Hey everyone. Here is part one if you don’t feel like clicking on the link. The Traveler has been in sight for weeks now. The huge moon like being has taken up most of the sky. Despite that it felt as though they weren't getting any closer. Still the refugees continued on, clinging to that hope that they would reach The City, humanity's last refuge.
Their party had grown since they left their small hidden village in the mountains. The alien race known as the Fallen had driven them out. After they had fled they knew they had to go somewhere safe, a place they could feel safe and prosper. That place was The City.
The City had been almost like a myth to them. A place of peace and protection, a place where the golden age was being reborn.
At least, that's how Joe's grandfather told it.
Joe's mother Jana would always scold his grandfather. Telling him that he shouldn't fill her boy's head with such fantasies of Guardians and Ghosts. Tales of epic heroes conquering extraterrestrial threats. "Bah," his grandfather would say. "The boy needs to know the truth, know that there is hope in the world and to be ready for the evil that is surely to come."
The evil did come, and it wiped out most of Joe's tiny village. Of the many casualties was Joe's own father. He had watched him fall, taken down by a Fallen's rifle. It was his mother who scooped Joe up and saved him from a similar fate.
It was an unspoken agreement amongst them all. They would travel towards the city. Joe's grandfather, a sturdy old man who looked like he once possessed great strength but now old age had seeped most of it away, claimed he had been there before and he knew the way.
They started as three, Joe a messy haired boy of 8, his mother Jana with red hair cropped close to her face, and Zeke her father. Jana had to care for them both. Taking up an old bow she would hunt and provide for what was left of her family. The death of her husband was a trial she took on her own. Saying very little about the matter or on anything else. The hunt and caring she gave to her kin is all that drove her and kept her mind from her loss. Both Joe and Zeke tried to help so Jana would not have to carry the burden of their care alone but they were physically unable. Instead, Zeke took to building cook fires and gathering wood or water, all the while teaching Joe the same skills. He was a fast learner but the boy was young and still needed attending to. The woods were vast and overgrown. Hidden ruins lay all about and one wrong step and Joe could be lost forever, so Joe and Zeke rarely left their camps.
In this time it could be said that humanity was at its most united. There were the occasional rogues who preyed on the week but they were too few. With the threat of the Fallen always looming over them there was little need to take advantage of your fellow man if they were weaker than you. All of humanity was weak now.
As their party grew over time, they became a small tribe of refugees. Everyone they came across had a similar story. The Fallen had come and destroyed what they had built and now they all moved to the City to start their lives a new.
They had grown close to twenty strong. Everyday they made progress ever closer to the city. When the Traveler's appearance broke over the horizon it was a time of celebration among their small band. Now Joe couldn't remember how long ago that was. The days and weeks since had been a continuous hike through hard overgrown terrain that slowed their steady pilgrimage to a crawl.
Game had soon become scarce where they were. No one was sure why. The land was lush with vegetation. Some said it was too thick for anything to survive in, while others attributed the lack of game to the strange sounds they started to hear in the night. Claiming they came from a beast unknown to them who hunted the land dry. No one knew for sure.
The sounds were real though. Everyone had heard them. At first it was only those who took up watch during the nights. Then the sounds grew louder the further they went, so loud that not one of the refugees was getting any sleep. They were left within a waking nightmare.
With days of no sleep Jana seemed to be the only one to keep it together. Keeping Joe close by she would find time to take him during her hunts, which now became foraging missions, to hide him and let him nap.
"Why don't the rest of the group nap like this mama?" He asked.
Jana sighed and said, "I don't know Joe, I've mentioned it to the others but they think it slows us down too much and no one wants to travel at night. You and grandpa are my only responsibility, so I will make sure you both survive."
Joe mulled that over after she had disappeared into the bush. It made sense, he thought, to not travel at night. When the sun went down he couldn't see anything, and if they went walking around when it was that dark they might run into the thing or things that were making those noises. Joe didn't sleep but stayed in his hiding spot thinking. Most days he would fall right asleep but today he wasn't tired and was soon bored with the hollowed out tree his mother had found to put him in.
Leaving the safety of the hallowed tree, Joe decided to explore his surroundings. The vegetation was as thick as it was everywhere else. There weren't very many places he could go. Picking his footing, like his mother taught him, he explored the woods around him. He found the tiniest holes and breaks in the vegetation to move through. It was a maze of branches and vines. There were a few strange flowers that caught his interest because of their vibrant colors, but that was it. There really were not any animals big or small that he could see. Even insects were illusive.
Pushing ever deeper into the forest something caught his attention. It sounded like voices. He couldn't make out what they were saying. They sounded muffled. He thought he had stumbled upon their tiny refugee camp. Climbing the nearest tree, he found a branch that led out in the direction of the voices, hoping to spy on the goings on down below.
He gasped at he found in the forest floor.
It wasn't his refugee camp that he found but a patrol of Fallen. He recognized them from when they attacked his village and the many patrols they had to hide from when they traveled. His first thoughts were of running away and warning the others, but he was frozen in fear. He knew that if he made the slightest movement he would be found. His heart raced as he watched the strange bug like, four armed creatures stalk about.
At their feet were the remains of dead people. Joe's heart leapt up into his throat. He thought the dead he saw were from the refugee group he was with but he soon realized he didn't recognize any of them. The Fallen were chittering out their language to each other. The sound of it sent a shiver up his spine and made his teeth grind, it sounded so unnatural to his ears. He began to notice that between the marching Fallen were people that were still alive. They were bound and pushed along by the Fallen. Joe wasn't sure who he felt worse for the dead under their feet or the prisoners they pushed around.
Something then caught his eye. One of the creatures who was larger than the others was carrying something encased in an energy field. Joe couldn't make it out until the creature passed right beneath him. He gasped when he saw what it was.
It was a Ghost. A Ghost from the Traveller and the companion to the fabled Guardians. Joe couldn't believe his eyes. It was just as the stories described them. It was bigger than a fist, with points on all sides, it was all white with a blue eye in the center. He tried to crawl closer to get a better look but he felt a hand clap over his mouth and something pulled him further into the tree.
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Not bad, keep it up. I suggest that once you have a full chapter(or however your going to break the story up) copy it into the post body instead of just having a link to each.