Occulted

[GamerShadow]

An FFR-Exclusive Literary Series by Austin Schaefer

======================
Introduction:
After writing upwards of eighty pages of text for FFR: The Phantom Challenge, I decided that I wanted to continue on the path of writing, but I also wanted to change up what I was doing. All fighting and no character development was getting kind of redundant, and I was losing inspiration rather quickly.

Instead, my thoughts went towards creating a story with a more complicated and hopefully better plot, and hopefully a little less fighting. Skip the next 99 steps, and you get Occulted.

So please, read, enjoy, but don't forget to leave comments and constructive criticism. I can't improve as a writer without knowing what I am doing wrong, so feel free to tell me. But I also want to see some positive stuff. The first "episode" took me about two hours to write alone, so you can imagine how much time this takes me. So without further ado, I present to you my latest work! After a table of contents of course. =P
======================
Table of Contents:

Season 1:

Episode 1: Unrequested Journey
======================
Episode 1:

“Azir!” A cry desperately rang between the threads of the nighttime cloak which quilted only half of its owner. Insignificantly puny dots decorated it, granting it an erratic, yet mesmerizing pattern which captivated the minds of many throughout every eon. The air stubbornly refused to move, demanding a break from its eternally cumbersome job. Grass blades grown in the most ideal of conditions served as the rug which clothed the naked earthen soil, and currently was doubling as a bed for a silent boy who had dozed off.

To Azir Seroz, this was home. The calm summer night stirred something in his subconscious mind which assured him of his safety and comfort. The invitingly friendly grass carried him away and gently stroked away any and all troubles on his mind. A soothing warmth blanketed him while his ears were graced by the world’s finest natural orchestra, which performed without royalties or restrictions. He could lie idly forever with his hands behind his head and his legs lazily sprawled out, given the chance.

However, such a chance did not exist, as Azir’s eyes slowly opened, and he awoke from one realm of darkness to another. He stared upwards at the night sky, as he sighed and was about to remove himself from his blissful position when his name was once again called. Somehow, this influenced a decision related to him getting up, and on nature’s bed he remained. He responded to the call by shouting out towards nothing in particular, making sure his voice would be heard for miles around. “What?” A surprisingly brief message revealed his location, but Azir didn’t mind being found.

“Get back in the house!” The voice possessed a much clearer tone, most likely from decreased distance. Azir recognized through tone and dialect what he was expected to do, and what his aunt would tell him next. “It’s way past your bedtime!”

The next maneuver which would work for Azir was to test how lenient his aunt would be in allowing him to remain outside. He merely required an excuse. As his mind scrounged around for reasons to not reenter the household, he stalled for more time by whining and drawing out his words. “But,” a brief pause, “Aunt Lila!” at this point, he had decided on the perfect excuse which he thought would surely work, “I wanted to watch the eclipse tonight! Please?” He ceased whining at the beginning of his last statement and employed a more sincere tone. “It’s all about the presentation.” he thought to himself while he grinned victoriously, expecting to remain outside for the rest of the night.

A surprise struck one of his nerves as a harsh, brief reply arrived from his disgruntled aunt, who at this point clearly wasn’t bargaining for anything. “No!” She roared, “You have work to do tomorrow, and I don’t want you tiring yourself out! Now get in here before I drag you in!” A stomping noise weakened from travel arrived at his ears, which meant that he had angered his aunt in record time.

Azir’s fingers drummed the soil with a sense of annoyance as the dirt particles burrowed their way into his fingernails. He wanted to stay outside and sleep, so what sense did it make to force him to walk a quarter mile back to his cold, rigid house and crawl his way into bed? A cloud of negativity soon hovered over the boy as his eyebrows tilted inwards to indicate the emotional change. He could feel the weighty sensation descending on him as another phenomenon became reality.

The moon, circular and full, appeared not as white or light yellow as it normally did, but instead as a dark red, appearing as if coated in fresh blood. Immediately, Azir looked up. This was his first time witnessing such an impossible feat happen as if the world had been thrown into chaos. He grinned once again as his nagging aunt vanished from his conscience. “This must be the eclipse. But I thought an eclipse had a golden ring around the edge of it. Where is the ring?”

Time decided that the mystery would not be solved, as Aunt Lila approached from behind and grabbed the boy by the ear. She was furious with him now; he had refused to listen to her and tried to argue against her. “I told you I would drag you back into the house if I had to.” she scowled at Azir as he attempted to break free, but to no avail.

“No!” He shouted as a combination of fear and anger welled up within him. His body began to glow with an obsidian hue, but neither he nor his aunt noticed. “I won’t go with you! You can’t make me!” He possessed the will and desire to escape, and definitely wasn’t about to let his aunt, a surrogate parent, boss him around when he wasn’t prepared. The black aura silently smuggled itself over to Azir’s hands and remained there, still unnoticed by either of the two.

Suddenly, Aunt Lila nearly toppled over as she ran forward with a sudden spike in momentum. The grip on her nephew’s ear had been mysteriously broken, but there had been no struggle to do so. Another mystery brought to the surface was the fact that he had disappeared without as much as a trace.

Azir watched as his aunt nearly tripped over herself as she attempted to regain balance. He had escaped her grip by rendering himself intangible, a simple process of focusing on a nearby parallel dimension and shifting over to it. He was the only one who could do such a thing, as far as he knew, his aunt certainly couldn’t perform the trick. He planted his hands behind his back and towards the ground in order to catch himself as he shifted back to a tangible state. Still undetected, the black energy released itself onto the ground and formed a ring just as the boy was about to hit the ground in his solid form.

For Azir, the ground never came. Instead, he continued to fall through what he noted was a small, black ring just large enough for him to slip through, but not a fully grown adult such as his aunt. A dramatic shift in scenery shocked the boy as he continued to fall. The most apparent change was the fact that it was no longer nighttime. An early morning sky greeted his eyes as a crimson sun loomed only halfway over the horizon.

More differences between wherever Azir was and his home continued to reveal themselves as he still fell through the air. There were trees now. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of the overgrown bushes dotted the vast landscape which extended for as far as the eye could see. The air itself had changed to favor a cold, humid climate, and the grass below appeared rough and uninviting.

The hole though which Azir fell had reduced in size, and had just disappeared. With no way back, the boy focused his attention towards a problem which was approaching at an alarming speed; the ground. Thankfully, Azir knew another trick, much like the intangibility act he pulled earlier. However, he hadn’t practiced it enough to master the skill and technique behind it, so there was a chance that it wouldn’t work.

Instinctually, he attempted to slow his descent by raising his arms slightly and focusing his mind on hovering in midair. To his surprise, it worked. His fall degraded into a soft descent, and for the next minute or so, Azir continued to approach the ground at a safe speed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hold his levitating state long enough to reach the ground. He suddenly lost control of his trick, and from roughly fifteen feet up, he impacted the ground with great force for somebody of his size.

Immense pain immediately shot through his body as he rubbed his rear end and cursed out of agony. Standing up proved to be difficult now that his legs had been used to cushion the fall, but he managed to muscle his way through the arduous task and regain his posture.

A new perspective brought more details as to where he might be. Coiled around the tree trunks like snakes wrap their prey were vines of varying shapes and sizes. The foliage also appeared much darker and more menacing now that Azir could spot them in full detail. Lightly sprinkled on the ground were corpses of numerous creatures, none of which he recognized at all. Most were about the size of the average squirrel, but one particular skeletal structure caught Azir’s eye. Towering over him by at least four feet, the bones showed signs of the creature having more than four limbs.

By now, Azir felt frightened and alone in the new world which he had been seemingly tossed into by the cruelty of fate itself. As he searched around for somebody, or something which could offer him assistance, one question floated in his head like a speck of dirt in purified water.

“Where the hell am I?”