But, this was wrong. She needed the rope.

She heard a loud snap above her and looked up to see the rope tumbling down, along with the tip of the large rock it had been tied to. The Scarva hawks, unable to fit their beaks through to saw the rope, had instead eventually worked out with their slow brains that the secret to ending this pathetic stubby-winged child was to break the rock she was tied to. Panicking, Winger grabbed the rock face with her bare hands, cutting into them and almost pulling her nails out. But unable to let go for fear of falling she watched the rope that she had intended to catch fly past her out of sight, along with her hope. Once again she had to wait, but this time with torn, bloody, aching hands and clinging for her life. Above her she heard the shrieks of the Scarva hawks as they flew away, and the Horn. The comforting low sounds of what was supposed to be the Master’s call itself crept into the Down Below to echo and tease Winger as she wished over and over in her head that the rock had held a little longer. It faded away after a minute or two, leaving Winger in silence, unable to move, hoping her nails would hold better than the rock.


How long have I been here?
I don’t know…
How long will I be here?
I hope not long, I hope someone will rescue me…
Anyone?
As long as I’m rescued I don’t care, I don’t even care if it’s a stupid filthy scavenger…
There could be worse things further down…what if the Echoer came to rescue you?
I don’t think that would rescue me…what’s the Echoer anyway?
It’s the thing that screamed…
How do I know?
Didn’t I realize? It echoed my scream…it echoes things…like the dripping…
Why am I talking to myself?
Well I’m not talking to anyone else…

Winger shook her head in confusion. Why had she been talking to herself in her head? Had she been talking to herself at all? It couldn’t have been anyone else, but the way the new voice had referred to itself as her too and known about the scream was weird, to say the least. Was she going mad?

As Winger gripped the rock face, she heard something. But it faded away and she began to wonder if she was hearing things again. Under her right hand the small jutting rock she’d been holding came loose, and as her fingers scraped down the rock she screamed in pain as a fingernail was torn out. This was it. With all her strength and endurance she climbed to the surface, and as she reached the top a scavenger poked his head over the edge and gasped. At last she was saved! He grabbed her and dragged her over onto the surface, into the brilliant, blinding light. “Thank you…” she began, but he cut her off with a gag and bound her feet together. She yelled into the muzzle and kicked out with both tied legs, sending him flying backwards. The scavenger’s leader looked over to see what was going on.
“Beatht vom Dowd Bellow!” stuttered the scavenger. The Master hadn’t bothered to gift the lowest of the low with the ability to speak properly, seeing as they usually just needed to shut up and work—an open mouth while rummaging through filth wasn’t a good idea. The scavenger was swatted round the head by his leader.
“Idiotic scum! This is a young hunter!” he untied Winger and helped her up. “Apologies for the stupidity of this filth in mortal form. Though you do look quite a mess—whatever happened to you? You—you’re missing a fingernail!” Winger burst into tears, which she hadn’t done for many years—and collapsed into the leader’s arms.
“I-I went to the Down Below. The Scarva Hawks were after me and my friends. They…they g-got Stinger.”
“You know about Stinger? He disappeared during the Scarva attack.”
“He tried to run for the Factory, and they r-ripped him apart. I knew I wouldn’t make it that way, so I went Down Below—and I wish I’d been killed by the Hawks.”
“I know how you feel. Most of my childhood friends have been killed by Scarva Hawks. But you shouldn’t talk like that”
“I should. You don’t know what was down there…” The leader looked confused at this. The terrible fate of those captured by Scarva Hawks was unknown, and only one had escaped—he was now mad, and demanded to sit in a room that glowed white with mist diamonds all around him, laughing to himself constantly. Apparently this had been where he was before his mental torture before the ‘Scarva Lord’, and he was trapped forever in this moment before his death. Because he was dead—dead inside. What could be worse? After a while, he spoke again.
“I think we need to take you inside to your breeding group, your parents will be needing to know you’re ok.” Winger nodded, and fell asleep in the leader’s arms, exhausted from fear.


Hopefully I'll get the next part up before I go on holiday, otherwise you'll have to wait.

[sparta12]

Nice chapter Phang.
Will you be accepting the nomination for SGOTM?

[Phang]

sparta12 wrote: Will you be accepting the nomination for SGOTM?

Of course! :D

[sparta12]

Excellent... It's all falling into place lol :D

[Araex]

Nice story Phang, I like the way the story is developing as we learn more about the world.

Also, you need to take the poll down! Or get someone to do it for you.

[Guest]

The Master strode around his huge hologram of the Factory and all around it, brushing his hand over every needle-sharp Scarva defense tower, running his fingers through the fragile vine-like trees in the forest, tracing the cracks in the crags, the deep maze that formed the Down Below. The Down Below...he would never return to that place. Here he had control, here he was at the top of the food chain, there was no desperate struggle to survive. And the small weaklings of humans had submitted to his will, and he granted them safety and peace like he'd longed for, in return for supreme power over them. They hadn't realised his side of the deal, they were too preoccupied with their happy lives...

Enough about myself, he thought, shaking his head. [i]I need to find that girl. I sensed her, she has a connection to the Down Below that's been triggered... Still talking to himself in his head, he passed his hands over the crack she'd entered and began to mutter under his breath: "[/i]Show me the mind of the girl..." chanting constantly, he began to be drawn to a spot near the crack, heading quickly towards the Breeding Area of the Factory.

Standing there while his hand followed every step the Leader took as he carried the slumbering Winger, the Master heard a voice answer his: "Her name is Winger, her parents were part of Experiment Animal Gene Addition, the only survivors. She is unique, bearing a unbreakable bond to the wild..."
"Unbreakable?" he asked to the voice, but he did not expect an answer, he was more talking to himself. "No bond cannot be broken...let me enter her dreams..." He began chanting again, and slowly, the room faded into a vision of a tribe in the Down Below that looked strangely familiar to the Master...and it seemed someone else was intruding on Winger's dreams.


Winger floated slightly above the ground, watching a tribe of strange creatures. Rock walls went far up and far below them on both sides, beyond sight into the light and darkness. The crag they were on was particularly large, but hung off the rock wall it was jutting out from precariously, threatening to fall any second. The creatures did not seem to notice this, but continued to crouch and huddle over what they were doing, even when the rock shuddered and sent pebbles crumbling down into the darkness. Winger floated forward to see what the creatures were doing, the Master following her unseen. Peering over, she gasped in horror and reeled backwards, tearing her eyes away from the sight. But it was stuck in her mind: beneath their torn, dirty black hoods they bared huge mouths with rows and rows of tiny teeth, rotten and bloodstained. As a group they were gathered round a carcass, which all Winger could recognise of it was a long, powerful tail and one strong back leg. The rest had been devoured, except the brain, which lay in the skull to the side of the dead beast. Winger watched them from the distance she had flown back to, realising that their lunges into the ground were them crouching down to tear another chunk of flesh from the creature.

"Awful, isn't it, the behaviour of these creatures, the supposed Lords of the Down Below?" Winger froze as she heard the Master's voice behind her, then spun to face the hooded and robed figure. She'd never seen him before, even now he was hidden in darkness, but what was he doing here? "I'm here to help you," he said, "I know things about you even you're not sure of yet, and they're bad things."
"L-like what?"
"The things you saw in the Down Below were awful, but you are drawn to this place all the same. Even with such danger you may feel the urge to re-enter your nightmares...I cannot allow one of those I lead to do that."
"Oh really? Those you lead, is it now?" Winger and the Master looked round to see one of the creatures standing at the edge of the crag, facing them. The others were staring from behind their hoods with huge blue eyes. "You didn't want the path of dreams and the wild, so you chose to make these people your slaves! Look at this child, she's warped beyond her original species! This is what you've done without your soul land! This is how you lead!"
"I...do not understand what you are saying. I have improved their species--"
"To better suit them with the meaningless jobs you force them to do!"
"--and I do not know of any path of dreams and the wild."
"It's all around you, heartless liar! You left us because the thirst for power was too strong, but for what? Where is the real power in enslaving the last of this race?"
"I have not enslaved them!" the Master glanced nervously at Winger to see she was listening to every word, and reassured himself before looking back to the creature.
"Worried she knows the truth now?"
"SILENCE!" the Master turned to Winger and looked into her eyes. "If you believe him, then you are a fool. These creatures use their psychic powers to decieve, not help like I use mine. And I admit I was once one of them. But I left. Please, Winger, return with me. I give you a choice, but if you go with him then you are nothing but an animal and I must do like all in the Factory must do when facing a possibly dangerous animal--kill you, or enslave you for real. So will you come with me--or become a common animal, like the animal in your blood from the experiments. Experiments to help you..."
"Liar..."[/i]