Awakenings

by Timothy Manley

  Awakenings

  An

  Urto & Raevyn Story

  Volume 2

  Book 2 in the Earthborn Saga

  TIMOTHY MANLEY

  Copyright © 2018 Timothy Manley

  Covers by www.cathyscovers.wix.com/books

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781731255075

  DEDICATION

  Everyone gives a dedication to that special someone in their life. The reason is that to be a writer means you borrow time. That means that you use time that you could be using for other things, like spending that time with the people that are important to you. A long time ago I hung up my dream of writing to take care of my family. It was with the encouragement of my wife that I pulled that dream out of the drawer of discarded odds and ends I had no use for but couldn’t throw away, brushed it clean, and began working on it anew. My wife encouraged and enabled me to write. She created the space and supported me in my efforts, even though it meant trading my nights for these stories. This series is dedicated to her.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank my BETA readers. I know reading and giving feedback on writing is not easy. To those folks that gave me feedback I want to show my appreciation by sharing their names here. To keep everyone’s privacy, I’ll just use first names. But y’all know who you are.

  Dean

  Sherry

  Shawn

  Mitch

  what is the

  earthborn saga?

  The Earthborn Saga is a grandiose tale of epic fantasy with some aetherpunk and science fiction elements. This series will be told over the course of ten full sized novels, each a story that make up the full Saga. Each Story of the Saga tells the tale of the Grimstad family, their friends, allies and enemies.

  The 10 Stories of the Earthborn Saga will be

  1) Urto & Raevyn

  2) Kinhold

  3) Blood & Manna

  4) the Immortal Wars

  5) World Ender

  6) Reckoning Lives

  7) A World United

  8) War of the Dead

  9) Manna Death

  10) Kingdom Come

  Each Story is told over the course of 5 separate novellas. These novellas will generally range in size from around 20k words to around 40k words (though a couple may be shorter and a few may be longer).

  Each Novella will be published every 3 to 6 weeks beginning with the first one, “Separated” from the Urto & Raevyn Story, starting in December of 2018.

  Thank you for reading this and please, enjoy the saga as it unfurls over the course of 50 novellas.

  earthborn saga novellas

  Book 1: SEPARATED

  Book 2: AWAKENINGS

  Book 3: TRUTH

  Book 4: TAKING IT BACK

  Book 5: REUNITED

  Book 6: FOUNDATION

  Book 7: NASH & ROSHI

  Book 8: KISSIAH

  Book 9: BOHDAN

  Book 10: WAR DRUMS

  Book 11: STEEL & IRON

  Book 12: BLOOD MAGIC

  Book 13: FIRESTORM

  Book 14: UNDYING DEAD

  Book 15: HERO LOST

  Coming Soon! The Immortal Scourge. Another 5 novellas in the Earthborn Saga!

  PROLOGUE

  The workshop was supposed to create things. It was oddly simple, I design them and as long as I had the raw materials the workshop would create it. But, since I was lord of the manor, the estate and the entire damned valley, I, apparently, had unlimited resources for this magic box to make the shit I drew. I also had access to a whole host of preexisting designs.

  Alfred was floating beside me. I had showered, dressed, amazed at the fact that the clothes fit my new frame, and then had breakfast. While over coffee I had this idea: spring powered crossbow rifle. What I figured was that I could make a crank powered clockwork style crossbow using springs instead of the cross bar, and a two-pulley system mixed with gearing to cock it by turning a crank on its side. The geared system working with the crank would dramatically multiply the force meaning my springs could be that much more powerful.

  Now, anyone reading this needs to be fully aware that I’m not an engineer. I’ve worked with engineers for most of my professional life. But I’m not one. I’ve done enough reading and listening and looking shit up that I can act like I know what I’m talking about. But I really don’t.

  So, as I drew out this weapon, tossed the drawing into the prototyping slot and then pull out a full replica from the box, it took a lot of trial and error. I can’t really tell you how many days I spent in there. I would create a design, test it, then redesign, and test. I tried to vainly recall the drafting skills my time in high school so vainly tried to teach me. In spite of this, day by day my drawings got better, more exact. I’m not sure how many days, maybe over two weeks, I spent making copy after copy, slight change after slight change, then a test, then a couple of trips to the shrine since I constantly hurt myself while testing the prototypes the magical construction box would create. Then I’d go back for more adjustments and then back outside for more tests.

  I would always get hung up on projects. I had made this thing so important that I worked my ass off until I made it work, and I included a magazine fed bolt system, very much like the nerf guns the kids and I used to play with. I just knew, I needed a gun for the zombies and since I couldn’t make a gun, I’d make the next best thing.

  At the end, I had a crossbow rifle that looked more like some steampunk cosplay prop than a crossbow. It had a crank that I could fold in and fold out, and I could load a magazine that could carry eighteen spikes. Since I had unlimited access to resources I made boxes filled with magazines. All told I had two hundred boxes of magazines, all in crates of fifty each. That’s thirty-six-hundred spikes. Yep, little shards of zombie hunting death.

  I needed my body back, my old body. I visited the shrine nightly, getting treatments to remove all my weight and regain the muscle I used to have. When I was younger they called me ‘Urto the Strong’. I needed to be that person again. I also began working out. I had to get used to using my old body. It had been a long time since I could move like I used to.

  Once my weapon was ready I continued my planning. I needed a rowboat and cart. Turns out I have plenty of farm animals, including draft horses. I just had to take their cards and place them in their respective pens or stalls to wake them up. It took a good few hours to learn how to lash a horse to a cart, even with Alfred giving me step by step instructions. Once I had it down, I undid my handiwork and put the horse back.

  The stalls kept the horses alive. Much like the pods in the Shrine, these did the same for the animals. I stood there staring at it. The animal was a card not long ago. Now it was a real draft horse. I petted his nose and he nuzzled me.

  I hugged him and he pressed his head to me. I found myself standing there, talking softly to the horse, scratching his ears. I missed my family. I was alone. I was utterly alone in a way I had never really been before. I had a computer hologram to talk to, but, still, alone. Making friends with the horse drove it home to me just how isolated I was. I hoped to hell that Raevyn wasn’t as alone as I was. I hoped the kids didn’t know anything that their sleep was deep and heavy so when they woke up it was as if no time had passed. They shouldn’t be feeling the immense weight of isolation I was feeling.

  “I’ll call you Marble,” I said. His fur was grey and black, mottled like the design on a marble. He nodded at me, seemingly to understand his name and he liked that I gave it to him.

  I set about having what I was feeling like my potential last meal. There was this Chinese Restaurant I went to a few times in San Francisco during work. It was the best I ever had. And the food machine, the foodbox I called it, had access to pretty much eve
ry single restaurant, café, diner, and fast food joint on planet Earth.

  Okay, I need to stop. Let that sink in. This magic box I had access to in my kitchen had access to the menu of every single food joint on the entire planet. Past and Present. One time, I ordered McDonald’s fries from 1970. And then I compared two of them, one from 1970 and one from 2017. Yes, they were different. The 1970 fries were a hell of a lot better. Now, I could go off on how the French fry recipe was mucked with, but the bigger issue is I could actually do that.

  I called up a full meal, more than I could eat, and took everything to the formal dining room. Having that meal by myself made it feel very much like my last meal. It deepened the isolation I was feeling. My mood soured. I started by drinking sake, then I moved onto whiskey. I stuffed myself but kept drinking. I have no idea how late it was when I stumbled to bed.

  ————

  The morning came too quickly. My body wasn’t pleased with me and part of me wanted to sleep. But no, I had to get started. I had to get the day going. I had zombies to kill. I got up and stood in the shower letting the water wash away the cobwebs that refused to let go. After finishing my shower I stood at the mirror and stared at the man looking back at me.

  His grey beard, dripping wet, was getting larger. But, there was not an ounce of fat on that body, the muscles were back.

  “Hey old man,” I said to my reflection, “you sure you do this?” I dried off, dressed and then went downstairs. I drank a ton of water, then filled a huge cup of coffee and set to work.

  The wagon was loaded with everything. I took the horse from the stall, hooked him up and then started driving down the road. I let Alfred stay floating on the bench next to me as the wagon jostled slowly behind the trudging horse.

  “Maybe two horses next time,” he said, as if he were musing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me how to do that.”

  “Once you get one the other isn’t hard.”

  “So I hear,” I laughed.

  He looked at me and I realized he wasn’t talking with the same double meaning I was. I shook my head, pulled out a cigar. The morning light streamed through the trees, glistening the dew off the leaves. I could tell the air was starting to get colder. The smell of the air was crisper.

  “What season is it?” I asked Alfred.

  “The first day of fall was two days ago,” he answered.

  “We have all four seasons here?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The four seasons.”

  “Same as Earth?”

  “I don’t have that knowledge.”

  “First day of fall, day and night are same length, like first day of spring. Only after fall the days get shorter until first day of winter when you have the shortest day of the year.”

  “Yes,” Alfred said. “It’s the same.”

  “They made the world for us, didn’t they?” I quietly asked.

  “I don’t have that knowledge.”

  CHAPTER 1

  The wagon was fully loaded, including the small rowboat I tied down over it all. After a hard start, straining under the load, Marble got the wagon moving and pulled it easily. He got us all the way to the end of the road from the manor house to the ferry dock without issue and didn’t seem to break a sweat.

  Once there I unpacked everything. I pulled out the rowboat and the oars and then climbed in with my long spear. The rowboat glided effortlessly over the placid black water to the ferryboat still resting where I had left it. I could see figures laying and hunched down in the ferry. I used the oars to reverse and pull the boat steady. My youth was spent in these boats, this was something I was good at and I easily maneuvered the boat to exactly where I wanted it.

  When I had it just right I pulled my spear and tapped the edge of the ferryboat. Plenty of those zombie things, the guants, were laying down in the ferry, more than I thought from what I had initially saw. They all stood, wanting to get me. I just pushed them off into the water with the spear. They splashed and then bubbled away in a frothing mess.

  Once the ferry was cleared I rowed until I was just short of the boathouse dock. Guants were inside the boathouse, there was no way to block it off since it had only the two walls and one roof. But my plan didn’t need to block it off. I rowed around to the back of the building where the wall was almost up to the end of the pier. The dock had just a little lip of space from the edge of the wall and the end of the dock.

  I rowed next to the ferryboat, tied the rowboat to it, and climbed in. I cranked the ferry back, but stopping just out of reach from the platform, near the wall on the edge of the dock.

  I climbed back into the rowboat and rowed right to the edge of the dock. I tossed the grapple attached to the rope ladder and it latched onto the top of the ferry building. I tied the rowboat to the ladder, pulled the rowboat over to the edge and climbed up. I grabbed the ropes I had tied to my gear and while holding them, pulled myself up the side of the building via the rope ladder, carrying the lead lines with me. Once on top of the ferry boathouse, I pulled all my gear up behind me.

  I could hear those undead monstrosities going wild beneath me. Some tried to come around back but fell into the water. They rushed to the boathouse, crowding inside, swarming the dock and the cobblestone walk at the edge of the wooden wall. As long as the structure held, my plan would work.

  I set up my chair, my boxes, and my weapons. I had the long spear instead of the boar spear. It was a much longer shaft, with a longer sharper tip. I also had a knee length brigantine coat, an armored coat made from heavy cloth with metal plates sandwiched between the cloth layers. I brought a steel helmet, the kind that covered my head and my cheeks, but was open at my eyes, nose and mouth. I brought my throwing axes and a one-handed broadsword. And no zombie hunt would be complete without refreshments and a comfy chair. I figured it might be a while.

  I walked to the edge, they were swarming below in what looked like a hunger frenzy. I took the long spear and began slamming it into the skulls of them one by one. They would fall, their bodies would vanish, replaced with a card. As soon as the space was open others would swarm in to fill it.

  My home was lost, not just the waystation I was calling a home, but everything. Gone. My family was scattered. These things below me, they were keeping me from collecting my kids to make sure they were safe. They were my obstacle. Even better, this was free. These things were not alive. They were more like amusement park robots. Just the kind that could infect me and make me like them. The chuck of the spear slamming the tip through their skulls charged me. My anger, my fear, my loss, I took it out on them, each strike a catharsis, a purging of the anxiety held in my heart.

  Then I saw one that moved differently, it wasn’t shambling, it moved quickly, with purpose, and was forcing its way through the crowd to get to me. Its glowing red eyes fixated on me. I figured that one would climb, so I quickly grabbed the crossbow rifle, sighted down the barrel and pulled the trigger. The bolt flew just as it did during testing, flat and fast. It missed. I quickly worked the crank and then worked the lever to load the next bolt from the magazine. It had found a way to climb around, and I saw another coming from deeper in the city.

  I lifted, aimed, breathed, and fired. The bolt hit it in the head and it went down. I worked the crank, spinning the handle as quickly as I could and then I worked the slide, raised it and shot the other one. The bolt hit it center of chest.

  The thing fell, and then vanished. Damn, I did not need to hit those in the head. It wasn’t like the zombie movies back home. I cranked again quickly and hit another one. They were coming faster, but center of mass shots were far easier to make than headshots. And I managed to keep them off. One did crest the top of the wall, but I pulled the hand axe from my belt and slammed it into its head. Then quickly raised my crossbow rifle and fired at another one.

  We were at a stalemate. The only thing that was waning was my endurance. I was getting tired. I had gone through two boxes of my bolts, one hundred ma
gazines. There was no pile of bodies beneath my perch. As each one fell the body vanished. Though there was a pretty hefty scattering of the cards that replaced the body when the corpse vanished.

  I just finished slamming in a new magazine, working the crank and loaded another bolt. The fast ones backed off, the mass of the gaunt horde withdrew. A tall figure emerged from around the edge of the road, coming from the center of town. He was huge, at least nine feet, and so skinny, like taut leather pulled over a skeletal frame. His eyes sockets were glowing yellow orbs of fire, sputtering and flickering. He grinned, a lipless grin, showing all his rotted teeth, and he looked right at me.

  I raised the crossbow rifle, sighted down the barrel, pointed it right at that huge creepy grin, and pulled the trigger. My bolt flew hard and fast. My aim was off, it was heading for the base of his throat, a miss I was okay with.

  The freak raised his hand and caught the spike with it, the spike travelling through his hand but stopping before passing all the way out. Then he pulled it out while I was cranking and loading another one. I raised the crossbow rifle to my shoulder and he threw the bolt back at me. It travelled as fast as my shot travelled to him. I dodged to one side and it creased my arm.

  I shouldered my weapon and fired again. My shot went south, heading for his lower abdomen. He did the same thing. Catching it and then pulling it from his hand. I picked up the chair and swung it at the bolt that was thrown back at me.

  That was it. I put my crossbow rifle down, put on my armored coat, and strapped the sword belt on, shoving my axes in it. I stood, staring at him as I pulled my helmet on. I grabbed the long spear and pulled out the Alfred’s projection disc.

  Alfred popped out. “Oh,” he said. He had a genuine look of concern on his tiny face. “You’re going to fight them, and that?” he asked, motioning to the giant freak standing in the street waiting for me.