//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: For an Untainted Dawn // by Hyperbole //------------------------------// For an Untainted Dawn Chapter 1 I don't know where I am I'd like to say that this day had nothing abnormal about it, nothing at all, but that would be the farthest thing from the truth I could possibly say. I've been through anything as remotely far from the pattern of daily life I had so accustomed myself to. Waking up in a place I didn't know about was one thing, I had a few friends who would pull something like that. Waking up in an entirely different climate? That shouldn't happen. If this was somehow some machination of one of my friends, I'd have to congratulate them, I had to admit this was pretty impressive. Then I'd have to punch them in the face for leaving me out here to freeze to death. If they didn't leave me my sweatshirt, I wouldn't have made it very long. I could see a few mountains in the distance, but they didn't give me any more information about where I was than I already had. They were placed sparsely - If you could describe mountain placement with that - around from what I could see. There seemed to be no method to the madness of the placement, which threw out any rules of how mountains formed that I had learned of. right out the window, then proceeded to exit the building and step all over them in pointy high-heels. My first priority had been to get a fire going or something, there were a bunch of nearby trees, I had managed to rip off a few branches to get something burning under an alcove I had found to protect me from the heat-ripping wind.. Rubbing sticks together when you're losing feeling in your fingers isn't the nicest thing to have to do. I had seen some lights up near one of the mountains I think. I'm pretty sure that's where they are, but my friends aren't ones to really go out and climb a mountain, they must have had ride, however that works. Hopefully they'll see my fire, and come back down to get me. I thought as I started to drift off, I know it wasn't the safest thing to do. But I put myself out of the wind, and I had a fire. I could probably spare a few hours to sleep, those branches were very high up and hard to get... The feeling of something prodding my side with something disturbed me from my slumber, I guess they decided I had enough I thought stretching out. Upon doing so, I heard an something gasp, and scramble away. That was confusing, sitting straight up now, I tried to look over towards where I'd heard the scrambling, but my eyes were still blurry from sleeping. All I could see was some grey-ish blob a few feet away. The notion that it could be one of my friends was gone. "What are you?" The grey blob inquires with a slightly feminine tone, I don't recognize the voice so something is even more wrong than I thought in the first place, the question doesn't help either. "What am I?" I echo back. "Who're you? I woke up here and I don't know where I am, and I would like some answer." I question, starting to stand up, I had enough, I wanted to get back home and go back to my routine that was normality . "I am Gwyndon Steeth of the Griffon Kingdom. and you are not supposed to be here. You haven't answered my question, what are you?" The voice was filled with caution, but firm. My vision was starting to clear up and was almost back to normal, and what I was hearing I was confused by, and my sight only added to the list. I was staring at something out of mythology. There was what could only be described as some sort of amalgamation between some sort of bird and a cat. With ashen-grey fur, and white feathers on her -what I presumed to be- head, they somehow curled upward near her... forehead? Into blue-tipped ones that looked reminiscent of hair on a person. "I-I..." I stuttered unsure of what to make of the situation. If my friends were in on this, I would have to give them some sort of medal, but my hopes that they were behind this were slowly dwindling. "I'm... Charlie Kovach... I'm a human." I never thought I would have to make a statement like that. Certainly not to a cat-bird. Still in shock, I nearly jumped out of my skin when she spoke up. "I've never heard of them, so you must be from pretty far out, are you some sort of refugee or a Seer? I can't believe how far this war is spreading, we just want to finish it." Now I was thoroughly worried. I had no clue where I was, and there was some war going on. "War? With who?" "You can't be serious." Gwyndon said incredulously, "What rock have you been living under... and if you don't know, then why are you here? We're in the middle of nowhere. I thought you might have been someone who finally realized the façade that the Tyrant has been pulling, and managed to get someone to tell you which direction to go." That question didn't help much at all. "Tyrant? I'm truly lost and confused, not to mention cold, can we please get some heat?" I said rubbing my hands together trying to get the cold out of them. "I... suppose I could take you to a check in station and then take you to the city, but you're still suspicious, instead of just the routine entry, you're going to have to submit to a mem-check." "A mem-what?" Will the questions ever end? "Memory check," She elaborated. "I'll carry you to the nearest one, come on." She said, getting up and stretching her wings, which I had previously not noticed. There were multiple things wrong with that. She didn't look nearly strong enough to carry me, and I absolutely hated heights. Voicing my feelings of this, she merely smiled evily, and rushed up grabbing onto my wrist with a hand... claw? She started dragging me outwards from the alcove that I had found myself. "Let's go!" She semi-shouted. She had gotten me outside, and seemed to be enjoying the fact that I was starting to go into a panic because of how much I didn't like getting off of the ground. "Let's not!" I shouted back. When we were both outside, she pushed me forward a little, then when I was recovering from my stumble, she grabbed me under the arms and pulled me off of the ground. "Come on, Charlie, you've never flown at all?" "And I had planned to keep it that way!" I replied, trying to get a firmer grip onto her, as we ascended higher and higher. All she did was laugh and keep ascending. After some time of panicking, I was starting to calm down, but still wasn't enjoying any second of it. Starting to look around, I realized how beautiful the surrounding area was, the snow covered mountains reflecting the light of the sunset all around, the near entirely undisturbed snow doing so also, made for quite a sight. Feeling her angle herself towards.. Yeah, that was a tower. I guess that would be where we were heading, looking more closely, I could see a few more spaced throughout the climb up the mountain with a cluster placed at the top, until they reached the most amazing thing. A city was floating about the top of the mountain, it was defying any law of physics that I knew, and just seemed so impossible that I was just awestruck and couldn't even form any words. It looked as if the entire city had been ripped right out of the ground, then suspended in mid-air. "It's something, isn't it?" Gwyndon said, pulling my attention upwards towards her, trying to get a better view, but I couldn't get a good look at her face so I resumed looking at the impossible city. As we were getting closer to one of the towers near the base of the mountain she started to decline in height, "But you're not going anywhere until we get you cleared."