"Miev?" I whispered.
"Egris, I'm here, you're going to be okay," she said.
The Kamulatitan left the rest of our party alone after we eventually retreated. It filled itself with food from the wagon. Eating until it couldn't move. There were barely any scraps left for the rest of us. We had become scavengers.
After a few days I finally recovered. My wounds mended with dragon's bane. Those of us that were left attacked another caravan. We ate. The pattern repeated. Each time I returned home, I felt my heart turning more black.
Miev had been coming around more. I'd started training her to fight and in turn she had been taking care of my wife and daughter while I disappeared for days.
Months passed. We were sitting in wait in the woods. Preparing to raid another caravan. It would be our sixth one in a month.
A lone elf wandered along the road. He was wearing leather armor, a short sword on his belt, a small satchel, and something strange on his back. An infant! As I looked there seemed to be a spark of electricity in the child’s eyes. An elemental?
The man stopped not thirty yards away from us and scanned the woods, as if sensing our presence.
"My name is Carine," he called out. I sat there, frozen in the dark. "I know how to end the drought!" he shouted.
I stepped out into the path. I was holding a dagger made from the tooth of a Sabre-cat. Something was strange. I could feel something in the air. The smell that came before a storm. Familiar, and yet it felt like it was so long ago.
The child couldn’t have been more than a year old. Likely born around the same time the drought had started. I felt a deep sense of sadness, imagining what it would be like for this child to grow up in a world without rain. She reminded me of my own daughter. My Chrysalis. And looking at him I was reminded of who I was, who I had forgotten. I had lost so much because of my hunger.
At that moment the man looked me straight in the eyes with a seriousness that could make a Praeg stop and listen to what he had to say.
“I know how to end the drought,” he repeated. "But I need your help.”
END.
Robbie Ballew
Robbie Ballew is an award winning screenwriter and film producer with a passion for storytelling in all its forms. He holds a degree in Theatre and is working toward a Masters in Film. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and two daughters, and when he’s not busy writing or working on homework, he can be found playing video games or reading Star Wars novels.
His debut novel, Arianna and the Spirit of the Storm, is based on his own screenplay of the same name.
Instragram: ballewrobbie
Website: www.guidingthread.com
Stephen Landry
Stephen Landry is the author of the LitRPG series Star Divers, Sci-Fi series Deep Darkness, and multiple award winning short stories. After graduating from Nossi College of Art in 2012 with a degree in Graphic Design, he discovered a new passion for the creative process and started working on his first series. Deep Darkness released at #1 on Amazon in Cyberpunk in 2016. In 2019 Stephen released his first GameLit short story titled HUSK in the anthology Game On! A GameLit Anthology which reached #1 New Release in Virtual Worlds and followed with a full length novel from LEVEL UP PUBLISHING called Star Divers: Dungeons of Bane, a brand new LitRPG series that combines Stephen’s love of science fiction, video games, and survival horror.
Twitter: @AstralStrikes
Instagaram: Stephen.Landry
Website: www.stephen-landry.com
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OUR FIRST NOVEL ARRIVES…
September 6, 2019.
Egris and the Silence of the Storm Page 4