An Untitled Fantasy Story by Michael C. Lorah

Hello, Shotgun readers; Michael Lorah here. I’d like to share with you the first chapter of an in-progress fantasy story I’ve been working on. I hope you enjoy it.

An untitled fantasy story

by Michael C Lorah

Once upon a time…

Chapter One

The Par-Tay

…there was a young man named Jerrod. Tall and lean, with a narrow face, a full head of dark hair and shimmering evergreen eyes, Jerrod lived quietly in city once named Plohton in a kingdom formerly called Valencia. His skill with a sword ranked second to none of his neighbors, though his foster parents – Knorr and Lyrra – ensured that his physical prowess never surpassed his compassion for finding a fair and equitable solution to any problem.

            Plohton lay on a long, sweeping grass-laden plain, sitting high on a slope above the Ploh River. Decades ago, when Valencia prospered, Plohton was regarded as one of the world’s busiest and most important port cities. Many years ago, during the golden rule of King Humorff, food was plentiful, trade profitable, and enemies dared not move against the mighty Valencian army. All this, once, many years ago. Now, finding food may prove a fatal proposition, trade became a foreign language, and enemies … enemies still stayed their distance. Perhaps, fickle and vengeful, they enjoyed seeing the once-great kingdom bowed low. More likely, they feared Kaarg and dared not intrude into his territory.

            Every spring, heavy rains pushed the Ploh River beyond its banks, and the waters spilled onto the plains, replenishing the farmlands surrounding Plohton with rich soil from the riverbed. The neighboring kingdom to the south, Juntiper, claimed land surrounding the river, and the conflict between the two nations extended back generations. It was, however, not the most telling or personal conflict that had arisen between the two nations. That particular story is best left for a later page in this drama.

            Watching the river and its generosity from its safe hillside, Plohton was a sprawling mass of city without any coherent structure. As expansion was required, more was built, and with little regard to the layout of existing neighborhoods or buildings. Plohton simply grew, wrapping around itself for so many generations that it became an impenetrable maze. In the city’s heyday, many lifelong residents occupied themselves as pathfinders. One in five residents, usually those who were born, lived and, with Kaarg’s coming, died in the city, learned the twists, turns, alleys and dead-ends of Plohton, and these pathfinders, for a small fee, led merchants, traders and tourists to their destination. A merchant who stiffed a pathfinder for payment rarely found his way back to the surrounding grasslands within the same calendar year, so fierce was the loyalty of the pathfinders to one another.

            Now, two decades since Kaarg decimated the city, the crumbling and charred structures stood empty for a mile deep no matter which direction you approached. However, if you could find your way past the scorched marble columns and through the labyrinth of streets, if you could circumvent the carefully structured dead-ends and harmful-if-not-lethal booby traps, at the very center of Plohton you’d still find a community. Not a large one, this village of survivors – perhaps two hundred and fifty people all told. Hardy survivors, mostly lifelong residents, all committed to fashioning the most functional and normal society possible in modern-day Valencia.

            If, on this particular evening, you happened to be walking across the plains surrounding Plohton’s remnants – which by the way I would not recommend, for only two miles north lie the Black Forest, once known at Norna’s Woods, and many predatory animals and creatures watched the grass plains carefully for easily obtainable meals – but if you were strolling through the waist-high, gold and green waves of slender grass, you’d hear a whisper of music. The spring solstice festival survived in Plohton. The annual celebration of winter’s end, of the beginning of the planting season, of life itself raged with all the fervor two hundred and fifty souls could muster.

            Old Birt Ploggy blew his horn and Sherm Tual strummed a lute and Thom Kockal pounded a drum. And everybody else danced. Jerrod danced with great abandon. Amelie Ploggy, Old Birt’s niece, smiled and laughed at every bit of showmanship Jerrod could muster, and with each glimmer of approval, inspiration drove him to find another way of showing off. The result wasn’t particularly good dancing, honestly, but Amelie didn’t mind.

            Breathless, Jerrod weaved out from the rhythmically pulsing crowd and joined Amelie. “I need a drink. You?” he panted, reaching his hand toward her reclined form.

            Smiling, she took his hand and was pulled to her feet. “We haven’t had dinner yet, Jerrod. I’m famished.”

            The young couple, who’d only begun dating in the last six months, strolled hand in hand, taking in the colorful spectacle of the festival. Crowds milled around carefully constructed games, pitching horseshoes, darts and bean bags toward various targets, while other clustered groups drank ales and teas, laughing and singing.

            In a few weeks, the rainy season would start. Sections of the city had been razed and turned into crop-bearing fields, so tomorrow the planting would start. The river’s beneficent flooding did not reach the city limits, but between the rains and carefully disguised irrigation, the hidden fields still profited while remaining safe from unwanted eyes. Tomorrow, planting. Tonight, the party raged, a burst of relief, a shucking of the daily stress and anxiety of life in Kaarg’s domain. In the morning, headaches and facetious claims of never drinking like that again. Tonight, mugs hoisted high.

            “I wish you didn’t have to join the hunters when they go,” Amelie said. “Tonight is too beautiful, too perfect. My heart can’t let this moment pass.”

            Jerrod squeezed her hand tightly, smiled. “Hold onto it then. We’ll have many more in the years to come.” Although Plohton was largely agrarian, a deployment of a dozen hunters went out onto the grasslands once every month from spring until late fall to bring back meats, furs and fish. Jerrod, a regular on the hunting teams since his fourteenth birthday six years earlier, would assist the hunter team leader Prater Oldar during the week-long expedition when it departed in three days. During daylight, the team split into four three-person squads, two devoted to fishing the Ploh River and two pursuing game.

            The dozen men met again at nightfall to encamp. Rotating shifts of two men stood guard while the others slept, often fitfully. Nobody felt comfortable outside the Barrier, as the ruins of old Plohton surrounding the remaining village had come to be known.

            Jerrod and Amelie waved uncomfortably to three village elders. Romance could not be hidden in so small a community. Proximity had as many pros as cons. Neighbors frequently offered their help with building projects and late harvests; the trade-off was that if Samual Terschek and Lorna Polton engaged in an extramarital affair without either of their spouses’ knowledge, nearly everybody knew except the wronged parties, and nobody dared shatter the peace by telling.

            At the food tent, venison and steaks sizzled over open flames while pots of rice simmered and salads of carrot, cabbage, beets and vinegar waited. With full plates, Jerrod and Amelie retreated to a side street, away from the festival’s hubbub and din. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, they fed one another, laughing when food tumbled from each other’s fork and dribbled over their chins.

            “We’re making a mess,” Amelie said, laughing. Her laugh sounded sweet and inviting, and Jerrod wished, not the first time, that he possessed natural humor. She seemed to laugh at his antics more so than with his jokes, but so long as Amelie shared her warmth, high mirth with him, all felt right in his world.

            With his tattered handkerchief, Jerrod wiped sauce from her chin. She returned the favor much more enthusiastically, sucking the juices of his meal from his face with her lips and tongue.

            “Sorry,” she said, laughing, not even slightly apologetic. “Somebody might have seen that.”

            “So long as your uncle doesn’t bring one of his meat cleavers after me, I don’t mind,” Jerrod told her. “I think most people have caught on anyway.”

            “I know, but I like having a secret. It feels more exciting. We’ll have plenty of time to be proper; let’s be frivolously young a little longer.”

            Jerrod nodded his acquiescence, giggling along with her.

            Music slunk through the streets, caressing them gently, building the romance of the moment, and they kissed. In another lifetime, they both would’ve looked back on this moment as the first time they knew, perhaps not consciously, that they belonged together forever. This is not that story.

            Some time later, exactly how much time you don’t really need to know, but suffice to say, some time later, Jerrod and Amelie returned to the festivities. Her uncle, Old Birt, taking a brief respite from the music-making, toasted them with a tall glass of ale. “Enjoying yourselves?” he asked, grinning slyly. Amelie demurred, and Jerrod offered a mild, “We are.”

            Old Birt bought them each a drink before returning to the stage with his horn. Exhausted, Jerrod let the music wash over him, buoyed up by its bouncing, swinging tones. People danced like marionettes all around him, women hiking their skirts up and men kicking the heels into the air. The old city square provided a picturesque backdrop of tall marble columns and striking architecture: corbelled vaults, carved stone façades depicting sleek, abstract iconography of gods and goddesses, and fountains, now dry, filled with yellow, white and blue flowers. Despite the buildings’ worn, burnt appearance, aesthetic use of candles and streamers recreated the square’s remarkable sense of splendor and majesty. With every person dressed in their finest – including a few pre-Kaarg honest-to-God ball gowns and three surprisingly stylish buffalo skin dresses, one of which had been diligently fashioned over eight full months by its owner just for this occasion – the music, lights, food and sheer joy in the air allowed Plohton’s residents to escape their troubled lives. For one evening, anyway.

            A shadow passed overhead, and silence ripped through the crowd. Shaking hands reached for the candles and lamps, but the cloud moved past the moon. Slowly, knotted stomachs loosened, and the revelry renewed.

            Lying on the grass, Jerrod’s heart slowed to its normal rate. He’d never seen Kaarg, but others had. Survivors of Plohton’s razing recalled the flames and sheer malevolence with any prompting. Two decades past, nightmares still gripped many of Jerrod’s neighbors, and the ripple of sheer terror caused by a simple cloud across the moon or sun never abated in all the years since.

            Kaarg, you may have realized by now, is a dragon. Now, even in the time of this story, dragons were long thought extinct, yet grand and red, Kaarg appeared in the skies above Valencia many years ago. The army, then commanded by Jerrod’s adopted father Knorr, fell. The entire royal family, incinerated. Every bastion of order and civility in the land toppled, crushed beneath the dragon’s rage. Civilization ceased to exist. Any inclination of humans banding together was met with immediate and unbridled destruction. Kaarg brooked no possible resistance. No one knew what brought the dragon from memory to Valencia, nor what inspired its rage or its continued dominance over the land, but Kaarg remained, a dark cloud that swallowed all of Valencia’s silver linings.

            Though Jerrod had not seen the beast, first-hand accounts of its continued presence were not hard to hear. Situated near the country’s southern border, across the Ploh River from Juntiper where resentments toward Valencia ran deep, Plohton once occupied a station of importance higher than any city outside Valencia City itself. After razing Plohton, Kaarg left a clear message to the Juntiperians that they were not welcome in its hand – hundreds of acres of farmland across the Ploh were decimated. Kaarg’s fires burned so hot that the land itself baked.

            So Plohton, like a sock without a mate, was forgotten, a remnant of something long lost.

            Those lost things, however, were not entirely forgotten. Knorr and Lyrra taught Jerrod of Valencia’s past. The lost times remained in his mind, gleaming and beckoning. Lyrra, who grew up in Plohton, complemented tales of Valencia’s political with slivers of daily culture in the bustling port city. Jerrod learned of the miners’ strike of 1392 and the annual bombastic solstice festivals, the Elf/Halfling War and the writings of Prajar Huxford, the street music of Plohton and the vagaries of cross culture trading.

            Knorr bestowed upon him an elven blade, light as paper, hard as steel, when Jerrod was just a boy. First he taught his son when to not use the sword. Then Knorr showed Jerrod how to use it, and Jerrod learned like few students Knorr had ever known. I don’t mean to oversell Jerrod’s skill, mind you. He’s quite good, but we’ll meet better.

            “What’s on your mind?” Amelie asked.

            “Them.” Jerrod pointed to his parents, sitting in consultation with Prater Oldar. Even at the party, Knorr and Lyrra couldn’t escape their responsibilities. The hunt began in two days, and so Jerrod devoutly determined to enjoy himself as much as possible tonight. “I’m wondering … if perhaps I should do more.”

            “More what?” Amelie’s genuine curiosity made it easy for Jerrod to unburden himself.

            “I don’t know. More to help, to – I don’t know … lead, I guess. Plohton, this community, isn’t getting any younger. Not our leadership, at any rate.” He nodded toward the three who couldn’t fully immerse themselves in the festival. “They’re not young anymore.”

            “Jerrod,” she caressed his cheek, turning his face to hers. “Your time is coming. You already take on more than anybody else your age. You’re Prater’s number two on the hunt, over men with five times your experience. People trust you. You’re a hero.” She paused, toying. “It’s very sexy.”

            His brow arched. “Really?”

            Her lips curled upwards, desirous. “Very much so.”

            “Perhaps I can wait until tomorrow to get into the hunt planning.” Amelie’s smile told him that she agreed.

            Flames danced late into the night, music swelled, and dancers kept pace with each song’s tempo. Pies and cakes, filled with apple, cinnamon, pumpkin, and delightful bean paste, added to the buffet, and supplies of home-brewed ales outlasted the revelers.

            Jerrod and Amelie enjoyed sweet baked deserts and danced for hours. When Amelie finally sat down for a breather and quietly slipped into sleep, Jerrod spent ten minutes with his parents, wishing them well, encouraging them to take a few moments for their own pleasure on this of all evenings. He then procured a blanket, lay on the old town hall’s stone steps alongside Amelie, covered them both with the heavy deerskin, and slept himself.