Chapter 1 - Home no longer.
She rested herself on a small platform she had glitched off the side of the nearby chunk, Her long red hair coiled at her shoulders before continuing the fall down her back. Her deep blue eyes roamed over the unloaded vista, finally resting on the void below her. "If I jumped... Would I ever land?" She pondered aloud. "Maybe I would just freeze as I fell."
She shook her head roughly, sending her hair flying out from her shoulders in a wide arc. She refocused her attention on the great blocky sun as it descended towards the horizon. A small prayer to Notch fell into her head from her past. 'As the sun falls away, I thank thee for another day. As another year becomes clear, I praise thee name. As my life's end comes near, I ask for but one more day.'
Her mouth formed the words and sent them flying into the void. Memories flooded in behind her recital. Memories of her old home, her old life. She remembered her few friends, and her multiple enemies.
Her eyes grew damp as she tried to force the memories away. They had banished her from the village at the age of eleven! The wizards had tutored her some before even they had tired of her constantly changing demeanor and sent her to the reject areas of Minecraftia,
So, now she lived on the last loaded chunks of Minecraftia. Mostly she lived in peace and hapless solitude. The creepers unfortunately had found her identity and demanded her removal from their lands. The wizards were most likely working on relocating her right now.
Undoubtedly, Marcus was already preparing to head her way and give her a quick relocation, A catch up lesson for her almost nonexistent magical potential, and a bit of conversation. She was pretty sure he only had to relocate her, the other things might be a addition to his duties or they might be pity...
Either way it was always a bittersweet reunion. He would bring a batch of essentials, random treats obtained from his other travels, and a new 'Cure.' Last time the 'cure' was a desensitization pod that she had to sit in for a day, time before that it was a bunch of cold potions that tasted like rotten feet.
The cure was for her 'Special problem.' In her earliest memories, she had a friend. They looked nothing alike, and were nothing alike. StormGale had been wild rambunctious and free spirited, while she had preferred books and puzzles. Over time, she saw StormGale less and less, until she just vanished completely.
The people in the town saw StormGale and said she did the worst things, but she never saw her. She honestly didn't think about her very much... After a short period, instead of blaming the things done on StormGale, All of it was blamed on Ashley.
She was shunned and her friends disappeared. The arrival of the wizards was a relief. She had been so happy when they arrived and proclaimed that they would investigate her actions and the actions of the mysterious Stormgale.
For the next week, the wizards kept an omnipresent eye on her. At the end of the week, they called a town meeting and stated their findings. After a couple minutes of explanations, the whole town knew that, her 'authorized life force' was intertwined with the coding of another.
They brought her up to the stage and demonstrated a quick test. In front of all of them, her skin turned bleach white, her eyes faded to a stormy grey, and her hair turned to a silvery blonde. Gasps echoed through the crowd as StormGale stood in front of them. Stuck her tongue out and took a deep bow.
Confused and outraged, the Townsfolk had tried to extract an understandable answer from the wizards, but it seemed as though they were at a loss. A group of fathers grouped and approached the wizards as every eye in the room stayed stuck on StormGale's skin.
At least that's how the wizards had recounted it to her. She didn't remember much more than getting up on the stage. What she did remember was waking up in a chair off the side of the main room and the kindly man that had took her hand and teleported them away from the irate crowd that had declared her banishment.
That had been five years before. Since then she had lived in the ruins of Antiquity, and the sodden bowls of troy. The wizards had changed her name and her background countless times. Finally, she had opted to live beyond the reaches of the humans and keep her past.
A deep bell rang out from the growing darkness. Somewhere out in the unloaded area, there was an immense wizard base glitched into the middle of nothing. Only the higher wizards could go there. She had attempted to glitch her way out towards the continuous tolls but she never got out of the sight of land.
Something always drove her back, the bell resounded again, jerking her from her thoughts and drawing her attention to the sun falling beneath the horizon. She cursed and checked her inventory for her bow.
She pulled it out and stretched, her skin color fading to white. Her calm grey eyes absorbed the situation and the bow in her hand. Quickly she tucked the bow away, and unsheathed her iron sword. She jumped from the platform and somersaulted through the air, barely grasping the ladder as she connected with the side of the unloaded chunk.
Holding the ladder with both hands, she brought her legs up behind her and touched the soil in front of her with her feet. In a single fluid movement, she thrust her upper body away from the ladder and hung for a second suspended over the void. Her silver hair caught the suns dying rays and flashed white.
She flipped up above the grass and gracefully landed on her feet. Confidently she strode forward into the night. She halted after a second and, grinned a frightening leer into the dark. The bushes around her snapped and swayed as bodies moved through them.
Behind her, she heard a low chatter of teeth grinding together. She jumped and swung her sword in midair slicing through the head of the zombie that had run full hilt from the bushes. Blood and brain flew in a gory mess through the air around her as she continued her spin.
As another two zombies forced their ways out of the bushes to confront her, her grey eyes flashed in delight and she beckoned them closer before running the first through with her sword, and vanquishing its body in a shower of grey and white puffs.
The second paused for a moment as if trying to understand what had happened to its partner. It recovered quickly but she had already launched herself into the air above it, she let out a fierce battle cry as she used the force of her fall to drive her blade down through the zombies' skull sending bits of bone flying as she twisted it out of the creatures' rotted innards.
The square moon had risen high above the dark land, and was nearing the apex of its climb, as she approached the front of her house. She ran her hand through her red hair and squinted her eyes at the remnants of the gore on her iron blade trying to figure out how she had lost so much time killing zombies.
She sighed as she walked through her gate and looked at her farm. None of the wheat had grown; shaking her head, she grabbed a couple of potatoes and carrots from their small patches. Much easier then going down to her main farm.
She looked out beyond her fence and sighed at the multitude of eyes that leered from the forest. She ducked as an arrow flew with great gusto towards her head, hit a button beside her farm and watched as the fence got one higher blocking the arrows, then walked towards her door.
On her door was a piece of dried flesh with words written in a dark ink. In a well-placed scrawl written several times in differing hands, it read; "You have been warned twice! After this there will be no more warnings." Rolling her eyes, she ripped the skin off the door, swung about and hit the button again, dropping the fence down so she could be seen over it.
She walked forward along her path and stood at her gate holding the dried flesh. Her grey eyes flashed as she ripped the skin in two and held them over the dual torches marking the entrance to her yard. Her red hair gleamed catching the light from the skins as they caught fire and fell in bright flames from her hands to the ground.
She turned away and walked back towards her house, hitting the button once more without stopping and walked through her front door. The leaves crackled behind her for a few seconds before the noise calmed and ceased.
Inside she shook her head and tossed out her earlier thoughts. She reached into one of her chests and fished out a bucket of water. Turning back to her cauldron, she filled it up and lit the fire beneath it.
She then plopped the potatoes on a board and cut them in silence. After a minute, she looked over to the cauldron and found that it was boiling. She looked around the room for a second as if she was missing something, and then redirected her attention towards the potatoes she was cutting.
She sighed as she finished with the potatoes, and then dumped the slices into the cauldron. She turned and grabbed some salt from her chest and sprinkled it in the water. She looked around again and murmured seemingly surprised, "Jack isn't here..."
She looked around the smaller kitchen, "Where is he?" Her voice cracked, then she shook her blond hair and took a deep breath. "Don't need him anyway." She murmured, an edge catching her voice.
She pulled the carrots out and sliced through them quickly, her knife becoming a blur as it moved across the cutting board. She scooped up the small slices of carrots and dumped them into the soup.
For a few minutes, she just blankly stared at the wall. The water boiled to a broth and the thick aroma of soup began to fill the air. She pulled a bowl from the chest and scooped a bit from the cauldron.
She move over to the table in the corner of the kitchen and began to eat her food. The hot soup stung her mouth but she hardly noticed it as she stared intently at the front door. "Where is he?" She murmured, barely hearing herself as her red hair fell into her eyes obscuring the sight of the door.
She blinked back a couple of tears and turned away from the door. "Probably at one of those Nexus clubs..." She said. Then she flung her bowl into the hopper on the side of the room, and stormed out of the kitchen.
She stormed over and slammed a button to her side, then stumbled up the stairs that formed ahead of her. She glanced off the door as she barged into her room then tripped over the lock switch that deactivated the lower stairwell access before falling into her bed.
As she began to fall asleep, she heard the zombies around her house chanting softly in their guttural language. She shuddered as their chant rose in volume. She contemplated what gods they might be calling on and what they might be asking for.
The chant continued well into the night but she fell asleep quickly, barely missing the sound of her lower door opening and sounds of her base level traps going off.
I am working on rewriting all of the current chapters as i am self-imposing a new criteria for my work. One of those is a word minimum of 2,000 words... At least it adds challenge right? I spent the last hour working on getting that last couple of words... :\ But it got done. :D
The storyline should stay roughly the same... Though the actual events, I can't promise.
The original chapters can now be read on the Minecraft forums page for this.
topic/1899410-the-reincarnation-rewrittenchapter-9 character-applications/#entry23448358