Rook

Darkness. Darkness upon darkness. Nothingness upon nothingness. Until, from the ether, a whisper: He didn’t recognize the language, but he felt its meaning: Take care of your head. Then a realization. With a start, Rook sat bolt upright, clutching his chest, gasping for air. Except there was no fight in the air, it happily filled his lungs. And his chest was intact. Despite his sudden panic, and the lingering feeling of oblivion, all was okay. He put a hand over his bullseye just to be sure, and when he was satisfied, he let out a sigh. ...

“Are you sure you wanna go through with this?” An automated twin needle jab into the neck quickly brought up the name “SAVINIEN ROOK” on the coliseum signup display, along with a rotating 3d display of the namesake’s head. Other unique identifying features were also displayed, like fingerprints, retinal scan, a similarly rotating 3d display of his spinal column, and his lone tattoo. RACE: Human ORIGIN: Akabyssus [KR67Q3SQ15] TYPE: Carbon-based ...

(10 years after the events of The One Where Rook May Or May Not Have Slept With Ace’s Mom ) “SAVINIEN ROOK” boomed over the stadium speakers, and the rhythmic echo of ‘rook, rook, rook’ brought him back to the cheers from the audience. The retired champion looked out from his glass box in the stadium towards the field to see who was calling for him, but the hovering cameras found the culprit first, and every screen in the coliseum was filled with his face. ...

The interstellar train dropped them off at the orbital station, the elevator platform lowered them to the planet’s largest metropolitan center, and the intercity jumpwarp shot them to the nearest southern capital, and that’s where all convenient forms of public transportation ceased. Despite being a capital city, it was the planet’s most destitute. Not even the paid caravans were available past the morning rush. And so the crew legged it the rest of the way, carrying their luggage with them. A 3 hour hike through the dilapidated urban center, the yellow sands which were quickly encroaching upon the city, the mud, the thickening vegetation, into the humidity of the freelands. Along the way, the road shrank and shrank until the walking path was merely the telltale triplet set of tire tracks in the swamp. ...

CLANG! clatter The sound of two metal swords striking the cool tiled floor of the arena. Gasps and cheers from the surrounding audience, the sounds bouncing off of the cloth roof barring the heat of the twin suns above. A slow-motion video played from the hovering screens showing that Rook had managed to deftly wrap the flexible steel of his rapier around the claymore of his opponent and cast it aside with a flick of his wrist. But a sudden jolt from his opponents strong arms sent his own sword flying as well. ...

A row of slowly marching children, dressed in robes, moved as a conveyor belt towards and away from a singular point. Faint but determined chanting and instrumentation filled the air and the sky was just beginning to darken over the opulent half-domed sanctuary. Even the most energetic child was marching stoically, moved by reverence for the entire ritual. The singular point that the children were approaching and then departing was the Conduit of Fate. A child approached and knelt before the unseeing but seeing eyes of the Conduit, through whom Fate whispered on gently plucked harp strings. ...

For a while, the child wore the satchel of an odd-jobber, Path-less, largely ignored by society, performing small courier services just to try to find something, anything that called out to them. Until one day, the sound of a loud one-sided argument from the local drinkery caught their attention. From the noise, a blonde woman stormed out of the drinkery and into the plaza where the child stood. Shirtless, with a red triangular cloth around her waist, and a long thin sword on her left hip. Closely behind her was a disturbed and drunken man, shouting. ...

Prologue Chapter 1 The Prophecy Chapter 2 The Mentor [[Chapter 3 Practice]]

A million years from now, a million lightyears away, the age of space flourishes. Transport from planet to planet, system to system, galaxy to galaxy, is as regular as the morning commute. Peoples born on one planet can end their life on the opposite side of the universe with a satisfied smile, having seen all manner of strange and wonderful things that every world has to offer. And there are many different kinds of peoples. The slow and steady jelly-like slime folk, the famous councils of the mycelium, the burgeoning, yearning enlightenment of mechanicals. ...

Prologue Chapter 1 The Prophecy Chapter 2 The Mentor [[Chapter 3 Practice]] [[E1]]