Lidarion: Page 32

Dean was the first to speak. “All right squints, do your thing.” He said a huge smile on his face.

Squints pointed at the scrolls. “Oh sure, only two problems, even if I could unroll scrolls the size of a house, I can’t read Titan!” He said in shock.

“I can.” Haruff offered.

Trent gestured to Haruff. “There we go! I knew you were going to be good for somethi – You’re Blind!” He finally caught on.

Haruff’s mouth dropped open in mock shock. “Since when?” He asked sarcastically.

Trent stuck his tongue out. “Very funny.” He spat.

Dean had been inspecting the locks on the lowest scroll. “Can we even open these? They look incredibly old.” He said.

Squints looked at Obla’reth. “So can we even open the scrolls and if so do you know anyone that can legitimately read Titan?” He asked.

Obla’reth shook his head with a smile. “No we cannot, and no I do not. No one had read or spoken Titian for more than ten lifetimes.”

Brooke sighed heavily. “So we came all this way for nothing.” She said.

Obla’reth walked over to an ancient wooden pedestal that had a wooden cover closed over the top of it that was split down the middle. He flipped the wooden cover open to reveal a large book. “I wouldn’t say nothing, before the locks rusted and the language of the Titians had faded from memory, one of the librarians translated the scrolls into Mer.” He explained.

Squints scurried over to the podium. “You can read the language of the Merfolk?” He asked with a huge smile on his face. The weirdness of the book being written in Mer struck him. “Why Mer?” he asked.

Obla’reth nodded. “Yes I can speak and read Mer. I do not know exactly why the book is written in Mer. The Rumors passed from librarian to librarian say that the underwater kingdoms were the last place the Titans were welcome before their race passed beyond the veil. Strangely enough, I have yet to find anything old enough to corroborate that.” He opened the book. “Now what are you looking for?” He asked.

Trent stepped up to the podium. “Where each of the Paragon’s are located, how to contact them, and the best way to earn their favors.” He said with all seriousness.

Obla’reth blinked. “Oh, is that all?” He asked as he turned back to the book on the pedestal and turned to the first page. “The Scrolls of the paragon’s, a comprehensive translation in five parts.” He turned to the second page.

Melody and Harmony: Page 6

Aaron’s set at the Shadow Church was over, and discounting the guards chasing out a lone pirate infiltrator it had been a good set. The dance floor stayed full, the color patterns and the dancer’s enthusiasm seem to be generally upbeat and he had received no complaints.

 He had a three song transition set to give him and the replacement DJ time to trade off. He thumbed a control on his glove and the lights in the back of his white trench coat shut off. The cords that plugged him into the club’s sound system unhooked and recoiled back into his jacket. The next DJ stepped and started to get himself plugged in and set up.

Aaron stepped off the stage and was met by the booker for the club. The booker gestured to his earphones and Aaron turned the dial on his to filter out the club music. “Good set.” The booker complimented. “We’ve got an opening on Thursday nights, you want it?” He asked. Aaron nodded excitedly. The synthesizer mask he was wearing covered the huge smile on his face. The booker nodded and handed him a business card. “I’ll give you a call on Monday and we’ll get the specifics worked out.” He said before he walked away to handed another crisis.

Aaron was in a Daze. He had covered the ninety minute set as a favor to a friend who was too sick to get out of bed and had gotten a job out of it. Not that one set a week was much of a job but it was one set a week at the Shadow Church which was easily the fanciest club in the district.

He was deep in his thoughts and almost walked by a table full of his friends, he would have walked by them but Freya snagged his wrist. He stopped and looked down at her brilliant smile. “Where you off to in such a daze?” She asked.

He saw that her headphones where filtering the club music out as well and he pulled up a seat next to her. “I just got a job.” He explained, still in a daze.

Frey hugged him in excitement. “That’s great!” She let go of him. “I’m not surprised though that set was incredible. We were on the floor for almost an hour.” She confirmed.

Aaron looked around the table and noticed several empty chairs. “I’ve been off stage for almost fifteen minutes, you’d think everyone would want to come congratulate me.” He commented sarcastically.

As if he himself summoned them the rest of the gang left the dance floor and took their seats. Freya smiled at him. “Look at that, Power you didn’t even know you had.” She laughed at his shock.

Spoonerville: Page 4

Rodney had been living in Spoonerville for exactly seven days. And in the week that he had been there he had learned a lot. He had learned that he could leisurely walk from one side of town to the other in exactly thirty two minutes. Less if he caught both stop lights on green. He had learned more that the town had taken the popularity of the Blood Night series to heart and the stores that were still open were geared towards, hunting, fishing, and Blood Night. He had never paid attention to Blood Night before he moved in with his Grandmother and now that he was here everywhere he looked was Black and Red, fur and fangs, Spoons and Forks.

The local Library had a reading group where they discussed each chapter of each book and when they finished all three books they started over again often with the same people in the reading groups. There was a tiny local theater that had done so many different stage adaptations of all three Blood Night Books that their wall of past shows was nothing but Blood Night performances. Every shop, every restaurant, every gas station had signs declaring their allegiance. Team Alphonse or Team Spencer. He had even seen that in the previous years of the high school the fictional characters had been voted prom king and prom queen.

He Hated Spoonerville with a passion and he had only been there for seven days. He had tried to get a job but no one in spoonerville was hiring, he didn’t have a car of his own so traveling to the nearest town wasn’t an option and his Grandmother didn’t have cable, even worse she didn’t have internet, so he had resorted to spending his time wandering through town hoping against hope to find someplace that didn’t suck.

That place turned out to be Joe’s Pizza. He had stopped there on his second day in town in the middle of his third timed walk across town. He gave up on beating his record of twenty nine minutes and walked across the empty street to check the place out. It instantly became his favorite place when he got close enough to the front door to see the index card taped to the door that said [Free Wifi with the purchase of…anything really, PSW: #BN5UKS].

The place was deserted but he had pretty much decided that unless the owner was a creepy pervert that it had become his new favorite place. There was a colorful sign taped to a bell that said [I can’t hear you over the N64. Ring Bell Loudly] So he did, twice.

The door behind the counter opened up and an unshaven guy in his mid to late twenties stuck his head out. “Oven’s not even on man, you in a rush?” he asked.

Rodney shook his head. “If I was then I wouldn’t be in Spoonerville.” He answered.

The guy gave a wide grin and nodded. “Right on! My name’s Derek I’ll be right out dude.” He stuck his head back in and Rodney could hear him un pause the video game and finish his level. Rodney grabbed the nearest stool and sat at the bar. Closest to the cash register. He pulled out his phone and set himself up on the wifi, able to check on the life he had left behind when he came to Spoonerville. His Facebook profile was a never ending stream of condolences and well wishes on his new life in this dirt hole, middle of nowhere village of forgotten tween romance. He closed Facebook and opened up Reddit to see what his friends were saying about the new rule set for star pilots, a board game he was sure no one in this town had ever heard of. The timing of his move had forced him to miss the most recent regional qualifier and he was pretty sure that he was no longer going to be a part of the professional scene considering the nearest regional tournament had already happened and was in a town almost four hours away.

He had gotten so lost in reading about his game that he completely Missed Derek coming out and firing up the pizza oven. “Hey buddy, what can I get you?” He asked.

Rodney pulled his mind out of his phone. “I feel like it’s a dick move to order slices when you’d have to make an entire pizza to do it.” He said.

Derek shook his head. “Either I’ll eat it over the next few days or someone else comes in and orders stuff anyway, don’t hold back on my account.” He assured him.

Rodney nodded. “Cool, I’ll take two slices of pepperoni, and an orange soda if you got it.” He said.

Derek nodded around the corner to the back wall of the shop. “Sodas are back there, help yourself. Two slices of pepperoni coming up!” He went back into the kitchen as Rodney filled his cup.

Shades of Justice: Page 36

Mark teleported into the command center. He had been spending the last few months in Hawaii surfing on every wave he could catch. So when he appeared in board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt the others were surprised. “What’s up kids?” He asked taking off his silver sunglasses.

Gordon took in the garish outfit quickly “Aloha I guess, sorry to call you back so soon but were in a bit of a situation.” He started.

Mark nodded. “Par for the course wouldn’t you say?” He replied with a smile.

Gordon nodded. “The good news is, we got Technarious back, the bad news is, Sonya almost died to make it happen and Technarious isn’t functional and we don’t know if he can be fixed, what we would fix, or how to fix it if we knew.” He explained walking over to the platform where Technarious was laid out.

Mark looked him over. “First of all, congratulations on getting Technarious back, is Sonya going to be ok?” He asked.

“She’s already starting to recover thanks to the command centers medical systems and Spark.” Kelly added.

Mark turned around to reply to her. “Who or what is Spark?” He asked.

Lumarion’s wall light up. “I’m Spark. These guys thought there were going to rescue Lumarion and found me instead.” He explained.

Mark nodded. “So you found a different Shimmeron, you have Technarious back, and the command center is still standing, you guys are doing all right.” He smiled and put his glasses on. “Computer, give me a full body structural scan of Technarious compare it to his last fully functional scan on file.” The others stood in silence and Mark looked over the information that was coming through his glasses. He snapped his fingers. “Computer, display discrepancies on the center holoprojector.” As soon as he finished the command he took his glasses off and two holographic three dimensional representations of Technarious appeared in the center of the room.

The left one was dimmer than the right one and there were several area’s that were lit with red light instead of green. Gordon reached out and pointed at one of the red sections. “I’m assuming the red sections are the area’s that are damaged and in need of repair or replacement?” He asked.

Mark nodded. “Exactly, now all we have to do is break into the storage facility underneath the command center.

Warren sighed. “Of course, why didn’t we think of that?” He said sarcastically.

Mark shrugged his shoulders. “I know you guys are new, but where did you think Blinding Light went when you weren’t fighting giant monsters?” He asked.

Warren held up a finger, realized it was a decent question and then shrugged. “Fair point.” He admitted.

Blood and Profit: Page 59

The room Ling led Mew into was a state of the art computer lab. She watched as the male assistant sat at the nearest interface and pulled up a search program.

Mew leaned over to whisper to ling. “So what’s his name.” She asked.

“That’s Cory.” Ling replied.

Cory filled out the search parameters that they knew. He set the system to its task and a large [SEARCHING] icon popped up and faded in and out.

“And why is he searching for the game console?” Mew asked.

Ling nodded. “To see if we have one.” She explained.

Mew was lost. “To see if you have one where? Why?” She asked.

Ling gestured to the rest of the building. “This ware house is the technology library and machine repository. We’re hoping that we have one waiting for us in one of the storage compartments here.” She explained.

Mew nodded. “Ok but what’s so important about the game console? Aren’t we supposed to activate the ring?” She asked.

Ling nodded. “The ring console is based on three hundred year old technology. On a consumer level we moved past it long, long ago. When your friends erased the data on the ring and console we were left with a three hundred year old remote control that has no known visual interface and runs on code that no known machine can interpret. We’re down to digging through the oldest machines we have in the library to see if any of them are able to show us why this ring console isn’t turning on.” She said.

Cory stood up “G – G- G –Got it!” A paper with the box code and game system information printed out.

Ling grabbed it and glanced it over. “Toll definitely had a passion for old rare electronics. This thing wasn’t made here, it was brought all the way from earth.” She said as they left the computer lab and headed for the machine repository.

The doctor saw them come out into the hall. “Did you find anything?” He asked, jumping off the chair and running to catch up with them. Ling handed over the paper. “Vintage to the point of being nearly useless. I highly doubt your friends were into video games that old.” He said looking at the rest of the information. “Row nineteen, Section F, Box eight. You’ll need a ladder” He said handing the paper back to Ling as they entered the repository proper. 

The others moved with purpose, the storage facility was nothing new to them, but Mew was stunned instantly by the sheer size of the area and the never ending rows of stored materials that went all the way to the roof of the building. “How?” She uttered mostly to herself.

Ling came back her direction with a large ladder. “Decades of dedication, and organization, Come on.” She headed down the hall toward the nineteenth row.

Lidarion: Page 31

It was not an easy three days of travel. The journey itself was easy enough, every fifty to a hundred feet they marked their path so they could find their way back to the port. Trent had been short tempered from the get go and by the end of the first day his attitude and the ever present fog had soured the group. They traveled the second day mostly in silence, there were bits of whispered conversations but nothing that lasted longer than a few sentences. By the end of day three they had all retreated into their own thoughts and followed Haruff in total silence.

Twenty minutes into the fourth day they found the library. It was large enough that the fog obscured its total height but what they could see was stunningly beautiful. A mixture of wood and stone that appeared to have escaped the wear and tear of time. As they approached the heavy wooden main doors they were able to see representations of every language they knew and several that even Squints had never seen. Haruff pulled the door open and they ventured inside.

The interior was even more impressive than the exterior. Their vision no longer limited by the Fog, everyone but Haruff was able to take in the architecture, the paintings on the walls, the tile work on the floor that appeared at first glance to be an ancient map of the world. The book stacks started almost immediately and rose high into the building. They could see ladders hanging off the shelves. A fair skinned elf with ice blue hair came around the corner to greet them. He wore a plain white robe that had one large pocket in the front that was filled with a book. The Ice haired elf smiled at them and clapped his hands in excitement. “Oh my yes! This is a wonderful day, it had been so long since we’ve had any visitors.” He ushered them further into the building as he walked by them to close the doors. “Come in, come in, come in. Keep that nasty fog outside where it belongs.” He turned back to face the group. “Before we begin I invite you to wash all that negativity and anger off here, I promise you’ll feel better once you have been cleansed.” He gestured to a basin of water and waited for each of them to clean their hands and faces. As they did they discovered that the ice haired elf wasn’t lying. The sour silent negativity was rinsed away as their hands and face dried. The ice haired elf nodded again. “Good, Good, now welcome to the City of Scrolls. A misleading name if ever there was one, because it’s a library, but as far I am aware it is the largest library on the planet which means whatever you came here to find, I can almost guarantee that it is here to be found.” He shuffled back to the front of the group. “Now then, how may I be of assistance?” He asked with a huge smile on his face.

Squints stepped forward with the book he had brought from Lidarion. “We’re ah, well. We’re looking for the five scrolls that detail the sigils of the paragons. He said. Do you know where they are?” he asked.

The ice haired elf nodded in excitement. “The five scrolls are easily one of our most treasured manuscripts here. Come! I will show you.” He said spinning around.

The group scurried behind him to keep up. “What’s your name?” Brooke asked. As they weaved through the stacks.

The ice haired elf laughed. “You may call me Obla’reth.” He replied.

After a few more moments of scurrying through the library they came to positively primal wooden doors, marked with some sort of ancient language. Squints was beside himself with curiosity. “Obla’reth what language is that? I saw it on the front door as well.” He asked.

Obla’reth smiled nodded. “Yes you did, it’s the language of the titans, the first sentient race we have evidence of on this planet.” He explained.

Squints shook his head. “I thought the Titans were nothing more than a myth, bed time stories for children.” He replied.

Obla’reth shook his head. “An unfortunate side effect of time, and a general disinterest in the preservation of history. Luckily it is a side effect those who dedicate themselves to the preservation of this city are not burdened by.” He said pushing the doors open to reveal five gigantic scrolls. Each was easily five feet tall and twenty feet wide. They were secured to the wall of the room they were stored in by giant leather straps. It was clear that the room they were stored in had been built specifically to house them as the ceiling of the room was no more than two or three feet above the fifth scroll on the wall. “Ladies and gentlemen, the scrolls of the paragons.” Obla’reth gestured to the wall as the others stood in stunned awe.

Melody and Harmony: Page 5

The other side of the bridge was friendly territory, it was home. Once he touched down he coasted to a stop and kicked his board up. It was long past sun down and the second shift workers were well into their evening’s entertainment. Foster was still miles from Safe Port, the bar where he was to deliver his package but on this side of the bridge he was already among family.

He dropped his board to the street and made his way into the district, families had come out of their homes and every street he passed down there was another feast, another pick up band filling the alleys with ancient music that bound the souls of all who danced to the past, stronger than any blood ever could. This was the music that made their blood flow, He set his audio filter so he could hear the music as he rolled through the streets. He smiled and acknowledged those who raised their glasses to him as he passed. Among friends, he found himself in no hurry.

Safe Port was open but you’d never know it from the outside. Foster kicked his board up and it magnetized to his leg as he thumbed the button to split the board in half at his knee. He walked around the corner of the building and stepped into what was both the back alley of the bar and also the front entrance. The back alley was filled with a small army of questionable characters. Two tired looking men in torn gray plants and faded purple tunics were sitting on boxes, one of them was dealing hands from a sun worn deck of cards. Leaning on the alley wall opposite them was another fellow in gray and purple with a plain black eye patch over his right eye, his left eye was closed and he was strumming out a lazy tune on an electric guitar. At the far end of the alley, Daniel was perched against the wall, His electric purple cavalier hat angled low to cover his face, and the neon purple feather pinned to the right side pulsed through patterns of purple and black. The smoke from Daniel’s Cigarette curled up slowly around the brim. He wore a galleon coat that had been stitched with fiber optic thread, purple lines of electricity crawled the crisscrossing patterns they had been stitched into from ankle to shoulder.

Foster made his way down the alley, bobbing and weaving around the guardians of the club. Daniel did not look up when he spoke. “How did it go?” He asked, letting more smoke slowly dance its way into the sky.

Foster shrugged. “Oh you know, same shit, different day.” He tried to play it off as he pulled the package out of his jacket and handed it over to Daniel.

Daniel checked the contents of the package and saw the bloody hole in Fosters jacket. “That good huh?” He nodded to the wound as he pocketed the package in one of his own inner pockets.

Foster nodded. “Nothing I couldn’t handle, but unless you need anything else, I’m going to head home.” He said turning toward the opening of the alley just in time to see the woman from the club and a ten guard’s roll up behind her. He cursed under his breath as she locked eyes with him.

Daniel didn’t move off the wall. “Something we can help you with, Veronica?” There was disdain in her name.

She pointed a black opal fingernail at Foster. “He broke the rules, my master demands retribution.” She spat.

Daniel tossed the butt of his cigarette and lit another, the glow of his lighter revealing the left half of his face. “If he so desires then let him come and take it.” The light died and smoke crawled out of the darkness.

Veronica clenched her fists and postured in fury toward the alley but did not enter it. “I HAVE KILLED MEN FOR LESSER INSULTS!” She growled.

Daniel shook his head calmly. “I think you see insult where none exists.” He replied with an even tone.

For a second everyone seemed to freeze. Daniel calmly tossed his half smoked cigarette across the alley way and lifted his head for the first time. The lamp light from above revealing a deep scar on the right side of his face. Veronica took a half step back in surprise. “You!” Her men got nervous. “They said you were dead!” She uttered in disbelief.

Daniel reached in the darkness of his jacket and pulled a mini gun out from under the long body of his jacket. It was hanging from a strap around his shoulder the head of the six barrel rotator pointed at Veronica and her men. The other men in the alley way all stood and revealed the guns and knives they were carrying as well.

Veronica held her hands up in surrender. “It doesn’t have to go down like this.” She said

Daniel squinted. “We are men of action, lies do not become us.” The mini Gun roared to life and Veronica and her guards shot into the air bouncing off the walls and launched themselves at the men in the alleyway.

Foster pulled his sword out of his jacket but was stopped from entering the fray by Daniel. He handed him the package. “Go home kid, keep this safe, I’ll drop by in the morning to pick it up.” He turned his attention to the fight and caught a guard lunging at him with a quick burst of fire that dropped him to the ground.

Foster was thumbing the control for his board when Daniel whistled and a fire escape ladder dropped down. He nodded to the ladder. Foster nodded back and made his way up and away from the fight.