Progflaw99
Well-Known Member
Innocence Lost: A Frigid Dawn
Location: Hyperspace between Almania & Telos, near Ziost.Alarms and klaxons were sounding in the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot frantically flipping switches while wrestling with the controls. Through the viewports one could see the shuttle was in hyperspace, white lines streaking across the dark blanket of space. The Co-Pilot gripped the controls with both hands now, looking over at the pilot with fear.
“We need to let her go, we can’t stay in hyperspace much longer if we want to make it out alive!” He shouted.
The pilot continued flipping switches, a sharp jarring beginning to reverberate through the hull, audible shouts coming from the passenger compartment. He appeared not to have heard the co-pilot, a look of determination coupled with fear evident on his strained features. Again the co-pilot tried to reach him, this time reaching over and hitting him on the arm.
“Trask, we need to drop from hyperspace. NOW!”
It was as if a light had suddenly come on and the pilot’s eyes grew wide. He looked over at his copilot blankly for a few seconds and then returned to his controls. He flipped a few toggle switches and pressed a couple of buttons on the panel, frantically disengaging the Hyperdrive as carefully as he could under the circumstances. The jarring got worse as time passed, both pilot and co-pilot wresting the controls left, then right attempting to stabilize the ship as it dropped from hyperspace. Exiting hyperspace, it began to roll forward, tumbling aft over bow.
Nearby a planetary body hovered in the darkness of space, Ziost if the navigation computer was correct. Three loud screeches could be heard, plating being torn loose from the ship, previously damaged by laser blasts on their departure from Almeria. The pilot hadn’t given them much thought, a slight wobble in one of the controls but beyond that everything seemed fine that was until they’d reached about halfway through their hyperspace journey. Something had knocked loose causing their ship to lose stability in hyperspace. He’d heard the stories before of ships that fell out of hyperspace… the known list of survivors was slim.
As the ship tumbled the passenger compartment erupted in a cacophony of screams and fearful shouts, bodies lifting from where they sat in the seats and jostling into each other. A few loosely held items had managed to break free and were cast into the air, adding to the chaos. Despite this, towards the rear of the passenger compartment two figures remained slumped, bodies curled over their son. A father and a mother, his arms wrapped around his wife, the wife’s arms and body shielding a boy of about 8. The boy had his arms tightly wrapped around his mother, tears streaming down his face as the hull of the shuttle shook.
The shuttle had begun to rotate faster, the pilots struggling to bring the ship to heel. As it continued spinning, the nearby planet was getting closer and closer, the gravitational pull of the world urging it ever closer. A few more tumbles front over rear, and then the ship began to steady just slightly, nosing downward towards the planet. With a jolt, the shuttle dropped downwards as it began its descent into the atmosphere. The exterior of the ship began to glow, the damaged panels causing heat to be distributed unevenly as it began re-entry. Time seemed to slow. The pilots were strapped into their seats, spittle hanging in the air as the pilot was shouting something to his co-pilot. In the cabin, passengers had been returned to their seats as the planet’s gravity took hold. Cries of terror and fear hung in the air, men and women’s voices alike. A few of the crew members clung to handles mounted near the access hatch, another was laid out on the floor after being thrown into the ceiling as the ship had tumbled. In the rear of the shuttle huddled the small family, the child’s eyes squeezed shut. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His mother’s grip on him was white-knuckled, pulling him in protectively. Around her shoulders, her husband had his arms wrapped around the pair, his eyes also closed tightly and his jaw set.
As the shuttle streaked across the sky, the nose came up slightly, thundering over the barren landscape of Ziost. A steady trail of smoke was coming from the overly heated hull, mere millimeters of plating between the outside and the passenger cabin. The damaged tiles on the exterior of the ship were supposed to be protecting the cabin from the heat, instead, they were creating more heat. As the ship descended, it passed between two mountain peaks, debris beginning to shear off of the damaged shuttle. A hard jolt caused it to hang in the air for a moment before its nose tipped downward. As it plummeted, it slammed partially into a third, smaller peak.
Inside the ship, chaos was king. The passengers saw the peaks pass by, a shadow across the viewports. Mistakenly, several of the occupants let loose sighs of relief… and then they were interrupted.
A sharp screech of tearing durasteel filled the cabin, the glass from the viewports shattering as the cabin rapidly depressurized. Air was sucked out of the cabin, loose items and debris flew from the now gaping schism in the side of the shuttle. The sound of screams was sucked away by the high pitched squeal of depressurization. The gap widened, several of the shuttle’s occupants sucked away, a horrifying wail as they were cast out into the open air. A few tried in vain to hold onto seats, handles, anything they could find including other people…
The ship had now plummeted, tumbling and spewing its debris in a trail from the side of the lower peak. Seconds after impacting it had finally hit ground, the hull bursting in an explosion of fragmented durasteel and smoke. The shuttle bounced off of the hard packed and frozen earth below it, grating to a halt as it buried itself nose first into a hill of ice and snow. Steam rose from the wreckage of the ship, the heated metal melting the thick layer of snow around it. Sparks of electrical energy shot from exposed conduits in the shattered hull, a small fire crackling lightly near what remained of the engines. A bitter wind blew over the wreckage, the heated durasteel creaking and groaning as it cooled against the ice and snow.
Several minutes passed, the wreckage still but for the gentle wind causing some loose cabling and debris to rattle. The fire towards what had been the rear of the shuttle had gone out and the electrical sparking had subsided, now there was silence… just the sounds of the wind passing over the snow covered landscape.
Above where the ship lay were the jagged, snow covered peaks it had passed by… and struck. They loomed high against the cloudy sky, snow drifting and falling on its way to the planet’s surface. Here there were no trees, just snow, ice, and jagged rock. The breeze was light but frigid, the cold a dominating feature of the area. Nothing moved but the flakes of snow as they were blown across the empty tundra. Dark clouds hung in the west, moving swiftly east to where the shuttle had wrecked. Bodies littered the ground around and behind where the hull had come to rest. Inside the broken cabin, more bodies were piled together, thrown atop each other and all about as the ship had made its final death throes. Towards the rear of the ship, a brief stutter of movement. There, one of the bodies twitched, an arm slipping from where it had been resting on the shoulder of a woman. As the momentum carried the arm downward, the body of the man whom it had belonged to slumped sideways in the seat. His cold, empty eyes stared upwards at the ceiling. Rigor mortis had yet to set in but would rapidly in this frigid climate. Another shift of movement came from beneath the remaining body, curled up against the wall, appearing to be protecting something… Someone. A small boy struggled beneath the woman’s weight, a quiet cry of pain was drowned out by a large gust of wind rattling against the husk of the shuttle. A louder cry this time as the boy pushed himself free of the weight on top of him. As his head came up, the child’s mouth fell open, his eyes scrunching back shut as the horror of what he saw began to take hold. Almost immediately he began crying, the tears falling from his cheeks as he reached for his mother’s arm… begging her to wake up. After several minutes of this, he curled up in a little ball, rocking himself as he sobbed. If one were to observe the boy, he seemed miraculously untouched. His clothing had been torn in some places, and a small dried streak of blood had formed on his forehead but beyond that he appeared no worse for wear.
Edric had spent around thirty minutes inside the torn frame of the shuttle, crying, begging… hoping that this was all just a nightmare and his daddy and mommy would wake him. He slowly began to realize that this wasn’t a nightmare he was going to wake up from… which sent him into another fit of tears and sobbing. After a few minutes he stopped, shivering; the cold wind cut through the shattered hull. Suddenly quiet, he rose from the floor near the bodies of his parents and silently walked towards the gaping maw in the hull. His eyes had glazed over, the cold gripping at his exposed skin. The tears that had been dripping were now freezing as they rolled off the boy’s cheeks. He kept walking forward in a daze, headed for the mountains, the only object he could see across this barren landscape. He stared at the ground, not looking about as he passed through a field of loose debris while following the trail the shuttle had taken… he was numb… nothing felt real. As he walked, he began to have difficulty wading through the now thigh deep snow. Edric didn’t feel the cold snow seeping through his trousers or the
Edric trudged closer and closer to the base of the mountains, a sheer rock face quickly approaching. The wind had picked up now, the snow falling in thick flakes. The clouds above had gotten darker, a subtle warning of the snowstorm to come. He’d been walking for what felt like a lifetime to him… he was tired… cold… wet… He was still dazed… his parents were gone. They hadn’t simply gone to work or gone away, they were dead. Why? Why was he still alive? He hadn’t seen any other survivors… in fact he’d seen a lot of non-survivors, the images of broken bodies and blood forever etched in his mind.
He stumbled, his toe catching on a small edge of granite protruding up from the ground. Edric’s hands shot out in front of him to break his fall, barely managing to keep his head from hitting the ground. His hands however were not as fortunate. As Edric picked himself up, he looked at his hands. Funny, he hadn’t felt any pain but he could see the blood dripping from cuts on his hands. He wiggled his fingers slightly, the blood already beginning to freeze in the bitter wind. He pressed his hands against his shirt, attempting to wipe what blood he could away. A sharp howl of wind made him look up. The biting wind had begun to really cool down, he needed to get out of the cold… The shock had finally begun to wear off. He wasn’t okay, he knew that, but he also knew he needed to get out of this storm. To his front, a sheer rock face jutted from the ground, leading up to a single peak, behind that a pair of peaks. He recognized this as the mountain they must have collided into when everything had gone black for him…
Worn into the rock face was a large crevasse, darkness inside. It looked like it might have been a natural cave. With the wind in his eyes and burning his skin, he forced himself forward into the small opening. As he stepped through, the wind died immediately, the hollow whistling replacing the roar of the powerful storm that was forming.
Inside the cave was dark but the light from the entryway illuminated a large cavern just past the entrance. The ceiling of the cavern was approximately 10 feet high, roughhewn granite with a few veins of quartz and a mysterious black mineral running the length of the room. The walls tapered down about 8 feet off the floor, the walls slick with moisture. No moss grew here, a barren cold floor greeting Edric as he stepped inward. The cavern was at least twenty feet in depth but beyond that was masked by the darkness of the cavern. As he stepped into the cave, he stretched out his arms, tracing his way along the wall deeper into the cavern. The air here felt cool at first, but he felt a warm draft coming from deeper within the cave. Outside the wind picked up even further, the inhospitable climate of Ziost maintaining its reputation. As he progressed further into the cave the ground began to feel less cool, a slight warmth emanating from the rocks… what was this place? In the brief time Edric had spent in school they tried to teach him about geology… the study of rocks… He found himself wishing he had paid just a little bit more attention. His thoughts were interrupted as his hands reached the back wall, about thirty feet from the entrance to the cave. Here was darkness, but he could see the light coming in from the opening. For a moment, Edric did recall something about g… geo… geothermal energy. He must have found a source here below the mountain.
As he pressed himself against the back wall, his clothes began to dry and a warmth filled him, this wasn’t the warmth of a fire, or a warmth of a thick blanket on a cold night… it came from within. At first it scared him, the warmth radiating from his chest, spreading to his limbs. As the warmth expanded into his extremities he seated himself with his back against the rear wall of the cavern, tucking his knees up. He basked there for a moment in the radiant warmth, letting everything fall away, imagining this was all a dream… The warm haze picked him up… raising him higher and higher, the coldness and harshness of Ziost temporarily forgotten, the wet clothes which stuck to his body no longer bothered him… he felt… good. For a moment, he was teleported to another place… His mother was there, his father… they were playing one of his favorite games… hide and seek. He’d chosen to hide beneath the sink in their small shack, he was small enough he could wedge his way in underneath the piping. He could hear his father counting and his mother’s laugh… as he closed the cabinet door behind him he heard a laugh… this wasn’t a laugh he knew. The counting suddenly stopped and the light flickered on the other side of the cabinet. He cracked the door, pushing it open with two of his small fingers. As he peered out he could see a cloaked figure standing there… laughing. It was a deep laugh, a frightening laugh. As the man came closer, his face was illuminated, the cowl of his robes falling away from his face. Edric opened his mouth and screamed…
His high pitched voice echoed in the small cave, amplifying the sound of his scream as he awoke with a start. Tears anew began rolling down his cheeks as he sobbed. The reality of what had happened hit him again and again… and he didn’t like it. He sobbed for a few more minutes, drifting into an uneasy sleep as he let himself lay on the floor of the cavern, the wind howling past the entrance, his head propped up on his arms. He stirred lightly as he slept… one could only imagine the dreams he must be having… the poor child had seen more in the last few hours than many people would see in their lifetime.
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Darkness. In the void there was no light, no existence… but there was energy. An overwhelming force hidden behind the shroud. At first it was nothing but energy a small hum in the vastness of the dark. It became louder, forming a dark cave, candles appearing lit around the edge of the cavern. There was still an energy here, something lurking in the flickering shadows of the room. On one end of the room was an opening, errant snowflakes and a light howling as wind outside passed the opening. Light from the entry was disrupted, the candles flickering as a huddled figure entered the cavern. The figure wore dark robes, a cowl concealing his face. In its hands, a small leather-bound book could be seen, a strange symbol on its surface. As the figure reached the center of the room it sat, holding the book above its crossed legs. Bowing its head, a low note reverberated within the chamber. The flames flickered and then grew as an inky darkness began to manifest itself in the room. The energy held a consistency of smoke, flitting about the room, beginning to circle the ring of candles. As it did so, the flames grew brighter, hotter. Despite the cold outside the cave had become hot, small streams of water beginning to drip along the walls from melting ice and snow above… the power here would have been overwhelming but the figure in the center of the chamber appeared unaffected, an audible chant now filling the cavern as the darkness continued, increasing it’s speed as it whirled around the cave.As the swirls of darkness spun, they appeared to grow thicker... forming a near impenetrable wall of darkness... closing in on the figure. With a sharp jolt, the cavern became silent, all motion ceasing. Flickering flames from the candles could still be heard, a light flutter of moving air casting strange shadows on the floor... Silence... Darkness...
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Edric woke with a start, frantically trying to remember where he was. The memories of the crash came flying back at him out of the back of his mind and he grit his teeth, forcing the memories back. The boy looked around him, his eyes now accustomed to the darkness of the cavern. The light that had been coming into the cavern was now gone, only a small sliver of light coming in. In the night, the snow must have shifted, covering it. Feeling his clothes, Edric found them dry to the touch… in fact, he actually felt quite good considering that… He quickly shifted his gaze, bringing his hands up close to his face, squinting, trying to make out his palms in the dim lighting. They were unscathed. He wrinkled his brow in confusion… all the snow… his palms no longer cut… his dry clothes… What was this place?
His eyes traced the cavern he was in, a bit smaller than he had remembered thinking when he first arrived, but what caught his attention were the small circlets on the floor… He couldn’t make out what they were and so he pushed himself up from where he sat, moving over to them. Edric cocked his head to the side slightly as he realized what the spots were. They were arranged in a circle… and they were… old candles? They were melted down, forming small pools of melted wax at their base. What were candles doing here… in the middle of nowhere, in a cave? This couldn’t be Telos, his parents had told him about Telos… and this place was nothing like what they described. He spent the next few minutes looking about the cavern, unsuccessfully trying to find anything else. As he moved about the small cavern, he realized the warmth that had been there before was gone, replaced by a coolness. Not cold, but it was definitely not warm as it had been.
A loud grumble caused Edric to pause. His hands went to his stomach, a concerned look on his face as he looked down. He was hungry. Normally his mom made him food… His mom. That thought alone brought tears to his face. Edric began sobbing, wiping his tears off with his torn sleeve. It was a half-measure because as soon as he’d wipe away the tears he’d start crying again. This went on for about an hour, eventually he became too tired to cry any longer, and resigning himself to finding something to eat… he picked himself up off the floor. He didn’t exactly know where to start. Reluctantly, he decided he would have to go back… maybe… just maybe there would be food hidden somewhere in the wreckage. Just the thought of having to go back almost brought him back to tears but this time he forced it downward, back into the pit of his stomach where it festered. Swallowing hard, he took steps to snow covered entry. Reaching out he was able to push away the thin layer of snow over the opening and into the sunlight.
The bright sunlight hurt his eyes, Edric brought his hands to his face, shielding his eyes from the direct sunlight. The wind had died down from the previous day… it looked to him like he’d been asleep for the entire night. Outside the cave, snow had covered the tracks he’d made, hiding what had yesterday been rock beneath Edric’s feet. He could still see the debris trail from where the shuttle had struck the peak above and behind him leading out over the landscape… below he could see the shattered frame in the distance. He could feel it welling up inside him, the grief, the fear… Again and again he forced it back down, barely managing to think. Biting his cheek he began trudging forward through the light dusting of snow headed towards the wreckage… hoping for the best…