The Obsidian Chronicles, Book One: Ender Rain



  The Obsidian Chronicles, Book One: Ender Rain

  By Mark Mulle

  Copyright 2014 Mark Mulle

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  Other Books in The Obsidian Chronicles Trilogy

  The Obsidian Chronicles, Book Two: Hell and Back

  The Obsidian Chronicles, Book Three: Of Dragons and Demons

  Table of Contents

  Ender Rain

  About the Author

  Other Books in The Obsidian Chronicles Trilogy

  Ender Rain

  I live in a world not at all like your own.

  In this world, there are four essential places. The Green is the places above ground, the places where trees and grass grow, where mountains rise up, the places where cows might moo woefully, waiting for a purpose in their lives. We live in the Green.

  There is the Underground, all places which must be reached from caves or mine shafts or great rifts in the ground. These are the places where the sun does not and never has touched, where the creatures of story and legend are said to roam.

  There is the Nether, a horrible, blasted landscape overrun by fire and the beasts that embody it, where infernal castles and strongholds dot the maps which never are finished. This place must be reached from a certain archway made of black stone, anointed with a drop of blood and burned.

  There is the End, from which no man has ever returned. There are legends that talk of a grand gate somewhere in the Green that pulsates with an acrid energy, which can only be seen by the stricken eyes of the already-dead. Nobody knows what is there.

  It is the Green which enriches our lives, of course, but we are an industrious people. We cannot survive on sunshine alone. Thus, we began one day long ago our descent into the Underground, to find the treasures that it had to offer us.

  Those are the stories we tell here, at least. Really the Green is just as fraught with danger and hardship as anywhere else. At night, when the sun sets and it becomes dark, things come to terrorize the villages. Hordes of the walking dead, their acrid flesh just barely hanging onto their bones or perhaps already fallen completely off and shed behind. Giant spiders the size of horses that climb the sides of your house and stare at you with their glowing red eyes through your windows. tall, thin figures in black, with burning purple eyes that slowly deconstruct your house before you.

  And in order to protect yourself from these creatures, you must build shelters. The first, early shelters, made out of packed earth, were enough, but they soon began to fall apart, dry out and crumble. The monsters took that opportunity to do what they did best. We tried building from wood, and it held well until the first big storm. We were not prepared for the lightning, for the fires that ensued.

  We started to build our houses out of small stones held together with mud and mortar. These sort of cobbled-stone houses are still very solid and reliable, but some of us cannot help but wish for something stronger than just bricks of mud and pebbles. To get stronger materials, one must look underground.

  Deep underground, in the twisting cave systems, we discovered an abundant supply of iron ore, which could be smelted to bring out the metallic bits and get rid of imperfections. This was the beginning of the first real economy where we were. There were those that went down into the earth to get the metal, and there were those who formed it into tools on the surface. My name is Vincent, and I was a miner, as was Mary, as was James. Austin, Katy, and Anna were the crafters. They generally stayed on the Green, using the resources we would get them.

  Austin decided one day that he wanted to come down into the earth with us, so he and I partnered up, and descended the long mine shaft. Already, breaking into the deep caverns far below from above ground had been laborious, but now that we had established the route, it was a breeze and his enthusiasm was resurfacing.

  "I wonder what else could be this far down in the earth," he said.

  "We've found all kinds of ores down here. Plenty of coal to keep your furnaces burning, plenty of iron to keep building, even some gold. Gold comes up out of the ground like butter, it's so soft." I shrugged the stack of pickaxes higher up on my shoulder.

  "And jewels? What of those?"

  "Deep blue ones and glittering glass-like ones and stark green ones. They come about more seldom, but they are also here."

  He rubbed his hands together. "Here, give me one of those picks," he said, and I shouldered him one made of iron, fresh out of the forges only yesterday.

  We worked together, side-by-side, opening a long tunnel in the ground dozens of meters down. Onward and onward we pressed in the stone, crumbling it around us as we kept on.

  "The funny thing is," Austin was saying, "I have an inkling that there's something I once heard about, a stone stronger than iron, black and smooth, down this far. It's dangerous to get it, though, because it's always—" His pickaxe struck into a piece of stone, pulled it free, and the hallway rumbled around us.

  My eyes grew wide. This was the death that miners feared the most, a collapse in a tunnel. Even with these picks, we'd be trapped. The loose stone and gravel and sand would slowly settle into an impenetrable wall, and no matter how much we cleared, there would be more to fall down and take its place. I could feel my blood pressure rise.

  Austin, too, felt the tension grow, and his knuckles turned white on the handle. "What—

  "We need to reinforce this bit of the tunnel. Let's get those wood supports up," I said quietly. "This happens, but it is always best to make sure the tunnel is safe." Austin cracked his knuckles, never a coward but wise enough to take safety precautions, and he opened up his bag.

  We spent the next small while making sure that the tunnel would not collapse, propping up the sides and roof of the cavern with stout wooden beams. Even with the supports there, though, something felt off. I had to shrug it off, put it to imagination. After all, we'd made sure to—

  The sudden crunching of stone breaking apart, of a ton of gravel and dirt suddenly pouring down in a torrent, struck me in the ears, and I had barely enough time to turn and see Austin get bowled over by the flow of rock, quickly being engulfed by the heavy death that took no prisoners.

  "Austin!" I spat, and before the flow had even stopped I had flung the planks aside and seized the broad, flat shovel leaning on the wall, beginning to fling the debris behind me in a desperate attempt to reach my compatriot before he was crushed, before the fine dust crept into his lungs and rendered him no more than wet dirt himself.

  "Austin! Hold on! I'm going to get you out!" I cried, my eyes dirty with soot and dust, my mouth full of fine stone.

  I saw a slight shifting in the stone, like something straining underneath it, and attacked with fervor until I unearthed a patch of cloth, Austin's red jacket. Discarding the shovel, I moved the rocks away with my bare hands, feeling the shards ripping into my skin. Austin heaved himself free from the pile, and lurched onto his back, heaving and coughing.

  He spit blood and wet dust from his mouth, wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and breathed.

  "This job sucks, and you can have it back," he coughed.

  I sighed my relief. Thank the stars we didn't just lose him. A laugh rose up in my gut, and we both sat in the gloom and dust and dark laughing for the next several minutes.

  Back up in the main house on the
Green, Austin leaned back on his bed, and drank from his bowl of soup. "Man, it was crazy!" He gestured with his spoon. "We thought we were safe, but then the whole damn tunnel came down on me! It was this huge sudden torrent, and I got bowled over and buried!" He drank again, and the others listened. "And the whole time, all I could think was, 'I absolutely will not sand for this!'"

  Silence shook the very air as we all stared at him for a second. Anne was the first to speak up.

  "I hate you so much," she said, and we all laughed. Back up in the house, we were all safe, and Austin was largely recovered from his encounter with the fingers of the deep earth. We lost some of the materials we'd collected, of course, but somehow I could not help but think it was worth not losing one of our people. Austin even seemed to be taking near-death at the hands of the Underground very well, in stride.

  I did not know what he was planning.

  It was mid-day the next day. We took every couple of days off from mining so that we didn't get stir crazy and claustrophobic, so I was up in the farmyard helping Mary build what she was calling "the greatest pig sanctuary in the entire world" when I saw Austin come up out of the mine shaft, carrying an obviously empty bag and looking pleased with himself.

  "Hey, man!" I called, and waved him over. As he approached, I noticed the distinct smell of salt peter coming from him. "What are you up to?