Sunday 30 September 2012

Story: 'Night Trials', I

As I fight my Minecraft addiction, which steadily becomes easier as I run out of things to do for novelty's sake it becomes apparent that I'm not holding up my end of this blogging lark. As a result of this I present...

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Night Trials: Part 1
(Part II)

It was a cold night, and Sheriff Bob looked into the tavern from the swinging doors and frowned at what he saw within. It was coolly quiet and civilized. So quiet that he could not help but be irked. How could a sheriff in a frontier town have something to do on a Friday night when the citizens behaved like THIS.

Turning away from the tavern he surveyed the main street, with its quiet nocturnal setting. The blacksmith was silent, and the general store, and even Madame Hong's was sedate and modestly lit. He supposed he should be happy with the easy life of a sheriff of a crime-free mining town, but he sometimes wished he could test himself. In his five years on the job so far he'd arrested one person for being drunk and disorderly and had even gone part-time, fixing wagons in an attempt to be useful.

Down at the end of the street, southside, a light was coming in from the wilds out beyond the town boundary of Wandering Yip. The light was wavering and green, bumping up and down from time to time, and sometimes roaring up into the air for second upon second. The ground began to shake under Sheriff Bob's feet, dust swirling in the air. The light grew larger and larger as the phenomenon approached at a terrible speed. Docile horses at their rail pulled away and bolted for the plains.

With no time to do anything else but panic, Sheriff Bob flinched as the light reached its crescendo, and everything faded to blinding, wavering green. Then he panicked and remembered nothing more.

To be continued...

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