Chapter 3

Mystech, or technology powered by myst, uses a condensed myst crystal as a power source. These artificially grown crystals are made up of a single type or a fusion of two of the fourteen elemental types. The most common myst crystal batteries used for personal tools are either fire (a single myst type) or electric (a fusion of two myst elements).

18th, Liovid, 5646, A.o.t.S.S

Now, you're going to want to ready yourself for this next bit. My story honestly starts here, and it's a dark and bloody start. It’s also the start of a long string of traumas.

The screw gave a shrieking squeal before it popped free. I plucked the bit of metal between my thumb and forefinger, setting it aside on a flat of cardboard alongside its brethren. Methodically, I set down my screwdriver and raised my hands over my partly dismantled victim. I bit my lower lip, my fingers dancing like a spider over its prey. With practiced precision, I plucked off the back of the myst storage battery to reveal its internals. This nifty little toy I found in the garbage was quite the prize. This MK 3.2 V-tech battery also doubled as a backup generator. I picked my way around the internals, examining wires and checking circuits for damage, careful not to touch the capacitor. You only touch a live capacitor once.

I pulled free a circuit board from the control panel, unplugging all the links to reveal what I was looking for: the battery charging rack. What made this model so important was that, unlike other generators with one or two massive rechargeable myst crystals (RMCs), this one had thirty-six smaller RMCs designed to be swapped out.

From the looks of it, this poor toy was trashed because of a broken connector. I pulled free the rack of crystals and gave it a close inspection. Some of the dead ones had cracks or chips; clearly, the device was literally thrown into the trash. But a couple of crystals still glowed with a bright, charged yellow.

I plucked free the first of the eight working crystals, holding it up to the light. For the past couple of years, I had been completely fascinated with Mystech. It all started with the blacksmith showing me his projects. Then, my fascination evolved into an obsession. My eighth-grade class had recently gone over the basics, but I wanted to know more. How did rune script work? What kinds of components were there? My teachers just kept telling me it was dangerous and I could learn more when I was older. My father thought my interest was odd, but to me, the technology was simple. You made a thing, and it did what you made it for. Circuits, wires, and gears never got angry at you or hurt you because you looked strange.

The only person I knew who didn’t hurt me was my father. Well, he only hurt me when I did something wrong, but he was still nice at times. He tucked me into bed and gave me hugs after I got picked on. He made sure I always had food, clothes, and a home.

I took one battery and picked up my toy hover disk. I had noticed the silver disk had been slowing down. It didn’t hover as high as it used to, and the lights were dull. I figured it was running low on power.

I picked up the disk, turned it over, and popped open the battery hatch. Sure enough, the crystal there was glowing a dull red. I thought it was odd that the battery was red, but maybe it was a power indicator. I pulled out the old battery and plugged in the fresh yellow one. Carefully, I set the dying crystal on the table, clicked the hatch shut, and flipped the switch. I watched in joy as it spun up and the lights began to display. But then it started making an odd ringing sound, and one by one, the lights popped. In a panic, I dropped the disk. As it struck the floor, I heard something else break inside with a loud crack, and the remaining lights all blew at once. It went quiet as smoke began creeping up from the battery hatch.

“Damn it!” I cursed.

“What was that?” my father’s voice came from upstairs, his tone carrying a warning.

“Nothing, Father!” I replied. I rushed to pick up the disk before he found it. It was hot to the touch, and to keep from getting burned, I tossed it from hand to hand like a hot potato. Suddenly, the toy burst into blue-yellow flames. I heard my father coming down the stairs, his steps heavy, meaning he had been drinking. My panic escalated. In desperation, I hurled the flaming toy into the fireplace. As my father stepped into the room, flask in hand, I saw the aggravation on his face and braced myself.

He shuffled across the room in a manner only an experienced drunk could and fell into his armchair with a heavy ‘foomph’. He clearly was so drunk his perception was limited.

“Stop playing with your gizmos, boy. Go out and practice hunting. You have made good progress in tracking and evasion, but you have yet to make a single kill. I don’t want you coming home until you have put down something and brought the body home.”

I let out a silent sigh. “Yes, Father. May I please use the rifle? I can’t work the bow as well.”

“No. You need to know the drive and skill it takes to kill. There is a meaning in a kill made with a bow that is lost behind the trigger. Get your bow and quiver. And don’t come home until you have an animal corpse with you.”

“But... what if I catch an elk or something? I can’t drag that back.”

He gave a disgruntled sigh, causing me to flinch. “Then take a knife and bring me its head. I’ll bring the sled and drag it back myself.”

“Yes, Father,” I said in sullen resignation. As soon as I was out of his earshot, I began cursing under my breath.

I had a thought as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Stepping into the living room, I faced my father. “Hey, Father, if I make a noteworthy kill, can I please get a therra-node?”

His response was an indignant snort. “You can buy your own once you sell enough pelts.”

I clenched my teeth, trying to hide my sneer. “Then, if I bring something back, could you please tell me something about my mother? You’ve told me nothing about her.”

I watched his body respond with a flash of rage before he tamped it down. I could hear him grinding his shark-like teeth. “Maybe,” was all he said before aggressively pointing to the front door. I took the message. As I made my way out, he gave one last statement. “And Iver,” his tone was gentle, a shock after his display of aggression, “don’t forget my rule about monsters or the restless dead. You see a monster, hide and get back here. If you stumble across one of the restless dead, I don’t care if you think you can handle it. Get back here as fast as you can. Do not stop.”

I stepped out from the cabin and into our yard. Looking toward the sun, I guessed the time to be around 10:00 AM. I turned from the path that led to my misery in town and toward the wilds in the opposite direction. I unlocked the small gate to my father’s hunting path and passed from the confines of control into the freedom of the wilds.

Out there, creatures fled from me. To the rabbits and squirrels, I was a creature of power to be feared. I pressed deep into the woods, leaving minimal traces as Father had taught me. I wanted to know about my mother. Father refused to tell me anything other than she was a Darkling who dropped me off in the dead of night.

I pushed into the forest, searching for something big enough to be worth earning even the smallest bit of info. An hour into my hunt, I caught sight of something—a deer. A ten-point buck grazing beside a pond, completely unaware of me. I flashed a victorious smile as I pulled my bow, nocked an arrow, and drew the bowstring. I aimed for the stag’s heart.

I was about to loose the arrow when it raised its head and looked right at me. In that moment, when we locked eyes, I saw so much. Innocence. An understanding of its own life. A life full of fear, just as mine was, waiting for pain to come. I looked at that stag and saw myself. I couldn’t end its life.

My arm lost its strength. In a panic, I redirected my shot. As my fingers slipped, the arrow flew into a nearby tree. The stag fled with the twang of the bowstring. I turned and made my way back home in shame. I couldn’t kill it. I couldn’t take another life. What right did I have?

I knew Father would strike me for this, but I didn’t care. I would not take a life unless it deserved to be ended. As I made my way home, I tried to think of things I could kill without shame. Wolves, bears, or monsters? Creatures that killed others. Those were the ones who deserved to die. I started wondering about the right thing to do when I reached my front door just past noon. I threw open the door to the cabin, tears streaming down my face, seeking answers.

There, I found a sight that would remain with me for the rest of my life. A man dressed in black leathers, wearing a red skull mask, standing over my father, a dagger in his chest. As I opened the door, I watched as Fermose slid down the wall, his lifeblood spilling from him before the shadowed figure ripped the large dagger free. With that single motion, blood flooded from the gaping wound.

Time froze. My father bleeding out, a figure in black with a bloody dagger and a black box under his arm. I wasn’t Iver the Darkling. I was a son watching his father die. Rage, pure and hot, rose from within me. All I wanted was the death of the man who hurt my father. My bow was gone, my knife was missing. I reached back and grasped the only weapon I had: an arrow. I drew it, holding it like a dagger.

I clutched the arrow shaft so tight I broke it in two. I rushed the assassin, head-on, and with some form of luck, my father’s arrowhead bit deep into the attacker’s right shoulder joint. I heard a groan of pain. In response, I broke off what was left of the shaft, leaving the head several inches deep. He struck me with a backhand hard enough to send me to the floor.

I lay stunned, the world spinning, as I crawled to my father while the killer left.

“Father, I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop him.” I pressed my hands against the sucking chest wound, trying to staunch the bleeding.

Even as blood seeped between my fingers, I saw him smile at me.

“Don’t you fret over me now, boy. You’ve got bigger things to worry about.” He coughed up bloody phlegm. “Listen close now. That man. You need to find him.”

I wiped away tears with the back of my sleeve, leaving a bloody smear.

“It’s not to avenge me, Iver. That box he left with—your mother gave it to me for safekeeping. That box came with you the night Kella dropped you off. She made it clear it was never to see the light of day. Find it. And if you can, destroy it. Kella said it was of world-changing power.”

I watched in horror as my father gave into a coughing fit, scarlet spit painting his fist. “W-what? Father? Why does some damned box matter right now? Just tell me what I need to do to help you. Please, I can’t let you die.”

He gave me a weary smile, his gaze focusing somewhere behind me. “Be sure to tell your mother that I—” His words faded, and the light left his eyes.

I shook him, but his glazed eyes told the truth. My father was gone. He was dead, and anything I wanted to know was gone with him. Part of me wondered why I wasn’t dead as well, but grief overwhelmed me. The only man who had ever loved me was dead. I was alone.

I remembered something he had told me. In some cultures, those who died an honorable death would be burned in a pyre. That stuck in my head as I went to my room and took what was mine: my tools, my hunting leathers, my bow, my arrows, and Sasha, my childhood safety blanket.

In a haze of mourning, I prepared the cabin to be my father’s pyre. I poured out bottle after bottle of his scotch, letting it pool on the wood floor. I hauled in plastic jugs of liquid myst used to power the emergency generator. Six-gallon jugs sat in the center of the room. I desperately wanted this to be a dream.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to look at the corpse. Suddenly, it all set in. I was looking at a corpse. The corpse of someone I knew. The corpse of someone I loved. Sobs wracked my body. The man who raised me was dead. Images flashed through my mind, shifting from pleasant memories to memories of the beatings, the neglect, the closed-minded lifestyle he forced on me.

I clenched my teeth and fists in rage. This man raised me, mocked what he didn’t understand, and beat what he didn’t like. Now, he goes and dies, leaving me alone. I clawed my way to my feet and stormed up to the corpse to punch him in the mouth.

“YOU ABUSIVE ASS!” I wailed. “I HOPE YOU GO TO HELL FOR ALL THIS!”

I threw an aggressive kick into his ribs. I caught a flicker of movement. The thought that my father’s corpse had risen dominated my mind for a moment. But it was only a pocket notebook that had slipped out from his jacket. A small, crimson leather-bound book wrapped closed with a leather cord. The bottom right corner had sopped up a bit of blood. I didn’t want to take it, but it was a sign. My father had been a spiritual man. This was a juncture, a moment in my life where everything had changed.

I picked up and tucked away the journal. I went to the dining room table and picked up one of the electrical myst crystal batteries. Stepping back to the front door, I tipped over the liquid myst jug with my shoe. I tossed the battery into the center of the glowing puddle and turned to walk away, even as the concoction on the floor caught alight.

Looking back, I question a lot of my choices, but I stand by the thought that my father, Fermose, deserved a warrior’s funeral, no matter how much of an abusive ass he was.

I would soon grow to regret burning down my home. I didn’t dare call law enforcement; they’d put me in the adoption system, a meat grinder for anyone.

So there I stood before my burning home, with nothing more than the clothes on my back, the skills my father taught me, and an unquenchable loneliness.