Dangerous Ascent, Book 1: Starfall

by Mark Mulle

  “You heard well, but those are just pessimists talking. I’m a strong guy.”

  “If you say so.” The man wasn’t very cheerful, his pale face looking strained and worried about all of the events that had taken place. “It’s better this way. We’re going to travel through some tough territory to get to that thing. I hope you are ready as you say.”

  “I have come of age; do not doubt it for one second.”

  I stepped out of the hut behind him and saw my parents jogging over toward me.

  “Son! You can’t leave without saying goodbye! Take care, please. You’ve been hurt; it could be serious.”

  I smiled at my mother, but that was when I saw what lay behind her. The pain of seeing my fellow villagers in the states they were in was crushing: little kids, orphaned by the destruction, were sobbing and asking for their mothers and fathers; old and sick people were crying out for help, but there were only so few doctors around; and finally I saw others lying in the snow and trembling, though there were others that weren’t moving at all.

  “Look at that, mother,” I told her. “That’s serious. I’m fine. Just stop worrying. I’ll be back to help these poor people. They don’t deserve this at all. I’ll find out what that thing that landed was, I promise.”

  The bearded man looked at me with newfound respect. Ironheim men and women despised weakness; it was clear to him that I was no weakling or coward.

  “Time to go, son.” He set off without me toward where the others waited on their horses, and I hugged my mom as hard as I could. My father stretched out his hand, but he was just as upset as my mother about my departure.

  “Good luck and bring honor to our name and to our village.”

  I walked after the man and jumped onto my horse without looking back.

  My adventure had just begun and I was going to prove to the world who I was and what I was capable of.

  “The chieftain wants us to be back as soon as we’re finished, so I don’t want any stragglers,” the bearded scout said. His name was Rengerd and it seemed that he had come from another village to help. The other scouts in the party seemed to greatly respect him, though I was unaware who he was or where he was from.

  “Yes, sir,” one of the younger scouts said. He was the second youngest after me, a boy called Markus. He had come of age a year ago, his skills with a bow second to none. I remembered watching him fight — he had beaten his enemy with a well-placed slingshot blow to the head, all without being hit once.

  “Lucas, are you feeling okay back there?” Rengerd’s question was a mix of cruelty and worry, it seemed. The man didn’t want a weakened scout at the back of his formation, but he also wasn’t happy at taking a kid along with him.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. My head ached and my vision was slightly blurry. That blow to the head got me good…

  The huge piece of rock got larger as we approached, and I began to see the details on its sides and edges. There was something worrying about the large shard from space: it was mostly dark grey, but other shinier spots were visible where the sun hit it. The material of the shiny areas looked different to the rest of it, and I had the dark feeling that maybe the rock wasn’t the actual object but a protective casing that enclosed it.

  “Rengerd, what do you think it is?” I asked, risking a scolding for speaking so directly to a superior.

  The scout didn’t care about the manner of my asking.

  “It isn’t an asteroid, that’s all I can say. I’d rather it just be something simple, though.” He looked like he was trying to keep himself positive but was failing. “I’ve seen what you’ve seen, Lucas. It might just be the outside shell for something more dangerous.”

  It was as if he had read my mind.

  There were twelve of us; all mounted and all armed in case of any threats. Rocks falling from the heavens weren’t the only dangers around here — just outside of Ironheim territory the Spider Caves began, an area of dark and dangerous caverns that many entered but few returned from. We were surrounded on all sides by enemies and that was a real worry now that the massive boom had woken them all up.

  Soon, we’ll have mobs and rival tribes all over our lands. It is going to be a real threat.

  We passed by one of the smallest rock fragments as we headed towards our target. Rengerd picked it up with both hands and inspected it before dropping the thing again. Some of the others took their time to circle it, but there wasn’t anything special about the fragment. Finally I led my horse past it, but suddenly my thoughts were cut short. I even gasped in shock.

  “What’s wrong?” Markus asked, his hand jumping to the handle of his blade as he turned his horse around.

  I looked at the rock again. Nothing.

  “No, I just…coughed,” I lied again.

  For a split second as I had been looking at it, I could have sworn that the rock had moved.

  A bad feeling crossed over me like a dark cloud.

  Something was about to take place.

  Chapter Four

  “We’re only a quarter of an hour away,” Rengerd shouted over the noise of the wind. We had been forced to climb a tall, icy hill to get to the rock. The other easier route into the valley where the object had fallen had already been occupied by other creatures.

  Skeletons.

  A mass of them stood on the lower side of the peak, all looking intently at the steaming boulder that melted the snow around it.

  “We’re so close,” Markus had his bow ready in case the Skeletons became hostile, but he was more concentrated on the weird object down below. “What will we do with it?”

  “Nothing until I give the order to take samples of it back home. Be careful, we cannot be sure on what the thing is and what it may contain.” We began to descend the slope, every passing second filling me with more and more dread. It would have been the mark of a coward to tell them I was afraid, but it was definitely the truth. This was nothing like facing an enemy; it was more like preparing for a natural disaster.

  As we let ourselves slide down the slope, we finally saw the thing up close. The massive rock was huge, its misshaped base occupying almost the entire valley. The shiny parts were eerier than we had initially observed; they were definitely of a different material and beneath the outside rock. The shell itself was of a mineral I had never seen in or around Ironheim. It was also only now that we understood how massive the rock was.

  “Is it me, or is it pulsing?” Rengerd asked. We all voiced our agreement or nodded. The object was certainly releasing some sort of energy waves every few instants.

  Markus took a few steps closer to it as we finally reached its base.

  “It’s so beautiful…”

  “Markus,” Rengerd warned, but the boy was getting too close.

  “I’m okay, don’t worry. I just want to touch it…”

  This time it was me that cried out. One of the shining pieces had lit up, and others were doing the same.

  “No, Markus! Something is wrong!”

  I saw the lad turn around with a strange face as he heard my fear. There was a smile there, a look of confusion and suddenly a look of distress.

  “I can’t help it…”

  His hand stretched out to touch the material inside the shell, and my eyes widened. As his fingers made contact with it, something happened.

  WHHHHOOOOOOSHHHHHH

  A terrible sucking sound, followed by a whining roar like a gust of wind through a small cavern.

  We covered our ears as the noise threatened to split our eardrums, and backed away from Markus as he cried out in pain and terror. From the point where his hand touched the strange material, small cracks began to appear on the outer shell. The ground trembled, and our eyes burned with the pulses of light that suddenly and rapidly speared towards the sky.

  “No!” Rengerd screamed. The material was stretching out over Markus’ arm and pulling him inside it as the rocky shell’s cracks finally reached each other.

  SMAAAASHHH

&nbs
p; The pieces of shell flew off, landing around us. One of them hit a member of our group and crushed him without warning. We stumbled away as fast as we could, fighting to stay on our feet. Elsewhere, the other fragments of the fallen rock were also lighting up.

  “What’s going on? Where did Markus go?!” I asked as we ran.

  When it seemed that the rock was about to end the world itself, the light suddenly stopped flashing. The ground’s trembling came to a halt and the horrible noise was gone.

  We breathed heavily and backed away from the thing. There were more creatures standing around. They kept their distance, but we could see the Zombies, Skeletons and Villagers watching from the nearby hills.

  “Be careful,” Rengerd said. “We don’t know what could happen nex—”

  He never finished his sentence. It was at that precise moment that we realized what the rock had really been all along.

  Interlude

  The Skeleton known as ‘Mercenary’ looked down from the hill.

  The noise and lights had stopped. The humans were curious creatures, always getting into more trouble than they needed to. Mercenary had pulled his small group of soldiers from the cave to see what had fallen in the middle of the icy valley, but the humans had beat him to it.

  One of them had already been sucked into the rock, the young fool having made the grave mistake of touching it. Now though, it seemed like it had ended.

  Mercenary pointed to other hills where other watchers stood: Zombies, Villagers, Pigmen, other humans…Everybody had been called by this massive rock’s arrival.

  “Those fools,” a Skeleton beside him said, “They just couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. For a moment, I thought that we were all going to perish in an explosion or something because of them.”

  Mercenary nodded and looked down at the group of men as they fought to regain control of the situation. One of them looked up at his group fearfully and the Skeleton smiled at him.

  The leader began to talk, and Mercenary decided it was time to go down and get rid of these humans — after all, they were on Skeleton territory.

  That was when it happened.

  The rock hadn’t stopped. It was only just beginning.

  Mercenary’s eyes widened as a ripping noise split the silence and the rock finally burst open like an egg from outer space.

  From it, a giant structure began to form.

  “What is that?” A Skeleton said as the valley began to tear apart.

  The humans were running for their lives now, some of them being sucked into the spreading mass of alien rock that was forming in and around the object. The structure was growing horizontally, yes, but it was also growing upwards at an incredible speed. It didn’t even stop when it hit the clouds, the mountain-like tower stretching far and wide, its black structure absorbing the light from all around. Ice coated it in large sheets and made it even thicker. It looked like it was made of Obsidian, but no Obsidian looked as pure and polished as the tower walls did.

  It was only then that Mercenary realized what the smaller fragments were for. They also sprung open, revealing smaller but similar towers that shot out wire-like bridges that connected with the main one.

  Ways in…or perhaps ways out…

  The tower didn’t stop getting thicker until it almost reached the hill he and his soldiers were standing on. Only then did the structure stop its spreading.

  “Wow…” he breathed. Many of the others who had been standing on the hills around the structure had fled, surely fearful of being crushed by the thing.

  If there was one thing that Mercenary admired as he looked down at the base of the tower, it was that the humans had managed to make it out of the valley and up onto the hills. He looked at them then and caught sight of a young boy.

  Despite the fact that all of the men were dangerous, well-trained warriors, there was something about the lad that made Mercenary’s eyes widen. There was a hunger in the boy’s eyes, a desire of greatness.

  That lad is going to be trouble, he knew.

  He flashed a smile at the youngster and nodded, the human nodding back respectfully — a salute between two warriors.

  And then the voice echoed from the structure and the whole world froze to listen to it.

  Chapter Five

  I turned away from the Skeleton in time to hear the powerful voice boom over the hills. The tower had finally stopped growing and it was time for the final great reveal. Those of us who had survived had barely lived to see it.

  “Beings of the Minecraft World.”The words were a thick purr, the powerful voice of a large figure who knew he possessed great power and feared no man or thing in the lands. Chills ran down my spine. I didn’t need to see the speaker to know he was a being of great darkness. The light in the sky itself was fading, as if the massive icy tower was sucking it in like a vacuum. “Your world has been claimed.” The voice seemed to whisper other strange words as it spoke, and it was only a moment later that I realized that it was speaking in all of our tongues at once, so that all the gathered races understand what the being was saying. “You will soon learn what that means, what suffering and terror I can bring to this world…” The tower’s smaller bases, the towers that had once been fragments of the larger rock that fell from the sky, began to pulse with energy as noise began to emit from their insides. “If you ever wish to end it, I dare you to come up to the summit of this tower. I dare you to defeat me. I am the Demon King, and I am waiting for you…”

  Lightning criss-crossed in the clouds and thunder boomed and roared.

  I tried to look up past the thick storm-clouds and failed. The top of the tower was impossible to see. Each of the tower’s floors themselves seethed with movement — strange beings were being spawned all over them. They stumbled dizzily out of doorways on the sides of the tower and began to stumble their way around it as if they were going somewhere.

  But then I realized in shock: they were going somewhere.

  The bridges that led down to the smaller towers that had formed around the main one were starting to fill with the rows of demons that shuffled down them. It would be a while before they reached the bottom, but once they did it would mean total destruction for those villages nearest to the small towers.

  Rengerd sighed exasperatedly.

  “This is going to hell real fast. We didn’t come prepared to fight this!” The Skeletons and other creatures watching from the hills made their retreat immediately, surely returning to warn their peoples of what was coming. We had to do the same.

  “Sir,” I said, “Give us an order, we must act!”

  Rengerd watched the descending demon forces for the longest moment before turning away.

  “We must go; it is time to warn our people and the King of Ironheim. Great misery and despair is coming to our world; it will only end in war. But we must be ready to fight it.”

  We passed by several villages as we thundered our way toward the Ironheim capital. One by one, Rengerd left men behind at each town to ensure that they had at least one experienced warrior among their number, someone who could lead them in case of a battle.

  By the end, it was just him and I charging toward the city where the throne lay.

  “Will the King see us?” I asked, lifting my eyes up at the city a few miles away from us. “He might be too busy reacting to this sudden development.” It was visible even from here, the great spiked walls recognizable from any distance. Sunforge. It was a beautiful but intimidating thing, even for someone who had already seen it as was my case. The city stretched from one side of Iron Peak Mountain to the other. It was naturally defended by the steep slopes of the rocky formation and the strong winds that could easily rip an attacking army off its sides or bring an avalanche down upon them; but it still possessed a tall, strong wall and a powerful army within. The King’s army, I corrected myself.

  “He will see me,” Rengerd said confidently, and that was that.

  The last few miles passed by in a breeze, though our ho
rses were exhausted by the time we reached the city. There were many guards surrounding the entrance, their spears dropping at once to confront us.

  “Stay back now, don’t get too close.” I jumped as a spearpoint came to a stop inches away from my face. The guard holding it looked like he wasn’t afraid to strike if he detected any strange behavior from us.

  “My name is Rengerd of the Icy Plains; I have come to see my friend. His Majesty, the King himself.” A guard captain stepped out from inside a tower and looked over his men’s shoulders to check us out.

  “You…” he said simply.

  “Me.” Rengerd’s face broke into a smile, and the captain ordered his men to lower their weapons. They walked over to each other and embraced briefly before the scout looked the captain in the eye. “That was frightening, I must say. I have left all of my men behind to help at the villages closest to the tower, but we need the King’s forces. Even our village, as far as it may be from this ‘Demon King’ and his forces, is still in danger. Our people are in danger, William. I need to talk to His Majesty at once.”

  Captain William made a face.

  “I am afraid that won’t be possible.”His words didn’t just tear our confidence down, they demolished it. I looked up at him and only then did the captain spot me. “Who is this?”

  “A young warrior,” Rengerd said as he looked at me proudly, “With a lot of potential. He will be a great warrior one day. Now please,” the scout said as his expression became sterner, “Tell us why the King cannot see anyone at such a time.”

  The captain approached us, looking at me strangely. He needed to say something private, but Rengerd nodded him on.

  “He has been having strange visions,” Captain William whispered uneasily. “They’ve been assaulting him for days now. He predicted that…thing…crashing into our world, and now that it’s here he can barely get out of his bed. The headaches are too strong and his guards have had to muffle his screams so that the castle can’t hear them! It’s like the enemy got into his head, our great Warrior King, and now we’re headless and lost!”

  Rengerd grabbed the captain and shook him hard. Several guards stepped forward to protect him, but I stepped forwards and grabbed my axe’s handle.