Chapter 3 

Mystech, or technology powered by myst, uses a condensed myst crystal as a power source. These artificially grown crystals of compressed myst are made up of a single type or fusion of two of the fourteen elemental types. The most common myst crystal batteries used for personal tools are either fire (a single myst type), or electric (a fusion of two myst elements).

Now, you're going to want to ready yourself for this next bit. My story honestly starts here, and it's a dark and bloody start. It’s also the start of a long string of traumas.

The screw gave a shrieking squeal before it popped free. I plucked up the loud bit of metal between my thumb and forefinger before setting it aside and pressing it into a flat of cardboard alongside its brethren. I placed each screw set into the board in the mirror location from where it had been removed. Methodically, I set down my screwdriver before raising my hands over my partly dismantled victim. I bit the lower lip of my small yet eager smile even as my fingers began dancing like a spider over its prey. With practiced precision, I plucked off the back of the myst storage battery to reveal its internals. This nifty little toy I found in the garbage in town was quite the prize for me. This MK 3.2 V-tech battery also doubled as a backup generator. I picked my way around the internals, examining wires and checking the circuits for damage, all while being careful not to touch the capacitor. You only touch a live capacitor once. After that, you either learn your lesson, or you were literally cooked meat. You also had to keep in mind that even if the device was unplugged or its batteries were dead, the capacitor could still hold a charge for a while afterward. I pulled free a circuit board from the control panel, unplugging all the links as I went to reveal what I was looking for. The battery charging rack. What made this model so important for my needs was that, unlike other battery/generators, which had one or two massive rechargeable myst crystals, or RMCs for short, this model had thirty-six smaller RMCs that were designed to be swapped when they broke down.

From the looks of the internals, this poor toy was trashed because of a broken connector from the control panel. I set aside the quartz board in my hands and plucked up one of my rubber-handled flathead screwdrivers to dismantle the copper mounting brackets and disconnect the high-capacity wires leading to the capacitor. I pulled free the rack of crystals and gave it a close inspection. Some of the dead ones had cracks or chips. Clearly, the device was literally thrown into the trash. But there were a couple of crystals still glowing with a bright, charged yellow. No doubt there would have been more if so many of the crystals were not damaged. It was such a pain when you damaged a myst crystal. Ninety-five percent of the time, a chipped or cracked crystal would leak myst till the once glowing crystal was just a chunk of clear glass-like rock. But with elements like fire and electricity, there was still that slight chance that the power crystal could explode, which could range from a sharp sting and pulling shards from your hand to third-degree burns and/or myst poisoning.

I plucked free the first of the eight crystals, holding it up to the light between the thumb and forefinger. It was a small thing, about an inch and a quarter tall, with a one-centimeter diameter. These ones were mostly straight as an arrow, only tapering down to a dull point on either end for mounting purposes. For the past couple of years, I had been completely fascinated with everything about Mystech. I think it all started with the blacksmith when he would show me his projects. That got me into crafting. Then, I wanted to learn about mechanical devices. From there, my fascination evolved into an obsession with Mystech and all things Myst-powered. My eighth-grade class had recently gone over only the most basic of the concepts, like what myst crystals were made of, how dangerous they were, and how most technologies were based on rune script, sigil components, mechanical components, and/or electrical components. But I wanted to know more. How did the rune script work? What kinds of components were there? How could those components be put together? So many questions, but all the teachers just kept telling me I could learn more when I was older because it was dangerous. My father thought my interest was odd, but to me, the technology was simple. You made a thing, and it did what you made it for. If you got it wrong, then it just wouldn’t work. Circuits, wires, and gears never got angry at you for no reason or hurt you because you looked strange. 

The only person I knew who didn’t hurt me was my father. Well, Father only hurt me when I did something wrong, like if I broke something or got annoying, but he still was nice at times. He tucked me into bed and gave me hugs after I got picked on by the other boys. He made sure I always had food, clothes, and a home.

I took one battery and stepped around the kitchen table to pick up my toy hover disk. I had noticed that the silver disk decorated with blinking lights had been slowing down. It didn’t hover as high as it used to, didn’t come back as fast as it should, and the lights were kind of dull now. I figured it must’ve been running low on power.

I picked up the disk, turned it over, and popped open the battery hatch. Sure enough, the crystal there was glowing a dull red. I thought it was odd that the battery was red, but maybe they worked like the power indicators on some other things that flashed red when they needed a new power source. I pulled out the old battery and plugged in the fresh one. Carefully, I set the dying crystal on the table before I clicked shut the hatch on my toy and flipped the switch. I watched in joy as I heard it spin up, and the lights began to display. But then it started making this odd ringing sound, and one by one, the lights popped with tiny pops. In a panic, I dropped the disk. As it struck the floor, I heard something else break inside with a loud crack, and the remaining lights all blew at once. It went quiet as smoke began creeping up from the battery hatch. 

“Damn it!” I cursed.

“What was that?” My father’s voice came from upstairs. His tone carried a note of warning.

“Nothing, Father!” I replied in panic. I wasn’t sure if he was asking about the curse or the broken toy, but I’d rather not find out. In my panic, I rushed to pick up the disk before he found it. The disk was hot to the touch, and to keep myself from getting burned, I tossed it from hand to hand like a hot potato. Suddenly, the toy burst into blue-yellow flames. I heard my father coming down the stairs, his steps landing heavily, meaning that he had been drinking. My panic escalated. In desperation, I hurled the flaming toy into the fireplace. As my father stepped into the room, flask in hand, I saw the aggravation on his face and braced myself for the pain to come.

He shuffled across the room in a manner only an experienced drunk could, to prevent staggering to fall into his armchair with a heavy ‘foomph’ sound as the leather cushion compressed under his weight. He had walked right past my tiny disaster and was now looking away from it. He clearly was so drunk that his perception was limited.

“Stop playing with your gizmos, boy. I think you should go out and practice hunting. A ranger needs to master hunting. While you have made good progress in tracking, evasion, and wilderness survival, you have yet to make a single kill. You haven’t brought home a single rabbit. Either you’re a terrible marksman, or you don’t have the stomach to make a kill. Either way, I don’t want you coming home until you have put down something and brought the body home for skinning, gutting, and cooking.”

I let out a silent sigh at his words before speaking. “Yes, Father.” I stood upright, hands behind my back, as my gaze flitted from the back of my father’s head to the burning mess in the hearth. “May I please use the rifle? I can’t work the bow as well.”

“No. You need to know the drive and skill it takes to kill something. There is a meaning in a kill made with a bow that is lost behind the trigger. Go get your bow and quiver. Remember to take those arrows I made for you. And don’t come home until you have an animal corpse with you.” Father rumbled before he took another sip from his flask.

“But... what if I catch an elk or something big? I can’t drag that back.”

He gave a disgruntled sigh, causing me to flinch in reaction. “Then take a knife and bring me its head. I’ll bring the sled and drag it back myself.”

“Yes, Father.” I said in sullen resignation as I made my way back to my room to gather my gear. As soon as I was out of my father's earshot, I began cursing violently under my breath, any curse I could think of, if childishly profane. I continued even as I gathered my recurve bow, hunting knife, and the quiver of arrows crafted by Father.

I made my way back downstairs, pulling my bow over my head to rest on my shoulder. I had a thought as I reached the bottom of the steps. Stepping into the living room, I faced my father, my hands held together in front of me in trepidation.

“Hey, father, if I make a noteworthy kill, can I please get a therra-node?”

His response was an indignant snort. “You can buy your own once you sell enough pelts and meat.”

I clenched my teeth at this response, trying to hide the sneer that wanted to creep across my face. “Then, if I bring something back, could you please tell me something about my mother? You’ve told me nothing about her, and I feel like I should know something about the parent that actually gave birth to me.”

I watched as his body responded with a flash of rage before he tamped down on it. I could hear him grinding his shark-like teeth even as I saw him flex his fists before visibly forcing himself to relax. “Maybe.” was all he said before aggressively pointing to the front door. I took the message, and as I made my way to the door, he gave one last statement. “And Iver,” His tone was gentle, a shock to me after his display of constrained aggression. “Don’t forget my rule about a monster or restless dead. You see a monster, hide and get back here as soon as you see an opening. If you stumble across one of the restless dead, I don’t care if you think you can handle it; get back here as fast as you can.” His voice turned hard but with a tinge of concern. “Do not stop till you get back.”

I stepped out from the cabin and into our yard, only barely distinguishable from the wilds beyond. Looking toward the sun above, I shielded my eyes even as I guessed the time to be around 10:00 AM. I turned my gaze from the sky with only sparse clouds down the dirt path that led into town. That town was my personal hell. Anyone my age went out of their way to either mock me or beat me. The adults were all too busy, swapping stories about how I might have come to be there or ignoring me, to help. From the adults, the most I would ever get were curses, telling me to leave, or blatant glares that all conveyed the same message. I turned away from the path that led to my misery to the wilds in the opposite direction. There, I found a thick braiding of trees and bushes that marked the end of the domain of the Sophic Species and the start of the world of nature.

Anyone who lived near nature knew just how hard it actively tried to take back its domain that the Sophic Species claimed as home. My father had to cut back the foliage every three days and spread herbicide around the perimeter every week. The perimeter of our land was also marked with a fence. Now, this was no chain-link fence like in the city or woodboard fence like in the suburbs. This was an eight-foot high, electrified, razer wire fence with seven-inch thick steel posts every six feet. Anyone from a purely urban environment would think this looked like defenses for war. In truth, this was standard wildlife management. Towns and cities had their defensive walls to keep out monsters and nature, so those who lived out in the middle of nowhere needed a smaller version to keep homes and property safe. Even rural farms needed similar perimeters, but since most farms were corporation-owned, the fat lizards normally flipped the bill to protect their goods.

I unlocked the small gate to my father’s standard hunting path and passed from the confines of control and into the freedom of the wilds. Within that grove just behind our home, I found peace. No one mocked me or attacked me there among the trees. Out there, creatures fled from me. To the rabbits and squirrels, I was a creature of power to be feared and respected. I pressed into the woods, trekking deep, barely leaving any mark on the land as I passed through. Father taught me how to move through nature with minimal traces. As I went, I left no tracks, broke no branches, and became all but invisible to the surrounding creatures. The few small animals that noticed me fled into the brush, each time giving me a sense of power that let me feel like I was worth something more than a child who was too sensitive to kill another living thing. With every step, I rallied my will, only to second guess it over and over again.

I wanted to know about my mother. Father refused to tell me anything other than she was a Darkling, that she dropped me off in the dead of night in a panic, and that the man raising me, Fermose, was not my biological father. He only told me the last bit one night when he had drunk far too much, and I was too young to understand. When he told me I remembered, I made sure to remember this because I needed to know more. 

I pushed into the forest, searching, seeking, for something big enough to be worth earning even the smallest bit of info about my mother. Don’t get me wrong. I was dying to have a therra-node, the most modern communication and interactive device that replaced cell phones. It was the big thing to have among the student body, but if I had a chance to learn about my mother, that meant so much more to me.

As I dwelled on the thought and fantasized about what kind of person my mother was, I caught sight of something an hour into my hunt. Movement larger than any rabbit or squirrel; I focused on the large shape to find that it was a deer. A buck, a ten-point buck that was grazing beside a pond, completely unaware of me. I flashed a victorious smile as I pulled my bow, nocked an arrow, and drew the bowstring. I drew my line of aim to the stag’s heart as he grazed. I pulled the string back even farther as I thought about the stories of my mother I could get. The muscles of my back were pulled as taut as the bowstring I had in hand.

I was about to loose the arrow and kill the creature when it raised its head and looked right at me. In that moment, when we locked eyes, I saw so much. Innocence with no desire beyond that to live. An understanding of its own life in all its aspects. Respect for those greater than it, and an understanding that it would one day die. These realizations stayed my hand, but that last bit of understanding gave me a reason to pity. His life was full of fear, just as mine was, waiting for pain to come from another creature, pain that would define my reason when my end came. This feeling was so hard to explain or express. Like no one would understand it unless they were just as alone as me. 

I looked at that stag and saw myself, and I just couldn’t end its life. I felt my arm losing strength, and in panic, I redirected my shot. As my fingers slipped, the arrow flew into a nearby tree, the shaft burrowing five inches past the head of the arrow into an old oak. The stag fled with the twang of the bowstring. I watched the creature flee deeper into the woods and couldn’t help but watch it go. I turned and made my way back home in shame. I couldn’t kill it. I couldn’t take another life. What right did I have to cut short the existence of another breathing thing? Let them live so they could learn to love and understand the world, something I still couldn’t quite understand myself.

I knew full well that Father would strike me for this, but I didn’t care. I would not take another life unless it deserved to be ended. As I made my way home, I tried to think of things that I could kill without shame. Wolves, bears, or monsters? Creatures that killed others. Those were the ones who deserved to die. 

While I made my way home, in dejected shame, I tried to think of other creatures that I thought were worth the blade or bullet. I couldn’t help but wonder if sapients should be killed. Humans, Elves, and other Sophic Species. Should they be targeted? The sapient races and their ilk comprised creatures that would kill or let creatures be killed, if only for their own good. It was at three-quarters of the way home that I realized what I was thinking of. Killing people. People who could think like I could, reason like me, and feel like me. But sapients were the races that did the most damage. We were the ones who tore down forests for supplies and space for homes. We were the ones who killed for sport and ruined the lives of others because if it would help ourselves.

I really started wondering what the right thing was when I reached my front door just past noon. I needed to ask my father what the right thing was. I stood there at the door, leaking tears of confusion as I tried to understand what the right thing to do was. I was so confused about when it was right to take a life. I held back a sob even as I tore free my bow and threw it aside. I was a disappointment to my father, unworthy of his teachings. I hated myself for thinking like this, asking these questions. In a rage, I drew my hunting knife and threw it at the oak in our yard.

I threw open the door to the cabin, tears streaming down my face, seeking answers to so many questions. There, I found a sight that would remain with me for the rest of my life. A man dressed in black leathers, wearing a red skull mask, standing over my father, a dagger in his chest. Even as I opened the door, I watched as Fermose, my father, slid down the wall to land on the floor in a heap, his lifeblood spilling from his chest in a guttering stream before the shadowed figure ripped the large dagger free from my father’s chest. With that single motion, blood flooded from the gaping wound in a torrent. 

There, time froze. My father bleeding out on the floor, and a figure in black wearing a red skull mask standing over him with a bloody dagger in his hand and a black box under his arm. I couldn’t think in those moments. I lost who I was and thought of one thing. I wasn’t Iver the Darkling. I was a son watching his father die at his murderer’s feet. Rage, pure, hot, and restrained, rose from within my chest. In that moment, all I wanted was the death of the man that hurt my father, no matter what. My bow was gone, and my hunting knife was missing. I reached back and grasped the only weapon I had on hand. My fingers closed in a death grip around the shaft of an arrow. I drew the arrow, holding it like I was about to stab the bastard to death with a dagger. 

I clutched the arrow shaft so tight that I broke it in two. I didn’t notice until it was far too late. I rushed the assassin, head-on, full tilt. I didn’t hold back. I sprinted at the masked man, lunging at him with all that I had. With some form of luck, my father’s arrowhead bit deep into the attacker’s right shoulder. I drove the arrow down so deep that it held fast in his right shoulder joint. As soon as I sunk the arrowhead into the bastard’s flesh and bone, I heard a groan of pain. In response, I broke off what was left of the shaft in the killer’s shoulder, leaving the head several inches deep. With the broken shaft in hand, I lashed out against the killer like some rabid ape. In answer, he struck me with a backhand hard enough to send me to the floor like I was little more than a puppet thrown aside by an enraged child. 

I lay on the floor, stunned, the world spinning in my vision while the side of my head burned like someone had pressed hot coals against it. And yet, I pushed the pain aside as I crawled to my father while the killer left out the front door. 

“Father, I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop him. I wasn’t strong enough.” I pleaded. I pressed my hands against the sucking chest wound, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding.

Even as blood seeped from his chest and between my fingers in a rhythmic flow, I saw him smile at me. 

“Don’t you fret over me now, boy. You’ve got bigger things to worry about than this dying feeble cut ear.” He coughed up bloody phlegm as he tried to sit up, only for him to settle back down to the floor. “Listen close now, boy. That man. You need to find him.”

I wiped tears away with the back of my sleeve, heedless of the bloody smear it left behind, before giving him a resolute nod.

“It’s not to avenge me, Iver. That box he left with your mother gave it to me for safekeeping. That box came with you the night Kella dropped you off. She made it clear that the box was never to see the light of day. Find it, and if you can, destroy it. Ruin it. Do whatever it takes. Kella said that it was of world-changing power.”

I watched in horror as my father gave into a coughing fit, scarlet spit flying to paint his fist, and spray across what little of his shirt was still clean. I felt a small droplet of something warm land on my cheek.

“W-w-what? Father? Why does some damned box matter right now? Father, just tell me what I need to do to help you. Please, I can’t let you die.” I said, my pitch rising with my panic as tears overwhelmed me. 

He gave me a weary smile even as his gaze focused somewhere behind me. “Be sure to tell your mother that I-” my father spoke before the light left his eyes and his words faded, his last thoughts left unsaid.

I shook him, trying to bring him back. But his glazed eyes told the truth that no matter how much I wanted Fermose to live, my father was gone from this world. I shook his body for what seemed like hours before I understood that my father wasn’t coming back. He was dead, and anything that I wanted to know was gone. Part of me wondered why I wasn’t dead as well, but that part of me was overwhelmed with grief. The only man who had ever loved me was dead. I was alone. What was I supposed to do? Deep in the back of my mind, I remembered something he had told me.

 In some cultures, those who died an honorable death would be burned in a pyre so their souls could find the afterlife where their achievements would be celebrated. This was what stuck in my head as I went to my room and took what was mine. I collected my tools, my hunting leathers, my bow, my arrows, and Sasha, my childhood safety blanket I’d had since I was barely a year old. 

In the haze of mourning, I set about preparing the cabin to be lit ablaze as my father’s pyre. I didn’t think of what I needed beyond those basics. All of my thoughts were that my father, as flawed as he was, deserved to die as a warrior and hero for what he did.

I poured out bottle after bottle of my father’s scotch, letting it pool on the wood floor and soak into skin rugs. I staggered to and from the shack beside the house, hauling in plastic jugs of liquid myst used to power the emergency generator outback. Six-gallon jugs sat in the center of the room. I stood at the front door, the last jug in my hands. I surveyed my home one last time through tear-blurred eyes. I choked back a wave of sobs, trying my best to remain aware of everything even as I felt like I was stumbling through a dream. Desperately, I wanted this all to be a dream. I would burn down the house, and Father’s soul would pass on in this dream, and I would wake up, and he would be in the kitchen.

I could see it so clearly, his pipe between his teeth and scotch glass in hand as he stood at the counter, reading over the news on his therra-node. I would come downstairs, and he would ask how I wanted my eggs cooked. I would tell him the same thing I always did: ‘scrambled with cheese, sausage, and hot sauce, please’.

I realized that I was staring into the container of glowing magmatic fluid. I set the jug down and let the cap fall from my hand. I closed my eyes, raised my face to the ceiling, and took in a single, long, shuddering breath. I opened my eyes and forced myself to look at the corpse I had pointedly ignored as I set up for my arsonist's funeral pyre.

I looked into my father’s pale face. For a long moment, nothing happened. Suddenly, all at once, it set in that I was looking at a corpse. I gagged reflexively as I keeled over; it was the corpse of someone I knew. Tears flooded my eyes so fast it was physically painful for my tear ducts. It was the corpse of someone I loved. Sobs wracked my body as I shifted from being bent over to falling onto my knees. 

The man who raised me was dead. The only person to not care about what I was had died in my arms. The only person in the world I could count on was gone. The man I trusted abandoned me. He was the man that fed me, the man that beat me. He was the one who taught me how to be a man. The same man who mocked me for my interests. Images from the past flashed through my mind as these thoughts rushed through. Quickly, the images I thought of shifted from pleasant memories to memories of the beatings, the neglect, and the closed-minded lifestyle choices he forced on me.

I clenched my teeth and fists in rage. This man raised me in what he thought was the bare minimum standards, mocked what he didn’t understand, and beat what he didn’t like. Now, after all of that terrible parenting, he goes and dies, leaving me alone. I clawed my way back up to my feet before storming up to the corpse to punch him in the mouth. 

His head bounced once before lulling to the side, his lower lip torn open. “YOU ABUSIVE ASS!” I wailed. “I HOPE YOU GO TO HELL FOR ALL THIS!”

I threw an aggressive kick into the corpse’s ribs, hard enough to make the foot sting. I caught a flicker of movement after the kick that nearly stopped my heart. The thought that my father’s corpse had risen from the dead to kill me for what I had said and done dominated my mind for a moment. When I realized it was a pocket notebook that had slipped out from my father’s jacket’s inner breast pocket. I stared at the small, crimson leather-bound book, wrapped closed with a leather cord. The bottom right corner of the small book had sopped up a bit of blood, staining the pages if only in the smallest mark. But such a small mark could bear substantial weight for those who understood what that little stain meant. I didn’t want to take the notebook, but it was a sign.

My father had been a very spiritual man, bringing some of what many would call ‘old Elven culture’ into my life. He made offerings to nature spirits every full moon, equinox, and solstice. He sometimes talked about how the spirits watch over everything and would give aid or guidance at moments in life known as junctures. This, of course, was one such juncture, a moment in my life where everything had changed. I really could use some guidance.

I picked up and tucked away the journal while I made my way over to the dining room table. There I picked up one of the electrical myst crystal batteries. Stepping back up to the front door, I tipped over the liquid myst jug with a nudge from my shoe. I watched the red, orange, yellow, and blue glowing fluid spread out to mix with the scotch. I tossed the battery into the center of the glowing puddle and turned to walk away, even as the concoction on the floor caught alight. 

Looking back at it now, I question a lot of my choices, but I stand by the thought that my father, Fermose, deserved a warrior’s funeral, no matter how much of an abusive ass he was.

I would very soon grow to regret burning down my home, but I wouldn’t have been able to keep it with my father dead. I didn’t dare call law enforcement. They’d put me into the adoption system, which was a meat grinder for anyone to fall into the machine.

So there I stood before my burning home. With nothing more than the clothes on my back, the skills that my father taught me, and an unquenchable loneliness now that my only supporter was gone.