Chapter
1

 
    Looking down at the thirty foot wide stream that ran under his feet Sca thought he saw his father's reflection in the water. Remembering that last mourning with him, he had only seen a glance of him before he ran out of their house toward the front wall but there was almost something mystic in that memory. His father was not a strong man and never had any real talents except the unmistakable ability to lead people as was the tradition of all the Glacierwind family. As he tried to picture his father he saw a middle aged man with ragged curly black hair with a touch of gray and a tidy gouty around his mouth. He was broad but lean and about two halfings in height he was useful with a trident and bow and sometimes a sword when he was really mad. Spotting a salmon beneath him in the river he drove his trident threw it and levitated back to the rocky shores of the river. He lay the salmon on shore with the other dozen he had in a birch bark sheet, then he sat on a high rock nearby and stared up at the mountains that surrounded him. He wondered what would happen if his mother had not hidden him that night, if they had never made it to the mountains. He thought back to the mourning the goblins had attacked his town Bremanton. They used a simple trick which most people thought was beyond goblins and made an illusion of their army in front of the town to get everybody’s attention. Then they made a surprise attack coming down from the mountains and somehow penetrated the town wall eventually crushing the town. After waiting for night to fall he and his mother creeped out of town but the goblins' hounds had smelled them and chased him and his mother all night. Then when they were cornered in a small glen he watched his mother change into a winter ogre and destroy the whole hunting party that had been made up of a full twelve goblin warriors. At that time he had been eight winters old and after that his world had never been the same. Even during their flight threw the mountains that took the whole summer season his mother had taught him the powers his mind could develop if he trained it . The powers he had mastered so far were controlling wind , forming a mind armor around his body , and shaping his arms into a trident or long sword . The powers he still needed to work on were telekinesis , which is lifting objects with his mind ,levitation and inertia barrier which is forming an  transparent elastic bubble around him self that could stop most missiles . All these powers were broken into schools , which is the main classification of a power . Sca was taught that sciences were called major powers and devotions were minor powers . As she taught him she seemed to get weaker and older .To seal her teachings in Sca she had told him that it was his fathers will for him to learn. Because it was a rarity in humans many feared it in most parts of Fareun , especially far north where people like his kin lived .

 
* * *

    The old women pulled her brown cloak around her tighter as she dug up more carrots in her small garden , the cold seemed to effect her every so more with each passing day . Suddenly her senses were alerted to another presence . She thought that it could be Sca but when her mind focused on it she felt that it was unintelligent and a strong feeling of despair and hunger. Then she felt twelve more similar presence’s in the area . Instinctively she grabbed a ho that was laying against the make shift shed . Within a couple of seconds twelve huge dire wolves were growling at her with drooling jaws . She thought about using telepathy to call to Sca but that would drain her of the bit of psionics power she could muster , so instead she thought of herself to be as light as a feather and started to ascend into the air . Seeing there hard found food getting away the lead dire wolf bound with a growl onto the top of the shed then leaped threw the cold air and bit into its prays cloak and in turn slowly dragging her down . Instantly the whole pack was atop of her but as she was being brought back to the earth she sent a short message to her son leaving her helpless where psionics powers were concerned . With all the wolves chewing into her bear skin garments it would be a matter of moments before she would be torn to pieces , knowing her parole she used her last resort , jerking her fur covered hands from the wolves snapping jaws she clapped her wrist together and a blinding explosion filled the air. Feeling the wolves retreat she stumbled toward the trail which would lead toward the river where her last chance at live was, her young boy .

* * *

   As Sca was heading back to the river he heard a small plea in his head , knowing that it could only be his mother he rushed up the rocky shore toward his cabin all the while preparing his mind to use his psionics powers . When he came in view of his mother she was running toward him down the shore with a bleeding face, he was brought back to the dreadful night he lost his father and swore that would not happen again .
   It was few seconds after when he saw the twelve huge wolves catching up to her , he had to blink twice before he actually realized the size of the shaggy beasts . Reaching into his mind he summoned strength from it. He found a deep state of power far within his psyche. Concentrated on every molecule that existed in his body and began re-ordering them in his desired fashion. He envisioned small particles compacting into a solid wall all over his skin and turned it toward every part of his body making him as hard as a rock but as flexible of a trench weasel . Seeing he wouldn’t make it to his mother he stopped and threw his trident at the lead wolf in attempt to a least slow the pack . It arched over his mother and hit the lead wolf driving it into the rocks with a small yelp, to Sca’s surprise the pack did not even slow as a new smaller wolf took the lead . Running toward his mother again he drew more psionics energy from his mind. He envisioned long hard metal shaping over his arms. Slowly he shaped his arms into two long sword blades that were just as much as part of him as his legs . Before he could get to his weak mother the lead wolf jumped on her back and bored her to the rocky shore , with in seconds the rest of the pack was tearing at her . Finally reaching his mother he had no problem stabbing two wolves in the back because of there concentration on his mother . After the first two of the giant beasts had died three more blood trench maw’s turned to face there new food with blood stained teeth bared . Realizing the new threat Sca raised his bladed arm and chopped it down toward the biggest   wolf only to hear a resounding bang as it dogged out of the way and his blade hit against the rocks of the shore . Seeing his mistake Sca took a chance and blindly raised his left arm into the empty air beside him . Before he could turn his head he heard a yelp and felt a black wolf being impaled on his left blade.
    As soon as he got the dead wolf off his blade the viscous beast he had missed before jumped atop him bringing him to the ground , then he felt a pinch around his neck as savage the wolf tried to close his jaws through his psionics armor . Sca knew his situation was bad and no matter how hard he tried he could not get the five hundred pound wolf off him. And to make it worst another wolf was mangling his leg . He hoped his concentration would hold up until a idea came by , luckily for him one did . He felt the cold pinch of a glacier wind pass over his head and he summoned his ability to control the wind . Taking his mind off the constant painful pinches he caught the wind with his mind and made it do his bidding . Conecting with the flowing molecules above him he forced them low to the ground he let it gain speed and rammed it into the wolf that was atop him sending it flying twenty feet into the freezing cold river . Using its remaining strength he formed a whirl wind and sent it over the wolves surrounding his mother and sucked them into it. After freezing them with its arctic current Sca dropped them five paces from his mother .Then he felt a stabbing pain in his left leg as another wolf broke threw his psionics armor and tore threw his black trousers and bit into his flesh . With his arm blade he took a weak swing at wolf cutting a tiny gash into his fur , noticing the distraction the wolf raised his gray head to its annoying pray but all it saw was Sca’s blade coming right for it’s mouth .

    After separating the wolf’s head into two pieces he ran to his mother which he saw was drenched in blood . When he called her name she weakly opened her eyes .
"You must leave here Sca"
she rasped with blood on her lip
"there is nothing here for you, return my son to your home and share what I have shared with you".
With tears in his eyes Sca brushed aside her wet black hair and nodded to his mother . "There are supplies and a map buried in the bottom of the shed and Sca as well as my love, you will inherit my powers in your mind , when you are ready you will have access to them , use them well and wise and make your father proud".
With that she closed her eyes for the last time . Cradling her head in his arms he swore to himself he would make mother and father proud . By all the gods he would make them proud .

* * *

    After the battle Sca dressed his wound and made a bonfire , laying his mother atop of it in her finest cloths he said aloud "may the winds of the glacier take your ashes to the final resting place of my father and your husband"
with that he let the torch he was carrying drop onto the tinder at his feet. As the fire reached high into the sky the sun lowered past the horizon . In minutes the whole pile was ablaze .Watching with solemn eyes he bowed his head as the fire reached the top and took his mother and mentor to the gods, with that he felt a sudden surge of power and knew it was his mothers powers being endowed in him. He could feel deep reccess's of his mind opening and a energeic power filling the caverens of his mind.

   It was only when the first rays of spring sun touched the mountain horizon when Sca actually moved from the bonfire which was now a pile of smoldering ashes on the shore . Heading toward the cabin he almost fell to his knees because of the cramps in his legs . He looked at every detail of the trail as he passed by the mountainous terrain ,   he remembered all the years of painful training his mother endured upon him and all the love she bestowed in him. When he reached the campsite he headed directly toward the old wooden shed , its roof had dropped and the wooden shingles were broken in a number of places . He told his mother he was going to fix it as soon as all the snow melted , but now there was no point to do it now . Remembering what his mother had said about the supplies buried in the floor of the shed he wondered what there could  possibly be there . He saw every thing his mother had made and gathered and not in his whole memory did he remember her drawing a map . Opening the rickety door a thick musty smell hit him , the mourning light shun through the cracks in the wood with enough illumination for him to find his way around .

   A thick layer of dust covered the whole wooden floor , looking around for tool that could help him tear the floor up he saw a stone shovel his mother had made laying under some lose wood . Grasping it's rough hewn handle he drove its blunt edge in a crack between to middle boards given it a strong jerk he popped the board up . In under it was a hollow dark place , he worked quickly an removed the rest of the boards. When the light hit the gravel pit it revealed the dull reflection of metal that was under ground for too long . Grasping the item he found it was quite light and thick .He took it outside to get a better look at it and when he did he was quite confused as to what he saw . There were six round metal rods and three pronged ones tied together in a neat little bundle they were no longer than ten inches long and the whole bundle was about as thick as his leg . Untying the rope that held them together he carefully laid down all the pieces , he noticed that all the normal rods had fixtures at each end that allowed them to be screwed together . He screwed all the ends together and came to the end where only three prongs were left and a rod with three holes on one side and one on the other . Once he screwed the prongs into the triple hole side and the combined rods in the other he had a compact steel trident to call his own . Testing it with a few mock swings he found it to very well balanced and extremely light , turning around as if someone was behind him he threw the trident at an oak tree thirty feet away .

    Surprisingly it dug all three prongs past the sharp barbs that were on the tip and then four inches . Not expecting such a good result he realized how hard it would be to remove the weapon . At closer inspection Sca noticed a small catch on the middle rod , when he pulled it up he heard something move in the tree . Slowly he tried to extract the weapon but found he could do it easily because the barbs retracted. He saw this when it was once again in the sunlight . Laying it against the wall of the shed he couldn’t help but feel there was something more to this trident then its fine design and silvery metal, it was something explosive. Walking back into the shed he reached down between the boards and felt some cloth , giving it a tug it came loose . Taking that to into the sunlight he found it was a large bearskin back pack with something inside . He emptied the contents onto the needle covered ground before him . All together there was a bear fur sleeping blanket which was rolled up in a neat little bundle , a wooden jar filled with foul smelling bear fat and a wood bound book with birch bark paper in it . Opening this up he recognized his mothers writing burnt into the paper , he had only see her do this a few times while they were in the mountains . She had taught him how to read a long time ago and most of the words were unclear but he recognized some of the them . It basically told him that it was a book of survival with recipes for cures , food, traps and tool making, also in the back was a roughly scrawled map showing how the stream near thier cabin, if followed, would lead to a much larger river. Then it went on to show that if the river was followed south it would meet with a gigantic lake in which the town he was born in harbored . Now that he had a map and a purpose Sca set about collecting supplies for the long and dangerous trip to his homeland and what was sure to be the greatest adventure of his life.

 
* * *

    With all his supplies in his back pack Sca set off with his long sword which was taken from the goblins his mother defeated . He also carried a stone hatchet attached to his back sack and his old trident which he used as a walking support . He thought it wise to put his compact trident in one of the many deer skin belt pouches he had .

    During the first week of travel Sca made good time and according to the map his mother made he was half way down the river that was by there cabin . During that week he had slept for only seven hours a day and now felt the fatigue of traveling over the rough mountainous terrain . Although he could feed himself easily with salmon he speared in the river he was getting tired of the bland taste . To make up for it he ate spring berries which were in great variety. One day he wasn’t paying attention to the berries he was eating and got very sick but before they could take there full effect he found the recipe for a antidote in his mothers survival book . The second week he put little distance between him and the cabin because of the berry poison and the fatigue . To hinder him further it had started to rain heavily and the river flowed it bank making it impossible to travel on its rocky shores .

    Realizing his bad condition he went into a near by clump of trees and with his hatchet made a lean-to and rested for a whole day by a warm fire he had made inside his wooden tent . He found that his mothers bear garments were very warm and came in handy in the cold rains. The skills she had taught him also came in handy , he had made use of most of them already. The main one being fire building which wasn’t that useful on a dry day because flint and steal could be used . But with all the wood drenched in water in the past week he had to rely on his skill with rubbing sticks together to get a spark because his flint and steal got wet . Every couple of days he had set one of his mothers rabbit snares that she detailed in her book and got a nice meal of arctic hare which was a great relieve from berries and fish . After the rain cleared on what was to be day twelve of his trip he set off again following the blue waters of the river south. It was still not easy because the shores of the river were still flooded with water, making Sca travel in the dense wood which greatly slowed him down . When he sat down that day for his simple dinner of berries and water he was reviewing his mothers map and figured that it would only be a couple days before he met up with the main river his mother called the black raven .

* * *

   The huge five foot tall magical bird looked down from the high mountainous cliff with it flaming red eyes for its next meal . It was perched on the higest tree that could support its wieght, the dark feathers which adorned it wings hide it well needle covered furs. When it saw a deep red spot moving in its blue back ground it switched from infravision to color sight and picked out a human laying on a rock . It let out a loud shriek with its black stag head in sick happiness . It had been a long time since she had saw a human and was desperate not from hunger but the need to reproduce, and the only way it could re-create itself was with a beating human heart .

* * *

    Sca almost choked on his water when he heard the loud shriek . In all his time in the mountains he had never heard such a bird cry . When he looked up to find its source he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t see anything , most bird calls could be heard but there source not seen. But this one unnerved him in a way no other every did . Sca grabbed some more berries out of the pouch at his side and started to study her map again . As he was studying the map he noticed the quite background of chirping birds around him had gone silent so that all he could hear was the rush of the near by river . He quickly put his things away and took up a cautious stance . He grabbed his near by trident and looked all around him for any signs of danger . While he was in mountains he learned when the birds didn’t sing it was a sign of a upcoming storm or danger .

   He heard the shriek again and looked in its direction , gliding toward him silently with a twenty foot wing span was a giant bird with a black stags head and a large black antler sticking out from the top of its head . Its whole eagle shaped body was covered in a dark green and black feathers . Raising his trident in mock defense he tried to summon his psionics armor to protect him in time but it was too late the monster came down at him amazingly fast and lowered its antlers directly at his chest. Sca tried to dive out of its way but it compensated in a amazingly agile manner and struck him in the chest.  When the force hit him it drove all the air from his lungs and knocked his trident out of his hands . He heard one last screech of victory by the bizzarre beast as it swooped past and before he fell into unconscious.

 
* * *

    Sca awoke in severe pain which was coming from his cracked ribs, when he opened his eyes he saw it was night out and a very cold wind was blowing on his face . When he adjusted his eyes to the darkness he could see he was probably in a large stone cave .Then when he twisted his head around he saw he was surrounded by a low barrier of trees with small twigs tightly packed under him .Judging from all the characteristics he say it was the equivalent of a bird nest. When he looked down at his feet he saw his back sack torn below his feet , when he bent up to inspect the damage a great shot of pain jolted threw his body making him cringe with tears coming to his eyes . In all the gashes and bruises he had in his life this was the most pain he had ever felt. After it diminished a bit he tried again to inspect his back sack only this time twisting him self toward it then bending upward. He found the outside was tore to shreds but when he checked he found his mothers book and all the other equipment he had was in good condition except for some minor cuts across their surfaces . When he checked for his weapons he was at a loss , his long sword was no longer on his side and his hatchet was missing . He remembered dropping his trident before he went unconscious but found he still had his compact one at his side in its pouch .When he put his hands down to lift himself up they scraped against something that was not a branch on the spongy floor . Feeling around he recognized it as a skeleton probably one of a child but wider. He noticed straps on its shoulders and found they belonged to a back sac it felt like a fine leather to Sca. Taking it off the skeleton he transferred the items from his torn sac to his new one and strapped it on with the metal buckle that connected across his chest and straps that went on his shoulders . With all his strength he slowly stood up straight and peered around the cave , it seemed to be empty . He started to walk across the nest toward a constantly blowing the wind which would probably be the cave exit .

    When he got to the edge of the nest and tried to climb over a vine shot up from the nest and wrapped around his leg , when Sca tried to pull free the vine’s grip tightened and started to pull him back toward the nest . Realizing the birds plan he figured out why it had taken his weapons away. "Bet you weren’t expecting this birdie " said Sca out loud then he once again develved deep inside his mind and   shaped his free arm into a long sword blade and started chopping at the vine . When it was severed he hopped over the small twig wall and half walked half ran toward the edge of the cave. When he looked out of the cave mouth he happened to notice the horizon was lower then it should be. When he looked around he took 2 quick steps back, below him was the sheer drop of a cliff that ended in untold darkness .
    The sky above him was dotted with stars and by his judgment he was not far from where he had slept the night before. Looking back at the nest he couldn’t believe it when he saw yet another vine pursuing him. Changing his arm back to normal he summoned his psionics and thought himself to be light as a feather and added his metal energy . Slowly he stepped over the edge of the cliff and started a slow decent down the cliff. It took very little of his mental presense to mantain this power, he simpily concentrated on depersing the particals inside his body.  He didn’t know how far he went before he heard the familiar screech of the bird that captured him before; it was coming closer. With the darkness still predominant he could not tell which direction the monster was coming from yet he could not speed his decent without falling . He wished he had practiced levitating more often for then he could just drop and turn the power on before he hit. When he felt the wind pick up in front of him he picked out the vague outline of the death beast hovering before him. As it got closer and the force of its wings beating increased and Sca was banged up against the cliff wall by the wind. He almost lost his concentration with this alone but the bird started lunging it black antler at him. In a effort to dodge Sca lost his metal hold on levitating and started falling at a immediately toward the ground . After a brief freefall Sca broke through the top part of the of some fur trees and just as he was about to hit the ground he was un-naturally stopped a few feet above the rough ground and was slowly lowered .

    Not sure on what had just happened Sca stood up and winced because of his ribs and realized he could here the sound of a rushing river nearby . Stumbling over the ground at a steady pace he thought if he could just get to the water and dive in the bird would lose him. As he clambered threw the forest the shrieks of winged his hunter got louder. Breaking through the tree line Sca’s mouth opened in awe at the powerful sight of the Black Raven river. It was at least a hundred feet wide with a gentle steady current and the waters were as black as the night itself .
    A hellish shriek brought him back to the problem at hand , when he turned to see how far away the bird was he was glad to see that he had plenty of time to get his bear fat on to protect him from the cold of the water. Throwing his new found-back around his shoulders he nimlby jumped into the Raven and started swimming toward the main current but to his dismay he could not dive because of some unknown source . Before he could figure out his problem he heard the familiar cry of his hunter only closer then before. He felt the wind, then a pull on the straps of his back sac as he was pulled from the river into the air. Quickly Sca rose high in the air and started to slowly fly across the river back toward the birds cave in the cliffs. Realizing this was his only chance he captured the high cold winds with his mind and with all there strength blasted the bird . This action alone sent the bird falling wildly toward the rocky shores of the river and for one brief moment the hunter showed fear in its eyes. Almost as if to say "how could I possibly be defeated in my element." Due its need to regain stabliity it released Sca and let him drop to the waters below.
    As Sca was about to hit the river he was stopped again only a few feet above the water and was slowly lowered into the main current which quickly sent him uncontrolled down the river .When Sca grasped hold of the situation he realized something in his back sack was keeping him a float ,and because of this he could not duck a wooden log that was caught between two rocks in the river . A flash of light suddenly filled his eyes but he was not sure if it was the impact or the rising of a new days sun .

~ By: James Smeaton