Chapter One: Sorrow and Determination
Nori sighed heavily and leaned against the railing, staring blankly off at the sunset that was painting the sky a myriad of dazzling colors. The world was truly beautiful at sunset, yet it was the time of day she had come to hate the most. It was when monsters crawled out of their various holes and caves and made it their business to try and destroy everything she had.
She was standing on the sixth-floor balcony of her house, her faithful white Husky named Snow lying beside her with his head resting on her foot. He looked up to growl halfheartedly at a Creeper they could see about a mile off. The dog would jump to her rescue and fight off any monster that threatened Nori, except for Creepers. Nori couldn't really blame him; she didn't like getting very close to them either after what had happened to her mother.
Her parents had been dead for three years now, almost to the day. Everything she had, had once belonged to her parents. The house, the farm, all the chests full of spare tools and food... And now it was all hers. But she would have given up everything to have Renee and Rhett Stone back with her again.
Nori's thoughts turned from her dead parents to something disturbing that she had discovered earlier that day. Her food chests were getting low, and her tools were nearly broken. She would soon have to venture out into the world for the first time in her life and collect resources if she wanted to continue to survive. Nori's parents had never let her outside the fence her entire life. However, logic told her she couldn't be all alone in the world.
"There have to be other humans out there, Snow," she whispered to her dog, whose ear twitched at the sound of his name. "I just know it... Mother and Father had to come from somewhere, right? If I could only find those other humans..." Nori's voice trailed off as she became lost in thought again.
There was no denying it; the seventeen year old girl was afraid at the thought of leaving the relative safety of her home. There were a few crops she had kept tending, and apple trees that would give fruit a little while longer before she had to chop them down for firewood, but she wasn't sure that she wanted to use all the resources on the property before searching for help.
However, there was a huge setback keeping her from trying; she didn't know how to make the weapons or tools she would need to go on any kind of journey. Her shovel, hoe, and axe wouldn't hold out very long against a hoard of hostile monsters; they were barely standing up to their intended jobs anymore. "What's really upsetting," she murmured to Snow, "Is that I know where I would find out how to build those things... Father's workshop." She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Her father... She had loved him dearly, and he had always made it clear that he loved her too. But he had been irritatingly secretive in life.
Her mother, Renee, had been a down-to-earth and hardworking woman. She singlehandedly grew all the food they ate, made repairs around the house, kept the animals fed as well as slaughtering them when the time came, and trained Snow from a wild dog to a loyal companion. The woman had been a master with the sword and bow, and feared no monster.
Her father Rhett, on the other hand, was just the opposite. Oh, certainly he'd been hardworking, but in a very different way. He preferred to spend most of his time deep in the cellar, in what his wife used to refer to in an annoyed voice as his "workshop". The room was all but impenetrable, made of pure obsidian and sealed with an iron door. Nori had never discovered how he entered and exited; he seemed to have some secret way of entering so that his curious daughter couldn't follow.
Rhett had done most of the mining for the ore and minerals that his wife needed for her tools and building materials, as well as creating the tools themselves. Nori could see the entrance to his mine shaft from the house, still glowing faintly in the distance from the torches around it. Her mind turned back, to that fateful day that her parents had both been taken from her in one fell swoop...
Nori smiled as her father patted her head fondly, looking with wide and trusting eyes up at him. It was his day to stay home and protect Nori, but he had told her that he needed to go down into the mine for something. "Don't tell Mother, Nori. I should be back before she can notice. Can I count on you?" Nori's grin widened at his conspiratorial wink, delighted to be trusted with a secret.
"I won't tell, Daddy, I promise."
She had stood on the third floor balcony to watch him hurry toward his mine shaft. Nori crossed over to the other side of the house and stood out on that side of the balcony, able to see her mother in the distance herding cattle. The child admired her strong, fearless mother, but Renee could be a bit cold and calculating sometimes. She often scolded Nori for being so interested in her father's mysterious work. 'It's not the kind of thing you should concern yourself with,' seemed to be her constant refrain when her daughter asked questions about crafting.
Nori was brought back to the present when she saw something unusual; a Creeper sneaking up on her mother during broad daylight. She screamed in terror as it got within exploding distance, her mother whirling and slashing at the creature with her sword just in time. Nori thought later that there was something odd about that specific Creeper aside from it being out during the day, but she had never been able to put her finger on it. Any thoughts of the creature's oddities were driven away by pure horror when her mother's sure and true strike didn't kill it, the Creeper exploding with a flash and earsplitting bang, the noise muffling Nori's screams.
Utterly horrified and shocked by what she had seen, Nori peered desperately into the smoke left behind by the creature's destruction, praying for a sign that her mother could have survived. Maybe she hadn't been as close as she'd looked... But all hope left the young girl at the sight of her mother's burned, shriveled body lying in the rubble. "Mama!" she screamed in her grief, running to the other side of the house, desperate to see if her father was okay. She couldn't lose both of them in one day, she just couldn't...
Nori got to the window in time to see her father just touching the doorknob of the entrance to the deep mineshaft, the girl feeling a brief flutter of relief before her world was shattered once more by a deafening explosion. This one left no corpse, it was so massive; it could only have been caused by TNT detonating behind the door. Nori sank to the floor, howling and sobbing with the deepest sorrow a human could feel, wishing that she had died too.
And yet, she hadn't. After many, many days of just crying and sleeping and crying some more, Nori woke to find Snow faithfully curled around her in her parents' large bed. Strangely, the dog's loyalty brought her back from the brink of despair, and somehow she knew she could make it on her own. And she had, up until now.
"I know Father's workshop has to have clues on how to create all those tools and weapons... It can't have all been in his head, he was too scatterbrained for that," she murmured to herself, going inside the house again as the sounds of the monsters dying in the traps around the property began to get to her. She knew they couldn't reach her in the large house. Monsters weren't smart enough to use the doors.
"But how can I possibly get in there? Father said that nothing can break obsidian except for diamond..." She thought suddenly of the diamond sword her mother had possessed; it had been the very weapon that she had tried to kill the Creeper with. Maybe, just maybe, she could use it to hack away at the obsidian and get to the knowledge that would liberate her at last. And perhaps she would find some answers to the questions surrounding her parents' deaths. There was one small problem with her plan, one that she nervously decided to face in the morning...
The diamond sword was still lying on the floor of the crater where her mother had died.
((Thanks for reading! Please review. I welcome constructive criticism.))
