Short Stories With Matt

     So I'm going to undertake a side quest in my epic journey towards publication. Don't worry, Alduin, I'll still slay you, I'm just going to take some time to help out this poor guard who took an arrow to the knee five years ago. Skyrim reference. Move along, move along.

     I'm going to write some short stories. These will be related to the main story of my books. They will enhance your understanding of events, but they will not be necessary to understanding the plot. I'm not going to cause Continuity Lockout, at least, I hope not.

     These stories will center around a few characters, some of whom surface in the main books, some of whom do not. The story will be centered around events mentioned in the book, namely the war in Benfor, and the Wilderness War between the Pathkeepers and the Karad.

     Yes, I'm name dropping to get you a little curious about what happens in my books.

     I'm going to be working on outline work for these stories for now, so you can expect an update on that around Thanksgiving time. Each short story will be about 10,000-30,000 words. I hope they'll be something you can enjoy reading.

That Girl, or, Why I Wasted a Year of My Life and You Don't Have To

     Listen up, it's past midnight, and so I'm liable to talk a little crazy. I've been ruminating over details of my life, and I realized for the first time ever that there is actually something I regret doing.

     Everything you do creates a path that leads you to this moment in time, that makes you who you are today. If you like who you are today, that's a good thing. And I do like who I am today. But there is a very large event in my not-too-distant past that I have taken issue with as of late.

     If you're just starting high school, and have any sort of romantic leanings, let me explain something to you. Sometime over the next four-ish years, you are going to meet an absolutely amazing girl(or guy). It will be love at first sight, and when you actually do summon the balls to ask them out, you will fall head-over-heels for them. 'I love you' will be said far, far, far too early into the relationship. You will get wrapped up in each other. You will be convinced that they are 'the one'.

     You're throwing your life away, your prime years. Run as far away from that person as you can, they are trouble for you. 'The one' does not exist. 'The one' is a delusional fantasy created so that you would bind yourself to a person and become dangerously co-dependent upon them. If you get in a relationship with That Girl, you are going to waste over a year of high school. For me, it was most of my junior year and the very start of my senior year.

     That Girl was bad for me. I couldn't see it because I was so 'in love' with her, but because of her, I allowed my talents and my gifts to stagnate for almost one full year.

     The worst part? From the beginning of the relationship, I heard God tell me to leave her, to break up with her. I heard God say that he had something better. I now know that my foolishness ruined a year of my life. Yeah, I had one heck of a dopamine and oxytocin high, but I allowed this girl to wrap me around her finger, I allowed her to take my focus from God and the use of my talents.

     I sit here and realize I threw a year of the time I was supposed to use to prepare for life straight into the trashcan.

     Don't do that. Long-term relationships have no place in high school. Period. High school years are supposed to be a term of preparation for the real world, not a time to prance around and play house with some chick or some dude who makes you feel fuzzy inside. Grow up.

     Furthermore: high school ruins things. Suppose you do meet someone you are insanely compatible with, shares your faith, and wants the same number of kids you do(ladies, I want none, keep that in mind when trying to get my attention); do you really want to have to endure high school together? If there's one thing that being a minor, having a job that barely pays a thousand a month, and having a buttload of schoolwork to do relationships, it's ruin them. This is only magnified by the fact that most people don't even know who they are yet.

     Young relationships are not a bad thing. Far from it. The Bible is constantly saying 'the wife of your youth'. And youth back then was really young. But if you just look at that phrase, you're missing another point, another key verse. Genesis 2:24- "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Hey, guess what? You can't leave your father and mother in high school, you nimrod.

     "But, Matt," you say. "I'm so in love I feel sparkles in my happy place when she/he's around."

     If you're a guy, come a little closer so I can smack you across the face. Love is not a feeling. Get that through your head! Attraction is a feeling. Infatuation is a feeling. Love is the highest commitment to a person that you will place their needs and desires above yours, even unto the ending of your own life. Again, read Genesis 2:24. That's God's description of how dating is supposed to go. Are you a Christian? Are you in high school? Are you in a high school relationship? You're sinning. Get out of that relationship and stop screwing around with your life.

     It's called tough love, deal with it. Stop crying and get over yourself, you'll be a better person for it.

This random late-night post has been brought to you by Monster, the unofficial drink of writers everywhere.

Light

     Light pricked the darkness.

     No legend knows how long that single spot of light shined out of nowhere, no legend tells whether it was bright or whether it was dim.

     The light vanished, for a time. The darkness that had become worlds continued to exist, unsettled by the existence of the light, for the light was a sign of life—that which the darkness had outlasted, that which the darkness had destroyed. The darkness continued to wait, swirling on itself, violent in its stillness.

     Light shone again, this time brighter. As the universe spirals downwards, so it must begin again once it has reached bottom. The darkness shuddered as the light continued to shine brighter and brighter until almost nothing existed save the light.

     The light vanished still again.

     The darkness was disturbed now. It knew that its existence wasn’t forever, that an end to void would soon come. The darkness could do nothing but wait, tensed to smother the light. The darkness heard, as no ear had heard in many thousands of ages, a sound. The sound of a single word, spoken against the void of chaos. In tongues of ages past, that word was known as “death”.

     And so the darkness died, its place now taken by eternal light. Unending, blinding, the light became the universe, shone until nothing save the purest white existed. Energy pulsed in the light, radiating in all directions from everywhere and nowhere at once. Infinite light in every part of the universe. Where once had been the Earth, there was light, where once had been Orion’s Belt, there was light. Black holes that had been swallowed by the darkness were now replaced with the energy of light. Light was all that existed.

     

It was from here that the universe would yet again begin a downward spiral.

Rainfall

     A path in the shadow of mountains. Dirt paved by feet unseen for many years, blackened as the sun dipped low behind the stone wall to end the day. The road stretched on for many miles from north to south. A wind picked up in the east, bringing with it a wall of clouds, too arrogant in posture to yet release their flood upon the earth and turn the path to slick mud.

     The gale whipped through the trees to the east of the road, turning their boughs into a sea that flashed different shades of green as the leaves were twisted this way and that. The foliage rustled, coming alive as the wind tore at it. Thunder rumbled as the clouds drew nearer to the mountain range, to the inevitable clash of nature.

     The warrior quickened his pace along the road south, south to home. The wind buffeted his weary footsteps, and the heavy chainmail in his backpack weighted him oddly. He sniffed the air as the smell of rain grew.

     Lightning flashed from the clouds to the forest, illuminated the darkening landscape and stretched the warrior’s pupils. With a hand to the hilt at his side, he continued along, his worn boots beating out a steady pace. Blood and dirt stained what had once been a lighter shade of hide, but had now become a dark and ugly shade. The warrior looked at the clouds again, almost overhead now, the darkness almost complete as the last rays of sun poked over a peak to the west.

     The wind increased, howling, tearing at his face and hair, pulling him and pushing him. The warrior kept his pace, fleeing from the north, hurrying towards the south.

     The clouds reached mountain range. Sheet lighting cracked in the sky. Thunder boomed, echoed off the mountains and swept across the path and into the forest with a deafening roar. The warrior halted for a moment and peered at the sky, waiting. A droplet smacked against his nose, splashed into his open eye. He blinked and rubbed at his face as more rain followed. The path looked black now, the surface had turned to mud.

     The rainfall turned into a torrent, and a torrent into a deluge, streams racing off the cured leather of the warrior’s pack. His hair clung to his head and his clothes to his body as he set off again, hand ever on the hilt of his sword, head down to focus on keeping his balance as the ground grew ever slicker.

     The lone survivor of the Slaughter at Dumhaven continued through the night, and the storm did not stop.

The Bleak

     Winter turned the blackness of night to a hazy blue and clothed the cabin in a mantle of pure white. A light emanated from the single window, a lamp flickering there. The glow pierced the darkness of the cold night, a tear in the cloak of darkness. It only let one know how alone you truly were in the Bleak. The wind howled, tearing at the senses like brambles at fine clothing, blinding wanderers with ice and snow. The stars could not be seen overhead as the storm began to unleash its fury.

     The blizzard swirled around the hut, all but obscuring the glow of the lamp from whoever may have seen it. One did. The half-mile distance to the cabin may as well have been twenty leagues. The Traveler’s hands were frozen stiff, his thick cloak almost board-like from the ice. Foot after foot he managed to trudge through the snow, his eyes locked on the faint light to the north.

     He had long given up on using knowledge to escape the Bleak. Only years upon years of gathered instincts drove him forward, a whisper in his ear that he was not walking in a circle.

     The light grew.

     The Traveler wanted to spit, but the thought of another icicle dripping from his bearded chin kept his saliva in his mouth. He wanted to wipe his nose, but he kept his hands huddled underneath his cloak, wrapped tight around his body. Only the faintest sensation of cold and wetness came from his reddened face.

     Perhaps only a quarter mile remained. His mind knew the pace he kept, his body did not. The steady beat of his boots into the icy powder ticked away in his head. Another foot, another yard, another span. His mind kept the rhythm. His body grew numb. The light grew in strength. He thought he could see the outline of the cabin now. His mind told him only a hundred yards were left.

     The wind pushed him around, set his course to a stumble. His hands came out form his cloak, he flailed for balance. When he found it, he could not see the cabin. With a desperate slowness, he turned in a circle, looking for the light. He could not see it. Instinct told him north, north, but he could not see north. The stars refused to be revealed, even for the tiniest moment.

     The Traveler spat and another icicle formed on his beard, white as an old man’s from the snow. And then, sure that he could not see the light, the Traveler gave up and sat down to await his death. The blizzard raged and froze him solid.

     When the light of morning brought respite from the storm, he was revealed to be only fifty feet away from safety, yet he would never be found. He would remain one of the many objects hidden under the mantle of snow that draped the Bleak and made it the most dangerous environment in all of Andul.

     That night, another blizzard came, and the cabin was also lost to the world.

Slaughter at Dumhaven

     And the din of war died with one final sweep of blade. One last man fell headless to the earth, blood spewed forth from his neck, spear clenched in a death grip. Years later, legend would call it the Slaughter at Dumhaven. The wind keened like a woman given a stillborn after hours of painful labor. The lone warrior sank to his knees, neither relief nor depression yet able to wash over him, only pure exhaustion. His coat of mail shifted underneath a hard leather cuirass. Both were ripped and stained with the blood of fellow man.

     The field of Dumhaven extended for miles in every direction, stained with the crimson blood of fallen armies. The warrior let out a long breath, his eyes closed. The wind obscured the noise of his lungs as bloody mud wetted his knees. The corpse in front of him still emptied through the neck.

     All around him, corpses lay, twisted and bent like childhood toys thrown into the garbage once the child outgrew them. Bones poked out of limbs like a worm out of the earth, faces were frozen into expressions of agony, horror, despair. Blood pervaded all. Its metallic stench rose to the wind and swept southwards to let all know that the fell deeds were done.

     He could already hear the first crows beginning to descend. In a matter of minutes, this field would become as black as oil, the dead a feast for the living, their eyes the dessert. The knights would be lucky. Covered from head to toe in plates of steel or frost metal, their families would have a face to look upon at the funeral. The warrior saw one such knight two feet from him. The visor of his helm was open. The warrior took a weary hand and slid it shut.

     “I am sorry, my friend,” he whispered.

     The warrior looked at the sky. It grew blacker by the moment, the chorus of the death feast growing louder and louder. Thunder clapped somewhere in the distance and the wind continued to howl. The warrior gathered his last reserves of energy and forced himself to his feast, the hundred pounds of mail and leather dragging on his weary shoulders. Step by step, he moved south, the lone survivor of the Slaughter at Dumhaven.

     The crows feasted.

By No Eye

     Mankind is the race of endurance, for there is no event which they cannot survive. They survived what was called by some the First True War. They survived the Scattering, the day the Earth shattered. Their seed was sown among the stars, among the races of the inky blackness. And still mankind survived, even the pure strain. The universe expanded, light-years upon light-years. Stars died, galaxies were swallowed up. And still mankind endured.

     Mankind endured to the point where the arc of civilization inevitably turned downwards. The great gates between worlds died, cities burned, forests became deserts, and pinpricks of humanity were separated, knowing each other only as alien legend. Life was at its end, and man was clinging to the last bit of hope as one holds to a lover going away on a long trip. Mankind dwindled.

     Great cities on these separated worlds became towns, towns became villages, villages a lone hut in the shade of a mountain. Even wildlife became scarce, on its last legs from the wave of overpopulation’s hunger.

     Then mankind truly lost the will to live. Worlds that had once been a scattering of hermits now only were home to ghost-echoes and rushing winds, empty biospheres in the mantle of space. Even more was forgotten by those that still lived. No one knew the world they lived on was round any longer, no one even knew why winter came and why the spring always followed. No one remembered a newborn’s cry.

     Still they lingered. Their spirits broken, their bloodlines ceased, they continued to exist. Somehow. A man sighting another man was as rare as diamonds supposedly were, but no one knew what a diamond was anymore. There were no children, for they had all grown up the moment they found the urge to kill, yet there was no one to kill.

     And finally, billions of years from when their story had begun, mankind died out. The last of them gave his last breath and laid back to stare at the stars, the stars which had defeated all life.

     And the universe continued to expand. Soon, the shadows between worlds became the worlds themselves. The stars winked out, one by one, turning in on themselves and pulling at the threads of space. Asteroids bounced aimlessly about space, nothing to alter their course where once had been gravity. Now there was only void. There was only darkness.

     The darkness would endure far longer than man ever did. Far longer than the stars, far longer than the planets, far longer than the black holes. The darkness would sit. The darkness would wait. The darkness would exist until what was unknown to any mortal mind came and replaced it.

     The void ebbed. It is the nature of the universe to spiral ever downwards, but what happens when the bottom has been reached? None were living to witness it; none know what happened the moment that light was glimpsed by no eye for the first time in time unsearchable. Perhaps it had been millennia, perhaps a single day.

     And the Light was seen by no eye.