literature

Breaking Hearts of Iron - Chapter One

Deviation Actions

Ferroth's avatar
By
Published:
425 Views

Literature Text

“These are the ‘veins of dark’ the little one spoke of. I’m certain of it,” Asmos the Village Sage said to the people.

The crowd surrounding him stirred uncomfortably.

“Can you tell us what they mean?” asked Mayor Ellana sternly.

Asmos stroked his thick white beard in thought, scrunching his lips together, his beady eyes blazing a gaze onto the bed of soil just outside of town. Thick veins ran in the dirt, which darkened the soil like tar and branched out like bolts of lightning reaching toward town ominously.

“The only thing I can only say for certain was Istar was telling the truth!” the sage boomed in his high, gravely voice, which was strong and energetic despite his age.

“That child makes up all kind of stories,” grumbled Mayor Ellana, her voice wavering in shock. “She causes more trouble here than the whole town can make on its own. You don’t believe the strange ‘whispers speaking in the fields’ outside of town are true as well?”

Asmos’s eyes opened wide. “Istar is quite the imp,” he admitted. “But she spoke of veins of dark, and here they are. As for whispers in the fields, we’ll deal with those if they manifest!” he waved a finger in the air, bent down to the ground and opened his satchel of tools and vials. “I wish to study these.”

“What should we do while you examine these veins?” Ellana asked.

“Go about your daily lives for now,” Asmos answered. “But let me know right away if anything else strange happens.”

“Such as what?”

“Anything, at all!” the Sage looked up from where he knelt, eyes bulging from his aged face. “I don’t know what these are, nor if they are harmful. They may be, they may not be. For all I know, they may even vanish later, though that could mean something else all on its own.”

“Should we be worried?” Ellana asked with concern, bending down with him. “Be honest with us.”

Asmos shook his head. “No,” he replied, setting down several vials on the ground and withdrawing a small, spoon-sized shovel. “There is no reason to worry that I know of. If I find there is later, I will tell you then.”

Ellana hesitated a moment, then turned to the townspeople of Enkian. “Back to work,” she said, walking back into the village. “Leave the wizard in peace.”

***

Asmos had worked through sundown and now it was until well into the night. Using the supplies he had carried in his backpack and satchels, he had set up a small, makeshift study with several small tables and desks over the site where the black veins in the dirt had appeared. When the sunlight was gone, he set a lantern on the ground—lit by chemical means known and understood by Asmos alone—which illuminated his workspace in a pale green light more brilliantly than any candles or torch could hope to.

Carefully he set a vial on one of the many empty desks, filled with a clear, water-like liquid, and released the seal on the top.  Taking a sample of the blackened dirt in a tiny spoon, he poured the soil into the vial, and the clear liquid bubbled and fizzed.

Footsteps stepping through the gravel approached.

Asmos knew who it was from slight limp.

“I heard the girl’s words came true,” Ryad’s young voice called out. He was the gardener and home keeper for the sage.

Asmos nodded. He took out his notebook to record his latest observations. “Istar’s quite the prankster, and the last thing we need are pranks here,” he said. “Perhaps she should have been told a few moral stories growing up. Maybe one about a shepherd who cried ‘Griffon!’ There are strange things that happen on this frontier where this little village is nested.”

Ryad limped into the light of Asmos’s lantern, walking stick in one hand. He was a young man just beginning to grow his own whiskers. He peered toward the fizzing vial, watching the soil layer itself in different sediments at the bottom of the beaker. “What does it look like?”

Asmos’s brown eyes squinted from under their long, white brows, curled up like owl’s plumage. He withdrew a magnifying glass from his vest pocket, and took a look at the beaker as the last of the reaction fizzed away.

“Intriguing,” he said. “It’s thready…like spider’s web. No...no closer to fine moss.”

“You’re saying whatever this thing is it could be growing?” he asked. “Like a plant?”

Asmos lowered the glass from his eye and turned to the youth with an approving nod. “Could be,” he said. “But it has yet to be confirmed.”

“Any danger in store for the village?”

“I could only test this stuff for so many kinds of toxins with a field study.” Asmos drew in his journal a depiction of the threaded vines. “So far, the plant life in the fields seems unharmed by it, so the farmlands may not be jeopardized. And if that’s true than the same holds true for the cattle and other animals. And if that holds true, than the people here may be safe.”
“But what is it?” Ryad asked. “Even if we’re safe from it, it’s still here. For all we know it could be all over this place in several week’s time!”

“Such is my hypothesis, for now,” Asmos stated, closing his journal forcefully and setting it in his satchel. “Though I hope I don’t have to test it very far. I’d like to get to the bottom of this matter before anything runs afoul!”

Ryad put his hand on Asmos’s shoulder. “It may have to wait until morning. You’ve been at this all day, old man,” he said. “It’s getting late into the hour. Perhaps we should go home and continue in the morning.”

Asmos rolled his eyes tiredly, sighed, and stood up straight and stretched his aged back, gazing at the stars as they came out.

“Will you need help packing?” Ryad asked.

“No-no,” Asmos, waving a dismissive hand. “I’ll handle it myself. Meet me at home. I’ll pack up and be their shortly.”

***

Striding down the trail, surrounded by tall stalks of wheat, which swayed in the cool, countryside breeze, Asmos the wizard made his way home—cottage beside a windmill with towered against the lavender glow on the horizon and under the darkened sky. The crickets chirped for a mile out, his only company while he walked.

“Dark veins in the ground,” Asmos thought aloud. His mind was racing with many thoughts—and his mind was something that was hard to stop once anything got it going. “And whispers in the fields. Well, no whispers tonight, other than the wheat in the wind!”

He stopped in his tracks, keeping steady, and listened. Something had caught his ear. A voice. Quiet and distant, but it was certainly not a whisper.

He crouched in the ground until his head was level with the wheat, and fleetly raced toward his home, glancing from side to side wary of his surroundings.

“What memories?” Ryad’s voice grunted from Asmos’s home. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Asmos peered through the wheat and saw someone—or perhaps some thing—standing in front of Ryad. The creature was eight-feet tall and, had the metallic head of a beast, and the armored frame of a personage with square shoulders, which leaned erect on three articulate legs.

The metallic creature opened the jaw of its draconic-looking head and spoke.

“Dear, dear. Then do you know someone who would?”

Ryad shifted his eyes and hesitated. “N-no,” he answered. “I don’t.”

The metal creature cocked his head. “Do forgive me,” he said. “You seem to have something stuck behind your teeth. Perhaps I can help.”

“What?” Ryad asked. “No-no! Wait!”

The creature outstretched is metallic arm and with a three-fingers claw grabbed Ryad from around his arm, holding him off the ground.

“Oh, yes-yes! I should have known. It was a lie,” the creature shook his head.

“Put me down! Please!” Ryad begged.

“I’m very sorry,” the metal creature moaned. “But you haven’t cooperated with me, and I’m afraid I must coerce you a bit more forcefully until it achieves the results I need. It’s nothing personal against you. I’m sure you can understand.”

Asmos watched carefully, keeping hidden. Ryad began to sweat, his breath shaky. He looked as though he dared not resist in the metal creature’s grasp. Stealthily, the wizard reached into his vest pocket a withdrew a small clay bottle.

“Once more, from the beginning,” the iron creature said, peering into Ryad’s face with its one, crimson-glowing cyclops eye. “I have traveled a long way from home tracking a suspicious little creature who stole my memories from me. I know such a creature passed through these parts. If you know someone who can help me find it, such a gesture would please me greatly.”

With a loud crack of shattered clay, the metal creature staggered in place. Clear goop—which at first appeared like liquid water—began to run into into the beasts’ hinges and joints and then thickened into bulging blobs in seconds.

Ryad was dropped from the beasts grasp and the boy quickly tried to get far away from the metal creature.

The metal creature turned and saw Asmos leap from out of the wheat. He turned on his three legs to approach the wizard, but the thick goop had become so viscous and he could hardly move without collapsing into a heap on the ground with a loud clatter of iron plates ringing together.

Asmos withdrew a short sword in hand and pointed the blade in the creature’s red glowing eye. “This is an easy question for you,” Asmos said. “At least I presume it should be. Do you wish to live?”
Been inspired lately to do more with Dycroft. :) So I decided to put together a story with him in it.

This is still the rough draft. The title is tentative.

Hope you all enjoy! :D
© 2017 - 2024 Ferroth
Comments7
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
TailypoArtist's avatar
OOHH! OONHA! YAASS A STORY WITH Dycroft! Yaass! 
Sorry it took me so long to tget to it. ^^
But I'm excited for moar~