World of Zaun (Science Fantasy FMG)

[Jeremy Seaborne]

World of Zaun

by Jeremy Seaborne


PART 1: EXILED

CHAPTER 1: FORCED TO FAVOUR

1.

The sun touched the horizon and tinted the sky in a ruddy evening blend. The clockwork towers and diaphanously netted bridges erected from floor to floor, bustling with chatter and streaked with ceramic, cogged by the fruits of the modern era, and alive with the pride of two million inhabitants.

The tower of Zaun stood proud among the shadowless reaches of the otherwise desolate expanse, large and heavy, strewn with stained glass and glittering pipes, rotating always and forever, an infinite steeple of cutting-edge design.

Then the elevator doors shut. It was the last time Piper Valentine would see the city of Zaun—at least, for now.

Her hands were shackled and her hair fuzzed a fiery red, cut short and tucked over the ears with one side shaved up to the temple. A mess of tattered clothes slipped over her thin-muscled arms, and blotched across her waxy pallor was a matching pair of annular red circles, chafed, indeed, by the cuff of her sleeve.

"You can't do this!"

But of course they could. There was no escaping eternal banishment from the surface, no matter your place on the hierarchical ladder, which was, sure enough, tapered with men at the top and women at the bottom. It didn't matter a great deal in her case, but it certainly didn't help.

"Shut your mouth, dweller!" the thickly armoured guard bellowed, shoving her up against the wall and unsheathing his silver dagger. He whipped it up to the skin of her neck and grumbled in her ear, "Scum like you make me sick." He let go, and she gasped for air.

She pulled on her chains again. Her wrists hurt, and she sucked in her breath as one of the steel edges nicked her knuckle. She relaxed her fists and, upon examination, saw a thin line of blood squirrelling through her skin.

She snarled, and she kicked the door of the elevator as it cogged down past the wandering lights of the Undercity. They weaved in and out of sight after passing each horizontal bar, giving her time to examine her surroundings more thoroughly. On the left side of the shadowy interior, pegged tautly on all four corners, was the picture of the man that had, and would continue to, make her life a never-ending hell. Jax Kingston, the leader of Zaun. His neatly whitened shillelagh cast over his shoulder, the bottle-green cape of his otherwise black armour waving in against the black of space.

A stab of distaste lingered on her tongue, and slowly she knotted her hands into fists once again. Her glassy eyes bore disc-shaped whites all around the purple irises, fresh with the gleam of frustration, old with the memory of her mother's death.

Jax Kingston would pay. His entire empire would.

Most days the sound of the cogs wouldn't bother her. Most days. But today tragedy and dread outran reason. She was to spend her entire life underground with the scum of the Undercity, never to step food aboveground, never to see her sisters again.

And for what? For trying to avenge her mother well within spitting distance of justification? The hypocrisy!

Piper had lived in the city of Zaun for eighteen years, born to a cobbler and a towermaid, and for well over a decade spent her time in the formal educational sectors learning magic, the connection between the scientific world and, of course, the brute existence of sorcery: blurry and infused.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall to her necklace fletched with black. She sighed, and the sigh turned into a groan. It didn't matter how much she tried to calm down; it wasn't getting any easier. Not in the slightest. And she hated it, really hated it.

Piper had spent her time in the dungeon of the Zaun prison until the decision was upheld by the court. Treason and attempted murder. Those two words rang in her ears like strings of music, vibrations you couldn't shake away no matter how often you tried.

But a third word swam in there, too: Failure. I'm a screw-up.

The elevator finally squeaked to a stop. The doors flew open and the armoured shoved her out. She almost stumbled over from the force, her balance half ready and drained.

"Hey, the cuffs moron!" She waved them in the air loudly. "Help a lady out?" she asked coquettishly.

The armoured guard stepped forward, the creak of the elevator straining under the weight of those ruthless bootheels, and he lifted his silver dagger again. A whirring sound quickly sounded out, and before she knew it, an electric-blue glow backlit the guard's dagger. It steamed with smoky fairydust and wafted into her nostrils: an aroma of wildflowers in early spring, lavender sprigs and juniper, meshed together, weaving an intricate netting among which grass sprawled.

"Hold out your arms," he ordered.

She did.

The knife came down and sliced the chain in two, smooth as butter. Heat rose off the metal and, before it could fall, the material burnt her skin.

"Shit! Couldn't have used a key?" she asked pettishly. She rubbed the area that had been burned, and slowly a yellow aura formed around it, healing it.

But the man had already been walking back towards the elevator. He struck the elevator wall twice with his thickly gloved fist and slowly the doors closed. "Whore!" he yelled before the doors screened him completely.

She finished rubbing her wrist and blew a stray curl of red hair from her eye. "Asshole," she grumbled.

She shivered, feeling the cold of the Undercity seep into her, and turned around. The road ahead, dirty and streaked with litter, divulged a compact spread of bridges and interconnected buildings, composed not of ceramic but instead rusted metal and stained glass. The Undercity spiralled up towards the roof of a cavern, at least two thousand feet high, divided into floors and stretched for miles ahead. Much farther than she could comfortably see from down here. Then she trailed her sight lower and lower and to the footpath.

People dressed in metal-sheeted clothes bustled about, all meeting at the centre, which was a circular platform, and attached to which were three giant bridges. A bright green glow climbed from the underreach of the platform, and when she ambled over to investigate it, she saw that the Undercity travelled even farther down, still separated into more floors. She strapped her hands over the balustrade and let her skin soak in the glow of the expanse.

It segued into her crimson hair and amplified her sharp angular facial features. Her cheekbones held high, and her eyes bulged with surprise.

She remembered the first time she stood atop the tower of Zaun and how wonderful it felt to look down across the city with her mother by her side. And she thought about how her mother looked, in that slim maid get-up, her body frail with years of work, her eyes dark with the circles of sleeplessness. She was only a child then, but the memory was strong enough to pull a tear from her socket and toss it down into the depths of this prison.

Normally, the memory would have made her smile. But her heart still hurt, and she couldn't forget that she was here forever; vengeance impossible.

"You're a sight for sore eyes if I've seen one," a voice said. Feminine. Unidentifiable.

Piper snapped back with beady eyes.

A woman, lean and athletic, stood with her arms thickly muscled arms crossed over one another, and a further three women behind her. They were all eye-poppingly gorgeous, skin tan yet sexily dirty, as if they'd done work recently, and their hairstyles similarly short as Piper's, though different in colours.

[Jeremy Seaborne]

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[Hello345]

Always good to read a story with a new and intriguing plot. Hope to see more!

[wowser1016]

What a wonderfully detailed start. No idea where Piper and the story are going but I love the style and development. K+!

[Jaguar]

Excellent start !

I love the plot and the descriptions.  The plot in particular is extremely promising.


I'm anxious to read more!

[madwolf88]

K+ ! Off to a good start!

[jhunter]

So glad to see a fantasy based story. Lately a lot of the have been set in a modern setting. Looking forward to more.

[Jeremy Seaborne]

1.5

Piper frowned. Were these chicks guards or prisoners? Both, maybe. "Can say the same thing about you gals, can't I?" She folded her arms and furrowed her brow. She blew a tuft of red hair from her eye and it swerved back into place.

The woman in front was dressed thinly in a baggy sleeveless ensemble—brown, with black trim, her gold-white hair tucked messily under the hood. Her face was sharp with a whiteness that is neither too much nor too little, but somewhere in between. The only noticeable colours were the pink radiances on her cheeks, vivid in the glow of the Undercity.

"It's always nice to see a lady down here," the woman said.

The other girls laughed.

"Always nice to see a beautiful lady," another chimed in. She was dressed similarly, her ashen pallor a faint canvas around the blues of her eyes. "They're hard to come by nowadays."

She was right. The delinquents of Zaun were predominantly men—something to do with their inherent aggression—and any woman that acted out was an anomaly in the system. She hadn't remembered this until now, but it made sense, given how many men roamed the Undercity already.

Piper did her best to tune into what the woman had to say. "What're you guys supposed to be then?" she asked, cocking one eyebrow—the left—above the other. She disciplined herself from thinking about her mother—she couldn't show any weakness to these chicks, even if they did have good intentions, and right now, she wasn't sure if they did. "Some sort of tour guides? I don't need your help."

"Alright," the woman in front said, "guess you're okay with walking around this place with an army full of rapists with nowhere to go then?"

"And what if I am?" shot back Piper.

The woman laughed. "You're alright, you know that?"

"I'm better than alright." Piper made jazz hands. "I'm fantastic," she said with forced gaiety.

Another laugh. "From Zaun, I take it?"

"From the deep, big city and all its wondrous delights." She unfolded her arms and gestured with her arms as she spoke, maintaining that prerequisite scowl. "And you're from?"

"Harbour, South of London."

That was a surprise. It meant she was only a visitor in Zaun. "Harbour?" She cocked her eyebrow again, grinning ruefully. "Why would you move to Zaun?"

"I didn't." She stepped forward, face to face with Piper. She folded her arms high against her chest. That marvellous set of C's, or what looked like C's under the browns of her clothing, popped out like two footballs. "My father did. I came to get him out of there. But they'd already killed him, you know how it is."

"More than you understand," Piper said. "More than Iunderstand." She was a little mad about hearing Zaun get away with more murders, but what could she do about it? She was stuck, down here, with them. The women looked strong—they'd have to be to fight off men—which was uniquely impressive. It was a nice change from aboveground.

"You wanna head down with us?" the woman asked.

"Ever heard of names, Cupcake?" She half-smiled, bowed playfully, and offered a hand. "Piper Valentine, Milady."

They laughed.

"Relax," said the woman in front. She accepted her handshake and Piper looked up with her glassy purple eyes. "Scarlet. I don't know you well enough to tell you my second name, and if I did, I'd just chose either my father's or my mother's."

"Seems complicated," said Piper. A lot of this system was complicated. She looked around, listening to the sound of the clamour spiral up and down and all around. She returned her attention to the women when one of them started speaking.

"She's a complicated woman," a lady behind said. She was tall—maybe five-ten, dressed similarly to Scarlet, if not the identically, with the only difference being the size in their clothes. "I'm Zip."

"Now that's a name! A name I'd like to know," joked Piper. She grinned and her eyes shone with that violet essence.

"What's with your eyes?" asked Scarlet.

"My eyes? Something wrong with 'em?"

"No, not that," she said.

"They're purple." Zip nodded.

"Oh," replied Piper sadly, "because I'm a reluctant Acessoress."

"A healer?"

"You betcha, Cupcake," said Piper. She winked and cocked that left eyebrow again. She grinned, the neat line of white teeth joining with the paleness of her skin.

"You could help out, you know," said Zip.

"That's what I was thinking." Scarlet nudged Zip on the shoulder. She looked back at Piper. "We have a hideout further down, an all-girls' safe-spot. You're welcome there."

Piper hummed suspiciously. Then she said, "Where's that?"

"Like I said," Scarlet replied, "further down. We can show you, if you like? That was the plan. We always help out new girls."

"New girl in a new world?" said Piper. "Sounds like a good plan. I'll take you up on it."

"Great," she said, turning back. "Harley?"

The shortest woman in the group stepped forward from behind the shadowless light of the Undercity sprawl. "Yeah?"

"There is room for one more?"

They talked a little more, but Piper zoned out, still thinking about her mother and how the guardsmen of Zaun executed her in the midst of daylight. The face she made, that rictus of terror, and then the guillotine—

She quivered.

"Pipe?" Scarlet said. "You comin'?"

"Don't call me Pipe," she said, creasing her brow. "Piper. Only Piper. And sure."

*     *     *

Later, when the must-dampened air finally subsided, they reached a semi-dark alley with thrumming purple fluorescents strung to the walls. They'd been walking for more than half an hour, and the clamour of deep voices dwindled to whispers, then to nothing at all.

That was one piece of good news, because it meant that Piper could think clearly.

"We're pretty much here," said Scarlet.

Another piece of good news. The alley lights were warm with their wonderful magic essence—glimmer(whose purpose was to heat buildings in Zaun)—but the walls were dilapidated, cracked and worn out. Piper knew time was a deadly force, especially in places that didn't have all that much to fight against it. Down here, it was a reaper of the most ruthless sort, and she hoped—just hoped—she wouldn't fall to its will.

Piper trailed her finger along the wall as they passed the glimmering tubes, stopping in front of a hatch no larger than your average bunker door. "Place is filthy," she mumbled, inspecting the dust on her finger, and the bits of black that smelt of neglected sawdust and ethyl-pumped fumes.

Then the hatch opened, loudly. A white light shone from the inside, and a slightly muted song rang out. What type of music was that? She couldn't remember, but it was a mix between upbeat and slow.

"And now we're here," said Zip.

Third piece of good news. Piper followed them inside, that relaxing silence tender against her heart. Her thoughts were still loud, however. She couldn't forget what happened; it kept flashing into her mind like a jumpscare, and each time she got a little more used to it, but still, not much progress was being made.