User:ShadowWolf/Untitled WIP
 | The Hero Factor |
| Author: | {{#if:madman@keil-draco.com|ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf}} |
| Website: | {{{website}}} |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
| Series: | {{{series}}} {{#if:|(#{{{position}}})}} |
| Previous: | {{{previous}}} |
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| Setting/Universe: | {{{setting}}}[[Setting::{{{setting}}}| ]] |
 | This story is a work in progress. |
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| [[Image:{{{icon}}}|30px|center|Icon]] | I first started writing "The Hero Factor" in 2006 on the original version of Shifti. I continued writing it for a long period afterwards, finally coming to a complete halt in late 2007/early 2008 thanks to a nasty case of writers block. When I started looking at it with an eye to breaking the writers block I realized that a major problem was that the story was a mass of ideas and not all of them actually worked well as a cohesive whole. That is why I started this rewrite—it is going to be, essentially, the same story but with everything not relating to the actual plot(s) completely stripped out. |
{{#ifeq: User |User| The Hero Factor (rewrite) | The Hero Factor (rewrite)}}[[Title::{{#ifeq: User |User| The Hero Factor (rewrite) | The Hero Factor (rewrite)}}| ]]
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}} {{#if:| — see [[:Category:{{{category}}}|other works by this author]]}}
Prologue
High in the mist covered mountains a bird of preys keening cry echos off the granite cliffs and the stunted bansai-like trees clinging to life in the small crevices of weathered rock faces. Another call answers and the pattern repeats, the calls slowly echoing and being carried on the winds down into the wild, untamed forests that surround the lower levels of the mountains in a sheath of green.
In those trees wolf-like beasts run and stab at pounce on their prey, wild calls of success mixed with howls of pain from the ones that the bull moose has injured. But the moose falls and his death will help the pack survive for another stretch of time, though shorter than normal since the females had just whelped and the pups were voracious and growing fast. High above their cries are picked up by the wind and mixed with the sounds of the birds from the mountains and carried on into the great, seemingly endless grasslands that cover the heart of the continent.
In the grassland a small, russet-furred, rabbit-like creature is gathering wild wheat and berries with it's agile forepaws. The motion is silent and not even the grasses move to mark it's presence. The rabbit turns and slowly works its way back to its den where its mate waits with their newly born children. Thoughts of them do not pass through its mind as such, but its intelligence is unquestionably visible in its eyes. The trek is cut short as a lizard, looking like an oversized gecko with a crocodiles teeth lunges from hiding and it's jaws snap shut, barely missing the rabbits throat.
Paws flex and the collection of fruits and grains is scattered as once-hidden claws pop from their sheaths and the rabbit strikes, tearing into the lizard. Snarls of anger from the attacking rabbit are mixed with cries of pain from the lizard and carried into the air and swept out across the grassland, mixing with the sounds from the mountains and forests as the wind blows on.
The wind dips and passes over a small pond in the middle of the savannah where a large boar has its muzzle in the water, drinking. Behind him grasses move, not from the motion of the wind, but from the large feline moving into position to take its next meal. As the wind dips and blows across the pond the scent of the feline and his nearby compatriots is carried past the boar, who raises her head and bugles, the sound causing piglets hidden in the high grasses around the pond to bolt from their hiding places. But the warning is too late as the feline closest to the boar moves with almost preternatural speed and has the boars neck in its jaws with a silent growl before the creature can react.
The snarl and the bugled warning mix with the other sounds and are carried to the arid edges of the grassland where strange, almost centaur creatures are huddled and grooming each other. Creatures like malevolent badgers had recently chased them from the lightly wooded areas on the edge of the great grasslands and the mares needed the comfort of the grooming to calm down while the stallions gathered and competed amongst themselves for positions in their new, smaller herd.
The wind whipped around them and gathered their worried and anxious noises, their whinnies and snorts and stamps, and mixed it with the sounds of life it had already gathered in it's long trek across the continent. And it's trek across the continent and world continued, finding neither town nor city, plowed field or planned orchard. The world was wild and inhabited by only animals, though they might gain sentience one day. But this wind never ceased, driven on continuously by the strange currents caused by the triple moons and double suns. Already it had circled the world for hundreds of thousands of millenia and it would continue until the world was dead.