Chapter one

A Man in the Snow

I, Jake Miles, was trudging through the already thickening snow. Only an hour ago it was an inch deep but now it was over a foot high! I was hiking to my home or what I called home. My house was a rundown sagging appliance shop called Go the Extra Mile with Jake Miles's Appliance shop. It wasn't very neat but who cares when you have a forest for a yard I'm serious! Right behind the shop growing twenty feet away was the forest. Anyhow I was walking when I saw a motionless lump on the ground. As I got closer I saw it was a man dressed in what looked like seal skins with scales but I decided not to worry about it because he was frozen it looked like he was probably exhausted to. So I grabbed his arms and pulled He seemed to weigh like three hundred pounds! Then I think I saw him move his arm not much but he moved it. So I knew he was alive. I pulled harder and he started sliding the one problem about that was that once he started sliding he didn't seem to stop so I let him slide until I realized my door was closed and the guy would smash right through it. I broke into a run. I got to the door about 200 feet before MR. Slidy (that's what I started to call the stranger) I threw the door open wide, Just as the stranger slid through the doorway. Then I closed the door and locked it.

Then I stoked up the fire and got a good blaze going. Then I turned to the stranger who was still on the ground unmoving. But he had defrosted that was good. Then suddenly he sat up, "boy where am I" he spat out the first word as if I was below him in every way.

I stood facing him "You'd better show some respect for me, I took you in and in the process nearly broke my door!" with that I turned away as If he didn't matter any more. "I'm sorry boy; I just need to bring Jake Miles somewhere." After hearing that I spun around "I am Jake Miles!" I said. He looked dumbfounded "you're Jake Miles? Why I'm sorry, it's just that I have just been frozen, then defrosted and so I am very cranky" he gave a huff and turned away from me, back towards the fire "okay" I said embarrassed, and then I turned around and went up the stairs into the kitchen and got a pot of water boiling for cocoa then I went down stairs to see how the Guy was. He was actually sitting up. Turning to me he said "By the way I'm James Clinton, runner of the Outsiders!" He said it as if it was supposed to mean something to me, which of course didn't. "Who are the outsiders?" James laughed a great big laugh. "You must be joking" he said still chuckling, "no really who are the outsiders?" he didn't look so jolly after that sentence "didn't your dad ever tell you any thing about the Outsiders" "never could, he died in a car wreck a couple of years ago, never actually never heard of you Outsiders or whatever you call yourself until you came along" the guy James looked grave "I wish I wasn't the one to have to tell you this but," he took a great sigh, "your dad was an Outsider one of the best he died because of the Diamond knights the Outsiders enemy's it was the Diamond Knights work all right," he looked at me sadly, "I know because of their mark a blue Diamond with a sword through the it. "I have a pot of cocoa", I said trying to hide my feelings, and I raced up stairs just as I heard. A hiss a ten foot long cobra came out of my room. A cobra with a blue mark with a sword through it, slid through the doorway. It was a king cobra to be exact but all I was thinking about was all the deadly facts about them namely the poison and the strike range. Thankfully I backed up, but my stairway didn't have strong banister and so I guess you know what happened, I broke the banister and fell off the second floor of my house. As I hit the floor of the first floor which was the shop I saw James wielding his sword against the cobra which of course had to sprouted two more heads. James drew a smaller sword and threw it to me. By some luck it didn't stab me or brain me, I actually caught it! I stood up and found to my astonishment that I had a grim desire to kill the monster, I'm very compassionate to animals but that didn't matter anymore I had blood rushing, adrenaline and a small sword. As I charged the cobra one of the heads turned to look at me and I started feeling strangely drowsy then with out warning it lunged for my head. That was its last mistake. The human instinct is for survival and with that I swung at the head that had gone for my head and "shlock!" I had somehow sliced off it's head and somehow that swing affected the rest of the body the cobra stiffened then started dissolving into pile of dust starting from were I had sliced the snake.

I wanted to turn away as the snake dissolved into pile of dust but I was mesmerized. When it had dissolved into nothing but dust I turned to James only to find that he had been searching for something I knew because he was kicking boxes over, moving pipes around looking for probably more monsters. Then he turned to me and said gruffly "pack your bags boy we're leaving we have to at least get to the Outsiders by tonight unless you would want to stay here and meet some other monsters worse than that Cobracus we fought back there. It was very small compared to a Draculus." I wanted to ask what that was but it would waste time and I didn't want to fight something else today.