Alex tried to get his arms up but Connor dropped his shoulder and drove through his block. Off balance, Alex stumbled backwards only to have his feet swept out from under him.
He hit the ground hard and lay there, flat on his back, gasping for a breath that didn’t want to come. He glared up at Connor.
“Try Dammit,” Connor yelled. “You think this is just about some training match?”
Alex frowned and forced out a reply. “Isn’t it?”
Connor stepped closer again and raised a foot to stomp down. Alex spun on the ground and rolled away. He stood back up.
Connor smiled and drew his practice sword. It wasn’t one of the wooden swords. Its dull metal glimmered faintly in the moonlight.
“I don’t want to fight you, Connor. We’re on the same team.”
“No, we’re not!” Connor yelled. “We are competitors. Your team vs mine. Now FIGHT ME!”
He closed the distance fast, sword cutting in from his right. Alex didn’t want a fight, but if it was happening he wasn’t going to just throw it and take a beating. Words clearly weren’t getting through. Connor either really wanted this, or he really needed it—needed to prove something. Either way, that sword was too much for whatever this was supposed to be.
As the dulled blade came in, Alex stepped forward into Connor’s space, slipping inside the arc of the swing. He drove his shoulder forward and thrust out with his left arm in a tight taan sau, or palm up block while simultaneously striking with his right fist in a clean straight punch to the top of Connor’s sternum.
Connor staggered back several feet, almost losing his footing.
Alex pressed forward immediately. He shot a series of sharp straight punches at Connor’s centerline followed immediately by a short right, western–style hook—tight and economical—that cracked against Connor’s cheek.
Connor dropped to one knee, breathing hard, but forced himself back up almost immediately.
“We don’t have to do this Connor,” Alex tried again.
Connor smiled. There was a small line of blood running down from a split across his cheekbone. “Oh yes. We do. What have you been telling your ANIP to upgrade Mercer? It sure as hell wasn’t strength.”
Told his ANIP to upgrade? What was Connor talking about? The ANIP just upgraded the entire system generally. Didn’t it?
Connor’s eyes glazed over for a moment and then there was movement at his wrist. Dark, flexible bands of material poured out of a wide flat bracelet and wrapped around his left hand and fingers, creating a slate gray gauntlet. Connor made a fist and energy crackled across the knuckles.
With that the real fight started.
Connor smiled and closed on Alex, bringing the sword around fast considering the size of the arc. The grimace on his face made it clear he wasn’t playing around and the sword whistled in towards Alex’s head.
Alex flung out his arm and activated his bracer with a thought, forming a two foot diameter buckler in front of the sword blade just before it struck. If it had hit his head or shoulder, he was pretty sure he would have been on the ground, but the buckler that floated just above his wrist absorbed most of the blow and Alex only felt a light impact, mostly through the haptic feedback on the back of the bracer.
Unfortunately he couldn’t stop the gauntleted fist that slammed into his ribs on the other side. The impact was bad, but the jolt from the crackling electricity was worse.
He fell back, the muscles down his entire left side cramping. Connor didn’t give him any time to recover, coming in hard with another big swing of his sword. Alex blocked once again, and activated the bracer on his other arm just in time to stop the fist. Connor’s front kick caught him in the chest for a second time that night.
“Fight back dammit. Everyone loves you because you are so frickin good. Prove it. Stop holding back and fight.” Connor was furious. His eyes were wide and crazy as he paced back and forth in front of Alex. Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke.
Alex got back up and rolled his neck. He was pretty sure his ribs were bruised but the ANIP system was taking the sting out of it. He thought about pulling up the HUD to check, but decided it probably wasn’t the right time.
"You took my spot,” Connor said. “Before you even landed your first hit, you took my spot. Class A. Extra HEX attention. The weird special interest from upstairs. You walk in and they start building storylines around you, Mercer. Why? And what have I become in those arcs? Just one of the guys you beat as you become the next great adventurer?”
Alex opened his mouth, then closed it. That wasn’t… entirely wrong. It wasn’t right, either, but he could see how the constellation of events would form that shape in Connor’s head. He was pretty sure he got this job because of the small amount of fame he already had and wouldn’t be surprised if the writers already had plans for him—but that also probably applied to all of them.
“You having a place here doesn’t negate my place, Connor. And vice versa.”
“Shut up,” Connor said. “You’re getting favours whether you asked for them or not. And I’m not just gonna stand there and watch while you sideline me.”
Connor came in again.
Alex leaned back enough to throw Connor off balance, then cut straight back in. He dropped his weight and pivoted his right arm around Connor’s gauntleted hand, forcing it to the outside in a kau sau–like arc. His other hand came in with a hard cross aimed at Connor’s chin. His fist never touched—his buckler, protruding a good four inches past his knuckles, made contact first and smashed into Connor’s shoulder with a grinding crunch.
Alex pivoted on his lead foot and whipped his left arm across again for a short, horizontal hook, letting the buckler do the work. The edge hammered into Connor’s ribs, the impact sharp and brutal.
Connor gasped and staggered back, but this time Alex maintained the pressure and stepped in with a square stance, taking the initiative. He followed with a rapid cascade of strikes—short-centerline chains, vertical fists, and cutting angles, each one reinforced by the hovering bucklers. The blows weren’t big; Wing Chun never was. But they were clean, direct and relentless. Connor blocked some, absorbed others, but every step he took was backwards.
Alex kept advancing and throwing punches—one, two, three, four–five, six–seven… his hands were a blur between them as they moved in a rhythm he’d drilled hundreds of times.
At the end of the third sequence he inhaled sharply and shouted, “Dragon’s Breath!” Energy in his bracer surged and a scorching blast erupted from the front of it—dialed to just 15% power, but more than enough.
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The shower of sparks blasted out and sprayed across Connor, who dropped backwards to the ground, rolling and struggling to bat away the sparks still clinging to his uniform. There were burn marks and holes across the chest.
Alex thought Connor would stay down but he rolled over and lunged back up from a squat, swinging his gauntlet around in a haymaker. The electricity arcing across the knuckles intensified and spat out little sparks of its own. Connor smiled manically as the blow came in.
Spinning around, Alex just got a buckler up just in time, causing a huge blast wave to explode out from the gauntlet. Alex’s buckler dissolved. The drones, likely short-circuiting from the blast, fell to the ground. His arm stung from the impact and his ears were ringing.
They both fell back, looking at each other, panting.
“This is a bad idea,” Alex said, and he meant it. “We’re supposed to be teammates. Everyone here is on the same team, Connor.”
“Teammates don’t humiliate each other,” Connor snapped.
“I didn’t humiliate you,” Alex said, sharper now, frustration bleeding through. “You lost a spar. That’s it. You’re choosing to turn that into something bigger.”
Connor’s eyes flashed. He stepped in again and launched a pattern of punches they had learned in Reach’s classes. Alex blocked and turned everything he could but still took a hit to the arm that stung and a glancing blow on his cheek that hurt way more than he expected.
Connor seemed to be much stronger than he was and it made him think back to Connor’s comment about how Alex wasn’t directing how his Anip was levelling him up. He was going to have to dig into that when this was done.
He tried, but couldn’t summon his left buckler; it was going to need a refill of the microdrones. He could still use it for a couple more blasts of Dragon's Breath, but he didn’t want to hurt Connor badly and he was hesitant to use it. He thought of the Jade ring that Rowan had given him.
He could sense it, a cool presence on his finger. He hadn’t really tested it out yet but it was supposed to help him focus, so it was worth a shot. He fended off a test swing from Connor and blasted a round of Dragon’s Breath at the ground by his feet, causing him to jump backwards.
Then he focused on the ring.
He could feel it. Like it had its own small gravity that could pull his attention at some level. It sucked him in and for just a moment the world shifted in his eyes. He really hoped that didn’t happen every time he tried to use the ring. As he concentrated on it, it felt like it was a part of him, but separate, like an extra finger or extremity. For a moment it felt like he was looking through the ring, and then everything went back to normal. The whole process lasted the length of a breath.
Looking around he could now see the mana around them. Floating in the air like little fireflies. All of it drifted in the same direction, with a few small eddies that seemed to follow their own rules. They drifted through almost everything. But Alex knew he could touch them, draw them in. The last time he had tried though, the mana had glommed to his fist and he had lost control of it.
He jumped to the right as Connor brought his sword down in a massive overhand blow. It hit the ground with a loud thump.
Alex called the mana, but nothing happened. He cursed. He should have been experimenting with this more before now, but the incident in the tavern, destroying that table, had scared him and he had been avoiding it. But he had thought a lot about it since then.
That last time, he had tried to grab some of the mana and hold it. It took him a little while, but once he did get some between his fingers, all the other mana in the area had been attracted to him. He wasn’t sure if he had called it in to himself, or if it was something else, but it had worked.
Once he had his fist covered in mana though, it had burned him. He hadn’t known what to do with it and panicked. But he’d thought a lot about it since then and was pretty sure the problem was only that he’d held onto the energy too long without trying to do something with it. If he was careful, he should be able to use it to ‘cast spells’. The only problem was, he had no idea how. But, he was pretty sure that he could replicate what he had done the last time: something he thought of as the Mana Hammer.
Connor had shifted around the still burning sparks on the ground and was stepping forward to engage once more. Alex watched him, but concentrated on his hand and all the mana in the area. Then the motes of light, bobbing in the air around him, changed direction and moved towards his hand. Slowly at first, then faster. Then mana from further off started bending towards him.
Shit, he thought. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.
Connor came in with a lazy sweep of the sword that was nothing but a feint and then, twisting, brought his gauntleted fist up in another blow aimed at Alex’s ribs. Alex deflected it with his only remaining buckler. Sparks sprayed off the surface and Alex’s HUD updated to let him know that it was now at 48% capacity. The electrical charge on Connor’s fist was taking bites out of it with every blow.
Connor jumped back before Alex could retaliate and switched his footing. Alex could see the charge building along the gauntlet’s knuckles—the next blow was going to be another big one. He looked down at his own fist. It was now completely surrounded in a bright glow of mana, at least six inches thick. He could feel the heat, but it didn’t seem to be as bad this time. He was focusing on the image of a mallet head.
And the mana reshaped into a blocky simulacrum of a mallet.
“Why the hell are you smiling?” Connor yelled. “This is funny to you?” Connor screamed and swung his sword again.
Alex countered with his own attack, thrusting his new mallet-hand straight at Connor's elbow while blocking the downward motion of Connor's arm with his free hand. The impact sent Connor’s entire arm flying backwards and his sword to clatter across the rocky shoreline.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a response. Instead he immediately threw a punch with his now free hand, and followed up with another using his gauntleted hand—jab, cross.
Alex could hear the sizzle of electricity from the charging gauntlet on Connor’s hand as it came in for a low hook to his ribs again.
He swung his depleted buckler down to try and block the blow. At the same time he swung his own left hand around at Connor’s chest.
Both blows landed together. Connor’s fist hit the buckler and drove Alex’s hand into his own gut. He felt the first impact deep in his stomach. Then the shockwave hit. The gauntlet’s charge. It discharged with enough force to make Alex’s teeth smash together as he flew backwards.
At the same time, Alex’s mana mallet slammed into Connor's unprotected chest. There was a blinding flash of light and Connor made a sound like a deflating balloon as he too got knocked backwards. As Alex was pushed back he focused on ridding himself of the mana on his hand. He didn’t want to land and have it come down on top of him.
To do that, he focused on the image of the mallet head, thinking about pushing it away and then watched, surprised as the mallet head burst apart and flew in all directions. Some of it at least. He couldn’t quite say how he did it, but a large portion of the mallet flew off the end of his hand and slammed into Connor, who was already tumbling backwards.
Alex hit the ground hard and looked up at the stars above. They spun around wildly like someone had shaken up the heavens. One of his hands was in the lake. In the distance he thought he could hear feet racing down the gravel path towards them from the village.
And then he couldn’t hear anything else.
***
For a place no one chose, Alpha Base couldn’t have landed in a better spot. Alpha Base sits on top of the spot where our portal into this world first opened. The location was completely accidental, but somehow we landed in the perfect location for our needs and right in the middle of abundance.
You can stand on the town walls and look in any direction and, other than our people, it’s empty land for 100 km at least. That would be unheard of back home. Here we have space to breathe but apparently we are relatively close to a major east/west trade route, which provides us access to the rest of the world.
The land here is fertile and full of abundance already. There are rivers everywhere, including a large one that curls around the northern rise like a moat beneath the palisade wall there, then drifts off toward the lake to the east of town. To the west, the land rolls on and on, open and workable. We’ve been moving farmers onto that land over the past year and now there are dozens of crops being produced and fields of cattle and pig.
The forest is another story.
To the northeast it just keeps going. Practically forever for all we know. The trees are the size of skyscrapers, but twisted like a licorice stick. You start walking under those trees and they can make you forget the sky even exists. The ground is covered with ferns that seem to come in every colour of the rainbow. I don’t know what sort of biology led to that, but it’s something to see.
Back home, there are very few wild places left and they are shrinking fast. Here, the wild doesn’t care that we arrived. We’re not pushing it back and it's not retreating.
I don’t know how long we’ll be here, or what this place will look like in a few years once more people arrive and the company starts its resource harvesting plans in earnest, but for now, standing on the ridge at dusk, looking out over water, fields, and forest all at once, it feels like we landed in our own little nirvana.
Personal Journal
Sergeant Frank Rellan
SHIELD
Dark steampunk fantasy webnovel
The world of Rohana exists beneath a barrier of luminous crosses. Here, the Rohana Federation bends to Rohai, whose staff bears seven crystals of immense power. His Church of Harmony has divided civilization: city dwellers harness crystal technology while villagers cling to simpler traditions beyond the Church's reach.
Haran Baratti fled his homeland and, along with his son Heron, sought refuge in Haugstad. Perhaps it was the will of the Creators, but after several star cycles of found peace, a tragedy strikes, leaving Heron to find himself alone with a mission to return to Tiwaz. The problem is that Tiwaz is in a different kingdom, a whole world away, and to get there, he'll need a special passport. One way to obtain it is to join an adventuring party that does international jobs.
Heron will have to navigate a world of mechanical cities powered by crystalline powers and governed by various social structures. There he'll meet allies and face dangerous foes. And all of them have secrets; some of them, if revealed to the public, may reshape the very foundations of the Rohana Federation. Will Heron, in learning those secrets, realize that maybe some of those secrets should have stayed buried?
What to expect:
- Dark steampunk-inspired power fantasy with extensive world-building
- Magic systems where power comes at a psychological cost
- Visceral, well-choreographed combat sequences
- Mysteries that unfold across multiple volumes
- Steampunk aesthetics merged with elemental magic
- Stories where the actors are often found in morally grey areas
This work will appeal to readers who enjoyed:Works of Dan Simmons (Hyperion, Drood, The Terror), The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, A Song of Ice and Fire, Fullmetal Alchemist, HunterxHunter.
More influences and details can be found on the novel's page.
Chapters (1000 - 1500 words) are released Monday through Friday at 20:19 (8:19 PM) GMT+1
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