Spring Break

So I’m hoping everyone out there had a great spring break because I know I sure did. I may not have had the most extravagant of a spring break, I didn’t get to travel anywhere cool like some of my friends here at the college did: Hawaii, Florida, California; but even though it wasn’t the coolest break it may have been the most rewarding.

I went home for spring break, back to the beautiful Sioux City, Iowa, where I settled into the house and called up some friends who were also in town. Before I did that though I knew that I was going to need some work to keep me occupied, though I had friends that lived in Sioux City they worked during the day which meant that I would be stuck at home which would not only be boring but also unhealthy (because I tend to eat when I’m bored at home). So not wanting to go through the hassle of going back to any of my current employments: Fareway, Carousel, etc that would require me to set up a schedule etc and would have been too much hassle just for one week of work; I rather decided to post an ad on Craigslist offering to do some general labor: moving, lifting, etc as well as offering to do video and photography work as well. I was a little skeptical at first; we all know the stories about the “bad people” on Craigslist. Anyways, I quickly got a response from a nice woman who needed help with yard work and various moving. I went to her house and everything was legit, possibly some of the hardest most physically strenuous work I’ve done in my life for sure but for $10/hr I figured it was worth it. She asked me back the next day and the day after that totaling me in the end at $120, a nice stash of cash to bring back to the college with me (though to be totally honest I spent most of it while I was still at home). So bottom-line this entire story goes out to all those college students and college students in the future that your spring break/breaks in general don’t have to be boring and unfruitful.

Aside from working and making much needed money I had a lot of opportunities to hang out with some of my Sioux City friends which I greatly appreciated. My friend Jordan, who is soon to be married, let me stay overnight at his place just like we did all the time in the good-ole-days giving us time to reminisce. I got to go with him and his fiance and her friend (who I will be eternally grateful to) who took me out to see Insurgent with them.

Quinn, the one I mention in the My Life A Fan Fiction stories is always one of my go-to guys while I’m in town and we had a good time chilling together. We found ourselves at Perkins a lot (since it’s open 24/7 and we stay up pretty late) just talking and having a slice of pie. At one point we went down to South Sioux City where a friend from high school worked and messed with her until she got off. From this experience I got my first lottery ticket (I do not condone the buying of such items but I won a bet and it was pretty much bought for me) which got me some winnings of about $2.

Interesting story that goes along with what I was just talking about. After the whole lottery ordeal we went with this girl to Perkins where we sat down and snacked on pie while we all talked when in walked this guy, younger handsome looking possibly a college student, who sat a couple tables ahead of us all by himself and ordered some food. He noticed us conversing (which wasn’t hard we were kind of loud) and decided to watch us (very obviously) and listen in. We all noticed it except for Kayla (the girl with us) who was sitting with her back turned to the guy. Anyways he continued to stare which was freaking Quinn and I out and I even once looked over at him and smiled and nodded, very passively but nevertheless, and it did nothing the man did not look away. At one point I made a reference to Avatar: The Last Airbender (freaking love that series) which this guy picked up on and said, “dude you like last airbender? Nice!” and reached over to give me a high-five which I returned cause I’m just a nice guy like that. Anyways he got his food which he would eat a little of and then go back to watching us and once finished with his food left and paid without a goodbye. If you’re the guy and you’re reading this I’m not mad or anything but definitely hit me up in the comments and let me know what’s up.

The whole break had it’s ups and downs such as finding that someone had taken a dump in the Hamilton blvd McDonald’s urinal which was disgusting and if you did it and you’re reading this, dude that’s not funny it’s disgusting seriously. But thankfully the break had more ups than downs and that’s what’s important.

Chapter 7: The Mouth of the Cave

Once Caleb had called his friend to “take charge” of the city in our absence, we finally got moving on with our quest. We made our way across the rocky plains of Galgorra where we discovered a strange looking cave. The scraggly rocks around it forming some kind of a mouth, and strangely enough the rock formations above seemed to look like a pair of massive squinting eyes looking down as if watching everything that entered its jaws.

“Well if that isn’t one of the scariest looking rocks I’ve ever seen!” Ben laughs looking up and into the eyes of the stone beast of a cave.

“Should we go inside?” I ask turning to the others.

“Do we have to?” Ben looked nervously inside. “Not a huge fan of caves to be honest.”

“What’s wrong with caves?” Caleb asks as he pushes past us and walks right on in without a care in the world. We hold our breath as he enters expecting the worst, but nothing happens. Caleb stands a few steps inside and turns to look at us awaiting us to follow. We slowly walk inside each of us quickly looking back and forth every step we take checking for traps or creatures that might be hiding inside the walls interior. Strangely enough there was light in the tunnel, a glowing yellow-orange light as if there were torches burning all along the way but there was nothing. The walls were bare but had a couple shadows here and there.

“Where is this light coming from?” Ben finally verbalizes the question on all of our minds. Since we have no idea we all shrug and continue down the tunnel in silence. The glow continues, not rising or dimming but simply continues with that ominous yellow-orange glimmer. Soon we reach a large open cavern stretching about 10-feet above us into a dome-shaped ceiling. Around the walls was the source of the mysterious lights, words and drawings carved into the rock that emanated some kind of magic allowing it to glow.

“Woah!” I state in awe as we walk into the center of the cavern and stare at the majestic work of art around us.

“What do they say?” Ben says leaning into a wall and putting his hand over the writing. I take a closer look and realize the text is in an unfamiliar language. I recognize the words but I cannot make out what they say. Suddenly Caleb takes a step closer and nods.

“Can you read this?” I ask surprised at the possibility. It’s not that I doubt the guy or anything but usually rogues aren’t very well-educated in scholarly things.

“It’s the ancient language of the dark elves; it would seem we’ve stumbled across an incredibly rare and powerful artifact.”

“You mean the writing?” Ben asks confusedly.

“No it’s located somewhere inside this cave.” Caleb looks around. “I don’t see any doorways though.”

“Well what does all this writing say?” I ask pleading with Caleb to reveal the secret.

“It’s a story,” he smiles. “Well more of a legend, I remember hearing pieces about it when I was a child. It’s from many centuries ago about a dark elf general known as Devanice.”

“Devanice!” Michael exclaims.

“You know of Devanice? Hah! Of course you would. Your grandfather’s grandfather…”

“Fought alongside of him in the Battle of Orvenhelm,” Michael grins. This is possibly the first time I’ve ever seen the man smile.

“But the treasure mentioned before,” Ben smiles nudging towards Caleb to explain more about the valuables possibly hidden inside this cave. Caleb smiles.

“To tell you where the treasure is without telling of the great General Devanice would be a great offense to my heritage and my people, even though I am a rogue I would not disrespect them in this way. On one side of the wall tells the story of Devanice, on the other the cave and how to get to the treasure, I will start with the story.”

Ben sits on the ground and sets down his axe that he has been carrying since we entered the cave. “Alright let’s get this over with.” He sighs and crosses his legs like an obedient child in school awaiting his teacher’s lesson.

Caleb takes a deep breathe before beginning to retell the tale of a man long since dead.

Chapter 6: The Necrostaff

“What is that thing?” Ben asks his eyes sparkle with wonderment as he stares at the magically infused item.

“It’s a wizard’s staff,” I reply. “Or rather some kind of dark-wizards staff since necromancy is illegal.”

“So this’s causing the zombies?” Caleb asks.

“It must be, I’m a little confused though,” I admit.

“Why’s that?”

“Well a staff is simply a tool for a wizard to amplify a wizard’s power it shouldn’t be able to work on its own.”

“So there must be a wizard nearby, right?”

“Well that’s just it, a wizard has to be physically in-contact with the staff for it to work. He or she can’t just be nearby, this is very odd indeed.” I reach out to touch the staff but my hand is shocked forcing me to draw back in pain. “It would also seem that whoever put this here didn’t want anyone tampering with it.”

“So what do we do?” Ben asks taking several precautious steps away from the object. Suddenly there is a thud at the door on the first floor, loud enough for all of us to hear. Caleb rushes to a window and looks down.

“The zombies are here,” he states urgently looking to us to hurry. I turn to the staff and continue to examine it hoping to find some kind of weakness. If I only had some mana left I could easily disable the force field around it. Suddenly I get an idea.

“Quick I need a stick!” I turn to the other two who momentarily give me quizzical stares before rushing around the room searching for the object of my request. Ben hustles downstairs and returns holding a broomstick. “Perfect,” I smile as he hands it over to me. “Enibus,” I whisper waving my hand over the stick enchanting it.

“You see a wizard can enchant his staff using no mana,” I begin to explain the other two behind me listening intently. “As I said earlier, though, the staff itself has no magical capabilities without the user and even with the user is only a tool of the wizard’s desire. Enchanting it allows the flow of magic within the stick, now with all that said I should be able to do this.” I push the staff forward and touch the edge of the force-field. The stick lightly pushes away like trying to touch a north-pole and south-pole magnet.

“Riberasu Barice Kyendu,” I say steadying the stick. The purple resisting mist slowly releases from around the standing staff and is absorbed into my own. The fog travels up the staff and dissipates inside until it’s all gone.

“Woah, what was that?” Ben asks in amazement.

“I absorbed the mana used to create the protective barrier around the Necro-staff into this one,” I explain with a smile.

“Cool…so this is a magic stick now? What can it do?”

“Well nothing without me telling it to,” I state matter-of-factly. “Of course I’ll probably just absorb the mana inside into myself and toss this thing.”

“What about the big scary one?” Ben points at the Necro-Staff that still stands in front of us that still retains that purple glow letting us know it’s still being used. I reach towards it and touch it, only with the tips of my fingers at first to make sure there were no other magical traps waiting. Nothing, the staffs leans off balance as I touch it. I grab it before it can fall over and cringe, waiting for something, but nothing happens. I look to Ben and Caleb who are both holding their breath.  I release a deep sigh of relief as I stand up and hold the staff above my head. The purple aura still revolves around it.

Caleb looks out the window, “Um they’re still up and moving.”

“Oh sorry my bad,” I lower the staff and wave my hand over it releasing some of the energy I absorbed from the other staff just moments ago. “Owisu Incantores,” the purple glow begins to dissipate. Caleb and Ben both look out the window this time.

“Haha!” Ben laughs turning back towards me. “No more zombies!” He lifts his arms into the air in celebration. I smile but not as big a grin as his, I’m still confused.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asks stepping towards me.

“I just don’t understand how it was retaining the spell without a caster.” I reply examining the staff but seeing nothing that answers my question.

“Who knows, but what’s important is that the dead are all back to being dead and we’re all still alive.” I nod in agreement when suddenly a thud comes from the stairway. We all turn our hands outstretched prepared for battle. The footsteps are heavy and soon we can see a foot appear at the top of the stairs, then another. Within moments a hulking mass of armored flesh appears, it’s Michael.

“Hey buddy you’re awake,” I greet the knight as he slowly makes his way down the stairs his eyes glaring at me in anger.

“Never throw me again!” He states gruffly before looking out the window at the lifeless heaps below. “I’m guessing you took care of the issue?” He asks looking towards me.

“Yep,” I smile back. “All taken care of.”

It took us about a day to clean up all the bodies from the town, but now that they weren’t fighting back it was much easier. We brought them outside the village and burned them so that no more could they rise from the dead. We collected everything worth saving and hid it away in the basement of the mansion we had found the staff in. As for the staff itself, I decided to hold onto it figuring there was some kind of powerful magic inside of it making it useful to me. Only issue was that it was infused with dark magic, so until I could find a priest to cleanse it I wouldn’t be able to use it for more than the stick itself. Strangely enough though we found more items infused with dark magic inside various homes hidden in basements and attics which we hid in another house. I placed some barriers around it to ensure no one could play with the dark items and cause any more trouble here.

“So technically one could say this town is ours now,” Ben said jokingly.

“How do you figure?” I ask.

“Well I was just kidding.”

“No your right,” Caleb states stepping in a piece of loot in his hand. “The law states that you can set yourself up as the lord of any township you create.”

“But we didn’t create this one,” I remind him.

“True but I don’t see anyone here that would stop you from claiming it.”

“Why are you saying I should claim it?”

“Well you’re the one that seemed so interested,” a soft chuckle flows from inside his hood as he goes back to looking at his loot. I think about what he said, it would be cool to own a town, and it would make a great home base for our mercenary guild Ben had mentioned earlier. And if we did a lot of exporting it would bring in lots of money which would be perfect for us since we’d be bringing in plenty of loot from our quests, this could turn out very profitable.

“Alright let’s do it,” I say turning to my comrades who all look at me like I’m crazy.

“What do you mean ‘let’s’,” Ben asks his eyebrow raised in confusion.

“Well I’m not running it myself. We’ll start the mercenary guild like Ben suggested and have the town as our means of supplies and income. We can use this mansion as our base that way we always have somewhere to return to after our various battles and ventures.”

“I like it, but how are we going to stake claim on it until we get back from this whole warlock thing?” Ben makes a good point and I pause contemplating the issue.

“I know a way,” Caleb steps forward. “I have a friend that could use a place to…hide out for a while until some things blow over. He can take charge of it for now.”

“And I can send an official message to Lord Quinn staking our claim over this village until we return, that way it’s all legal.” Michael states. His idea surprises us all.

“Gee Michael I didn’t realize you knew so much about the legal system!” Ben says in amazement.

“After years of working for Quinn and dealing with those who DON’T follow the rules, you catch on after a while.”

“Well then it’s settled,” I smile. “We shall run this village and call it Besimca!”

“Why Basimca?”

“It is part of the Language of Magic and it means ‘Those who fight together.’”

“I like it!” Ben smiles and the others nod in agreement.

Star Wars Battlefront Update!

Finally we have some official news on the Star Wars Battlefront game to be debuted this April at the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California. I am super excited for this! As many of you may know I am a huge Star Wars Battlefront fan and if there was one video game to represent my life it would be Star Wars Battlefront II. The game was a huge part of my childhood and teenage years so to see them bringing it back is a huge excitement for me. Check out the full article here at Gamespot.com, check out the teaser trailer showing the creators of the game and what they did to put it together, and feel free to comment about how excited you are for the new game.

Chapter 7: Finding Michael

“MICHAEL!” We all shout in excitement having finally found our missing friend. Michael jumped back in surprise at seeing a whole group suddenly in front of him, then, realizing it was us slowly pulled himself forward.

“Guys what’s up you come to work out with me?” Michael asks with a smile. We all stare silently unsure of what to say at this point.

“What?” Michael places his hand on his face, feeling around to make sure he didn’t have anything on it that didn’t belong there.

“Dude what are you doing,” I ask looking at Michael’s work. His cell phone was connected to a pair of earplugs and laying on the counter behind him next to the blender he had been filling with fruits and other ingredients.

“Making myself a smoothie before getting back to my workout,” Michael explains as he continues about making his shake. “I can make you guys one if you want, you want to wait five minutes after drinking it before you start lifting though, that gives the protein time to kick in.”

“Dude do you even realize what’s happening right now?” Ben practically shouts trying to imply the seriousness of the situation Michael is apparently completely unaware of.

“Um no,” Michael stammers looking up for only a moment to display the slightest look of interest and confusion before turning back around and tossing three slices of peeled kiwi into the blender.

“Dude it’s the zombie apocalypse!” Ben sharply explains. This catches Michael’s attention and he stops to slowly turn back to us.

“Wait, seriously?” He asks. I’m surprised at his reaction and the fact that he is so quick to believe us, even aside from all the pranks we’ve pulled on the guy a zombie apocalypse isn’t usually so easy to incite to someone without having a half-rotted walking corpse right in front of them.

“Yes!” Ben enunciates throwing his hands into the air. “How do you not know this!?” Michael takes a deep breath as if preparing to relay a long story.

“Well,” he starts. “I got here at 9am and went through my usual routine, half-an-hour on the treadmill, half-an-hour on the stationary bike, then rehydrate up here with a high energy shake. Then I move onto some stretches to loosen up my body before I hit the weights…”

“I don’t mean your routine dude, I want to know how you could possibly miss the concept of the zombie apocalypse happening in and outside of this building!”

“I’m getting to that!” Michael says with a hint of annoyance towards Ben for interrupting. “Anyways, after my stretches are done I come over here to get my high protein shake; this helps build more muscle once I start lifting.” Ben growls and gives Michael an evil glare, a non-verbal cue that Michael better hurry up with the story. “Ok well basically I come over here to order it and then something comes over all of the TVs at the same time, it’s the news. So I’m trying to listen in right? Then the dude making my smoothie flips the blender on making me miss the whole story. So I turn around and people are like rushing out of here.”

“And that didn’t trigger anything with you?” Ben asks his words thick with judgment.

“Well I wasn’t going to ruin my workout just cause a bunch of people leave, plus I was waiting on my smoothie.” At this point all of our faces are buried deep into our palms in embarrassment. “ As I’m waiting though the dude making it stops as an announcement comes over the speaker saying that all the staff is to leave everything where it is and to go to their homes because of some kind of emergency. Anyways the guy starts to leave and I’m like ‘hey dude what about my smoothie?’ and he just tosses me his keys and walks out the door saying something about making it myself.”

“And you didn’t think YOU should leave?” Quinn exclaims.

“Nah bro, like I said they said all staff was supposed to leave, they didn’t say subscribers had to go.”

“I like how you use the word subscribers instead of customer,” I chuckle noting Michael’s choice of words.

“So yeah, I’ve just been chilling here since then working out and drinking smoothies.” At this point Michael turns back around and continues his blendable concoction. I turn to look at Ben who looks like he’s about to explode.

“Why didn’t you answer our calls?!” His voice booms and resonates throughout the room bouncing off the various workout equipment, and ringing off the metal. Michael looks at us, then reaches past the blender and picks up his phone. We watch as he unlocks it and goes to the recent calls tab a little red circle above the missed calls section reading the number twenty three.

“Oh,” Michael muses and then clears the screen. “I changed my settings so that when I’m listening to music notifications for calls and texts don’t interrupt, helps me get into the zone you know.” Ben began to growl with annoyance when Caleb suddenly raised his hand.

“Guys do you hear that?” He asked looking worried. The room suddenly went silent as everyone held their breath. Sure enough they all could hear something coming from downstairs. The group slowly tip-toed their way to the door and opened it, from down the stairwell they could hear the sound echoing up the incline: growling, deep guttural growling; there was only one thing that made a sound like that: zombies a lot of zombies. Ben pushed past us and looked over the edge of the wall separating us from the deep drop to the first floor. We followed and joined his eyes with our own to experience the sight below. Zombies, about thirty at least, all piling on top of another attempting to get up the stairs, some managing a few stairs already thanks to their friends pushing them upwards in a mindless attempt to get the delicious flesh we featured.

“How are we going to get past that?” I breathed not taking my eyes away from the horror below. Ben stares at me eyes wide with fear.

“I don’t know.”

Attack on Titan Tribute Game

So I recently discovered something amazing that apparently people already knew about so I’m somewhat upset that no one bothered to tell me about it but I’ll forgive all of you who knew. Anyways, I recently was researching when they were going to come out with an online MMORPG for Sword Art Online, one of my two favorite anime alongside Attack on Titan, and I wondered to myself what about Attack on Titan? I know there is a live-action movie in the making which is going to be sweet!

But what about a game!? I want to swing around on my gear swinging swords and slicing open the napes of titan’s necks and saving all of humanity! And what do you know but in my search I discovered this:

The Attack on Titan Tribute Game. The game was created by Feng Lee, a Chinese game designer. The game lets you play as various characters: Eren, Mikasa, Levi, Armin, Marco and more each with their own special ability. You can swing around cities and forests on your gear, kill titans, and even play multiplayer online. The game even lets you play as a titan or even titan Eren! You can even fight the female titan, which I have yet to beat. The game is incredibly well designed and even though it still has some graphics issues it’s incredibly fun to play and would definitely recommend checking it out!

To download the game check it out here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/vbm…

And to play the game online go here: http://fenglee.com/game/aog/

Have fun and feel free to comment about other anime-based games out there that you think are really cool so I can check them out! Don’t forget to follow Gorssky4Ever!

Chapter 5: Finding the Source

“I’m glad you could all make it to this meeting,” I look around at my friends each breathing so heavily you’d wonder if they had been under water for the last hour. They stare back at me with serious looks obviously not appreciating my sense of humor. We stand in a room near the top of the tower a wooden table and sett of chairs in the center and windows on the walls around

“So why are there so many of these things?” Ben asks barely able to make his words out between gasps.

“There are a few ways to bring back the dead but my guess is that there’s a wizard here in this town somewhere that’s covered the town in a necromancy spell.” I reply searching my spellbook for a counter.

“So how do we stop it?” Caleb sits at a wooden table flipping his dagger in the air.

“Well there’s about as many ways to put the dead back in the ground as there are to pull them out which is a lot, but if there’s a wizard somewhere in town right now then we need to take care of him first.”

“Ok so how do we find him?” Ben asks as he sits down across from Caleb.

“Well I could do it pretty easily except I’m all out of mana,” I say as I sit down leaving Michael standing alone. “I could have more but it’ll take an hour or so and we don’t have that kind of time to waste.”

“Here come here,” Caleb reaches his hands out to me. I stare at them, my eyebrow raised in question as I slowly reach my hands out and place them into his.

“Whatchya doing there buddy?” Ben chuckles and nudges Michael who moved next to him to see what was going on. Caleb takes a deep breath an closes his eyes.

“Komucan Majjia,” he whispers. Suddenly a glowing blue ball appears at the top of Caleb’s arm, so bright that you could see it from under his sleeve. It moves down his arm and into his hand heading towards mine. As it touched the tips of my fingers I can feel a cooling sensation, not freezing but rather refreshing. It entered my hand and moved up my arm before fading into my chest, as it does I feel my magic regenerate slightly a pulse of energy flowed throughout my body.

“Woah!” I breathe out a cool wisp of air leaving my mouth leaving a cool sensation on the inside like when you chew mint leaves in the winter and take a sharp breath in.

“Do your thing,” Caleb states kicking his legs back up on the table and leaning back into his chair. I open a window and hold out my hand, I close my eyes ad chant a spell.

“Majjia Quiereku,” I open my eyes and the world is covered in a green tint. I can see into buildings and various colors appear. The spell allows me to seek out anything magic: people or objects with magic properties. Below us are the zombies all glowing blue to signify magic being used on someone or something. In various buildings I can make out glowing colored objects with magical properties, each color representing a magical element the object pertains to. I search around before seeing what I’m looking for: a large glowing purple orb surrounding an entire floor of a building near the center of town. The orb has a dark center with doom-like tentacles jutting out in every direction. Purple was the color of necromancy which meant the source of the magic bringing the dead to life. I close my eyes and close the spell, when I reopen my eyes everything is normal.

“There is a 4-story mansion with a heavy necromantic presence surrounding the third floor, that’s where the wizard is hiding.” I say turning to my colleagues.

“Alright now we just have to get there,” Ben says standing from his seat.

“We can just go through the rooftops to avoid the zombies,” I state simply.

“Not the easiest thing for me,” Michael speaks his first words since we’ve gotten there. He steps out from behind Ben and stands straight as if called to attention by his commanding officer. “I will battle my way through the dead and meet you all there as soon as possible.”

“I have a better idea.”

Moments later the three of us: Ben, Caleb, and I rush across the rooftops of the various houses and other buildings standing up along the streets. My hand is raised in the air and slowly becoming more and more tired, above is Michael hovering weightlessly surrounded by an iridescent blue aura proving the use of magic.

“My mana is almost out!” I shout to my comrades as we leap to the next house-top. The mansion we’re aiming for is only a couple blocks away. I look up to Michael feeling the weight already increasing, a sign that my magic is about to run out. “I’m sorry buddy!” He looks down at me and quickly realizes what I’m about to do, his face drops and is replaced by features of horror as my wrist angles back. He is about to yell something as I throw my arm forward but all that leaves his mouth is a loud ‘AAAHHHHHH!!!’ He flies through the air straight towards the mansion, I’ve never attested to my sense of aim but this throw is looking pretty good. He comes closer and closer to the building; I can no longer hear his screams, not due to distance but rather due to the fact that he has gone totally silent, all his breath has been taken away at the terrifying possibilities at what was about to become. He crashes head-first into a window on the top floor and his body disappears inside.

The three of us leap forward landing on the edge of the roof just in front of the mansion and bend our knees to add a little more to our jump before pushing off the structure and gliding straight towards our desired location, entering one at a time through the conveniently broken window on the top floor.

As we slide inside landing on our knees, we find Michael lying sprawled on the floor with his eyes closed. I kneel next to him to check if he is ok. Suddenly a soft whisper exits his lips.

“I would have preferred walking.” As soon as the words drift out he closes his eyes and blacks out.

“I guess we’ll have to come back for him,” I chuckle looking up at my other two friends who are picking themselves from the floor which is covered with glass and other debris from the smashed window. Over to the corner of the attic-like room is a set of stairs leading downwards to the third floor. Caleb points towards it and the three of us make our way down silently. Whoever was down there probably already heard us but you can never be too cautious. As we make our way down we can see the floor below, Caleb crawls to the ground and peaks in.

“No one I can see,” he whispers and motions for us to follow as he stands up and we walk in. The room is totally empty except for a wooden staff in the center of the floor. The staff stands straight up not protruding into the floor but rather is held up by some kind of magical force. Atop the staff is a glowing purple orb. The top of the staff curves around it in a crescent-like shape holding the orb in a hug. The artifact glows purple and as we approach it I can feel an almost death-like sensation flood over my body.

Chapter 6: Mr. Swimtastic

We stare through the glass door looking in every direction possible for any signs of danger.

“Looks clear to me,” Caleb whispers. I slowly open the door and peak out, still nothing. Then putting my right foot out, and my left foot out, I step onto the wet tile floor. I stand there alone, the others inside the door still awaiting my signal. As I’m about to motion to them I stop, there is a shuffling sound to my right. I turn to look and see the lifeguard station collapsed but moving. I motion for everyone to wait as I make my way towards it, floaties and other swim gear piled alongside it covering whatever was causing the movement. I put the sword I’m currently holding back into its sheath and quickly remove the longest one; with this I have the longest reach. I hold it out in front of me; I am now only two and a half steps away from the moving who-knows-what, I reach out with my weapon and using the tips toss some of the debris into the air. I quickly jump back as the unknown lurches towards me revealing itself. I find myself looking straight at a very muscular lifeguard zombie, a pair of swim-trunks covering his lower half with their brand name reading: “Mr. Swimtastic.”

My friends must have noticed my surprise because only a second later and they are by my side weapons at the ready. I hold out my arms to show them everything is ok and they stop to view the oddity in front of me. The man is trapped under a heavy enough object that he cannot get out and simply reaches for us his eyes glazed back in undead blindness, he cannot see only hear; mindlessly he shifts, occasionally kicking his legs in an attempt to remove the wreckage that rests atop him.

“Hm,” we all hum as we watch the creature struggle.

“What should we do with him?” I ask looking around for ideas. Caleb steps forward and reaches into his jacket and pulls out one of several large and well-sharpened knives.

“I got this,” he claims as he raises the knife high above his head reaching out as much as possible to avoid getting too close to the enemy below. When he decides he is at the right spot he lets go of the blade; we watch as it falls towards the monster’s head. There’s a quick clinking noise as his blade lightly grazes Mr. Swimtastic and then his the floor; the zombie, being attracted to sound, quickly throws his head towards the blade and begins to gnash his teeth in its direction trying to get a bite at his would-be attacker.

“Ha! Try again!” Quinn scoffs at Caleb as his friend stares sadly down at his failure.

“Now I can’t get my knife back,” Caleb lightly cries realizing that reaching for that knife would potentially get him bitten which was the last thing he wanted to do. Suddenly we hear a noise; a loud grinding coming that echoed through the room, bouncing off of every wall. The echo kept us from being able to pinpoint the location of the noise but looking around we knew it obviously wasn’t anything in here.

“C’mon,” Ben shouts rushing back towards the changing rooms.

“Wait what about this guy?” Caleb stands pointing at the undead lifeguard. I stop in my rush to follow Quinn and Ben sword raised above my head and slice down quickly lopping off the monster’s neck and everything attached.

“There,” I shout. Caleb bends to pick up his knife while I return to following the other two, just before leaving I grab a towel off the shelf by the changing room door containing hundreds of towels; I grab one and use it to wipe off my blade before tossing it and heading out of the pool room.

We quickly make our way back through the locker room and into the front lobby.

“I’m guessing it came from upstairs,” Ben shout back to us as we run up to the second floor. There’s no need to be quiet now, any undead in the area had to have heard that sound and are going to be focusing on that rather than us.

As we reach the top of the stairwell we find ourselves on the cardio floor offering ellipticals, stationery bikes, treadmills, and other similar equipment. We take a quick look around and see nothing but the equipment.

“It must be the next floor,” Ben states already spinning around and stepping onto the first step. Suddenly we hear it again, a loud grinding noise.

“Is that a blender?” Caleb asked as we rush up the staircase.

We make it to floor number three, the top floor of the building. Inside we see weight-lifting equipment: bars, lifts, and weights all neatly organized throughout the room. We come around the corner and see something at the far end of the room, the smoothie bar. As we come closer we notice movement behind it, then the noise again.

“Gggrrrrrrr,” we all jump in surprise. The sound WAS a blender and someone behind the bar was operating it. We approached weapons drawn and at the ready awaiting any sudden movement. The person moved quickly, too quickly for a zombie; grabbing a banana, pouring a small amount of protein into the blender in front of him, then spinning around to grab some more fruit causing him to find himself staring right into our eyes.

“MICHAEL!”

Needing Your Opinion

SO I’m having ideas and I know that’s a scary concept but nevertheless. I’m thinking of doing some drawings/sketches for the My Life: A Fan-Fiction stories. I think I’d go with one sketch per chapter. I’ll admit I’m far from being a great or even good artist but I feel like I can make something and giving one’s audience a visual makes things more eye-catching. The drawings would be some kind of representation of the chapter’s content and as I mentioned before be a cool visualization to make the stories more eye-catching.

I have the idea that once I’m done with some of these stories (which is going to be a decently long time) I’d kind of like to put it together in a book. I’ve played around with Blurb before and I feel like I’d use that to put together a “nifty” (yes I used the word) book. So I want to know what you all think. Are the drawing and book ideas good ones?

As a bonus I’d also like to reiterate that I am also working on the whole language of magic that is used in The Land We Wander: A Fantasy Tale. If the book idea is a good one then that’s where I’ll publish the language I’ve created. Thank you all for reading and please feel free to reply and let me know what you think.

Chapter 4: City of the Dead

“You killed him!” I attempt to hide my shouting under a harsh raspy whisper.

“He rushed me!” Caleb Replies. “Plus don’t you notice?”

“Notice what?”

“There’s no blood,” I slowly look down to view the headless corpse at my feet and realize he’s right, not a drop of blood flows from the body. The head rests face down on the beings back and is still moving in a strange repeating motion. I kick it and it rolls onto the ground. My eyes meet with a horrifying sight as the dull, blank eyes stare back at me and the mouth chomps at me.

“Ahhhh!” I shout jumping back. Caleb drops his knife into its head and it ceases movement. “What the Azorack!”

“It’s undead,” Caleb states emotionlessly and looks up to the rest of the village. “Look.” I tilt my head up and stare in horror to see about a hundred more silently dragging themselves towards us. Caleb and I back away slowly until we find our backs touching the door to the city.

“Hey! What’s going on in there?” Ben’s muffled voice shouts from behind the blockage.

“We figured out why the whole town is so quiet,” I shout in reply looking in every direction for a way out but the truth is that Caleb and I are surrounded.

“Well maybe you could open the door?” Ben shouts back. Oh yeah I totally forgot about that. I look to my left and see a tower stretching up to the top of the wall. Some rops stretched out to the door and a mechanical crank of some kind inside.

“Caleb can you get to the tower?” I ask nervously. But as I turn to look at the rogue he’s already gone. I look the back to the tower where he is already halfway up. I sigh with relief but suck it back in when I look to my front to find the zombies only 10 feet away. I calm my mind and pull out a small booklet from my cloak: my spellbook. I quickly open it up and flip through the nicely organized pages finding the spell I desire.

“Kukaires Nunda!” I say and a wave of invisible energy flies out pushing back the undead and knocking them to the ground. Suddenly the door behind me flies open. Caleb finally made it, and just in time too, the zombies are already picking themselves off the ground. Ben leaps inside and rushes the nearest undead swinging his massive battle axe splitting the monster’s body in half. Michael follows close behind his sword drawn. With every swing of his blade a head flies landing yards away from the rest of the body. A zombie manages its way through the chaos only to receive an arrow to the head by Caleb from the wall. I stand behind by the door and hold out my hand palm-up to a monster.

“Krecootus!” I shout and the creature bursts into hundreds of fleshy bits. I turn to a small group, “Hinobus Ignata!” A fireball leaps from my hand and crashes into the dead igniting them and leaving piles of ashes where they stood within seconds. I take a look around to see the carnage before us yet looking back up the zombies keep on coming. I rush to Ben’s side and narrowly dodge an axe swing as he obliterates the monster in front of him.

“Oh sorry bro, what’s up?” He shouts above the sounds of battle.

“We’re not making a lot of progress!” I shout back. “They keep coming!”

“It’s ok I have plenty more energy!”

“Sure but Caleb will run out of arrows and I’m almost out of Mana!”

“No worries Michael and I can take the rest!”

“But they’re not stopping!”

“Well they have to run out eventually,” Ben slices a zombie in half from the top down and pauses, his axe in the ground, trying to catch his breath. “Alright you’re right I’m getting tired but what can we do?” He picks his axe back up and knocks another zombie to the ground before smashing the head under his weapon.

“There has to be someone or something causing these zombies to spawn!” I explain.

“Alright tell me more!” Ben shouts in exhaustion.

“Ok but we need to take cover!” I look around for somewhere to get away from the dead. About four houses down is a watch tower standing high over the city lined with stone and about six-stories high. Perfect. Michael suddenly appears behind me slowly being pushed back by the onslaught of undead hordes. “Oblitiere,” I shout and three zombies heads implode into nothingness allowing Michael to turn away and look at us.

“What’s the plan?” He asks.

“Follow me!” I shout I’m about to look back to see Caleb’s situation when suddenly an arrow buries itself into a nearby undead, a piece of paper hanging from the shaft. I shout a spell that rips the note from the projectile and lands in my hand.

“Out of arrows, need to move!” the note reads. I look back to see zombies surrounding the structure where Caleb resides. The construction begins to waver as the fiends beat against it. Caleb leaps for the nearest roof and sprints towards us, his arms straight out behind him increasing his aerodynamics.

“Hikux Locasho,” I shout and push a bolt of light out of my hand straight towards the tower where it rests. Caleb sees the spectacle and adjusts his course towards it. “Let’s go!” I yell to my other two companions. I turn to the undead and before my two friends can swing their weapons shout, “Kucaires Pasem!” sending a bolt of high-velocity air straight out pushing the zombies out of the way and creating a perfect pathway to the tower.