《Agent Lightning: Operation Angel Arms》The island
Advertisement
As I fell and fell below into the water. I could feel the wind rushing past my face, making an unholy noise as it did so. The noise was like a thousand whistlers being castrated at the same time. Strangely, although it did scare me I felt like I wasn't as scared as I was supposed to be. Like death defying stunts was just your average Tuesday, quite strange since the last stunt I ever did was lightly popping a wheelie over a 4 inch curb. i closed my eyes to avoid having to look down. If I looked down, I would probably freak out. And if I freaked out I would surely hypervenalate. And it sure would suck if I choked to death before hitting the water. “Ey mate do you need help?” A voice said in a really thick Canadian accent. The accent was so funny it almost made me chuckle. It sounded so fake it was ahrd to believe it was even real? It did bring some levity to the situation. The voice seemed to be coming from the Canadian leaf on my suit. “Spread your arms and keep them to activate the wingsuit” the leaf said.
I closed my eyes and tried my best to not show fear as I did as I was told. I felt myself move slower somewhat. I was still moving very rapidly towards the ground. I then heard a faint and shrill, but otherwise familiar sound to my right. I turned just in time to see Snidely as he crashed into me and sent both of us tumbling. Meanwhile, the maple leaves on our suits were having lovely conversation about their day. When they were done, the suits jerked and separated me and and snidely from eachother quickly. The maple leaves on our wingsuits began to glow intesely before disentagrating into dust, floating above our heads, and transforming into maple leaf shaped parachutes. At this moment in time I was about 70 feet from the ground. If I fell, although there would be a higher chance that I would survive, there would also be a chance that I would be crippled, perhaps for life even. All was well for like five or ten seconds until I heard a wierd, ripping sound.
I turned my head up to see my parachute get peices of it ripped off. They were small peices at first and they were originally being ripped off one at a time. Eventually the first few peices were suddenly replaced as the Parachute was ripped doubly as efficiently as from last time. I “Sorry mate. It’s just a that’s after us canadian parachutes are actovated, we self destruct. “ I gasped. Why would they self destruct?
Did Lazarus make them do it or is that just who they were? I was cut off of my questions when the parachute responded again. “Ooh I don’t feel so good!” My strange Canadian parachute bellowed. I tried to comfort it as it slowly began on the road to its demise. With nothing to do, I called out to help.
All of the kids,werent able to help me. Probably because they were borderline crying as their parachutes were also dying, then I heard it. The voice of the girl from the jet whose chair I bumped into. The girl hadn’t even activated her parachute, she was just gliding towards me via wingsuit. Now I had a clear and definitive look of the girl. She was rather tall and skinny. She had bright, orange hair. And amber eyes with a green sweater and blue jeans. The girl also had freckles and was quite pale. She was maybe of Irish descent. As I looked at her I seemed to fall quicker. Surprised, I looked up, expecting to see my Canadian parachute. Instead, I looked up, just as the last of the parachute withered away.
Advertisement
The girl crashed into me with intense speed. I felt my ribs crack. Before I could let out a sound, both me and the girl hurtled into a forest and crashed into a house sized shrub. Sure, the landing wasn’t really good and both me and the girl were nearly covered in splinters and thorns. But at least, we weren’t crippled or dead. I smelt the sound of smoke.
And if there’s anything I learned from one of the plentiful tirades Snidely would go on, it's where there’s smoke there are people....or a forest fire. And so I walked to the north, to the smoke. The girl followed me. Eventually, we came across a big and juicy apple lying dead center in a patch of grass. there were thin outlines of rope in the grass.
It was like one of those traps where there’s bait and once it gets taken, the prey gets trapped. I know that now but at the moment and I was starving. I walked over to grab the apple, when I was all snared up in the rope. My right foot was hanging out. The girl walked over to me and tried to cut the rope but was interrupted when suddenly, she was struck with what I can only describe as an ice bolt From behind, sending her flying and also freezing her back.
I gasped and looked behind her at the strange and possibly magical thing that attacked her. Standing off in the distace was nothing but burning forest and some toppled, flaming logs, and some ice. I could hear animalistic sounds. It was as if two animals were fighting to the death. One of the toppled logs began barreling towards me! I was filled with fright and i began moving around, erratically, trying to escape from the snare. then i calmed down. I needed to focus. Frantically moving around wouldnt get me anywhere.
I needed to get away from the log and out of the snare. I began to swing form left to right, calmly at first, but after a while of acceleration I was able to hear the branch creak and break from my speed. Then, when the log was a half inch away from my face, I put all my energy into lurching backward and making a loopty loop over the branch, and also dodging. The log in the process.
The branch I was on broke off and I was sent sprawling onto the ground, face first. All of my energy was spent. Then I remembered the girl from earlier. The last I saw of her, she was shot in the back by a ice bolt . I didn’t remember her getting up and I began to get full of panic. I weakly stood up and looked behind me. Fortunately there was no flattened body. Unfortunately it was still quite possible that the log just hit her and pushed her down the road before flattening her.
Luckily, my suspicions were proven wrong when I saw the girl walk out from behind the tree that I was ensnared in. The girl was holding her back in pain and walked slowly. She was still doing better than me though. She had managed to dodge the flaming log and strangely enough even though she was hit by an ice blast her skin felt warm. Not just warm, but pretty hot like she was having a really bad fever.
The ice meleted on her back and dropped to the ground. Her body remained normal, save for a bruise on her back.I couldn’t believe it, the girl was heating up like crazy. Maybe she was magical. Maybe she had fire powers. Or maybe body temperature powers. Still, it was an amazing discovery. The girl appeared just as surprised as me.
Advertisement
“This is wierd” she said. I nodded in agreement. The girl bent down and picked me up. It was then that I heard a strange chittering sound. It was as if a dozen or so people were chittering their teeth in perfect unison. The girl heard it too, an a wave of panic and caution washed over her face. What were we going to do? Behind us were three strange creatures, and from the fact their sounds seemed to slowly grow louder and louder, they were probably advancing on us.
And ahead of us was someone’s or something that could shoot ice and was probably fighting something that could control fire. The girl rubbed her chin, profusely. Clearly she was thinking this over. Suddenly she gasped like she was in enlightenment. “I know we’ll just go to the side!”
She exclaimed a bit too loudly. She carried me over to the side and there was a wierd sound, before the ground a couple feet in front of her ignited and surrounded both her and me in a wall of fire. I couldn’t help but gasp in surprise. The chittering sound grew in loudness to the point where I could hear nothing but their noises.
It was a strange experience for sure. I was nearly going insane. I could feel myself beggining to go in and out of passing out. I struggled to stay awake as the figures making the strange chitterign noises, showed themselves. They were three creatures. I guessed judging by their appearances and voices they were all men. They looked rather fake I don’t know if I can describe it exactly.
They looked both real and fake at the same time. Like they were almost people. Almost. They all had a small, tiny error. Uh that error was enough. They were shrouded completely in bright red fire but seemed unaffected.
The figures raised their fleshy, burning hands at us and the wall of fire began to grow smaller and smaller. They were going to smother us! The girl carrying me dropped me in shand I fell to the ground with a thud. The wall of flames kept getting closer and closer to us until....it dissipated.
Like it was never there in the first place. The chittering creatures looked at me with eyes of horror and fear. At first I didn’t get what was happening, but when I heard the irrefutable sound of a sword being drawn, I knew what was happening. They weren’t looking at me, they were looking behind me! And whatever was behind me was definitely terrifying. I looked behind me slowly, expecting to see something horrifying and scary, like a giant dog made of human body parts or something.
Sure the cowboy wasn’t effected like the chatters as I’d like to call them from now on, and sure the cowboy looked like a dangerous guy also like the chatters but he didn’t look horrifying in any sense of the way. He wore a red rag as a cape and it seemed to be flame resistant save for the end of it which was on fire. One thought remained in my mind though. Thecowboy was human. And any human who could scare monsters was a dangerous man indeed.
The cowboy had a brown cowboy hat and it seemed to be made entirely out of flames. The cowboy also had what appeared to be a scythe made entirely of flame, save for the little hilt at the bottomin his right hand and a smith and Winston pistol in the other. This guy looked really intimidating but not scary. At least in the way I originally thought he was.
I began to wonder why the chatters were so cared of this guy. I soon go to my answer when one of the chatters leaped out at the cowboy and ended up getting sliced in half almost instantly.
The chatter let out a weak growl before expiring. The flame on its skin went out, leaving nothing but a charred upper half of a skeleton. It was as if the flames had actually been hurting it the whole time but it ignored the pain. The body looked grisly to say the least. It’s black sunken eyes stared at the cowboy with a tantalizing glare. I closed my eyes and cringed. The girl took one look at the man and ran in the other direction.....right into the chatters.
The chatters grabbed the girl by her feet and rushed off deeper into the woods. The cowboy and I followed. I could hear the girl’s screams as she was being burned alive form the mere touch of the chatters. Eventually the chatters stopped at a cave which had a boulder over it and they dropped the girl.
The cowboy aimed his shotgun at one of the chatters and shot him in the face, blowing it right off in a heap of sparks. The other chatters hissed before clawing at the boulder, eventually breaking t brought it. The creatures grabbed hold of the girl, and rushed in deeper to the cave, inside there were a bunch of other chatters. The chatters cackled maniacally at the sight of the girl being dragged.
The chatters then stopped when they recognized the cowboy. All 30 or so of the chatters began on the offensive and breathed fire at us. The cowboy raised his sword to the fire and clicked a little red button on the hilt. The sword seemed to absorb the fire, glowing a luminescent red as it absorbed the fire. When all the fire breath was absorbed, the man pointed the sword to the chatters and they began to be absorbed as well
Some of the chatters tried to run away but their attempts were fruitless. Eventually all the chatters were absorbed, leaving nothing but a cave full of smoldering skeletons. The sword seemed to melt and it oozed drips of lava. Clearly it was at its absaloute limit.
The chatter from earlier continued running down the cave, the girl in its grasp. The cowboy closed his eyes and focused for a moment before hurtling the sword at the chatter.
The sword went right through the chatter and absorbed it. The chatter let out a horrid scream before expiring pitifully. The girl fell when the chatter dropped her. She quickly ran towards me just as the sword exploded! The explosion was so vast I could feel the heat reach my face. Me, the Cowboy, and the girl, sprinted out of the cave just as it too exploded.
The girl picked herself up and I noticed that she did two very spectacular things. Firstly, she had a huge gash in her left leg, probably form where the chatters grabbed her. Secondly, she appeared to be burning it shut with her fingertips which were on fire. I couldn’t believe it, the girl could control fire. The cowboy gritted his teeth at her and raised his shotgun to her.
This time it worked and shot out a fireball. I quickly leaped in front of the fireball. The blast struck me in my abdomen and sent me tumbling to the ground. “Pitiful!” The cowboy said, softly, “who would you even stop me? She’s a plasma mage she deserves to die!” “Plasma mage?”
I mumbled to myself, “what’s that?” It was then that I noticed something. The fireball that hit me didn’t feel all that bad. I mean sure it hurt me. But that was just the weight it had when it hit me. Other than that, it just burned a little bit. Was I fire resistant? Hopefully.
The cowboy cursed to himself before shooting at me some more. 5 of the seven shots he hit got to me, and although individually they didn’t hurt too much, save for a little burning feeling, over time that fire damage stacked up and I was fully on fire! I flailed around trying to get the fire off of me but to no avail.
My eyes began to droop and then I fell to the ground, dead....well almost. Then I began to feel angry. Angry that I had trusted the cowboy, angry that I was about to die, angry that my life was pretty much ruined.
That anger made me ignore the pain and I stood up, Lightning now crackling in my eyes. I reached my hand to the cowboy. I don’t know why it just felt right. To my shock, a bright red lightning bolt left from my hand and It struck the cowboy in the stomach.
The cowboy was launched into the air and smacked against a tree. The cowboy wiped away the blood that began to drip from his mouth tDRtserand slowly stood up. He was bleeding a little bit which striked me as odd. He had just been hit by a lightning bolt after all.
Looking back at his wound I noticed something. The blood on his shirt grew smaller and smaller with every second until eventually, it was gone completely. He regenerated!
The girl gasped in shock. The man chuckled out a laugh and began shooting at me rapid fire. I barely dodged the shots by jumping away. The fireballs struck the forest ground and burned it. The fire seems to spread far quicker than I thought should have. The cowboy Pointed held his gun at me and pulled the trigger and..,nothing.
It appeared as if the gun could only fire after the trigger was released. It was as if the shotgun was charging. It was charging. After four seconds or so, the gun began to glow a bright red glow and suddenly it fired. A huge ball of fire, as big as myself, was shot at me! The next thing I know, my view became filled with a blinding white light.
Advertisement
The Oresteia (Modernized)
All three of the great Greek Tragedians have written plays about the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. Yet theirs is in fact not a story of tragedy, but rather one of redemption. As they move from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration to be heard throughout the ages. Forming a discourse set against the emergence of Athenian democracy out of a period of chaos and destruction, the Orestian plays are compelling stories of the tensions between our obligations to our families and the laws that bind us together as a society. In the beginning, we witness how a king’s decision to sacrifice his daughter and turn the tide of war inflicts lasting damage on his family, culminating in a terrible act of retribution. In the aftermath of regicide, we behold how a son must set out to avenge his father’s death by committing a most egregious sin. In the end, the sinner is tormented by supernatural powers that can never be appeased, but ultimately finds redemption and ends the curse on his house once and for all. Woven through all of this is the story of a friendship so close that it elevates itself to brotherhood - Where the blood of the covenant is shown to be indeed thicker than the water of the womb. In this very brief twelve-chapter modern rendition of the Orestian plays, I have chosen to place my focus mainly on the lives of the characters Orestes and his best friend Pylades. The chapters, each around 2000-2500 words, are split up evenly between them in first-person narrative. I hope that you will come to enjoy reading this heartwarming story, but more importantly, that you see how the conflicts portrayed in the story, whether human or institutional, are still much very relevant to our societies today. Note on Sources: The details of this story is very loosely based on The Oresteia by Aeschylus. And I mean very loosely. Other sources that I referenced for detail and inspiration are Mythology by Edith Hamilton, Electra by Sophocles, and Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. You may also find that I have quoted some of these works, and others (such as Shelley's Ozymondaeus), without citations (average of 1-2 such quotes per chapter). I did this because I do not have the ability to describe certain scenes nearly as well as some of those writers. If you read a particularly beautiful piece of prose here, chances are it's probably stolen lol. Also, I wrote this during the summer between my high school senior year and my college freshmen year. It was the summer of 2020, and being quarantined apparently gets my creative side out lol.
8 191The path to an Overlord
A 24 year old man Richard Kaltefeuer goes on vacation for a family reunion to learn a secret his family hides from the world. His family knows magic. The family gets there magic from a black orb. When Richard reaches and touches the orb to gain magic of his own he is rewarded with pain and watches in horror as his body starts to disintegrate into dust, and the world goes black. Whats in store for this man is a world unlike his own its a world of magic. What will become of this man will be of his own making if he survives. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- some tags have yet to show up in the story, yet they will, I have tagged all that i have planned and will tag further when i notice a tag should be added or it is pointed out to me. I hope you all will enjoy the first story i ever posted online.
8 189Frigid Influence
The festive period seems to just be getting longer and longer, and Alex has had enough. What starts as a joke with friends down at the bar ends up with Alex seeing just how close to the truth he was all along, but will he be able to help the inhabitants of a strange alternate Earth powered by the mysterious Frigid? A Gamelit/LitRPG novel heavily influenced by the Veil of the Void ttrpg system.
8 153Imperator's Path: A Sci-Fantasy Xianxia
Adrias Lucion lives in the Dominium, an interstellar empire where twelve races of mankind follow Paths inspired by the Olympian gods and seek to advance their Rank. Adrias was born a lowly slave but is given a chance to be something greater. TL;DR: Red Rising is going for a jog when Will Wight's Cradle mugs it at gunpoint and then Warhammer 40k shows up with a steel chair while Percy Jackson and Mistborn eat popcorn in a corner.
8 157The Hunters Of Artemis (JOIN!)
Are you a girl looking for a place? Well that's us! We are the immortal unflirtable hunters and you can become one of us by reading this!
8 83A girl, Isabella, gets abducted and taken onto a ship. The ship is a transport for the intergalactic zoo and Isabella would be the second human taken to the zoo. Drew, who was taken in 1949, had to fight for his life for what seems to be months, when in actuality has been decades. Isabella gets put into a human exhibit where she meets drew. They must survive together in order to escape but will they? Will they fall in love? Or will all hope be lost and they give up?NOTE: this is my very first book and I won't be editing it. Therefore please understand that there will be a lot of issues like an underdeveloped plot line or not enough character development. Also it's kind of cringy. Read at your own risk
8 113