Basically what the title implies. I am writing a book, and would be interested in some feedback. Anyone interested?

well, here comes the first chunk. as I said, its a work in progress. the storyline is mostly set, but I really need to go back through it, and fill in more details, etc. also think I'm going to redo the parts about the basement armory and such, probably make it more mysterious.

.........Rowan county Kentucky.

Jake Reynolds sat in his truck and looked at the weather beaten sign attached to the gate in front of him, he flipped on the high beams to illuminate it better, in the dark snowy night, sure enough he was at the right place. He breathed a sigh of relief, he was exhausted from the 16 hour drive he had just completed and was ready to call it a night, he hoped there was a warm bed waiting for him. The heavy snow, and slick conditions turned what should have been a relatively easy six hour drive, into a white knuckle miserable sixteen hour driving nightmare. It’s amazing he didn’t end up in a ditch as many other vehicles had, or smashed under the wheels of a eighteen wheeler, which he almost had once due to the terrible icy road conditions. The only reason he had made it successfully was due to driving slow, four wheel drive, and the heavy bags of sand he had thrown into the trucks bed at the last minute. He would be glad to finally get out of this truck get a quick snack and go to bed, it felt like everything on him hurt from being hunched over the steering wheel for the last sixteen hours. His shoulders, back, neck and even his eyes ached. He didn’t want to drive up here tonight, but he didn’t have much choice, his late uncles will had clearly stated he had 24 hours to take ownership of the property, or he would forfeit the farm to the next heir after himself. What a pain in the ass he grumbled to himself, why would someone put that bullshit in a will in the first place?

The damn place had sat empty for the last three months, what difference would a couple more days make? He had made it though with a hour of time to spare, however. The representative from the bank would be here at six to check that he had indeed taken up residence within the allotted time. The last year of his life had been pretty rough for him. First he had lost his dad in a house fire, the fire had burned the house to the foundation, taking his dad. He had returned for the funeral, but could not stay long enough for the clean up, seeing it was a total loss, he had hired a company to do the clean up after he returned to the middle east. A few months later, instead of reenlisting, he had decided to finally leave the Army, to commit himself to his wife full time and start the family they had talked about for years. The day he arrived home his wife had hit him with divorce papers, it had caught him totally by surprise and left him completely devastated emotionally. He had married his child hood sweetheart, she was his first and only love, and he didn’t know how to live without her. He had lost the family heirlooms, and much of his belongings in the fire as he stored them at his fathers, then his wife took everything else in the divorce, including his retirement and savings. Then to top it off, she had ruined his credit by opening credit card accounts in his name, and maxing them all out to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

He had to file bankruptcy to escape the creditors who hounded him day and night. He was reduced to living in a homeless shelter by the time the divorce was finished, had gotten out of the marriage with the clothes on his back, one hundred and fifty dollars in his wallet, and a large lawyer bill. The lawyer had taken pity on him, and managed to get Jake a job working for a construction company. It didn’t pay well, and had zero benefits, but it was a job, and they had cheap motel rooms, they rented to their employees for cheap. A depressed Jake had settled into his new life, back breaking heavy manual labor during the day, a short bus ride to the motel, a few beers and depressing cheap motel by night. He didn’t see how he could keep going the way he was, he desperately needed a change, a better job, but that was not so easy when you were flat broke, and had no help. Jake had joked much of his life that he seemed to be blessed, things had always worked out well for him, even if he didn’t see it at the time, it looked like his luck had finally run out though. he had always wondered how people ended up in a shitty life, with nothing to show for it, or to live for... he had his answer now, he was one of them.

Jake had scraped by for months, barely keeping a roof over his head, and food in his belly working overtime when possible to get extra money. Then, one day, things seemed to start turning around for him. The first good thing to happen, was when he got a phone call from a local garage owned by one of his fathers friends. The old man had dropped off his truck to be worked on just a few days before the house fire. Jake was stunned, he thought the old truck had burned in the attached garage. The garage owner didn’t know how to contact Jake, but had recently managed to get his number from a family friend. He told Jake he could pick up the old truck anytime he wanted, and he was waving the repair cost as a favor to his father. Jake had tears in his eyes when he drove off in the old ford four wheel drive truck. The old red truck had belonged to his dad since Jake was 12 years old. He had so many memories of his father in it, hunting and camping trips, hauling firewood and building materials. Jake had learned to drive, and gotten his drivers license in it, the drive back to his hotel room had been a emotional one.

The second piece of good fortune, had come while he had been cleaning up the truck. He had taken the rest of the morning to wash and wax the old truck, and while cleaning out the cab, he had found a pistol case jammed back under the seat. He had been shocked when he discovered it contained his grandfathers pistol, one of the heirlooms he was sure lost in the fire. It had been wrapped in a oily rag, and was in great condition. the story was, his grandfather had been issued this pistol late in World War One, when he was just sixteen years old. The old man had lied about his age to join the Army claiming to be eighteen, when in reality he had just turned sixteen. He had carried the heavy Colt pistol in France and Belgium, and had brought it back home after the war. When World War Two had started, he had enlisted again, and took the old pistol off to war with him, carrying it this time through the invasion of France, until the end of the war. Then, when his father had went to Korea, he had carried the old pistol himself, and later again when he was drafted to Vietnam.

The history of the old gun was Incredible, which was why Jake had been so devastated when he thought it had been lost. He had sat for a long time, turning the heavy old pistol in his hands, examining every inch of it. It was over a hundred years old, manufactured in 1917, and issued to his grandfather in 1918. It had a few dings and scratches and the finish was heavily worn, but it was rust free, and still locked up tight. When he was cleaning it later, he had been surprised to find his grandfathers and fathers initials and dates scratched under the pistols plastic grips. Pvt T Reynolds, France 1917 / Germany 1944-45, the opposite side had, Pvt E Reynolds Korea 50-51/Vietnam 70-72 . Jake had swelled with pride as he looked at those initials, and the old gun. How many people owned a pistol their family had carried through four wars? Jake gazed out the trucks ice crusted window at the snow covered countryside ,He patted his side where the old Colt .45 rode in a concealed carry holster under his jacket it was Jake’s most Prized possession, and brought him a lot of comfort these days.

He thought back to a few days ago when he had been approached by the estate lawyer. He had just gotten back to his crappy motel room with a six pack of beer, planning to sit and stare at the tv for a few hours, before he passed out. There was a new Mercedes parked in front of his room, with a tall bald man holding a briefcase standing next to it. He was a estate lawyer from Lexington Ky, and had driven down to inform him that his uncle Edgar had passed away, leaving him a five hundred acre farm in eastern Kentucky. Jake had never met his uncle Edgar, he was sort of the black sheep of the family, and his father had always told Jake he had best stay clear of his crazy old uncle, if he knew what was good for him. In truth the property had been left to Jake’s father Elias, but since Elias had died, it all passed into Jake’s hands. He was shocked to be certain. His life a year ago, had went from happy and full of promise to bleak and depressing, losing everything and no future to be seen. Now However, things were finally turning around for him. He had his fathers truck, his grandfathers heirloom pistol, and apparently a 500 acre farm as well,it was all very over whelming.

Jake stopped staring at the snow covered countryside, bringing himself back to reality. He took out his phone, and sent a text to the lawyer, informing him that he was at the property, just in case the rep didn’t show up due to the snow. This is Jake Reynolds Mr Smithe, I just wanted to let you know I just arrived at the property, well under the time limit. He relaxed back against the seat and stretched his legs, then poured himself a cup of  warmish coffee from his battered old green thermos. The wind was blowing something terrible, and he was not looking forward to getting out to open that gate. Jake’s phone dinged, and he saw Mr Smithe had returned his text. Mr Reynolds, you drove across Kentucky last night in this blizzard !?! There was a provision in the will for inclement weather, that gave you a extra twenty four hours to take possession. I’m glad you made it safely, however our rep cant make it out today due to the roads, but will be there tomorrow at 5pm. Jake looked at the text and read it a second time.. ' SON OF A BITCH !  he fumed. You mean i didn’t have to drive in this shit? He was mad, but screw it. He was here now at his new home, that had been a hell of a drive, and it really got his adrenaline pumping. That was more excitement than he had experienced in a really long time, and it felt good, he really missed being in the military and the, adventure, camaraderie and adrenalin rush that came with it. He smiled for a moment, remembering things he experienced while in the military, then had another thought. He did miss those things about it, the fun and adventure, however, he didn’t miss all the bullshit, ass kissing, drama, and crap he had to deal with that went along wit the fun stuff. It seemed like for every 5 minutes of awesome, he had to wade through months of bullshit. He was going to have to get out of this slump he was in, and find something exciting, and challenging to push himself with.

Jake pushed the truck door against the howling wind, struggling to get it open. He braced it against his hip and struggled out of the truck holding the door against the wind and preventing it being slammed into him. His feet landed into the knee deep snow, he stepped back from the door releasing it, the wind immediately slammed it close with a loud bang. He took a moment to rub his tired eyes, and stretch, trying to work the kinks out of his back and neck, groaning with pleasure as he was rewarded with several loud pops from his back. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, leaned into the wind while keeping his head down to avoid the painful sleet the wind was was blasting against him. He stepped toward the closed gate, the snow crunched loudly as he forced his way forward, he stumbled once almost falling as he tripped over something that was hidden by the snow, but then he was there. The battered old steel gate was before him, The gate had a thick chain, brown with rust from many years of weather exposure.

The chain was strung through the gate, and around a thick post, a heavy old equally rusty padlock secured it. He pulled the keys out of his pocket with freezing fingers, and struggled to find one he thought might fit the old lock, he tried several wrong keys, but finally the next one slipped easily into it, the massive rusty lock might have looked a hundred years old, but it was well maintained, the key turned easily, and the lock popped open. He grabbed the gate, and shoved his body against it trying to slide it across the road, the deep snow make moving it difficult though. He struggled against the gate and deep snow that blocked it, shoving and kicking, it moved slowly before getting stuck against something, ice most likely, and refused to budge anymore despite his kicks and curses. Jake estimated it was just wide enough for the truck to squeeze past. “ Good enough”, he grumbled, and he stumbled back to the warmth of his truck.

Once back inside, he shifted the old truck into gear and stepped on the gas, the tires spun on the slick ground for a moment making a loud whining sound as they spun on the ice that lay under the snow. The knobby mud tires finally and the old red truck moved slowly forward, clawing its way through the deep snow, and past the heavy gate. The driveway was covered with deep fresh snow making it extremely hard to stay on it , he found himself more than once sliding off the road, he drove slowly and carefully trying to keep to what he hoped was the center of it, hoping to avoid any ditches that were hiding under the snow. The driveway was long and winding, but finally he emerged from the thick trees, and sitting there ahead of him in a small clearing was his new home.

Jake was pleasantly surprised at what he found, it was a beautiful old place, the house design was the old farm house look, it was white single story house, with a wrap around porch, the house had a waist high chain link fence surrounding it. He parked the truck, grabbed his bag, and stepped onto the porch. The front door was something to behold, it was huge, had hand carving, and the hardware on it was all heavy cast copper. He had never seen anything like it before, anywhere, it looked like it had come from a castle, but who would use copper instead of cast iron? It was puzzling, cast iron was a lot stronger, but, he had to admit it made for a good looking door. He unlocked the massive door and swung the it open, pausing for a moment when he saw the door frame. The wall was a good foot thick, he scratched at the wall next to the door frame with the house key and was surprised to find it was concrete. The entire damn house was made from concrete a foot thick, then covered with siding to make it look normal.

He thought for a second, and stepped outside to look more closely at the shutters that were on all of the windows. He inspected one of them, and was satisfied that his hunch had been right, it was not a normal decorative shutter, it was a real shutter designed to be closed over the windows, it was also made from thick steel, and was painted to match the house. The damn house was a bunker, maybe his uncle had been scared of tornadoes? No matter his reason, Jake liked it, it was a solid well built house, he didn’t need to worry about burglars, or tornadoes he thought. He walked inside and found himself standing in the main room, which was a combined living room and kitchen. He glanced around and loved what he saw. The floors were all hardwood, the ceiling had massive ancient looking wood beams, there was also a huge stone fireplace. The fireplace was built with large dark colored stone blocks carefully fitted together, it had a wide hearth and the mantle was made from another thick wood beam that matched the ones in the ceiling. The large couch and two comfortable looking chairs were upholstered in leather, the kitchen had new stainless appliances, and a old fashioned soap stone sink, that even had a old fashioned style water pump that actually worked, and he was sure would provide water even if the power was out.

Right beside the front door, was a large gun cabinet, peering through the glass he could make out a assortment of guns, and was both surprised, and pleased at what he saw, it looked like his uncle had raided a world war two armory. It was all World war two military vintage, and there were two of each gun, two M1Garands, two M1 carbines, two 1903 springfields, two trench riot shotguns, and two colt forty five automatic pistols, the bottom of the cabinet was filled with ammunition, and loaded magazines. Tired or not, the house had his curiosity now, he found a flash light in the kitchen, and went exploring. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, the master bedroom had hardwood floors, and another fireplace in it that was a smaller version of the one in the living room. In front of the fireplace were two large leather covered chairs with a small reading table between them, the bed was king sized and the head board and foot board were made from more thick hand carved wood, Sitting on the bed Jake nodded in satisfaction, it had a thick comfortable mattress. He felt the mattress calling his name, he walked into the master bath, again pleased with what he saw. The bath was finished in attractive tile, and the shower was a large walk in style. He could not resist the shower, he turned on the shower, and started getting undressed as the water warmed up.

The shower felt amazing after the long drive he had made, the powerful jets of how water soothed his muscles, and relaxing him, soon he was yawning, and felt that comfortable bed calling his name. He climbed out, and found the towels large and super soft against his skin. He climbed into the bed and was asleep in seconds. The next morning, while drinking his coffee Jake finished his walk around of his new home, the more he saw, the more he appreciated just what he had inheirted. The house had been set up for self sufficiency, and his grandfather and uncle had done a incredible job at it. The kitchen had modern plumbing, but next to the farm style kitchen sink was a old style hand pump that drew water straight from a well under the house, providing water even if the power went out. There was a outside wood furnace that heated the water and the house, with a large supply of firewood along with another well. There was a small building behind the house that contained a generator and fuel tank capable of powering the entire house in power outages for extended periods of time. The generator building also had several large batteries and charge controllers for a solar panel array, the southern side of the house roof was covered in solar panel’s. It was a great set up, and its what he would have done himself had he built it, and had the money to do whatever he wanted. The last place he went was the attic, he found a steel ladder bolted to the wall in the back of a closet that led to a steel hatch, He popped it open, and climbed into the large attic. Here he got another surprise, the ceilings in the entire house were concrete, here he was in the attic, and the floor of the attic was solid concrete. The roof that was on the house was more for looks, to make the house look normal. It was a real roof though, and he was standing in a spacious attic, that was stacked with the usual oddball attic stuff, a old  tree, old boxes, etc. He loved the place, it had the feel of a log cabin, and was built like a bunker. There really was nothing he felt it was missing, or that he could have done better.

Jake had been in the new house for a week , and had settled in pretty well, it was his dream home, and he was very comfortable in it. While going trough the large desk in the study he discovered a locked drawer in the top of the desk in the study. He found a key on the key ring that opened the locked drawer, inside was a envelope labeled basement, containing a large strange looking key, and several old leather bound journals, Embossed on the cover was the name Tobias Reynolds, Jake’s grandfather. He was excited to discover his grandfathers journals. Jake knew little about his fathers side of the family, and this was a real treat for him to have such a personal look into the life of the family’s war hero. The old books were still in good shape, and he was grateful his grandfather had neat writing that was easy to read. He started reading, curious as to what he, and his life experiences had been like, the first journal started at the beginning of world war two, and described what went on all through the war, and what the man had seen. It was amazing to read a first person account of the the invasion of France, the push through Europe towards Germany, the old mans tank battles which put the Sherman he commanded against the Nazi tanks.

He sat for hours sipping bourbon, and reading about what his grandfather had seen during the war. Then he started reading the last journal, which started detailing how his grandfather had returned home from the war, it began normally enough, but a few pages into it and he thought his grandfather had gone insane. August 1946, today while I was using the surplus welder / generator to repair the tractor, something strange happened, I had been welding the axle on the tractor, and laid the welding cables on the ground for a few minutes, when I realized what I can only describe as a black doorway opened beside the old cave, it was small, about the size of a doghouse, but when I crawled through, I found myself in another part of the world, I was looking down on castle ruins surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains. I don’t know where I was, maybe the alps? Its truly a marvel, I don’t know what this is, but I intend to experiment with making the doorway larger, and exploring whats there. The old man went on and on about experimenting with the generator, finally claiming sinking large copper rods into the ground and attaching the generator cables to them had opened the doorway up to the size of a house. Jake read much of the journal, it went on to describe enormous treasure, as well as fantastical things, such as unicorns, talking animals, and more.

Then. December 1946, today we were attacked by monsters, terrible , powerful, green , man like creatures. I was able to fight them off with my pistol and shotgun, but just barely. There were dozens of the things, I fear what could happen should they discover the doorway, and come here to Kentucky. I have decided to use some of the treasure we discovered, and rebuild the homestead into a much stronger, and safer place before we do anymore exploration. A unemployed army engineer friend of mine, who has had a lot of experience from the war building bunkers, said we could build the house out of concrete. When I skoffed at the idea, saying the neighbors would think im crazy for building a bunker, he told me we could cover the house with normal siding, and no one would ever know it was anything other than a normal house just by looking at it. The concrete construction would obviously make it super strong, last forever, and survive any tornado, hell it would be bullet proof as well. I very much like that idea after thinking it over, we will begin construction of a new house and barn next week, I also decided we would need better weapons and equipment should we want to succeed with our plan. The army depots are flooded with surplus war materials, and I had a supply sergeant offer to sell me a Thompson machine gun the last time I was at Fort Knox.

The man had hinted he could sell me anything I wanted if I had the money. I was doubtful and said as much, telling him I didn’t want any problems with the government should he get caught. He said there was simply no way anyone could keep track of the mountains of equipment the bases were flooded with.He was leaving the military soon, and if I wanted anything I had better let him know. I  had no interest or need at the time, but I surely do now, im going to put him to the test and see just what he can scrounge up, I have made a long list of things I want so I guess we will see. I have little doubt I can buy pretty much anything I want with the resources that treasure gives me. That’s not to say there is no risk involved, the things I want to buy would cause a lot of problems if the government were to find them, so I plan to store it under the house, and barn in the secret basements I’m planning to build, should the government men come looking for some reason, they wont find anything. Jake put the book down, basement? The house didn’t have a basement. Well not really, just a small utility room / storm shelter, not big enough to hide anything in, and the barn had no basement at all. He reached into the drawer and took out the envelope that was labeled basement, and dumped the weird key into his hand, looking at it carefully. He grabbed a flash light and headed towards the basement door. He swung the door open, and flipped on the light switch, a weak light bulb flickered on, barely illuminating the room below.

Jake stepped down the steel stairs, until he was standing on the concrete floor. This was silly he thought to himself, there’s nothing here. He carefully looked at the room, all the walls were concrete obviously as was the entire house. However down here the bare concrete was visible, and you could see the lines in the walls, that showed the various truck loads of concrete as it dried, the roof in this room was concrete as well. The room was only ten feet square. One wall had a old rusty water heater on it, and a few rusty water pipes, the back wall and side wall had wooden shelves with odds and ends on them, lanterns, canned food, blankets. It was obvious someone planned to use the little room as a storm shelter. It would be a hell of a shelter he thought, a under ground solid concrete room, surrounded by a concrete house. Jake randomly picked up objects on the shelves, examining them and setting them back down. He grabbed a old can of motor oil on a shelf, but it would not budge. That’s weird he thought, He poked at it, discovering it was apparently attached to the shelf, as was everything else on this wall, it was all permanently attached. Jake flicked on his flashlight and carefully examined the shelving and wall, he hesitated when he found what he thought was a hidden latch. He was starting to feel uneasy, not really so much for maybe about to find a hidden room or something, that part was cool. No what made him hesitate was, if he did find a secret room, it would give the weird last journal some legitimacy, which made the other stuff written it more likely to be real.

He gripped the hidden latch and pressed down on it, and was rewarded with a metallic click, and the shelving unit swing inward several inches from the wall. Damn Jake muttered, maybe there is something hidden here, he pulled the shelves away from the wall, discovering they were on hinges. The wall behind the shelves, was made of concrete, the same as all the others, except for the large steel door set in the center of it. The door had no handles, it was a featureless piece of steel, with only a keyhole in the center of it. He pulled the weird key from his pocket, and took a deep breath, and tried to slide it into the key hole. The key refused to go in, and he tried the other side, it slid smoothly into the key hole with a snick, and Jake twisted it. There was a loud clack and something moved inside the door, Jake pressed against it, and the heavy steel door slowly slid open on well greased hinges. Inside was a small landing, and a short set of concrete stairs going down deeper into the ground, the walls, ceiling and floor was of the same industrial concrete, at the bottom of the stairs was a small landing. A few feet in front of him stood another even larger steel door.

This door looked like it had come off a bank vault it was massive complete with round locking wheel in the center of it. He tried to turn it, but it would not budge, he looked at the door more closely and found another key hole. Sure enough the key unlocked it, Jake spun the wheel, and pulled the heavy steel vault door open wide enough to see inside. Stepping inside he used his flash light to look around,suddenly the room lit the room up startling him, illuminating the small room with blindingly bright modern led lighting. He realized there was a motion sensor, which had triggered the lighting. He also realized the lighting was pretty new stuff, his uncle had kept himself busy on the upkeep for this place, for which Jake was glad, this place would be a mess without maintenance for 70 years. This was a decontamination room, he had seem a few while in the military. One wall had towels and shelves with clothing, the opposite side had shower heads, there were vents in the ceiling for fresh air, and pulling out contaminated air, it was very professionally designed. Jake was impressed, his grandfather had really put a lot of thought, and money into this place, whatever it was. There was another smaller steel door and he spun the wheel and pushed it open, as he stepped inside, more lights switched on. It only took Jake a few minutes to look around what he discovered was a small bunker built under the house. There was a bunk room, with bunk beds to sleep twenty people, a military style bathroom beside that with multiple toilets, sinks, and showers, next was a combined kitchen recreation area. The kitchen had pretty modern equipment, including a stove, sink, a large walk in pantry filled with up to date canned and packaged food, including lots of bulk things like rice, beans, etc.

There was also a large walk in freezer well stocked with steak among other things. He imagined the food had been rotated out every few years to keep it up to date, damn, that would not be cheap he thought. There were several large tables for eating, and for relaxing, and playing cards, there was also a large flat screen attached to the wall, and a shelving units containing thousands of dvd’s, books, and a couple of computer stations with a wide selection of games. Next was a mechanical room, with lots of electrical panels, and a well insulated diesel generator, and large fuel tank. Across from the mechanical room was a military style supply room, inside were shelves stacked with boxes, clothing, boots, and more. Beside that was a office, with several desks, in the back of the office was a small bunk room, and a private bathroom. Next was another mechanical room, this one featured a water pump, for what he was sure was a well, and a large water storage tank. Across from this mechanical room was a locked steel door, and the word armory stenciled onto it. Jake unlocked it with the same key and swung the door open, lights snapped on and Jake gasp. He had perhaps expected the armory to have a few weapons, probably some surplus rifles, maybe a few ar-15’s. he was shocked at what he saw.

The room was maybe twenty feet by thirty feet, and it was stuffed full of weapons. There were rack after rack of them, floor to ceiling, easily hundreds of guns. The center of the room was filled with pallets of military ammo cans stacked chest high, and a work bench with tools for working on weapons. The opposite side of the room was more racks of weapons. Jake slowly walked around the tightly packed room it, walking between the weapon racks, carefully examining what was there. It looked like his grandpa had done exactly what he had mentioned in the journal, it looked like he had robbed a WWII arms depot. There were 1911 pistols, Browning high powers, Thompson, and Grease gun sub machine guns, M1 carbines, m1903 standard, and scoped sniper rifles, M1 Garand standard and scoped sniper rifles, even a rack of Browning Bar squad automatic weapons. Just as Jake didn’t think it could get any crazier, it did as he stepped to the back of the room. Here along the back wall hidden by the pallets of ammunition were belt fed machine guns. These were in racks of twenty, two racks of Browning .30 caliber machine guns, and a rack of browning .50 caliber machine guns, along with tripods, vehicle mounts, spare barrels and more. The ammo stacked in the room matched the weapons, several huge wood crates was filled with load bearing equipment for carrying magazines, and other combat gear. The weapons repair table had complete military manuals for each weapon, specialty tools needed for repairing them, as well as boxes filled with commonly needed repair parts. Newer looking racks had been built on this side of the room, and they were stocked with much more modern weapons.

Once again in racks of fifty, were Glock pistols, Colt M-16’s, Colt M16, 9mm sub machine guns, and the last two racks made Jake whistle, they were filled with sniper rifles. One rack was all Russian Drugnov semiauto sniper rifles, the last rack various bolt action rifles with scopes mostly Remington 700’s he thought. Jake stood staring at it all, it made his head hurt, there were enough weapons stuffed into this room to easily outfit several companies of soldiers maybe a damn battalion. He knew some of this had to have been put here by his uncle, as many of these weapons didn’t exhist when his grandfather had been alive. The more modern weapons, like the m16’s, probably were bought around Vietnam, the Dragunov’s probably bought in the 1990’s, the Glocks around 2010 or so. It was a hell of a lot of firepower. He guessed the vault held at today’s prices around five million dollars conservatively in weapons and ammunition. It was all illegal as hell, and if he was caught with it, probably spend the rest of his life in jail, he hoped his uncle had registered all this stuff back in 1986 when they did the machine gun amnesty, although he seriously doubted it from what he had read in the journals.

His family hatred and feared the government generally, and making the government aware of all this stuff would have been totally against what they wanted, they simply didn’t trust them. Something caught his eye, and he walked over to look closer at it. There built into the wall was a large steel safe, it didn’t have a combination dial though, just a locking handle, and another funny shaped keyhole. He stuck the key into the door and again it unlocked it for him. He pulled the door open, and shined his light inside, the safe was stacked to the top with canvas bags. He pulled one of the heavy bags out and looked inside. Jake whistled loudly, and scooped a handful of gems out into the light, large diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and other stones he could not recognize, another bag was filled weirdly with random oddball items made from solid gold, handles, door knobs and more. Jake blinked, as he realized how much wealth was crammed into this safe. Im a fucking millionaire, hell, I might be a fucking billionaire he realized. He sat down on a crate of ammunition, to get his bearings, and try to wrap his head around what he had just found. He could not believe how much his life had turned around in the last six months, from broke, and homeless, to a damn multi- millionaire, it was crazy. Jake was locking the safe back up, when he noticed a letter on top that was addressed to his father. Jake sat back down on the ammo crate, and started reading the letter.

Elias,

If your reading this letter, then I am gone to be with father, and you are once again back at the home place, I only wish you could have come back long before now. Fathers discovery, was the greatest find anyone has ever made, a doorway to another world, and not to just any world, a world filled with beauty, life, and unlimited wealth. Unfortunately, it also was filled with danger, and part of that danger took our father from us. I still remember it like it was yesterday. We had just finished building the new house, and stocking it, when father was finally ready to take us through to the other side for the first time. I was sixteen, and you were ten, our lives were about to change forever, and they did, just not as we thought. I don’t know what you think you remember Elias, but I know it was no ones fault, especially not yours. You took it hard though, you blamed that other world for killing father, and you refused to even discuss it after that. You went to live with Aunt Edna, and even refused to even talk to me after the fathers funeral. How that broke my heart brother, I sorely wanted to explore fathers new world, but how could I without my brother? I never went back after father died, I stayed here, year after year, waiting for you to return. You never came back though brother, and it broke my heart.

I respected your wishes though, and when your boy tried to contact me to learn more about his family, I declined. It broke my heart to turn away my only nephew from his family, I sorely wanted to tell him everything, but I respected what you wanted. I kept the home place going, I cleaned the guns, kept everything in good mechanical shape, and even added some things over the years as I could. Living close to Ft Knox really paid off a few times, especially around Vietnam. When I was able, I used some of the treasure to buy land from neighbors interested in selling. I’m proud to say I increased the original 40 acre farm to over 500 acres now, it damn sure gives us some more privacy, that’s for sure. Elias, you and your boy should finish what father started, go explore that new land. The world is not what it used to be when we were young. What our country has turned into would have broken fathers heart, after he fought through World War Two fighting for freedom, only to have the country’s freedoms eaten away from within by them godless liberals, socialists, and communists that infest our beautiful country. It tears my heart up the way they try to destroy everything decent, and undermine the constitution. That new world is there waiting for you, take your boy, find like minded people and start your own country, one with a better constitution,than this one has. Whatever you do, never allow anyone in who is not a true American freedom loving patriot they will poison anything you try to create. That was what fathers ultimate goal was, to create something better, even back then he saw how things were a changing, and not for the better, and that new land was going to become the next unexplored new world, the perfect place for people wanting a new life free from a burdonsome government. I am truly glad you are finally back brother, enjoy your home, and be safe in your adventures. Love, Edgar.

Jake blinked and rubbed his eyes, this partially explained why his daddy refused to talk about his family, as well as why his uncle Edgar had declined to talk about the family as well when Jake had tried contacting him. It felt better now knowing he had turned jake down, not because the old man didn’t care, or like Jake, but because he was honoring his fathers wishes. Felt a little better, but that didn’t erase the sting of never knowing his uncle.The few times his father had said anything when Jake had asked, he had said. “ No boy, your never to visit my family, them and their fool ideas will get you killed same as they killed your grandfather. None of it had made any sense to him before now, but it was a little bit. He had a lot of questions about and doubts about things now, he didn’t believe there was a new world around here someplace, but there damn sure was something strange going on, like where the hell had all that treasure come from? Jake locked the armory back up, and was about to leave when he realized there was still another door he had not explored. He unlocked another heavy door and stepped through into another decontamination shower, which must be the bunkers back entrance he thought. He found himself in a long narrow tunnel illuminated by lights mounted on the walls every twenty feet, he followed the tunnel, and ended up at yet another steel door.

He swung the heavy door open and this time was in a dark room, judging by the how sound was echoing it was the largest room yet, the air had a musty military smell to it, Jake recognized the smell from his time in service, it was the smell of heavy canvas military tarpaulins. He shined his weak flash light across the wall, until he found a light switch. He flipped it, and the room lit up brightly, Jake turned around and something huge towered over him covered by a faded green military tarp. He walked over to it, and pulled the heavy canvas tarp until it slid off, the heavy canvas sliding onto the floor in a cloud of dust. He stood there stunned at what he was looking at. Its a goddamned Sherman tank ! He said out loud. How the hell did they get this damn thing down here? Hell, where the hell did they get a fucking tank? He was curious, taking a minute to inspect the tank, even climbing up, opening the drivers hatch and looking inside with his flashlight. The damn think looked new to him, everything on it was in excellent condition, and well greased. He finally took his focus off the tank, and looked around the room, realizing there were several other large items down here besides the tank. They were all packed tightly side by side, and all covered with tarps as well. He found a World War two half track, as well as another smaller tank, this one was much smaller than the Sherman was, it was a Stuart light tank, he realized. It was smaller, and had a weaker gun than the Sherman, However, it was more maneuverable, faster, and used a lot less fuel, it was better suited for scouting where you might get shot at, than combat, where you were definitely going to be shot at.

Then there were two large six wheeled cargo trucks with trailers. He climbed up and peeked into the back of one of the trucks, and was further surprised, this apparently answered his question if the tank guns were operational or not. The back of the trucks, and trailers were packed with ammunition for both tanks. Deeper in the room, behind the vehicles was a concrete ramp leading upward, he realized that was how the vehicles got down here, the ramp must exit behind the barn, with the door probably covered in dirt hiding it. The only other things in the room besides the vehicles, were wooden crates, boxes, and pallets along all of the walls. He looked closer, and found the pallets were all packed with ammunition, for the guns in the armory, and the crates seemed to all be filled with spare parts for the vehicles. He found everything from replacement engines, and transmissions, to spark plugs and bearings for the tanks, half track and trucks, enough to totally rebuild everything several times over. He realized all of the parts were World War Two surplus, original factory parts made for the military, even though they were just spare parts, they were still highly sought after. New in crate, original war factory surplus parts like these were very valuable and extremely rare today. Those spare parts were worth a small fortune all by themselves. He was feeling a bit over whelmed by everything he had discovered today and he really needed a drink. He just wanted to sit drink and think about everything he had just discovered. He retraced his steps, locking everything back up and once back home, he headed for the liquor cabinet. Later that night, Jake collapsed in front of the roaring fireplace, with a entire bottle of bourbon.

He sat there for hours thinking about what he had discovered today, and what the hell to do about it. Insane as it sounded, he knew he was going to have to go check out that cave, and see if there was any truth to this doorway to another world thing. He thought it was pure fantasy this morning when he read the journal entries, but then again, he would have called you insane if you told him he would find a Sherman tank in his basement. His uncle and grandfather had gone to a hell of a lot of trouble, and expense building and stocking this place, they did it for some reason, and the huge pile of treasure in the safe backed up their story. He was going to have to check it out tomorrow.

The next day Jake found himself heading into the woods behind the barn. This was the warmest day so far since he had moved into the place. The sun was shining brightly, in a clear blue sky, and It was almost fifty degrees today, the snow had mostly melted away, turning the ground muddy. Jake’s rubber boots squished in the muddy ground as he walked down the logging road into the thick woods, he didn’t have to go far before the woods opened up into a clearing. The clearing was covered in short brown grass, and on the opposite side of it was the large hill that marked the rear of his property. The hill rose up several hundred feet, and was covered in leafless trees, with snow still clinging to it in places, except for one area that featured no trees, it was all exposed dark Grey solid rock, where he could just make out the shallow cave in the center of it. In front of the cave, a short distance away was a short concrete structure, that looked for the world like a bunker to him. He looked it over and sure enough that’s what it was it was basically a small room, with a heavy steel door, and one small window facing the cave, the back side of the bunker had a large generator installed there, thick cables left the generator and disappeared into the dead winter grass heading towards the cave opening.

There was a control panel bolted to the wall inside the bunker, right beside the window, showing several gauges, and controls on it, apparently for operating the generator. The only other thing here was the shallow cave about fifty yards away. It really didn’t look like much, the cave was barely a cave at all, only going back into the rock twenty feet or so, it looked like a giant ice cream scoop had carved it out of the solid rock of the hillside. The inside of the cave was pretty interesting though, featuring strange writing carved deeply into the stone walls. The writing was unlike anything he had ever seen before, it was not the only writing though, he recognized some of it, there were ancient Indian drawings of stick people with spears hunting animals and their hand prints, as well as more modern graffiti, depicting various names and dates written in English, all from the late eighteen hundreds. One thing was obvious though, the weird writing was the oldest, as the old Indian drawings and the early American graffiti were on top of it in several places. The area in front of the cave was solid stone, and extremely flat, as though it had been carved that way, it was worn smooth from age, and he didn’t see any tool marks. The flat floor in front of the cave extended into the cave right up against the back wall, it was obviously not natural, but he had no clue how it could have been made.

The back wall had a large flat area that had a border of writing carved into the stone around it, looking like a large picture frame he thought, the frame was the size of a large garage door. Sticking out of the smooth stone floor about a foot high on each side of the flat wall were thick green posts the size of his thigh. He looked closer and discovered they were made from copper, and were apparently very old, judging by the looks of them, attached to each thick copper post was a heavy black cable snaking away towards the bunker behind him. This was supposed to be the portal to another world? It was solid rock, how in the hell could it be a portal to anything? He was extremely doubtful this was going to amount to anything, but he knew he was going to have to at least try to make something happen, he was going to have to turn that generator on, and show this was all bullshit, so he could be finished with it. No matter if his grandfather and uncle were nuts, they had left him very well off by leaving him the farm, not to mention extremely wealthy, from all that treasure ,wherever they had found it. He was going to have to buy some equipment however, just on the off chance this did amount to anything, he was going to be ready, he owed his grandfather that much.

A week later, Jake sat in the bunker checking his equipment, almost ready to turn the generator on. Next to him sat his laptop, showing the feeds from the four different wireless cameras he had set up. One camera was mounted on the bunker watching the cave entrance, number two was just outside the cave looking in, number three was inside the cave, and number four, was mounted on the remote controlled truck, he planned to use as a unmanned vehicle for exploring the portal, should anything happened, which he felt was extremely unlikely. The large remote controlled truck was parked just in front of the cave, and the camera mounted on it gave a clear view. He had to admit he was nervous, if this failed it meant his family was full of nut jobs, if it worked, he had a portal to another world on his hands, he was not sure which would be the worse option honestly. He was wearing his grandfathers pistol on his hip, and had a rifle leaning in the corner next to him, better safe than sorry. His grandfather had over and over again explained how dangerous this could be in his journals, he figured he would be foolish to ignore the warnings.

The generator was a newer model, and when he pushed the start button it fired to life almost instantly. He allowed it a few minutes to warm up before he was going to put a load on it. Once he figured it had been running long enough, he checked all the cameras, making sure they were all working properly, then he turned on the power. The generator bogged down for a few seconds as it started producing electricity, smoothing out a moment later. The voltage was adjustable, by turning a large knob on the panel, Jake slowly turned the power knob increasing the voltage flowing into the copper posts. The generator got louder under the heavier load, but he didn’t see anything different looking at the cameras, he watched for a few seconds feeling like this really was a waste of time. He turned the power up a little more, and blinked as something changed on the cameras, the image was suddenly darker. Where before he had been looking at dark Grey rock in shadow on screen, now suddenly the rock was a deep inky black color. He looked more closely and saw that the inside of the cave was still dark Grey, However everything inside the border of that carved writing had turned inky black, almost like he was peering into a tunnel that was not there before. Could it really be a portal?

He picked up the laptop and switched to full screen on the truck camera, then picked up the remote and drove it forward, towards the dark opening. He turned on the lights on the truck, noticing the Grey walls illuminated, but that inky blackness simply absorbed the light. He felt foolish, but he shoved the controls forward, sending the truck towards the solid rock wall sure it would crash, suddenly the camera went totally black, and he thought he had wrecked it, when suddenly the screen lit up again, showing a small green clearing covered in brightly colored flowers, surrounded by green trees much like the one he was in. Wait, bright green? The field and woods around him were all leafless and brown from winter, the sky Grey and overcast, what he was seeing on screen was all bright green, and it was a bright sunny day as well. He looked back and forth between the computer screen, and the field in front of him several times, looking for the truck. He looked back at the screen and noticed something else, above the bright green trees, rose a enormous snow covered mountain, unlike anything within a thousand miles of Kentucky. Son of a bitch he exclaimed, it was all real! He drove the little truck forward towards the trees, watching the signal strength dropping, he was not going to be able to go much further, unless he set up a signal repeater or something. He stopped the truck right next to the woods and zoomed in as best he could. He was looking through the trees, and was seeing some kinds of ruins down below.

He focused the camera and realized he was looking at castle ruins of some kind, there were multiple buildings, some large, as well as several high towers as well, a high defensive wall completed the picture. The ruins appeared to be in pretty good shape, as best as he could tell, the walls all looked solid, and in good shape, seemly only needing new roofs added to be whole again. The ruins rested on a wide flat ledge on the side of a mountain, and far below he could see a river running through a green tree filled valley. He had seen enough, he brought the truck back, and examined the cave on the other side of the portal more carefully. There were the same thick copper posts in the cave floor, as well as cables leading away, but the cables ended, supposedly they had planned to put a generator on the other side, but had not gotten around to it, they had tested it though, and found out you could open the portal from either side, only needing a generator to power the portals operation. He brought the little truck back home, and turned the generator off, watching the portal to see what happened. The second power was cut off, the portal vanished, returning back to dark Grey rock instantly, he thought of what might happen to anyone using the portal should power fail, he shuddered at the thought, he didn’t know for sure what would happen, but he doubted it would be good. He had some good video of the other side, he was going to watch it tonight, and see if he missed anything the first time. The little truck had worked well enough, but to move forward it was obvious he was going to have to go through the portal himself, and look around. Going through alone to that strange land was both exciting, and terrifying to him. Should he find someone to go with him, or just go alone? He had a lot to consider.

A few days later he had decided to go alone, at least for this first initial trip. He was planning to make it short, probably just for a day, maybe for up to a week if things went well. His truck was heavily loaded with supplies, and was towing a trailer that carried a large military surplus generator on it. He had picked the generator up a few days earlier just for this exact purpose, it was in new condition and started easily. He had dressed in what he was most comfortable in, military fatigues. A trip to a surplus store in Lexington had scored him everything he needed in one stop shopping, he was sure he would be buying a lot more of this gear in the near future. He was dressed head to toe in multicam camouflage, black combat boots, a boonie hat, and a tactical vest loaded with magazines for his rifle. Grandfathers pistol was on his hip, and he was carrying a AR-15 from the armory. He felt a bit silly geared up for combat the way he was, but the old saying stayed stuck in his head, and he could not ignore it. “Better have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.” He stopped the truck next to the generator bunker, unlocked the steel door and went inside.

He learned the generator could be put on a timer, it could be set to automatically start up or shut down, depending on how the timer was set. He was pretty nervous about getting stranded on the other side, so he was being extra prepared for this trip. He set the generator timer for it to come on for ten minutes everyday at noon, he started it up, with auto shutdown set for ten minutes. He got back in the truck, and put it into gear and drove towards the cave, the inky blackness of the portal could be seen, everything was ready, he had to only drive though. He sat looking at it for a minute, wondering if this would be the best thing he ever did, or the worst, he put his foot on the gas and drove into the inky blackness. He panicked for a second as everything went totally black, not even able to see the dash instruments, or headlights, but just as he was about to panic, he was back in daylight again, and driving out of the cave into brilliant sunlight. Jake let out his breath he had been holding, and sucked in a huge lungful of the sweetest air he had ever tasted. He blinked in surprise, and just sat there breathing in huge lungfuls of the sweet air, the air here just felt different. Sure it was clean, crisp and fresh, and even sweet, but it was more than that, like the air was slightly electric somehow, it was something he had never felt before, and had no idea what it meant at the time.

He climbed out of the truck, and looked around at the scenery, maybe he was just at some location in the mountains of Europe or something, that was possible he supposed, it made more sense to him, and was more likely than being on another planet or something. He looked around at the tall snow covered mountains around him, taking in the beauty, he slowly turned in a circle taking everything in, looking for any clues as to where he was at. He glanced into the sky over the mountain behind him, and all thoughts he was still on earth were totally erased. “ Nope not on earth” he gasp. There in the sky hung three large moons, two were white moons similar to earth’s, while the last one was green, and surrounded by a orange colored ring similar to Saturn’s rings. The green surface had large silvery areas he thought might be water, oceans maybe, he stood staring at the moons for a long time, it was a spectacular view that was also extremely unsettling to him at the same time.

He forced himself to look away, and get back to the job at hand, reminding himself this was hostile territory, his ancestors had been attacked several times in this area, so he better keep his eyes open. There was thick brush close to the cave, and Jake took the time to carefully hide the generator trailer in it, covering it with camouflage netting as well as branches he cut to help hide it. He worked for a hour to get the generator camoflaged, and the cables attached from the generator, and to the copper posts next to the portal. The cave on this side, was a perfect copy of the one back on Earth, it had the same carvings, same flat floor, etc. Jake had been keeping his mind on setting the generator up, doing his best to not think about what would happen should this fail, and he be unable to open the portal from this side. He still had the generator back home set up to automatically power the gate, but the thought of being stuck here made him nervous, and he did his best to not think about it. His forehead was covered with nervous sweat when he was ready to fire up the generator. He said a prayer, held his breath and pushed the start button. The generator rumbled to life and powered up, all guages reading green, he flipped a switch sending electricity into the ground and when noting happened for a few seconds he started to panic, but then the portal popped into existence and he remembered to breath, sucking in a huge breath of cool mountain air.

He powered the generator back down, coiled up the thick power cables, hiding them beside the camouflaged generator in the bushes. The last thing he needed was someone finding this generator, he was going to have to do something better in the future than hide it, maybe build a bunker for it. He returned to the truck, started it up, and drove through the trees, stopping to take in the view from the top of the hill. The ruins were spread out below him, stretching about three hundred yards from left to right, and two hundred yards from front to back, with a tall defensive wall surrounding it completely. Inside the wall there were buildings, and towers of all sizes, he guessed the place housed several hundred people at one time, perhaps as many as a thousand. The area between the ruins and Jake contained a wide open field, that perhaps was a parade ground or something at one time. That would make sense, it was almost perfectly flat, the ground bare, containing no plants at all and covered with what looked like gravel to him. One thing he did notice, there was no way to reach the valley from here, or to reach the cave from the valley, without passing through the fortress.

He doubted that was by accident, what he knew of ancient castle construction, told him every tiny detail was planned far in advance, everything from approaches to the castle, to water sources, and weaknesses were all well planned and accounted for, as constructing something like this fortress often took decades, sometimes as long as a century of construction. He just wondered what came first, the portal, or the castle? The castle walls were thirty feet tall, and towered above him and his truck, the entrance gates however, were laying on the ground, ripped away from their hinges, little remained of them, what was not burned had long rotted away. He elected to go in on foot for now, so he parked the truck next to the massive wall locked it and covered it with more camo netting, from a distance it looked like a uninteresting bush or a rock. He gripped his rifle heading inside, and as he was stepping over the remains of the castle gates, he noticed something. The metal reinforcing on the gates, and all the metal fittings, were not iron, but some greenish metal, maybe copper? It reminded him of the front door of his house, he realized suddenly his front door must have come from here as well, how crazy is that, your front door was imported from another world. He stepped through the gate openings into the long abandoned fortress, the walls were massive, easily thirty feet thick, all built from massive stone blocks the size of his truck, he had never seen anything like it before, not even in real castles, how the hell had they moved blocks that big ? He wondered.

Inside the wall, the fortress had wide cobble stone lanes running between each building, grass and shrubs grew up through the paving everywhere. The place was huge and had dozens of buildings, it would take him forever to really search it properly by himself, he was eventually going to have to get some help for this project, whenever he thought about it though, the the details, and sheer size of the project, and the secrecy of it over whelmed him. No, for now it would just be him, so he better get to work. The temperature was dropping and dark clouds had appeared on the horizon, looking like it was going to rain soon, he was not looking forward to getting wet, or sleeping in the truck. He was considering returning home until the weather got better, when he discovered a perfect solution. He stood there looking at a small building, it looked a lot like all the other buildings around it, except for one thing, this one still had a roof on it, and it was in decent shape. He stepped through the open doorway, and looked around the interior, the little building consisted of a single room with a fireplace on one wall, and small narrow windows. He thought the little building would do nicely as a base of operations, he recovered his truck, parking it behind the building, and started unloading his camping gear. The timing worked out perfectly, just as he was finishing setting up his camp it started pouring rain, he was pleased to see that the roof only had a few small drips, and none were close to where he had placed his sleeping bag.

The air inside the building had become frigid quickly, however, the interior warmed quickly when he made a fire in the fireplace, and again he was pleased to see the fireplace was in good working order, and the smoke was being pulled from the burning wood, and up the chimney. He hung a lantern from a copper hook on one wall, there was a folding camp chair to sit on, and the cooler for a table completed his little camp, the seasoned firewood he had brought along was piled into the corner next to the fireplace, a piece of tarp covering the doorway wo keep out the wind and rain finished things up nicely. Jake sat cooking dinner over his camping stove, and he was soon glad he had relocated into this building. Right after dark the rain increased, the temperature quickly dropped down into the forties, and the wind was gusting hard blowing the pouring rain almost sideways. It stormed like that all night long, lightning flashed and booming thunder woke him more than once, but he was warm and toasty in his sleeping bag. He dreaded to think what it would have been like to ride that weather out if he had stayed in his tent as he originally planned.

The next week flew by for him, as he explored the ruins. The first thing he discovered about the place, was a total lack of iron or steel, none, not anywhere. There was metal, sure, it was everywhere, he had found lots of things made from metal, door handles, candle sticks, pitch forks, horse shoes, and more. It was all made from gold, copper, or brass however, not steel or iron. He had found solid gold door handles, heavy copper hinges, gold candle sticks, bronze pitch forks, copper swords and spear points, gold picture frames, gold spittoons, gold spoons. He had a huge pile of gold objects piled up near his truck, easily hundreds of pounds of it, probably millions in gold. However, even if these people had been extremely wealthy, and could afford to buy everyday gold items, it didn’t explain why he found no steel or iron at all, as iron would have been far superior strength wise than gold was. This was puzzling to him, and he spent a lot of time pondering it. He also discovered that the buildings were all in great shape, as least as far as the stone walls were concerned.

The level of craftsmanship the masons used to build this place was incredible, the stone blocks in the buildings walls were tightly fitted together, and as a result the walls were all in excellent shape for the most part. The damage that was evident was mostly caused by fire from what he could tell. It looked like someone had simple set fire to everything, the wood items, such as doors ,furniture, and wood roof support beams had all burned, causing the roof to collapse into the buildings, and everything inside was burned. He was pretty sure that after clearing out the rubble, the buildings would be easy to put back into livable condition, simply put on new roofs, doors, and windows, and you would have solid working and living areas. He could already tell he was going to need a solid base of operations just for exploration purposes, he had put little thought into colonization as his grandfather had planned to do, but even if he decided to do that later, there would still have to be a secure base created and at least some exploration done first.

The more time he spent searching the ruins the more he realized just what a large job it would be, the place was enormous, and he knew there was a lot of things he was missing in his search, it could take him years to search all of this alone. Just to clean the place up, and put the roofs back on, repair the doors and windows, would be a huge undertaking, much less all the other work that would be needed. He would need a large work crew who was skilled in construction, one he could trust, and would not have to worry about them spilling the secret about this place, it was a perplexing problem. The week passed quickly for him, and on the last planned day on site, he made his most interesting, and exciting discoveries. The first discovery was a building where someone had obviously been digging in the rubble, there were mounds of dirt, and a shovel and pick laying on the ground next to it. The digging was obviously not recent, the pick and shovel were heavily rusted, and the handles had rotted away from age. He looked closer at the tools, a little excited they were actually made from steel apparently. He looked closely at them, and rubbed away the rust on the pick, discovering words were stamped into it.

He could just barely make a few words out. Plum, Philadelphia, Penn. Well, definitely not from around here then Jake thought, this must have been left by his grandfather when he was here, back in the 1940’s. The center of the buildings had a hole dug out, or maybe made a existing hole made larger, in the bottom of the hole were stairs leading a short distance down to a small empty basement room of some kind. Maybe this was where his grandfather had found his treasure he thought. Later that same day he made his second and best discovery. He was walking through the rubble inside of a tall round tower, and searching for more items made of gold, when the ground make a hollow sounding thump when he stepped in a certain spot. He stomped around a little and managed to knock a hole in the floor, he got down on his knees and peered into the hole with his flashlight. He could see down several feet, and could tell there was a hollow space below him, suddenly he realized he was looking at stone stairs, it was time to go get some digging tools of his own. He returned from the truck with a shovel, ax, and crow bar, and got busy digging. He didn’t have to dig long, when suddenly a large chunk of ground gave way collapsing into the ground, causing a cloud of dust to spew out of the hole.

He had to wait a few minutes for the dust to clear out enough so he could see, finally it did, and he could make out a staircase below him. Jake got a lantern from the truck, and carefully descended the dirt covered stone steps, the stairs were a spiral stone staircase, and after he made three full turns around it, he reached the bottom. He found himself in a hallway made of stone blocks, the hallway disappeared into darkness to his left and right, however, right in front of him was a copper reinforced door. The door its self looked a lot like the door on his house, but that’s not what he found interesting, what was interesting was this door was locked with a massive padlock made from Iron. He had not seen a single piece of iron in the week he had been here, finding a lock made of it told him what was behind this door must be pretty damn special. He cut the lock with a set of bolt cutters from the truck, and pushed the heavy door open, he started forward, and as he stepped into the dark room, suddenly there was a bright flash that scared the hell out of him. He jumped back as torch sconces on all of the walls flared to life at the same time, illuminating the room in soft flickering torch light. He peered around the room cautiously, his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, ready to draw it, but nothing else happened, the torches flickered and occasionally cracked as they burned, but that was all. He slowly relaxed, and figured it must be some trick for lighting the room when someone entered.

The room was maybe twenty feet square, with a high vaulted stone ceiling, the walls were lined with book shelves that ran from floor to ceiling, and were filled with thousands of books. The center of the room held a massive wooden table that was piled high with books, there was a single chair at the table. Jake stepped towards the table for a closer look, on the table was a massive book that was opened, and a set of funny looking glasses were laying on the opened book, he looked closer at the book to try to read it, but the words were like nothing he had ever seen before, not only could he not read the language, the words seemed to squirm as he stared at them, seeming to change before his eyes, the flickering light must be messing with him, damn sure was strange though he thought. The glasses caught his attention, as they looked weird, and kind of cool at the same time, they appeared to be made of brass, and covered with strange symbols, the lenses were different colors as well, one lens as ruby red, while the other was a deep blue. “Ancient three-d glasses?” He wondered.

He picked up the glasses and peered through them curious at what things must look like through them. He held them to his eyes and glanced around the room, he gasp in surprise suddenly and almost dropped the glasses on the stone floor, barely managing to catch them at the last second. He took a breath, and looked through them again the book on the table was surrounded by a bright light of some kind, as were most of the books in the shelves, but he could only see the light when looking through the weird glasses. That in its self was weird, when he glanced at the book however, it went from strange to incredible. He looked closer at the books pages, and he could read them, they were written in English now ! He took the glasses away, and again the words were gibberish. Somehow the glasses were allowing him to read the book, the glasses were some how changing the language to English. He thought for a moment, and got a idea. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his cell phone, and changed the settings to Spanish, which he could not read or speak. He glanced through the glasses at the phones unreadable Spanish text, and the Spanish was translated into English ! He was amazed, he tried every language the phone had, German, French, and even Chinese, and he could read it all easily with the strange glasses.

He peered back at the massive old book on the table and began reading. “Principles for creating spells for summoning, Dragons.” DANGER, This section only relates to summoning Dragons, not controlling them, do not summon a dragon before perfecting the control spells in the following section of this book !! Jake rubbed his eyes, the glasses seemed to strain them a little. Spells for summoning dragons? What the hell? He looked through the glasses at other book titles on the shelves. Potions for battle, Medicinal spells and herbs, Unraveling the magics of astrology, Mysteries of the underworld, and raising the dead, spells for banishing evil spirits. Jake lowered the glasses and just stared at the books. Were these supposed to be spell books? He was dumbfounded by what he was looking at, could this shit be for real he wondered? He glanced one more time around the room and saw something interesting, one wall of books had a large glowing rectangle on it, that resembled a door to him. Jake stepped closer, and kept looking through the glasses, running his hands along the outline of the ghostly door, there was a small glowing area where a latch might be, and he found a book under his hand, it was like he could see some kind of hidden workings, like perhaps looking through a x-ray, he pulled the book and something clicked, and a section of book shelf swung away from the wall.

He removed the glasses, which were making his eyes hurt, and found himself staring at another heavy wood door that had been hidden behind a book shelf. Huh, apparently these glasses translated languages, AND showed hidden things to whoever wore them. Jake took off the glasses and looked at them in admiration, these were amazing, he wondered what technology made them work. He slipped them in his pocket, and went back to looking at the secret door. This door closely resembled the one he had came through earlier, except, it had three huge iron locks on it, which made him shiver, and his hands sweat in anticipation of what might be behind it. Taking up the heavy bolt cutters, he quickly cut through the three heavy locks, and swung the door open. Behind the door was another room, this one filled with wood chests, Jake stepped to the first chest and opened it, his excitement turned to confusion. Instead of treasure, he found himself looking at small blocks of steel that weighed maybe four or five pounds each, the chest had several hundred of them inside, just simple steel blocks. Is it possible that steel and iron were so rare here that they were as valuable as gold was back on earth? He stepped to the next chest and lifted the lid, this time pleasantly surprised, it was filled with gemstones, large ruby’s ,diamonds, sapphires, and more filled it to the top, the next chest was the same, as were the rest of them. The last chest held something totally different however.

He lifted the lid on the last chest, and found himself looking at a sword. There was a wide leather belt of black leather, covered with silver studs, the sword was attached to the belt as was a large dagger, and a third smaller knife. All three of them, sword and two knives were a matched set. The handles were some black material, wrapped with silver wire, the scabbards were black as well, studded with silver. Inside the wide belt, was a small silver plate with small writing on it he could not read. He picked the belt up, and as he drew the sword, a strong shiver ran through his body, from the top of his head to his toes, giving him goose bumps, He felt suddenly dizzy, and placed his hand on the chest to steady himself. Suddenly a soft intense voice whispered into Jake’s ear. Justice bringer has risen again! We are Joined with a warrior to avenge the weak and punish evil ! Only death may separate us! He looked quickly around the room for the speaker, but no one was there. He held onto the chest fighting against the dizziness, Jake guts roiled and felt like they were alive, squirming inside him, his head suddenly hurt and it felt like his entire body was being wrung out like a dish cloth, every muscle in his body spasmed, and he could not breathe for a moment. It was agonizing, and he thought he was about to die it hurt so badly. He fell to his knees and vomited, puking a thick oily black substance onto the stone floor, he gagged again, and to his horror the oily black puke traveled across the floor to the wall, traveled UP the wall, and disappeared into a crack! He stared at it stunned, wiping cold sweat from his forehead, then the entire room seemed to spin, the floor came up to meet his face painfully and everything went black around him.

Slowly Jake awakened, he felt like every inch of his body hurt, inside and out. He opened his eyes, to the same flickering torchlight he remembered. He slowly struggled to his feet, and leaned against the wall for a moment to balance himself. Retracing his steps he returned to the table, and sat heavily in the chair beside the table. Jake pulled his canteen off his belt and took a deep drink, if his dry throat was any indication, he had been down here for hours. He tried to wrap his mind around what had happened, obviously he had passed out, the last thing he remembered was drawing that sword, hearing a whispered voice, and them him puking. It was all very confusing to him, the sword seemed important for some reason. Jake was feeling stronger now, and he returned to the small room, and sure enough the sword and belt lay on the cold stone floor where he had dropped them, He bent over and picked up the belt and the sword, Suddenly his head cleared, the sick feeling was completely gone, and in its place Jake felt normal again.

Well not normal, he felt different, but he could not describe it, as crazy as it sounded, he felt stronger, and, somehow cleaner, as if that made any sense. He glanced at the shining blade and saw it had words engraved onto it in some strange language, the words seemed to move as he looked at them, he found he could read the words on the blade, he said the words out loud. “Justice Bringer”, and another strong shiver coursed through his body. He sheathed the sword and looked back at the small silver plate with strange unreadable writing, except he could read it now “This is Justice Bringer, whoever shall draw it, shall be bound body and soul to it until death, they shall be bound to good, their deeds honest, their words pure, no lie can they speak, nor may deceive them.”

Jake sighed, that’s a bit dramatic he thought, nice sword though. He had a hunch, and put the strange glasses back on and looked closely at the sword through them. The sword belt, the sword, as well as the two smaller blades all glowed brightly. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he knew it partially meant there was something very special about this sword. He figured the glasses could translate languages, and reveal hidden things, but why did the sword glow? It was not hidden anymore, the glasses were showing him something else, he just didn’t know what. He buckled the sword belt around his waist, and was surprised when it fit him perfectly. He pulled the sword from its sheath again, testing its edge with his thumb, the sword cut him easily drawing blood, it was sharp as a damn razor, the blade gleamed brightly, as if it were new, he had to admit it was a beautifully made sword. He next examined the large dagger it matched the sword beautifully, and had a foot long blade and was as sharp as the sword, the last item on the belt was a matching hunting style knife, obviously made for everyday work, like cutting things, skinning animals and such.

It was a hell of a find he thought, and the sword belt fit him perfectly. He felt better and stood back up, and got back to checking the rest of the chests, the final total was two large chests were filled with steel ingots, two large chests were filled with silver coins, and the rest of the chests, all 8 of them, amazingly were filled to the rim with jewels. There was over a hundred times as much treasure right here as was in the vault back home. One things for sure, he never had to worry about money again! He was feeling worn out from everything, and decided to call it a day. He carefully retraced his steps, and was soon stepping out of the hole, and breathing clean cool mountain air again. Once back in camp he collapsed into his sleeping bag and was asleep in seconds. He had extremely vivid dreams all night long, most were pleasant,some not so pleasant. In his dream he was in battle, wielding the sword of justice, it was a blood soaked dream, there was a great brass bell, heavily engraved with a huge eagle, the bell was ringing the alarm, clanging over and over as it called everyone to their battle positions. He stood near the bell on top of the battlements as the enemy charged the castle, archers released arrows dropping men and horses in droves upon the road, there is nothing more haunting than the screams of dying horses, the sound sent a involuntary shudder through his body. Soon their ladders fell against the wall and the enemy began climbing.

He stood hacking at the enemy with his sword, as their heads, and hands popped over the top of the wall, and attempted to climb into it. His glanced at his friends fighting beside him, and his heart swelled with pride at their devotion, the fight felt like it had lasted many hours, he was plastered in sweat and blood and was exhausted. The number of enemy was lessening now, as fewer appeared at the top of the ladder, and saw they were actually retreating now, they had turned the tide finally, and the enemy were retreating, they had won! Suddenly a dark shadow blocked out the sun, a painful deafening roar came from overhead, he put his hands against his ears in agony against the sheer volume of the terrible noise, he had never head anything like it in his life, it was totally overwhelming and was so loud he thought his ear drums might burst. He glanced up in pain, and was shocked at what he saw, a enormous dark shape decending rapidly towards him. He brain screamed “ DRAGON”,but even as he reacted he knew it was too late. He felt like he was running through mud he was moving so slowly, then everything was blasted with intense fire. He got a glimpse of the terrible green fire engulfing the nearby defenders on the wall with him, they screamed and dropped writhing in pain, some falling or jumping from the wall trying to escape the terrible heat. The fire was unstoppable though, consuming everything it touched, nothing could extinguish it, a moment later the same terrible green dragon fire swept over him as well. He lost control of his body, as it fell to the stone ramparts,writhing in agony against the terrible heat, he felt the fire burning the flesh from his bones, as he screamed in agony, along with all the other defenders.

Jake sat up on his cot screaming, and frantically flailing his arms wildly trying to put the fire out. He rolled off his cot screaming, and stunned himself momentarily when he smacked his face against the cold stone knocking the breath from his lungs. He lay on the cold floor struggling to breath, and feeling like he would never get his breath back, suddenly he sucked in a great deep breath, and burst into tears, trying to sort reality from the dream he realized he had been having. Jake lay on the floor for several long minutes, trying to sort everything out, and pull himself back together. It had just been a bad dream, no, not a bad dream, it had been a horrific dream, it had been so realistic to him he could see the dragons scales, smell its stink, he could smell the blood as he hacked apart the enemy, he felt the resistance as his sword stabbed into bodies, and his grip had became slippery from the blood. The fire had burned and hurt beyond anything he had ever experienced, before, he could smell his flesh burning, and hear his friends screaming in pain beside him. It was the most incredible, most detailed, most brutally realistic dream he had ever had in his life, the feel of battle had been incredible, it had also been absolutely terrifying, words simply did not do it justice. He pulled himself back into the cot, and pulled out his bottle of bourbon, and took a deep drink, trying to chase away the memory of the dream he had had. It took a long time before he could mostly forget the terrible dream.

He washed his face, and it was then he realized he still wore the sword around his waist, he touched the sword gingerly, and pulled his hand back away from it, and felt his pistol under his hand. What? How? His pistol was in his shoulder holster, why was it on the sword belt? He didn’t even have a belt holster. He pulled the sword belt off for a better look, and sure enough, his pistol was in a holster that was attached to the sword belt. No, attached was not the way to describe it, it was not simply attached, it was snug in a black leather holster with silver studsmthat not only matched the sword belt perfectly, it was swen to the sword belt, as if it had always been there, on the other side were his spare magazines, in matching pouches. The craftsmanship was impressive, as good as anything he had ever seen. He simply had no explanation as to how the holster came to be, or where it possibly could have came from. What, did someone come here, take his sword belt, and pistol, and make a custom holster while he slept? Who did that, little Elves? Anything he could imagine to explain it, simply sounded crazy, was it possible the holster had always been there? He simply didn’t see how that was possible, he had examined it carefully when he found it. He was stumped. He shoved it from his mind the best he could, and went out to explore more of the ruins, this time just walking along, to think. Later that day, as he explored more of the ruins, he found himself looking more and more towards the wall, he knew it was insane, but he could not help but feel like it was perhaps the wall from his dream. He fought the thought for several hours, when he finally decided to just prove to himself it was not the same wall.

He climbed the stairs into the top of the wall, and walked slowly down the wall, it didn’t look the same to him as in the dream, but then again in the dream that wall had been perfect, while this one had rubble laying all along it. He stopped at one larger pile of rubble, when something gold colored caught his eye, he reached into the rubble, and gripped it, but could not dislodge it, he dug away rocks, and bricks, until her could get a better grip on the mysterious item, it was large whatever it was, the biggest piece of metal he had found so far. He pulled hard, and it fell free finally, and with a start he realized it was a large brass bell, he held his breath as he turned the huge bell, it rotated around and Jake cursed loudly. There carved deeply into the side of it was a large eagle, the exact one from his dream, he felt stupid, but was unable to resist casting nervous glances into the sky. What the hell was happening to him? He sat in his camping chair for hours, sipping bourbon, and watching the sun set. Maybe this place was effecting him somehow, maybe there was something toxic here, that was causing him to hallucinate or something. He thought about it for a long time, eventually falling asleep dead drunk.

He woke up suddenly the next morning sure someone had called his name. He gripped the swords grip tightly, as he glanced frantically around the small room, relaxing slightly when he found no one there. He stepped outside, and found no one there either, he turned his head as he heard his name whispered again off in the distance, he realized it was not so much as a sound, but a feeling, the feeling was growing quickly,and somehow he felt that that someone was in trouble, it was hard to explain. He found himself walking through the ruins into a area he had not explored before, the strange feeling driving him forward with more urgency, in the same direction, until he found himself running, springting really, jumping piles of rubble, climbing through windows, rather than go around the buildings, always taking the shortest route, while always going in the same direction.. He realized he could hear cries of panic now, which made him run faster, in front of him a hole opened in the ground and he realized it was a basement. He peered down and found the source of the cries, a short broad shouldered heavily bearded man stood below him, his back to a wall as he frantically swung a shovel back and forth as he desperately tried to fight off his attackers. Jake was stunned to see the attackers were huge scorpions, each one the size of a German Shepard.

He had never seen anything like it before, they were terrifying, the massive scorpions skittered around him, snapping with their claws with loud popping sounds and jabbing their deadly looking barbed tail at the man, he was sure he saw a dark nasty looking liquid dripping from the stinger. The man gave another cry of panic, which turned into a scream of pain as a scorpion crushed the mans hand as it ripped the shovel out of his hand with a deadly looking claw. Jake’s fear melted away, and was replaced by a wave of fury that flowed through his body, he was enraged by the injustice of the scene before him, of a single man being physically attacked by a mob, before he knew what he was doing, he had drawn his new sword and leapt into the basement, as he flew through the air he wondered for a split second. “ Why didn’t I just shoot them with my pistol?” Then there was no time for thought, he was in the middle of the scorpions, his sword flashing over and over, blocking a stinger dripping with black venom here, lopping off a snapping serrated claw there, stabbing into a eye, he found himself leaping and dodging, fighting with the sword as he had trained for it his entire life. The entire time he fought he was filled with rage at the scorpions, Jake stood still at last, his chest heaving from the exertion gulping in huge breaths of air, as he stood there he realized that nothing was moving anymore, the scorpions lay sprawled around him, pieces of them lay all around as he had had hacked many of them apart in his fight.

Behind him he heard movement, and he spun around raising the sword. The man called out to Jake weakly“ Peace, I call for peace warrior. Do not harm me, I beg of you.” Jake lowered the sword and opened his mouth to reply, but before he could the mans eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed onto the ground in a bloody heap. Jake sheathed his sword and knelt beside the fallen man, checking him for a pulse, and was rewarded for his efforts by finding a strong pulse. He pulled the man into his back and quickly found the problem, he had several very deep cuts which were bleeding profusely, he guessed they were made from those vicious scorpion claws, he hoped the man had not been stabbed by one of those stingers, if he had, he doubted there was anything he could do for him, he shoved those thoughts aside and got to work. He quickly ripped his military first aid kit from his belt, and applied Israeli bandages over the mans bleeding wounds. The Israeli bandage was a military bandage that was part bandage for soaking up blood, and part elastic wrap that tightly bound the wound and was very good at stopping bleeding. He watched as the bandages absorbed blood and become discolored, but there was no blood leaking, and that was very good. The mans face was extremely pale, and a good indication he had simply fell unconscious from blood loss, that was easily treatable, scorpion venom, from a one hundred pound scorpion, not so much. It took a lot of work, but he managed to wrestle the unconscious man out of the basement, and onto solid ground, where he was able to hoist him onto his back, and fireman carry him back to his campsite.

A few hours later Jake had the man as comfortable as he could get him, he had given him his cot, and stripped him of his dirty leather clothing. He had carefully cleaned him with a wet rag, and searched him for a scorpion sting. He found a lot of old healed scars, so many he wondered what kind of life this guy led, but fortunately no scorpion sting was found. Jake had a very well equipped medical kid he had brought from his uncles storage room, and was now glad he had, as the kit contained multiple bags of IV solution. He knew how to use most of the items in the medical kit from his time in the military, and had quickly set up a IV on the unconscious man. That was about all he could do for him now, replace fluids, and once he was conscious again, push more fluids and soup into him. He had considered taking the man back through the portal to Kentucky and to a modern hospital, but he didn’t think that would be smart, for several reasons. If he thought it would be the difference between the man living and dying, he would have done it, but for blood loss, really the hospital would have been doing the same exact thing Jake was currently doing. They could give him blood, which would help him recover faster, but a hospital treating this man would bring a lot of questions Jake was not prepared to answer.

Jake had done everything he could for the man, he stretched, and realized he was totally exhausted. The sun had set sometime earlier, and it was pitch dark outside, he could see two of the moons low in the sky on the southerns horizon. He yawned loudly, and dug out his sleeping bag, and laid it against the wall, across the room from the man, the man was unconscious, but who knows what kind of person he was, Jake was not going to just blindly trust a random stranger on a strange planet. He got comfortable on his sleeping bag, drawing his pistol and putting it under his jacket he had rolled up for a pillow, he was asleep instantly. Jakes dreams that night were like nothing he had ever had before, they were filled with bloody battles, flashing swords, war cries from both men and strange creatures he didn’t recognize, and the screams of women.

Jake woke late the next morning, his entire body ached from the exertions of the day before, his stomach muscles hurt, and his stomach felt tender as well. He puzzled over that a moment then remembered the powerful stomach cramps he had the day before down in that hidden library, that was a unpleasant experience he had rather forget. He stretched, and yawned, and just lay there for a minute to think. He smelled something good, he sniffed again smelling bacon cooking. Mmmm that smells good he thought, Suddenly his eyes popped fully open and a twinge of panic shot through him, “Who the hell’s cooking bacon, hes alone here!  Suddenly he remembered the man he had saved, maybe he had woken up and was hungry? He glanced in the direction of the cot, and there lay the man, still in the cot, and still looking unconscious, he glanced towards the fireplace.

Oh shit, its not him, there is someone else here! In front of the fireplace a dark figure had their back to him, and was kneeling in front of the fireplace where a cheerful fire roared, he could just make out the sizzle of cooking bacon. Jake slid his hand slowly towards where he had laid his pistol last night before bed, just as his fingers touched the pistol the figure spoke. He didn’t know what startled him more, that the person spoke, that they knew he was reaching for his pistol, or that the voice was very feminine, and very sexy sounding, obviously a woman. “You wont need that weapon, I mean you no harm, I assure you.” Jakes hand had stopped when she spoke, but he was not taking any damn chances he reached for the pistol and it was gone ! He scrambled to his feet, grabbing his gun belt and felt a huge relief. His grandfathers pistol was safely in its holster, he strapped the gun belt around his waist and quickly adjusted it on his hips until his hand fell comfortably on the swords grip, he never took his eyes off the strange women the entire time.

Suddenly something hit him, Sword? He glanced quickly down and sure enough he had buckled the sword on, instead of his gun belt, he was even more surprised to notice his pistol, and spare magazines for it were attached to the sword belt as well. How in the hell had that happened, where the hell did this holster come from? The pistol, and spare magazines were snug in a black leather silver studded holster, and matching magazine pouches. He had no clue where the holster and pouches had home from, they damn well were not there yesterday! Then his love for well made gear took over, and he had to admit, it felt great on him, the weight was evenly distributed, plus to top it off, it was by far the best custom leather work he had ever seen. He ignored the holster issue for the moment, and directed his attention back to the figure before the fire. “ Who are you woman, and why are you here?” He asked angrily. She laughed softly, as if something were funny, and kept stirring the cooking food, never looking back at him. “ I am making breakfast obviously, what does it look like?” Jake took a deep breath. “You broke in here uninvited, to make me breakfast?” “I was invited, and I hardly broke in”. she replied pointing with one hand at the door and the tarp that fluttered in the breeze. “I didn’t invite you.” Jake persisted, “Look, woman, at least have the decency of looking at me when I’m talking to you !” He said angrily. She stopped stirring the food, stood to her full height, and turned to face him.

Jake hesitated, and gulped noisily, in front of him was easily one of the most attractive women he had ever seen in his entire life. She was very very petite, both slim, and short with a athletic build to her. She had silver hair and very delicate features to her, with large pale blue eyes. She was wearing some kind of long dark green jacket, fort of like a trench coat that came down to her ankles, and a shimmering silver metallic vest underneath, he was pretty sure was chain mail. There was a wide leather belt around her waist that held a dagger, and a long thin sword with a white handle that to him closely resembled a Japanese Katana. She wore a dark green skirt that came down to her knees, and black boots made from soft looking leather and came to just above her knees, she was very striking, he had never seen silver colored hair before, it had a almost metallic look to it. She looked at him with amusement in her large blue eyes. “ Do I meet with your approval human?” “Yes, that’s much better, I mean with you facing me to talk, not by your appearence, although that is very nice as well.” Jake agreed, “And my names Jake, not human, by the way.” The woman smirked at him, and bowed slightly. “I am the Elf Brynella Aliuream, of house Aliuream, sworn servant and protector of the bearer of Justice Bringer.”

Jake hesitated. “You’re a Elf, seriously? Jake didn’t look convinced. She turned her head, and pulled her long silver hair back, revealing delicately pointed ears. Jake blinked in surprise. He reminded himself he was not on earth anymore, but some unknown planet, but still a Elf? How crazy did that sound? “Your really a Elf, then, he said doubtfully?” Brynella Nodded. “I am, why do you doubt the existance of Elves, and fairy, when you have a dwarf lying here to stare at?” Jake glanced at the wounded man. “ He is a bit short, I admit, but there is no reason to insult him by calling him a Dwarf.” Jake replied. The woman burst out laughing. “ Human, he is short, because he is a Dwarf, I called him a dwarf because he is one, not because he is short. Have you never seen a Elf, or a dwarf before then? Jake shook his head, and paused to think how to reply. “No, honestly I have not, I am not from this world, but from another. My people have legends about Elves, and Dwarves and many other things, but I never believed they were real, only stories to entertain children. Well, Elf or not, what are you doing here?” She sighed heavily, and turned back to stir the food again. “Again, slow human, I am making you breakfast, well I am making breakfast, I suppose you may have some as well.” Jake grunted in annoyance.

“ Once again, my name is Jake, not human, and I meant why are you making breakfast at all, why are you in this room? I don’t know you.” Brynella scooped food onto two plates, handing one to Jake, she leaned against a wall facing him, and dug into the second plate, talking to Jake between huge bites of food. “ I did not make enough for your pet dwarf, if you wish to feed him, you will have to share your portion. You dwarf looks poorly, did you in flick those injuries upon him? Jake took a bite of his food, finding it to be delicious. “Hes not a pet, He was attacked by giant scorpions yesterday, not far from here, I rescued him, but he was injured and fell unconscious, so I brought him here to help him.” “The woman nodded, and gave a soft musical laugh. “I would expect nothing less of the bearer of the sword, I knew you would find trouble quickly, but that was faster than even I anticipated. However, I am here now, please try to not drag us into hopeless fights if you can help it.” Jake just stared at the woman. “ What are you talking about? You never told me why you were here, eating my food? The woman sighed heavily.“I told you, I am of house Aliuream, does that mean nothing to you?” Jake shook his head. Brynella rolled her eyes and shook her head sadly side to side. “ It seems humans teach their young less each year, not that they ever taught them much to begin with.

Look human.” She saw him start to protest, and held up her delicate hand. “Appologies , I meant Jake. I will give you a short explanation of whats happening here. Long ago, the sword justice bringer, and the person who bore her, did my family a great service, by rooting out a traitor in the Elf council who almost brought my family to ruin. In return, my grateful family made a pledge to always serve the sword, help it do its work, and protect its bearer, which is you now, by the way. House Aliuream swore their alliegience to Justice bringer thousands of years ago, we have proudly served her, and her bearer ever since. Each generation a member of house Aliuream is picked to partake in a ceramony overseen by powerful spell casters, and using our blood, and a piece of the iron justice bringer was forged from, we are bound to it for life. When someone unsheathes her, and is bound, we know it instantly, and we come to them. I was called yesterday, and I came with haste, the bearer usually finds themselves in trouble quickly once blessed, or perhaps cursed as it were with the sword”. Do you understand now?” Jake still shook his head no, he was thinking this woman was insane. Causing Brynella to utter some strange word which he took as cursing.

“Look, Jake, I am not insane, so, you may stop thinking that, right now. Listen closely. You found a sword yesterday, correct”? Jake nodded, patting the sword on his side. “Yes, I found a sword yesterday, what does that have to do with you?” Brynella nodded. “Good, we have the sword, I’m sure you noticed there was something special, about the sword? Jake nodded again. “Yes, its made of steel, apparently steel is rare here.” Brynella nodded in agreement. “Yes, that is true, however not what I meant. Did you happen to become sick, right after finding it?” Jake thought back to the terrible cramps, and his vomiting the black goo yesterday. Jake narrowed his eyes at her in suspicion. How did you know about that? Byrnella smiled slightly, “It happens to everyone who unsheaths it. That was the sword purging your body of lies, and your ability to lie. It belongs to you now, and you belong to it. You serve Justice now, that sword was forged long ago by powerful magic, to protect the innocent, and to spread and protect Justice in the land. Yesterday, when you got sick, since it was my turn to serve, I knew instantly someone had found the sword, I dropped everything and came here as fast as possible,getting here quickly was no easy matter I can assure you, I was on the other side of the kingdom when I felt the call.

Getting here quickly required me to call in a favor from a powerful wizard but here I am. I am here to advise you, to teach you about the sword, to help you deal with the adjustment that carrying it entails, and to protect you from harm, the swords influence will put you in great danger. Questions?” Jake just stared at her. “Um, its just a sword, I found it, but I don’t serve it. I don’t know why your claiming to serve the sword, or me, that’s crazy, but I don’t need your help. Your free to finish eating, but then I think maybe you should go.” Brynella stared at him for a moment, then she burst into laughter. She was wiping tears from her eyes, as she laughed at him for a long time. Jake stood there looking at her getting more angry by the second. When she had almost stopped laughing, Jake spoke. “ Are you done now?” She wiped away some more tears. “ Oh, my, you are so innocent, you REALLY have no clue what you have gotten yourself into, do you? You don’t need to answer me, she continued, just listen. When the swords bearer dies, the sword is open to the next bearer, it basically sits and waits, basically like a trap, for the next person to unsheathe it. Whoever unsheathes it, is bound to it, body and soul,forever, only death can seperate you from it. There is no way to be rid of it, or the urges it gives you, you will carry that sword, and do its bidding until the day you die.

You throw it away in a river, you will pine for it a thousand times worse than you ever did for any woman, a thousand times worse than any urge to drink, or to gamble, or to eat. You WILL find it, or die trying, it will consume you. Anyone who touches that sword in a attempt to take it from you, or harm you with it, with intent in their heart for such, will die instantly, the sword can also use its influence to bring its self back to you, by using people. It might as well be considered a cursed object, the supposed good it does though puts it off limits from banishment by the wizards guilds.” Jake stared at her. “Magic, curses, spells, intelligent swords, do you realize how insane you sound to me right now? Brynella nodded, “ I might, yes, that does not make it any less true, I see you don’t believe me. I can prove I speak the truth, simply try to separate yourself from that sword. Place it on the ground, and start walking away, I hear men with strong will can almost get one hundred paces from it before they start sweating, and are forced to return and pick it up, just walk away from it, try it, you will see, it has its hold on you, and will never let go, that will help prove what I am saying it truth. Although you already know I am telling the truth, the sword prevents you from being lied to.” “You need to leave now.” Jake said more forcefully. Brynella nodded. She scooped up her plate of food and slipped towards the doorway. “ I will do as you ask for now human, I will give you time and room to think, but I will be close by.

I am sworn to follow, and protect you at all times as long as you bear that sword, I would hope we can become friends, as we will litterally be spending the rest of your life together, however long that turns out to be. We are both basically married together through it, you through your connection to it, and me through my families alliegence to it, and you as bearer. When you learn the truth about the sword, or wish to see me, simply think of me, and ask me to come here, I will hear you and come, we are bound together through the sword. You know I am telling the truth, you just need to accept it. Your Dwarf is waking up, he will be grumpy to discover he owes a honor debt to a Human.” Jake glanced towards the cot where the injured man laid, and sure enough he was slowly moving on the cot, he glanced back towards Brynella, but she was gone, and loud snore pulled his attention back to the man on the cot. The wounded mans chest rose and fell easily, and loud snoring came from him now, at least he was not unconscious anymore. He figured the man would awaken sometime soon, and be hungry when he did, but he had some time before that would happen.

Jake sat back down on his cot, and picked at the now cold plate of food not really hungry at all anymore, everything from the last two days running through his head, from finding that treasure, to saving this man, and meeting a actual Elf, it was a lot to take in. The most disturbing thing to Jake about about the conversation he had with Brynella, was not what the woman had said, but that he somehow KNEW everything she had said was the truth. He could not explain it, he simply knew it was all true somehow, no doubt about it, as sure as water was wet, and fire was hot, and that disturbed him much more than the crazy things she had said. If what she said were true, then he had not so much have been blessed with finding the sword and treasure, but cursed somehow. She mentioned urges, I wonder what that was about? He sat there thinking for a long time, finally coming to the conclusion that the first thing he needed to do, was prove this was all bullshit. He was going to need some supplies from his truck, and figured this was a good time to prove the elf woman wrong, he damn sure would not need a weapon to walk behind the building to his truck.

Jake unbuckled his sword belt, and laid it on his chair next to his sleeping bag, and stood looking down at it. Did he need to carry it with him to the truck? What if something happened?  He shoved the thought from his mind, he didn’t need it, and he was going to prove it. He grabbed his rifle up and He walked to the door and stepped outside. He looked around the ruins and felt very exposed and helpless, he gripped his rifle tighter, it was a much better weapon than the sword, but he still felt helpless, he needed that sword! He shoved the feelings aside, and walked around the building towards the truck, he felt as if he were going to have a panic attack, his heart was racing, and he felt as if something would attack him at any moment, and he knew the rifle would be worthless, he needed that sword!! Jake forced himself towards the truck, with each step the miserable feelings of helplessness, and fear of attack grew, as well as a deep feeling of loss. He reached the truck, and gripped the door handle so tightly his hand hurt, he felt like he would be swept away at any moment, actually drown in the feelings of fear and loss he felt, before he knew it he had cast aside all thoughts of resisting the swords influence, and found himself sprinting towards the building. The feelings of panic were overwhelming, He must have that sword, before it was too late !

Brynella shook her head sadly at the scene she had just witnessed. She was perched high in a window of a nearby building, where she could easily keep watch on the building where the new sword bearer dwelt with his wounded Dwarf. She had watched the man step from the building without the sword, and was curious as to what would happen. She had read the histories, and been briefed on what would occur, but seeing it in person was something different. She felt pity for the man as she watched his struggle against the swords influence, she was impressed at his willpower, and was honestly surprised he made it as far away from the sword as he did, according to the stories, it was rare for someone to resist it for so long. She watched him stand there, his entire body trembling against the swords power, before finally losing the battle, and running back to his new master. It was distasteful to her, this entire business with this particular sword, that the bearer was a slave to it, the irony was not lost on her.

The sword promoted Fairness, Justice and Freedom for all, through force if necessary where ever it went. While the bearer of the sword, was a slave to it, as much a slave as any that toiled in a field or a mine, where was the fairness and Justice in that? She felt the guild should have reclassified this sword as cursed a long time ago, and dropped it into the sea where it could do no harm. They disagreed however, and still stood by the original judgements laid down five thousand years ago. “ The good the sword did for the many, far outweighed the negative effects it had on the bearer.” Perhaps if they had to spend years of their lives watching it destroy a person they were sworn to protect, who who they even cared for, they would think differently. She had read the journals of several of her ancestors who had served sword bearers in the past. They all generally had one thing in common, the Elf protector was always the opposite sex of the bearer, and the protectors, always grew to love the bearer, and were unable to save them from it. She supposed the fact they were always the opposite sex from the bearer was to help promote a closer relationship between them, as they would always be together, and she could see how that could lead to love, but she felt there was more to it than that. She believed that the sword influenced the protector as well, through the bearer somehow.

She didn’t know the purpose of it, but she believed it. She was locked into this role of protector, through honor, and it bound her to him more strongly than if she had been chained to him physically, she did not believe she would fall for the bearer as so many before her had. Elves had iron control over their emotions and feelings that was true for them all, Brynella however, took it far beyond that to the point most other Elves thought her cold and distant, she had also never loved another person, ever. She would be the exception to the rule, she had little doubt. She stretched her body, the cold stone of the wall pressing against her back, she gazed down on the building where the bearer was and wondered how long it would take the silly human to face the reality of the situation, and call to her.

Jake ran through the doorway, leapt over the sleeping man and snatched the sword up off of the chair with sweaty shaky hands, his breathing was difficult, as he buckled it with difficulty around his waist and snatched the gleaming sword from its scabbard, clenched tightly in his hands, the terrible feelings of loneliness, and fear quickly started flowing away, the sword felt like cool water flowing over his burning flesh. A loud noise sounded close behind him, reigniting the fear of being attacked. The attack was happening !! Jake spun around slashing wildly with the sword towards the noise, and was rewarded with a scream of terror, and a loud crash. Jake looked as the attacker cowered away from him, tangled in a cot, his eyes bulging in fear, at what Jake might do to him, and for a moment he felt triumphant. Suddenly he realized with a shock that the man was not a attacker at all, but the innocent he had saved the day before.

The man had apparently woken up and while standing knocked something over, then fallen over the cot when avoiding Jake’s wild swing. Jake’s body flooded with shame for causing such fear in a innocent, this was the one he had saved, how could he attack him like this? The man lay on his back, his eyes bulging in fear, his arms raised to ward off the death blow he expected. Jake cleared his throat. “ You have nothing to fear from me”. The man looked at Jake doubtfully, his eyes darting between the drawn sword, and Jake’s face. Jake slipped the sharp sword back into its scabbard, and held up his empty hands. “Better?” Jake asked. Jake held out his hand to help the injured man to his feet. The man studied him for a moment, then nodded, and took Jake’s hand, and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, groaning when he put weight on his injured leg. Jake studied the man, he was short, only perhaps five feet tall at most, but he was very stocky, with thick arms and legs, and a huge bushy beard. He was dressed in tough looking leather clothing, and knee high leather boots. The man also looked angry, and kept looking around for something.

If your looking for your ax, its in the corner over there, along with your pack, I touched nothing. Jake pointed, and the mans eyes darted into the corner he indicated. There maybe ten feet away a heavy copper battle ax leaned against the wall, just out of reach, next to it was a bulging pack, that contained the mans belongings, and food. The man cleared his throat, and spoke in a deep gravelly voice. “Who are you Human, Why did you save me, and how is it you speak our language? No human is to be taught Dwarvish, it is forbidden!!” The short man demanded angrily. “ My name is Jake Reynolds, and I am speaking English, not Dwarvish, whatever that is. I am new to this land, I saved you because it was the right and honorable thing to do.” The short man spat onto the ground. “Bah ! What does a human know of honor, and what is right? They only seek to enslave Dwarves, that is why my people came to this land, to be free from humans like yourself, and their desire to enslave us. You likely saved me only to claim your honor reward I suspect.” Jake was getting annoyed with this loud mouth, and his tone turned angry as well. “I despise slavery, and I take offense if your suggesting I encourage such a thing, you better watch your mouth if you value your teeth. I want no reward for saving you, and whatever a honor reward is I want no part of it, your, gratitude for my saving you is all I need.” Jake said slowly and sarcastically, causing the man to bristle with even more anger, and clench his fists.

“You REJECT the Dwarves honor reward that you are owed, you say this to me?! Such a insult shall not stand Human, I demand single combat to restore my peoples honor !” This was getting out of hand, and he needed to put a stop to it, and get this angry little man out of his life. “Look, dude, you need to chill out.” The man interrupted him angrily. “ I am not Dude, my name is Thoran, what does this Dude mean? It is a insult then, yes?  Jake held his hands up in frustration. “Thoran is it? Look Thoran, I wish no disrespect toward you or your people, I am a stranger to these lands and I do not know your people’s ways, or traditions, I mean no insult. I saved your life, because it IS the honorable thing to do, to come to the aid of a person in distress. Jake placed his hand on his sword belt, next to the swords hilt, drawing the mans gaze. The mans eyes bulged in surprise. “ Is that the sword of legend? Is that Justice Bringer?” The man asked almost reverently. “Yes, I believe its named that” Jake replied. “I discovered it recently in these ruins, you mean this sword is famous or something?” The man turned pale, and dropped to his knees.

“It is truly Justice Bringer then? Please, have mercy on me sword bearer, I did not know who you were, I would never seek to question the honor of the bearer of Justice Bringer, your honor is absolute, as is your word. Have mercy!” Jake rolled his eyes in annoyance, Jesus H Christ, is everyone in this place so fucking melodramatic? First that woman, and now this guy, hell, this is get going to get annoying fast. “Get off your knees man, you have nothing to fear from me” Thoran scrambled slowly to his feet painfully. “ Please bearer, accept my deepest apology, and allow me to escort you to meet my people. They would never forgive me should I not bring the new sword bearer to meet our people, and dine at our table, there will be a great feast in your honor, where you will receive your honor reward.” Jake groaned inwardly. We are still talking about this honor reward thing then?” Thoran grumbled under his breath for a moment, Jake was sure he was cursing. He finally spoke. “You said you did not understand our ways human, and you said you meant no disrespect, if you spoke the truth, then you will respect our ways, and allow my people to honor you. I assure you, you will enjoy yourself, and perhaps make life long friends of my people. However, be warned before you speak, Sword bearer or not, if you refuse my peoples honor reward you they will take a dim view of your presence here, and you will find us to be a dangerous enemy. You desire this?” Jake groaned inwardly. It was pretty obvious he was stuck with this honor reward thing, they apparently take it pretty seriously here. This was the first person he had met, he didn’t need to be creating enemies day one. “Thoran, I would be pleased and honored to meet your people, how far away are they? Will I need to bring supplies?”.

Thoran smiled obviously pleased. “It is only a few hours walk human, you will need only water, your every want will be met by my people. Tell me, did the sword lay with the treasure, do you lay claim to it?” Jake thought carefully how he answered, he was going to need to control these ruins if he wanted to create a colony here, and didn’t need there to be any questions about who owned it if possible, that would be easier if he used these peoples beliefs against them if necessarily. He spoke slowly, and forcefully. “I found the treasure, and the sword. As bearer of the sword, I lay claim, and ownership to this fortress and its ruins, and all that lies within, or as my people say.  Finders keepers, losers weepers.” He expected a argument of some kind, but was surprised when Thoran simply nodded. “That is within your power as the sword bearer, to claim a home, none shall challenge your claim to the fortress ruins.” There was a moment of silence where Jake looked around and remembered he had just hacked apart half a dozen gigantic scorpions a few moments before. “ Thoran, are scorpions this big common here? If they are, I would find that disturbing.” The short man started laughing. “You and I both would be disturbed by that! Thank the gods no, they are not common, they are in fact quite rare. These are the first I have seen in my 150 years of living, I have never heard of anyone else ever seeing them either, they existed only in legends to me before today.”

Jake blinked in surprise. “You are 150 years old?” Thoran nodded. “Do not be fooled by my youth, I may only be one hundred fifty years, but I am very mature for my age, of course if it bothers you, you may request a elder to speak with once we arrive at my home.” Jake simply nodded. “I wish to pick up a few things from my camp, and we can be on our way to your people.”Thoran picked up his pack, and battle ax, and followed Jake back to his camp. Once Jake had retrieved his pack, rifle and tactical vest he was ready to leave, Thoran looked curiously at the rifle, but didn’t ask what it was. He learned a bit more about Thoran during their hike, it turns out he had came to the ruins searching for a rumored lost treasure he had heard spoken of. He had been searching the rubble in the basement when he had accidentally disturbed the scorpion nest, and was attacked, his first trip to the ruins had almost been his last. Jake also learned the leaders of Thorans tribe would be unhappy to know he had been there, as it was off limits to their people.

I rewrote the last story post. everything from when the girls arrive at Helens boutique has been redone. mostly just added to it such as them modeling lingerie for him, and more.  enjoy.

I'm still adding to this. ill update it later tonight.

The next morning Jake was the first one to wake up. He slipped out from between Selene and Mirand, carefully sliding a arm from around his waist, and a leg off off his hip. He finally managed to stand up, and stood there looking at the sleeping exhausted ladies. They had stayed up late into the night drinking and having a underwear fashion show. It had been a lot of fun, but once the lingerie had come out it quickly turned from watching, to touching. He was sore in a few places, but just the thought of how he had gotten that way left a huge smile on his face. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, and realized there was something soft around his neck. He pulled it off, and held it up to get a better look, and found himself looking at a pair of silky red panties. He chuckled at the memory of how they had gotten there, then he realized with a start that he was wearing the matching panties. He had no memory however, of just how they had gotten there. Jiselle was snuggled up behind Miranda, and Selene was behind Asmund, and their long hair was a mess.

The ladies were half covered by a sheet, and Jake could see a bare ass, and a few naked breasts from where he was standing, he noticed lip stick on the naked ass, as well as a breast, and he smiled as he remembered who had put them there. The girls could be almost as much fun to watch sometimes, as they were to be with. There were bra’s, panties and other under garments scattered around the bed, and across the bedroom floor as well. Jake once again was amazed at what his life had turned into in the last few months, he was no longer flat broke, he was actually wealthy beyond his dreams now, he had a beautiful home, and his sex life was something any man would envy. He was truly blessed. If that portal disappeared today never to return he thought he would be pretty damn happy for the rest of his life right here on the farm.

Then portal had not vanished though, and he had a lot of plans for the future regarding it. A important piece of that plan was arriving later today in fact. Emily Carson struck him as a professional, and he intended to look professional himself when she arrived, as well as have everything ready when he explained what he needed her for. He opened the bedroom door and was greeted to the smell of fresh brewed coffee. He had intended to make coffee, and eat a quick breakfast, and before the ladies got up but it appeared someone had beaten him to it. He stepped into the kitchen, and discovered Bru already fully dressed in a pair of tactical pants, hiking boots, and a under armor t-shirt. She smiled at him as he stepped into the room. “ Good morning sleepy head.” She joked. “I was just about to come and wake you up.”

Jake rubbed his sleepy eyes. “Coffee smells wonderful. You made me breakfast? You didn’t have to do that Bru.” Bru smiled. “I know I didn’t, I was hungry anyway, I just figured id make a little extra for you while I was at it. I know you want to make a good impression on that Emily woman, and probably had a lot to do to get ready for the meeting. Figured you could use my help. Although I have no clue why you want to bring another woman into your life, don’t you have enough women problems already?” She smirked. Jake grunted. “ Your a darling for breakfast and offering to help Bru, and yes I do have a lot to do before she gets here. As to bringing another women into my life, that’s damn sure not my intention.” Bru snorted. “ Was it ever your attention to have the five women you have now?” Jake shrugged. “Good point, but no, I didn’t plan it. I don’t regret it though, I feel like I have been blessed, both with you and the other ladies. Im not saying its not a little challenging at times, but I would not change it for anything. I don’t know what the future holds for us, but I will cherish me memories we are making right now for the rest of my life.”

Bru laughed. “You keep bringing new women into it, and your life might be very short indeed.” Jake smiled sweetly at her. “Why, are you jealous Bru?  Bru shrugged. “Maybe a little I suppose. I really don’t have a reason to be though. I am your protector, and that is all that I am so far. I care for you, but we have not crossed into a man / woman relationship yet. If we ever do enter into a more personal relationship, then I will have a reason to be jealous, and I might need to put my foot down occasionally, regarding your little harem.” Jake didn’t like the sound of that. “ You would ask me to kick the other girls out?” He asked curiously. “Bru shook her head. “ No Jake, I did not say that. They are wonderful women, and they are good for you, I can see that. They are really helping to repair the trust issues you have with women, that’s something you must repair before you can ever have another healthy functional relationship with a woman. I can also see you know the difference between sex for fun with a friend, and the emotional aspect of a real loving relationship.”

Jake shrugged. “I do love those girls, they are amazing.” He said. Bru patted the seat next to her, and she handed him a cup of coffee as he sat down. “I know you love them.” Bru continued. “I love them too, But your not in love with them. Its a big difference. The way you tread carefully around me, and worry about my feelings, tells me you know the difference between love, and in love. No matter what happens between us, I would never ask you to give up your little harem. I not only have no objections to it, I enjoy using it myself” She grinned. “ Although I might have objections should you try to bring a woman into our lives I don’t approve of. We have a good thing going, all it takes is one shrew to make us all miserable and destroy everything we have.  Jake paused between bites of food. “ I agree, and I would support your objections.

You have nothing to fear though, I have more women than I can handle already. I don’t want or need more. I tried to get a man to fill the job, Emily seems to be the best I can find though.” Bru nodded. “Its fine dear. When she gets here though, I suggest you let the dwarf ladies help you decide if shes what we are looking for. They can learn more about her, and what shes really like in five minutes with their empathic abilities than you could learn in a month of interviews.” Jake nodded. “It had occured to me. Thats part of the reason I got all of you new clothes last night, we need to look professional. I appreciate the slutty farm girl look myself, but I doubt it would have gone over well with Miss Carson. She would probably think Im trying to take advantage of the your world to create a stable of whores, or a sex trade of some kind. Id like to avoid that at all costs.” Bru nodded. “What would be appropriate clothing for us to wear for the interview? We have a lot of new clothes, but I do not know what your culture views as appropriate.”

Jake smiled.” Anything besides the lingerie, pajamas, and bathing suit should be fine. Id suggest slacks, jeans, or sun dresses though. I don’t need us to dress like professionals, just look decent. We are on shaky ground with this interview. I really don’t know what it will take to convince Miss Carson of what we are saying. We will sound insane I'm sure.” Bru shrugged. “ Just show her the portal, and take her through it. That will convince her easily enough.” Jake nodded. “yeah, that will do it all right. Id rather leave that as a last resort though. This is a big secret, and I don’t want it to get out. We will get a feel for her first. If she seems like what we want, we can take her through to convince her. You feel like helping me move some gold today?” Bru frowned. “Not really no, but I am happy to help you today. If we must move gold, then we must.”

The day went by quickly. Jake moved his pile of gold objects from the ruins back to the barn, he also retrieved the strange glasses he had discovered, as well as a giant scorpion carcass. The scorpion carcass stank, but it was in good enough shape to use as evidence of a new world. Bru worked to get all the girls ready and by one pm everyone was dressed, and sitting around the living room. Jake opened some wine, and put on a tv show to help to pass the time. He still had work to do, so he got a beer and hit the computer to look for supplies. He did a search for swords, and spears, thinking of his promise to equip the guards who would arrive, and was surprised at what he found. There were actually a lot of companies selling those things, everything from cheap display items to hand forged works of art. He picked cold steel a company he was familiar with for the pocket knives they manufactured.

After reading a few reviews, he decided they were a good choice. They were priced pretty reasonably, and actually made working tools, as opposed to cheap trinkets, or works of art, and he thought the weapons would go over well with the Dwarves. He looked and discovered they offered a staggering variety of spears, and swords. He finally picked out a reasonably priced sword that strongly resembled what he had seen the Dwarves carrying, as well as a spear that he thought would work well too. He ended up placing a large order from the company, fifty of each item, swords, and spears, as well as a number of viking style battle ax’s, wood cutting ax’s, and even belt knives. He added a large amount of arrow heads at the last minute as well. He realized that this stuff would make excellent trade items, and planned to order a lot more of it in the near future. His biggest issue though was actually money. Although he had millions in jewels, and gold, he only had about fifty thousand in the bank. He was going to need to convert a lot of that stuff to cold hard cash before he could really get this stuff started. Convert it in a way that avoided unnecessary attention from both the government, as well as thieves who might decide to rob him. He hoped Emily Carson would have some ideas as to how to accomplish it. He knew he didn’t want to be traveling the country, driving to we buy gold places, to convert thousands of jewels and tons of gold.

The driveway alarm sounded promptly at three pm, announcing someone was coming up the driveway. Miss Carson had arrived, it was time to get ready! He turned off the tv, and turned on some soft background music. He had everyone get seated at the large dining room table where he planned to do the interview. He wanted the ladies present to be able to get their opinions on Miss Carson. He feared it might make things a little awkward for Miss Carson, but he didn’t really see anyway around it. For better or for worse, Bru, and the girls were his family, and business partners. He trusted them completely, and wanted their input over who they hired, they damn sure had a say in it.

Emily pulled her rented Mercedes suv into a parking spot in front of the farm house and shut off the engine. She looked around at the small farm with a  sharp eye, and noticed several things. One was it was not a working farm, there were no animals present, and from the look of the farm yard and the lack of tire tracks, it did not appear there had been any equipment moving in quite a while. She still had not idea what Jake Reynolds wanted to talk to her about. If it were not for her uncles insistence she meet with him, she would have never agreed to the meeting at all. She stepped out of the vehicle and smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt, and checked to make sure her silk blouse was in order. Her heels clicked on the stone walkway as she approached the front door. She paused at the door, and just admired it for a moment. She had never seen a door on a house like this before, it was simply beautiful. It was massive, and had all copper hardware on it. It was beautiful, not what she expected to find on a farmhouse. She gripped the heavy door knocked and beat it against the massive door three times. Before the last booming knock had faded away the door was pulled open.

Standing in the doorway was a ruggedly handsome man, dressed in jeans, and a “ Come and take it” pro second amendment tshirt. She stiffled a smile at the shirt, it very much reminded her of her and Uncle Thomas, she would bet money he owned one just like it. The man was just under six feet tall, with a short military style haircut, and was well muscled. He Flashed a big smile and held out his hand. Miss Carson, correct? Pleased to meet you, I’m Jake Reynolds. Emily shook his hand, which had a firm dry grip. “Yes, you may call me Emily, if you like Mr Reynolds.” Jake smiled. “Thank you Emily, please call me Jake. Please come inside Emily, the others are waiting for us, and eager to meet you and get started.” He stepped aside and she followed him inside, and closed the massive door. The house was beautiful inside, all hardwoods, and stone. It was a open concept, and allowed a view of the kitchen, living room, and dining room from where she stood. Around the living room table sat a group of very attractive women.

Four of them were what men liked to call thick, and had stocky builds to them. The two brunettes, blonde and redhead, were not fat however, just stocky, and had plenty of curves from what she could see. The other women was much different than the other four. She was slim and tall, with a very athletic build, and she had hair that was a unusual blondish silver color. All of the women were well dressed, though and all had a glass of wine in front of them. The four stocky girls were all wearing pretty sun dresses, while the woman with the silver hair was wearing dark slacks, and a white blouse. All of the women were smiling warmly in her direction. Jake ushered Her towards the table, and before she could get there, the women all stood and approached her. The slim woman was first. She stuck out her hand to shake, and spoke to her.

“ Hello Emily, my name is Brynella Ailuream. Please feel free to call me Bru. We are most pleased to meet you.” She smiled at Her warmly, and Emily was amazed at how big and blue her eyes were. The woman was simply beautiful, and she smelled like wild flowers. She also had high cheekbones and fine delicate features, that were totally at odds with her firm strong grip that rivaled Jake’s. She was put off by the woman’s strange accident, not that it was bad, in fact it was just the opposite, it was charming, and exotic. What put her off about it was she had met many people in her career, and she took pride in recognizing where a speak originated from, but this woman’s accent had her stumped. Emily smiled warmly, returning the warm smile she had received. “Pleased to meet you Bru, I love your accident. May I ask where you are from?” The woman smiled at her. “I could tell you, but you would never believe me, lets just say I am not from around here. I assure you we will be discussing this at length very soon.” Emily did not take her reply to be evasive, or rude, but more playful, so she simply nodded. “Im looking forward to it.” She said simply.

She next met the stocky women, and the first one was a pretty redhead, who was dressed in a light green sundress. Emily smiled and stock out her hand. “ Hello, I’m Emily.” The woman bypassed her hand and wrapped her arms around her in a warm hug, the woman smiled like honey to her. The woman pulled her out of the hug, and smiled warmly at her. “Emily, I am pleased to meet you. I am Miranda Claypotter, welcome to our home, if you need anything simply ask. Can I offer you some wine?” Emily liked the woman instantly. She put off a wholesome friendly vibe. Emily returned her smile. “Yes please, that would be lovely, thank you.” Jake stepped in. “I will get it.” But Miranda cut him off. “No Mlord allow me, you stay with your guest. Mlord? That’s a pretty odd expression Emily thought.

She didn’t have time to ponder it though as she was swept up in a flurry of hugs, where she met a Selene Cobbleshoe, Asmund Meadbrewer, and Jiselle Leathermaker, all three of them had the same honey smell that Miranda had. Emily had never felt so welcomed in her entire life, the women made her feel like she had returned home, even though she had never been here before, and only had know them for a entire five minutes. It felt nice to be around people who pulled a smile from your naturally, verses people you had to force a smile around. She smiled a big smile. “ I am pleased to meet all of you, I have never felt so welcomed in my life. I love your perfume, it smells like honey, what is it called?” They exchanged confused glances. Bru answered for them. “ They are not wearing perfume.” She explained. “They always smell like honey. Isn’t it wonderful?” The Jiselle woman laughed. “ I love your flowery smell myself Bru, I wish I could bottle it.” She said. “Cant help you there.” Bru laughed. “You smell nice as well Emily, you smell like berries to me.” Emily blushed. “ Well thank you Bru, its my lotion, its called berry passion,, Its my favorite.

“ I like it as well.” Asmund said. “Please, let us get together when we are done, and let us get the name of it, we must buy some for ourselves. We are just learning about your wonderful makeup, we had no idea we could get such wonderful scented lotions as well.” Emily made a note of that odd comment as well, what did she mean by “Your wonderful makeup? She spoke like a visitor from another culture, and the ladies odd last names did no go unnoticed either. When she combined them with the Milord comment, she was reminded of a medieval reenactor event she had gone to once. Miranda handed Emily a glass of wine and showed her to a chair. The other people were sitting, so she mad herself comfortable. “ Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me Emily. Tom Braddock could not say enough good things about you.”

Emily smiled. “I owe my uncle a great deal Jake, he also had a lot of good things to say about you as well. May I be frank Jake?” Jake nodded. “Please do Emily.” Emily sipped her wine. “ I am not sure why I am here. To be honest, the only reason I agreed to this meeting at all was because of my uncle. No offense meant, you all seem like very nice people and I could see us being friends, as I really do like you so far, but I’m here on business, not to make friends. I cater to a certain type of clienttell, a very high end kind of clienttell, and the fees I charge for my services are reflected in it. To be blunt. I don’t see what need a farmer in Kentucky has of my services, and any service I provide could be had much cheaper locally. Perhaps your more in need of a farm type manager Jake. In short, even if you do need my services, I don’t think you can afford them.” Jake blinked in surprise. “Wow, you don’t hold back.”

Bru slammed her glass down hard, leaned across the table and pointed a finger at Emily. You will watch how you speak to the Bearer in his own home woman, that is if you want to keep it.” The other women gasp in surprise, and looked horrified at her actions, Jake looked stunned. Emily leaned back in her chair and sipped her wine, as if Bru had commented on the weather, instead of threatened her. Jake looked at Bru with a stern expression. “Brynella, you will not speak to our guest in such a manner. If you cannot be civil you will have to leave.” Then he turned back to Emily. “My apologies Emily. Please ignore Bru’s outburst, she is a bit temperamental at times.” Bru sat back down looking furious. Emily just sat there looking totally comfortable with the situation, and sipping her wine. Jake nodded. “ I understand why you would feel like that Emily. I’m sure when you look around at the farm now that you are here it looks meager, and when you did a back ground check on me before you left your house, it likely looked worse. Your thinking I would not possibly need your kind of services in the first place, nor be able to afford them if I did need them.

Emily nodded. “ That pretty much sums it up, yes. Jake nodded. “ All of that would have been totally true a few months ago, however something remarkable has happened in my life that has changed my circumstances and put me in great need of your services.” Emily sat her glass down. “ If your referencing to inheriting this farm, and the meager bank account that goes with it as remarkable, that may be true, however it does not change my point. You would have to sell everything here, and clean out your bank account as well to pay for my services for a year. You don’t need me, and cant afford me if you did.” Bru pushed her chair back and stood up, a wicked looking knife had appeared in her hand from somewhere. “ I warned you to watch your mouth bitch.” Bru breathed menacingly. Emily raised her hand slightly revealing it held a pistol. “Bring it.” Emily said still looking bored. “Jesus Christ Bru, what the fuck are you doing? Emily, put that gun away, Bru give me that damn knife !” The other women at the table burst out laughing, causing Jake to state at them in exasperation. “ Why the hell are you laughing? Its not helping !” Asmund spoke first. “Relax Jake, they are having a pissing match, nothing more. Emily is pushing us to see how we react, and Bru is pushing Emily back to see how she reacts. There is no hostile intent here.” Jake looked lost. “ Uh, what?

Emily grinned, and let out a laugh, and Bru followed a second later. “I almost believed you might actually come across the table at me.” Emily said. “Bru nodded. “Aye. And I thought you were really a bitch there for a moment, nice move with the weapon, I never saw you draw it.” Emily smiled. “ Thank you.” She looked at Asmund. “ Im surprised that you picked up on it like you did. “Asmund shrugged. “ We knew you were faking in the first five seconds.” Emily looked curious. “ Was I that easy to read?” Asmund shook her head. “ No you looked authentic, it was your heart that gave you away.” Emily gave her a strange look. “Jake sputtered. “ What the hells going on? This is just a test?” Emily nodded. “Yes. I’m surprised you did not get mad at my jabs, many men in your position would have blown up, or been screaming for their security to show me out. I wont work with hotheads, too many bad experiences. You have a interesting group of lady friends Jake. I think I like them. Lets get down to business. Tell me what you need my services for exactly.

You have to promise to hear me out before I tell you Jake said. I want a hour to explain everything. No matter what you think, you give me a hour before you leave. You also can never tell anyone what im about to tell you.” Emily nodded. “ I can do that, you paid for a hour, as long as everything stays civil ill stay. If it becomes hostile, Im leaving. I wont tell anyone about our meeting, you have my word.” Jake felt like she was being truthful. He nodded in agreement. “ Ok. Here goes. It all started When I Inherited this farm. Emily listened to Jakes story. It was maybe the craziest thing she had ever heard in her life. She didn’t react, she simply nodded as he went along. She had encountered a few nuts during her career, some of them extremely wealthy. She even did a small job for one guy once, the guy was nuts, but he had a legitimate need of her services and he paid well. He later introduced her to family friend who just happened to be a senator, it helped launch her career. If she had blown off that first nut, she would not be where she was today. She listened politely to what he had to say, not believing a word of it. “And that’s the whole story Jake said. Thats why we need your services.

Emily took another sip of her wine, which had been refilled a few times during the story. “ So, what your saying is.” Emily began. “ You discovered a magic portal to another planet, and Bru is a real life Elf, and these ladies are Dwarve’s? “Is that it?” Jake sighed. “ Its clear you don’t believe me.” He looked at his watch. “However you promised a full hour. I still have thirty minute left, and I will use that time to convince you its true.” Emily shrugged. “ You can try, but I’m leaving in thirty minutes, one way or another. Id feel better if you paid me before you started trying to convince me though.” Jake nodded. He passed her a fat envelope filled with one hundred dollar bills. Emily glanced at it, and slipped it into her messenger bag, and placed it beside her glock. “Go for it.” Emily said. “This should be interesting.”

First Jake had Bru show Emily her ears. Bru swept back her thick silver hair, and revealed delicate pointed ears. Emily took a good look at them, and even carefully touched them. “ Thats very good work Emily said. They are actually beautiful, is swear they were natural. However that’s something easily faked. Next Jake had her pull out her phone and look up foreign languages on her phone. Then he handed her the strange glasses he had found. Emily had to admit she was stumped. The damn things translated every language she pulled up on her phone while wearing them She could read Arabic, Chinese, Latin and more. The damn things even translated Egyptian hieroglyphs into English. “How about that then Jake exclaimed. Emily shrugged. “ I admit I’m stumped by them, I have never seen anything like it. However I am not technology expert, all it proves is I cannot explain what they are or how they do what they do. Its not proof of anything else.”

Next he showed her the sword. She thought it was well made, but it was just a sword.” Ok. Fine. Next we have to go outside. I need to bring the sword, as I explained I have to keep it close.” Emily shrugged. “ Its fine with me. Just remember I have my own weapon, and know how to use it.” Jake simply nodded.

Next item was the gigantic Scorpion carcass. Which freaked Emily out. She disliked bugs, ans that damn thing was enormous. “ Looks real as hell.” Emily admitted. Does not prove another world exists though. Then Jake showed her pick up load of gold artifacts. “Looks like gold, and feels like gold.” She admitted. But I”m no precious metals expert. Even if its real, all it proves is you have a few million in gold. Nothing more.” She had to admit to herself though, the guy had a interesting collection of stuff. Those damn glasses were the only thing she could not explain so far.

“ I was hoping this would convince you Emily. I can see it hasn’t though.” Emily shrugged. It is what it is. You still have about ten minutes left, better use it wisely.” Bru interrupted. “You are going to have to show her." Bru exclaimed.” Its the only way.” Jake sighed. “I guess so.” He turned to Emily. “I only have one last thing to show you. Its behind the barn in that field. Ill show you the portal, ill take you through it. Its dangerous though. Just warning you.” Emily shrugged. “ You have that big assed sword on your hip, and I have my gun.” She reminded him. “Lets go. Times almost up.”

Emily sat in the front passenger seat of her suv, as she watched him fiddle with the generator. She didn’t know he was going to do next, but she was assuming he was about to claim the generator was busted, or the planets were not aligned or something. She knew he was not going to open a portal to another world though. In five minutes she was going to be on her way back to the four seasons, where she would take a hot bath, and drink some wine and put this craziness behind her.

The generator roared to life, and a minute later Jake climbed behind the steering wheel, and slammed the door. “ I need to give it a minute to stabilize, then we can go.” Emily nodded as she checked her messages on her phone. “Un huh, sure thing.” She was not really worried the guy was going to do anything funny towards her, since Bru and Asmund were sitting in the back seat behind her. If it were not for the other women though she definitely would have been a lot more on guard around him. Crazy as their story sounded though she only got good feeling from the group. The women seemed very likable and wholesome to her, even Jake was very likable guy as well. She had always prided herself on being a great judge of character, she could not explain why she felt like she could trust these people while they spouted this nonsense. It was clear they all totally believed it though, she just could not figure out what their angle was.

Jake put the truck into gear and started driving. She was almost done reading a message, in a few seconds she was going to tell them to go back, so she could leave. The suv bounced over the uneven ground, she slipped her phone back into her bag and looked up just in time to see them about to hit a rock wall. “What the fuck?” Was all she could say before they plunged into darkness.

Everything went pitch black. Emily sucked in air to cut loose with a scream when sunlight flooded into the vehicle, and they were driving out of a cave. The crazy bastard must have driven into a cave and out the other side, as part of his scheme to prove this bullshit was real. He could have killed her! She had a bad experience as a kid in a cave and as a result she was terrified of the damn things, and he had fucking driven her right into one of the fucking things! She was livid. “Stop the car!” She screamed. She slammed her hands down on the dash and screamed again. “I said stop the fucking car right fucking now !” Jake stepped on the brake and pulled the vehicle to a stop, as Emily cut loose on him. “ Look fucker. I came all the way to Kentucky to see you! I listened patiently to all your bullshit, I looked at all of your fucking proof, and I was patient, but I draw the line at this !” Get out of my fucking car ! All of you, get the fuck out right now !! Jake tried to open his mouth but there was no reasoning with her. He stepped out of the car just as Emily slid across the seat and locked the door behind him.

Bru and Asmund stepped out just as she stepped on the gas, and shot the vehicle forward through the trees in front of her. She was so fucking mad, Her uncle was going to get a earful when she got back, that was for damn sure. Ahead of her she saw a opening. Good, I bet there is a road up ahead. She drove out of the trees and found herself looking at a city, and huge snow covered mountains on the horizon. He stepped on the brakes and just stared. Since when did Kentucky have snow covered mountains? She realized the city was not a city at all. “ Its a god damned castle.” She breathed Incredulously. She sat there trying to wrap her head around what she was looking at. Could there be castle ruins in Kentucky? She knew there was a little castle in Lexington that rich family had built, but it was nothing like this. Well what about the mountains, how did she explain them? She glanced around and when she looked up she just gawked. There were three moons in the sky.

Bru leaned against the rock wall and sighed. “Do we go looking for her?” She asked. “Screw her.” Asmund said angrily. “She made me rip my new sun dress in the door when I was getting out. This is bullshit.” Jake cut in. “We wait for her. Where is she going to go? She will figure it out in a minute, just wait. I’m sorry about your dress Asmund. I will get you a new one.” He put his arm around her and kissed her neck. Asmund leaned back against him, and patted his arm that was around her waist. “ I can fix it she said. Its a little tear. You don’t need to buy me a entire dress, that’s so wasteful. But thank you Jake.” The sound of a approaching vehicle made them all turn. Emilie’s black suv emerged through the trees, covered in dust. She drove slowly up to them and rolled the power window down.

“Do you guys need a ride?” She asked sheepishly. Jake opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, while the girls piled in the back.  Emily turned to look at Jake, her face red from embarrassment. “ I think I might believe you now. I’m sorry for over reacting like I did.” Jake shrugged. “It happens, iv done it recently myself. I forgive you.” Emily looked relieved. “However. He continued. “You caused Asmund to rip her new dress, I think its the only dress she has ever owned. Shes pretty upset.” Emily turned and looked into the back seat where Asmund sat. Asmund was holding the rip in her dress in one hand, and wiping tears with her other hand. :Emily felt terrible. “ Asmund, sweety. I am so, so sorry. I feel terrible. I will buy you a new dress to make amends. In fact I want to do something nice for everyone I feel so badly. Let me buy everyone dinner tonight, my treat.” Jake turned and looked at her. “You decided to take the job then? I have not even told you what I need from you.”

Emily looked him in the eye. “Jake, I want to be part of whatever this is, as long as were not doing anything illegal, or hurting anyone, you wont be able to drag me away from this. We can talk on the way to dinner and start working out what you need from me.” Jake turned and looked at Asmund, and Bru. The decision is up to you two ladies. You are good judges of character, what do you think? They both looked up at Emily’s reflection in the rear view mirror. Bru smiled. I like a woman who can cuss, How about you Asmund, what do you think? Asmund smiled. “Shes in as long as she replaces my dress before dinner.” Looks like your on the team Emily.” Jake grinned at her. Emily put the car into gear and started towards what she know knew was a portal, not a cave, when Bru spoke again abruptly. “ Is she going to join the harem as well Jake? Emily stomped on the brakes. “ What?!”

Cool updates. Keep typing Buck, I like the story. I love to read as it takes my mind off things.

Just added more to last update a second ago.

UPDATE.

Just added some more. there wont be anymore updates until probably Monday afternoon.

Nice update. It’s gone beyond proofreading and more of a post-as-you-write thread which is fine by me!

Whenever you want proofreading/corrections let us know. Plenty of grammar/typo/disjointed little things that can be easily fixed. Great story so far though! Keep writing just as fast as you want!

I'm posting it as I go, but everything will be gone through again multiple times, corrections made, details added etc. There is still a hell of lot to do, but the story line is going well. The story is at 75,000 words right now, and I'm probably going to put around 150,000 in the first book. This is basically just a rough draft, and I'm just looking for " general" feedback right now. General, meaning do you like the basic premise / the basic story.  If I added details right now it would probably add 10,000 words easily to what's already been written.. Part of what I'm going to do is add different perspectives, like I did with Emily in the last piece, so its not all first person events.

I'm glad you guys are enjoying it.

keep it up, I'm hooked!

Fallen an update or two behind, but two major glaring inconsistencies I've noticed is 1), Thorin said as far as he knew Jake was the first visitor to enter the valley, yet the elf chick seems to have been their before, and at a minimum she somehow got in without a dwarf to get the "gates" opened.

Also, the dwarf women and the elf can understand Jake, and vice versa, yet the pizza guy can't understand them? That doesn't make any sense.

I'm enjoying the story, keep it up!

I was going to put something in explaining her access to the dwarves, but forgot. I was basically going to add something like.

( Jake) Bru, I saw how mad the king was when he saw you. I thought only dwarves were allowed in dwarf haven, how did you get in?   Bru laughs. They don't bar Elves from visiting, our two nations have ongoing diplomatic relations. it just really pisses the king off that they have no clue how I manage to get into the valley. they wont lock me up, as they fear the Elves reactions should they do so. They mostly just lurk around and follow me, hoping I will use the entrance while they are watching me. dwarves suck at being stealthy though. Imagine a Dwarf sneaking up on a elf !

The language thing was a good catch. I didn't explain it as well in the story as I did in my own head. My angle was. the sword allowed jake to understand most languages. the dwarves speak dwarvish, and the elf is old enough she has learned many languages, such as dwarvish as well. the races have a shared common language they use as well, to allow better communication between the races. common is used for that, its basically the language of the humans, as the humans mostly refuse to learn other languages, as they feel it is beneath them.  therefore, jakes women can speak English reasonably well, they just don't need to to talk to jake.

I agree I need to spell it out better in the story.

Saw the part about common language in the next update. I also forgot about the sword being Google translate for the bearer,

One note, your story do whatever you want, I'll still read it, but  unless you plan on the sword being a direct player on earth (I.e it keeps him from being lied to, he saves someone etc) instead of just an accessory I'd remove its magical powers on earth. It's not a far stretch of the imagination to presume a powerful magical sword loses its power on a different world, and it'd make his life much easier being able to occasionally escape it's influence, and not have to tote it around when he's at home. Just a suggestion.

I'm going to rewrite most of the Emily scenes. Everything past where she meets everyone. It just felt wrong. Emily's a level headed professional, she would not behave like I wrote earlier. Already started on it.

Keep writing Buck, I like the story. The lady could be getting the vibe from the dwarf and elf ladies and that is why she acted out of character. Just keep writing so we can read it, chop chop Buck.

Here's the rewrite. plus some added stuff. I'm still not happy with it, but I like it a lot better than what I had earlier. enjoy.

“ I am pleased to meet all of you, I have never felt so welcomed in my entire life.” Emily smiled at Asmund. “I love your perfume, it smells like honey, what is it called?” The ladies all exchanged confused glances. Bru answered for them. “ They are not wearing perfume.” She explained. “They always smell like honey. Isn’t it wonderful?” Jiselle laughed. “ I love your smell too Bru, you always smell like flowers to me. I wish I could bottle it.” She said. “Cant help you there.” Bru laughed. She turned to Emily. “You smell nice as well Emily, like berries.” Emily blushed. “ Well thank you Bru, its my lotion, its called berry passion, Its my favorite. “ I like it very much.” Asmund said. “ Let us get together afterwards so we may learn where we may acquire some. We are just learning about your wonderful makeup, we had no idea we could get such wonderful scented lotions as well.”

Emily smiled. “ Of course, I would be happy to do that.” Miranda handed Emily a glass of wine and showed her to a chair. The other people were already taking their seats, so she made herself comfortable. Jake started things off. “ Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me Emily. Tom Braddock could not say enough good things about you.” Emily smiled. “Uncle Thomas talks too much.” She joked. He had good things to say about you as well.” Emily explained. “May I be frank Jake?” Jake nodded. “Please do Emily.” Emily sipped her wine. “ I’m really not sure why I am here. To be honest, the only reason I agreed to this meeting at all was because of my uncle. No offense meant, you all seem like very nice people who have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome.” She smiled at everyone. “Which I do by the way, I could see us all being friends, as I really do like you so far. However, I’m here on business, not to make friends. I cater to a certain type of clientele, Mr Reynolds. A very high end kind of clientele, to be exact, and the fees I charge for my services are reflected in it.

To be blunt. I don’t see what need a farmer in Kentucky has of my particular services, and if you do need them, I don’t think you could afford them.” Emily sat her glass down on the table. “As I said, I mean no disrespect towards any of you, you all seem like nice people, I’d just like to cut to the chase as it were, like the old saying goes, time is money.” Jake nodded. “ I understand where you’re coming from. I admit that just a few weeks ago I did have no need of your services, nor could I afford them if I did need them. Circumstances have changed greatly since then however.” Emily was curious. “How so, if you don’t mind my asking?” Jake placed a piece of paper on the table and slid it across to Emily, who picked it up and studied it. “ Its a nondisclosure agreement.” Jake explained. No offense, but what I”m about to tell you is extremely sensitive. It absolutely cannot leave this room under any circumstances.” Emily nodded and read for a second, before she placed the paper back on the table.”

Where did you get this? It’s simply awful. It looks like a generic form you printed off the internet.” Jake blushed. “That’s where I got it, I didn’t think it was that bad.” Emily sighed. “ I can find three different ways around this thing just at a glance.” She ripped it in half, and placed her briefcase on the table, and removed a thick packet of papers. She filled out the front page, then flipped it to be rear page and signed it, then slid it over to Jake. “I already signed it, and filled in your information on the first page. Just initial beside your name.” Emily explained. “Then flip to the back and you sign on the top line.” Jake glanced at the paperwork, but was lost. “ I don’t understand half of the words in this thing. What does it say in a nutshell?” Emily smiled. Its a iron clad nondisclosure agreement. I had a very prestigious law firm make it for me, I use them in all of my contracts. You sign that thing, and your locked in. If I were to repeat anything mentioned today, I would be financially ruined. You sign the top line, and have three of the ladies to sign as witnesses and its complete. Then you keep it.”

Jake smiled. “I’m impressed. Very professional.” Jake signed, and then he slid the paper over to the other ladies. Bru signed and slid it to Asmund next. Asmund looked at it for a moment, and then looked up at Jake with a sad expression. “ M’lord, I apologize, but I cannot read this. We learn to speak your language as children, but not write it. Bru leaned over and pointed. “Sign right there.” She smiled. “Have Jiselle sign on the line below yours.” Asmund smiled gratefully. Thank you Bru.” Emily looked curious. What country do you come from, I cant place your accent. Its been driving me crazy.” Jake stepped in. “Its part of what I needed the nondisclosure for.” He explained. Emily nodded, and took the papers back, and examined them, then passed them to Jake. “There all legal now, I cant repeat anything we discuss in this meeting today. Now, why don’t you tell me why I am here.”

Jake nodded. “ I will do just that, but I need a promise first.” Emily sighed. “What kind of promise?” Jake shrugged. “You give me a hour to make my case, and you promise to not leave before the hour is up. No matter what you think of what I have to tell you, you stay for the hour, so I can explain everything properly.” Emily nodded. “ You paid for a hour meeting, you have my attention for one hour. I promise to not leave early. Unless the meeting becomes confrontational, or you ask me to do something illegal. You do that, and I’m leaving immediately. Now, why don’t you just tell me what this is about.” Jake nodded.  I just needed the promise because what im going to say will sound insane. I just needed to be sure I would be able to get it all out, without you running out of here.” Emily nodded. “You have a hour, so lets hear it.” Jake smiled. “I discovered a gateway to another planet.”

Emily groaned inwardly. Great she thought, another crazy. She met one occasionally in her line of work. She however was always polite to them. One of her first clients was extremely wealthy, and also turned out to be mad as a hatter. He was crazy, but he had need of her services, and paid very well. She had humored the crazy old man, and later it benefited her greatly. The old coot was dear friends with a senator, and he referred him to Emily when he had a difficult problem that needed solving. The senator had basically jump started her career. You just never knew who someone might know, and how one bad meeting could make or break you down the road. Emily smiled at Jake. “Really? You mean like the stargate in the tv series? What planet did you discover?” Jake frowned at her. “You are humoring me, you think I’m nuts.

Emily shrugged. “It does not matter what I think. You asked for a hour to explain yourself, I’m giving it to you. So convince me.” Jake sighed. “Ok, I will explain how I found the portal, and then tell you a little about the planet.” He turned to Asmund. “Asmund, could you get Miss Carson some more wine please? This might take a while.” Asmund nodded. “Of course M’lord. She retrieved another bottle of wine, and refilled Emily’s glass. Emily smiled. “Thank you Asmund.” Then she turned to Jake. I have to ask, what's with the M’lord thing? Whats that about?” Jake smiled. “I will get to that quick enough. It all started about a month ago… Emily sat and listened to his story. It was quite a yarn he spun. When he claimed the women were all Dwarve’s, except for Bru, who apparently was a Elf, Emily burst out laughing. “But he's telling you the truth.” Jiselle exclaimed. “We really are Dwarves, and she's really a Elf! Bru, show her your ears darling.” Bru swept back her long thick silvery hair and exposed her delicate pointed ears. Emily smiled. “They are very pretty Bru. However, they don’t prove anything though, except you have pointy ears. No offense meant to you.”

Bru shrugged. “I told him he was going to have to show you the portal,  Pointy ears, scorpion carcasses, heaps of gold, it proves nothing, and would not convince anyone with any sense of another world, and anyone who believed in it based off that evidence was to gullible for us to work with anyway. The portal is undeniable proof though.” Emily turned to Jake. “This is all fascinating and everything, and heck, lets just say everything you have told me is true for a moment, and you do need my services. The real question is can you afford them? How would I be paid? Because if you cant pay me, nothing else really matters.” Jake gave Emily a serious look. Jake reached under the table for something, and placed a pillow case onto the table. He turned it over spilling a pile of gems, and gold objects onto the table. Emily looked surprised. She picked up a few gems to examine, as well as a small solid gold statue of a horse. “I’m no expert, but It definitely looks real.“ I assure you I am not joking.” He explained. “ I have several million in gold laying in the back of my truck right now, not to mention millions more in precious jewels. I brought it all back from the ruins I mentioned.

I have access to literally tons of gold. I just need a way to convert it to cash. That is but one reason I need your services, to help convert the gold to cash.” Ok, we will assume you have the resources to pay me. Lets also assume this is all real, and not a joke of some kind. Why do you need my help, in, well whatever this is.” Jake shrugged. “In the short term, I need someone who can help me sell the gold and gems for hard cash. I plan to use the cash to purchase supplies, equipment, and other things to outfit those ruins I mentioned. I plan to create a base there.” Emily nodded. “I see, and yes, I could help you with all of that. It would be challenging to move tons of gold without arousing the attention of the government, but I believe I could do it. What kinds of materials would you need to purchase? Jake thought for a second. “ Well, steel in large quantities, surplus military vehicles, building materials, radios, ammunition, food, fuel and more, but that’s a glimpse of it, there would be a huge variety of items. I need a way to buy all of that, and get it through my portal, without anyone discovering what I am doing.” Emily nodded. “Not really a issue, challenging sure, but doable.”She glanced at her watch and let out a sigh. Mr Reynolds, I think have been patient, but its time to get to it. Your time is almost up, If you have absolute proof, I need to see it, and be convinced. Otherwise I’m leaving here in.” She glanced at her watch. “In fifteen minutes.”

Emily sat in the drivers seat of her Mercedes suv, and watched Jake work on his generator. Asmund and Bru were in the back seat, she had asked them to come along. She didn’t really get a bad vibe from Jake, or his lady friends, in fact it was just the opposite. She felt nothing but good things about them, she was not however going to run off into the woods alone with this guy however. The ladies in the back seat assured her somewhat, that things would stay civil. She just could not figure out what this guys scheme was. Obviously he was up to something, but she just could not figure out what. The only thing she damn well knew for a fact was, she would not be seeing any stargate today. He was likely to tell her at any moment that his equipment was broken, or the stars were out of alignment. She just could not figure out what he sought to gain from her involvement. It was not money, as she would not be giving him any, perhaps some legitimacy? She was highly respected, and had the ear of many powerful people, perhaps he wanted her to stump for him, and help him get a grant from the government. The generator roared to life, and a few moments later Jake climbed into the passenger seat, taking a moment to adjust his sword, before he could close the door.

“Jake, what's the deal with that sword? Why do you feel the need to haul it around with you? I have to say it does not help your case much, it just looks odd.” Jake shrugged. “This sword is special, lets just leave it at that.” Emily nodded. “Fine with me. When do I get to see this gate of yours?” Jake smiled and pointed. “Its right there, that black spot. Just drive up to it slowly.” Emily squinted. What the hell was he talking about? Then she saw it. There was something just ahead of them, a dark spot of some kind. She slipped the vehicle into gear and drove towards it, curious to see what kind of trickery this was going to be. She stopped, and peered at the black thing in front of them. Just in front of the rock wall of the ridge was a rectangle about the size of a garage door, and it was a inky black color. What in the hell? “Just drive through it.” Jake said. “It does not feel like anything, everything gets black for a second or two, and then your out the other side.” Emily was not so sure she wanted to drive into whatever this was. It gave her the willies. “ Ill drive into the cliff, I’m not going to wreck my rental.” She said.

Asmund patted her arm from the back seat. “I sense your unease Emily, all is well, there is no danger. Trust us.”Jake sighed impatiently. “What's the matter?” Jake asked. “Scared? Of what? You think this is all a load of bullshit anyway, so whats to be scared of?” She realized he was right, and she was pissed he had managed to make her feel this way. This was all nothing but bullshit, well, turn about is fair play. I’v got something for you Mr Reynolds. She thought, Iv got full accident insurance on this thing, lets see how you like being scared. She stomped on the gas and the suv rocketed forward. Jake yelled. “hey slow the hell down lady!” Emily chuckled and the vehicle hit the darkness dead center. Everything went black as pitch and Emily let out a scream despite herself. She could see no light, not even the dash or head lights. It was like being dunked into black paint. Suddenly they were in bright sunlight again, and Emily stopped screaming, embarrassed and pissed because Jake had managed to scare her again. This was all bullshit, she had driven through a black out curtain or a cave or something. She stomped on the brakes, full of piss and vinegar.

She turned to Jake and cut into him. “Look, Mr Reynolds, I have had enough of this bullshit. I came all the way to Kentucky, to see you, and in return you waste my time with this bullshit. I was prepared to listen, but you had to take it too far, and play these games. I don’t know what your scheme is, but I want no part of it. When we get back to the house, you are getting the fuck out, pardon my french, and I am going back home.” She noticed Jake was just ignoring her rant completely, and was staring up through the sunroof with a stupid expression on his face. She got even madder. “Stop fucking ignoring me goddammit!!” Jake pointed up. Beautiful view, isn’t it? All three moons are out.” She was ready to fight she was so damn mad. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not playing these games anymore, I’m sick of this insane bullshit!” Jake grabbed the keys from the ignition and stepped out of the vehicle. He took her fucking keys?!? Oh hell no he didn’t. She jumped out slamming her door. Asmund looked at Bru. “Should we help Jake? Emily looks mad enough to kill him.” Bru snickered. “Nope, lets just watch. I want to see what happens.” Emily stomped around the vehicle until the stood face to face with Jake. “Im out of patience Mr Reynolds. You have crossed the line, give me my keys, right now.” Jake shook his head. “You are so mad you don’t even see it.” She grabbed for her keys, but he held them out of her reach. “Last chance asshole, give me my keys, or I’m going to introduce you to some kick boxing.” Jake laughed. Your overreacting woman, just look up in the fucking..” The air exploded from Jake lungs and he collapsed onto the ground in a heap, all the air driven from him.

“Asmund squealed at the sight, and leaped from the vehicle, Bru simply whistled. “Damn that girl can kick !” Asmund ran to Jake and scooped his head up off the ground and cradled it in her lap tenderly, as she stroked his cheek. His eyes were bulging, his face was red and he made squeaking sounds as he struggled to take a breath. Emily snatched her keys from his hand. “ I warned you asshole!” Asmund was furious. “ You did not need to strike him ! He was trying to get your attention ! He wanted you to look into the sky crazy woman, that was all !” Jake managed to finally suck in a breath He rolled onto his side coughing, and gasping at the same time. Emily pointed a finger at Asmund. “He deserved it ! I’m sick of this shit, you people are all nuts !” Asmund pointed at the sky. “ Just look in the sky you crazy bitch ! !” Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Sure, as if me looking in the sky will make all this better somehow. Your fucking delusional.” Emily glanced up at the sky. “Son of a bitch.”

Jake lay back on the couch bare chested as Jiselle and Miranda mothered him. “It looks awful.” Jiselle said. She replaced the ice pack on his chest placing it on the odd foot shaped bruise that had appeared there.” Jake winced painfully at her light touch. Bru stood over them, with Emily beside her. “ The lass kicks like a mule.” She smirked in amusement. “You really must teach me that move Emily.” Jiselle turned on Bru. “How can you joke about M’lord being hurt? He very likely has cracked ribs !” Bru nodded. “I would expect so after being kicked like that. I have seen mules who could not kick that hard”. Emily had a embarrassed look on her face. “Mr Reynolds, I am so sorry. I hope you will forgive me. I wont accept all the blame in this, you went too far .You should never have taken my keys, that pushed me over the edge. I had a abusive boyfriend once who did that to me, and when you did it, I just lost my self control. I don’t feel bad about kicking you, you deserved it, I do however feel bad about kicking you quite so hard.

If it makes you feel any better, I decided to take the job.” She smiled at him with a big goofy smile. Jake burst out laughing at the stupid look, something he immediately regretted, and the laughing instantly turned into gasps of pain. He gripped his chest, and grimaced against it for a few moments. “ OMG! Ok, no more joking around. Its funny, but I cant take it right now.” Emily grinned. “ Sorry Jake. Maybe since your laid up, you can just tell me a bit more about what you want to accomplish, and what you will need from me. When I have a good idea, I will head back home and start putting things together for you. Jake nodded. “ I don’t really have any long range plans as of yet. I just want to build a base of operations on the new world. I will use it for exploration, as well as a base for trading gold ingots, for steel ingots.” Emily made a few notes. “What do you think you will need for this, materials wise?” Jake looked at her. “Your uncle said you were prior service. Ever been deployed, and been on a f.o.b?” Bru butted in. "What's a fob?" Jake turned to her. "Its a forward operating base, located close to or in hostile territory." Bru nodded. "I get it. I find it strange though that your people insist on using so many damn acronyms."

Emily nodded. “More than I care to remember.” Jake shrugged. “think of what was needed to make a fob run. That’s what I’m going to need. Trucks, generators, fuel, solar panels, computers, food, plumbing, electrical, and a hundred more things. Id like to buy mostly military surplus vehicles, as the roads there kind of suck, and I will need off road vehicles that can carry heavy loads. Plus a way to exchange gold and gems for cash.” Emily took more notes. “You have enough cash for the short term?” She asked. Jake nodded. “I have enough for now, but will need a hell of a lot more down the road.” Emily nodded. “I have a few ideas about how we can more large amounts of metals later on, let me look into it. Short term, I believe I know someone who would be willing to move enough metals to keep you reasonably financed short term, at least until I can work out the bigger plans. It wont be cheap though, we will likely have to spend money, in order to make money.” Jake nodded. “What do you need from me?”

Emily smiled. “I will need a paycheck. One hundred thousand sign on bonus, as a sign of goodwill. Then, a yearly salary of 10% of your proceeds from selling gold, or two hundred thousand a year, which ever is higher, plus expenses. How does that sound? Jake sighed. “It sounds expensive as fuck, Pardon my French.” Emily shrugged. “ I am expensive, but worth it. I offer a service few can provide. I can absolutely give you the things that you requested what's more I will find a way for it to be one hundred percent legal. All taxes paid, licenses obtained when needed, a top quality legal team on standby to answer questions, do research, and handle legal items. When absolutely needed, I can even get a influential person to help occasionally. Plus everything is absolutely confidential. I have a license to practice law, and when you sign on as a client, everything we discuss is attorney client protected. Besides, if everything you told me is true, you can easily afford my fee’s, I promise you I will be earning my money.

I will be taking a lot of risk, and need to be compensated properly for that risk. Jake sighed. I thought the work alone would excite you.” Emily grinned. “Make no mistake Jake, I think this is a incredible opportunity, and I damn sure want to be a part of it, but I cant do it for free. Well I could, but I wont. You are hiring me for my technical help, part of that is I am a skilled negotiator. You cant very well claim to have unlimited riches at hand, and expect me to ignore it. In the future I would not mention the gold when you are negotiating price.” Jake rolled his eyes. “ Fine, your hired. When can we get started?” Emily stood. “How about right now? I am a great cook. You just relax, and myself and your lady friends will whip us up something to eat. We can discuss everything over dinner tonight, I have a million questions to ask all of you. Just imagine, a real life Elf and Dwarves, I cant believe it.” She exclaimed. “I thought Dwarve’s were shorter for some reason.” Bru snickered. Everyone thinks they are three feet tall, it annoys them to no end.”

A pillow smacked into Bru’s head. “Hey, Elf sitting here !” Jiselle stuck her tongue out at her, I wont sit here and listen to Dwarf slander, so you stop right it right now missy, unless you want me to spread some Elf slander. Bru grimaced. “I would rather you didn’t, some of what people say about us is disgusting.” Jiselle shrugged. “ You see how we feel then.” Emily held her hands up. “Ladies Im sorry, I didn’t mean to insult anyone. Lets get to cooking then, any volunteers?” They all got up to help except for Asmund who had Jakes head cradled in her lap. The ladies walked to the kitchen, and then Bru spoke up. “So Emily, since your on the team now, will you be joining Jake’s harem?” Emily giggled. “ Nice try Bru, but I have your number, you’re a instigator. Im not falling for it.” Bru shrugged. “Thought id ask. Jake wont let me participate.” Selene interrupted. “ You know very well why Bru.” She turned to Emily. “Jake does not want to risk hurting her is all, it has nothing to do with him not being attracted to her. He cares for her greatly, and she knows it.” She looked Emily over in admiration. You are very beautiful Emily, I’m sure Jake would not disprove of you joining in should you choose to, he is a very good lover I might add.” Emily gasp in surprise. “What!?! I thought you were joking ! “OMG!!

Emily stuck her head out of the kitchen. “I can see you have been a naughty boy Mr Reynolds.” Jake smiled and shrugged. He regretted it instantly as he gasp in pain from the movement. Emily nodded. “Serves you right naughty boy.” She retreated to the kitchen, where pots and pans started clanking, and women giggled as they whispered things Jake could not quite make out. Emily pulled the ladies aside, as the harem thing was a bit much for her. “ You all are really a harem, seriously?” Don’t you feel dirty or something to share the same man? “Selene shrugged. “What is there to feel dirty about? Jake is a handsome man, and Miranda, Asmund, and Jiselle are like my sisters, we share everything. They are good women, and all of us simply work together to help meet his needs. It is not a traditional relationship between one man and one woman, but it has never pretended to be. We wish to serve him, and to help him with his goals. What he wants to do will help everyone in our world eventually, we simply have to be part of it. Besides, as I said, Jake is a skilled lover.” She smiled a naughty smile.

Emily groaned. “ Oh stop you. I really don’t know how I feel about this honestly. It has the feel of a cult to it, and I don’t like it at all. Maybe this is not the right fit for me after all. Jiselle grabbed Emily by the hand, grabbed a bottle of wine, and pulled her towards the door. Come on ladies, we need to have a talk with Emily, and sit her straight. Oh no Bru, where do you think your going? You started this, and made Emily uncomfortable, your going to help fix it.” Jake peered up at Asmund. “Anything I can do to help?” He asked. Asmund glared at him. “ I’m sure you have all kinds of helpful ideas M’lord, but no. She stood up, and let his head fall back onto the couch roughly. “ You just lie here, while we try to fix this. Emily seems like a good person, we don’t want to run her off over this, nor do we wish for her to think badly about us either.” Asmund grabbed two more bottles of wine and followed the other ladies back to the study so they could talk.

Dinner turned out to be excellent. They had cleared away the plates, and all sat with dessert, and a glass of wine. Dinner had been a little tense, and conversation had been a little awkward. Finally Emily took a deep breath. “Ok, lets get this over with, the tension is killing me.” She turned to Jake. “ I was ready to leave earlier over the harem thing, I did not like it one bit.” She paused. “However. I am a open minded woman, and I have told people in the past that what people did in their own bedrooms was none of my business, and I meant it. So, I cannot very well hold what you all do as consenting adults against you. The ladies went to great lengths to explain their culture, and how all of this came to be. They told me what happened between you and the prince, and how terrible you felt when you thought they had no say in the matter, and how you bought their freedom, and how it was purely their idea to remain with you, against your wishes.

I can’t say I really absorbed or even understand half of the things they told me, but they convinced me you all care a great deal for each other, and I can see it for myself. so who am I to interfere in that? Ironically it was talking with Bru that did it, the woman who was not participating in the harem convinced me of it being a good thing, and even if I could change it, why i shouldn’t. I will just say that they convinced me that what is happening here is nothing bad, and when it boils down to it, is really none of my business. Its nuts that you prove to me that you have discovered another world, and here I’m hung up on your bedroom practices.

You have all given me a lot to consider, and it will take me a while to wrap my head fully around all of it.” Jake didn’t know what to say. “ I appreciate that Emily. I can assure you that our personal lives will not interfere with our professional ones.” Emily nodded. “ That’s all I’m asking. From what I have seen and heard today I can see you’re a good man, who’s trying to do a good thing.” Jake nodded. "Which good thing are you referring?” Emily shrugged. “Pick one. There are a lot to choose from, even several that might not have occurred to you yet. Help stop slavery, and indentured servitude such as these ladies suffered through, bring badly needed steel to their cultures, explore new lands and possibly discover cures for diseases, or even new technology. Hell, wanting to get rich is not such a bad thing either. My uncle said that you asked if I were a conservative. That leads me to believe that you might not approve of many things happening in the world today, and perhaps you might be considering creating a colony where like minded people could find a new home, and freedom to live, Another new world as it were.”

Jake shrugged. “The idea has crossed my mind.” Emily nodded. “It a attractive idea, and done right could be a great thing. Just remember however what happened to the inhabitants of the last new world, after it was colonized.” Jake shook his head. “ I would never allow that to happen there.” Emily shrugged. “The gate exists, so people will use it. I just want you to be fully aware of the possible consequences is all. There are consequences to everything. If there is as much gold as you say, importing enormous quantities of it could change its worth here on earth, as importing huge quantities of iron will change its value there. Just things to consider. I’m headed back to my hotel room in a few minutes, where I will start working on plans to solve your problems, how about I meet you back here for lunch tomorrow to discuss what I come up with?” Jake nodded. “That sounds great.” The ladies refused to let Emily leave without each hugging her again, and saying a few words to her. Dwarf goodbyes were apparently pretty long Jake observed. After fifteen minutes of hugging, Emily finally made it out the front door, and pulled out of the driveway.

Jake was worn out from his busy day, and busted ribs, so he retired to bed early. Asmund was chosen to see him off to bed, as the other ladies were cleaning up the kitchen, and wanted to talk about some things before bed. Jake fell asleep in Asmund’s arms, his head resting against her soft naked breasts. He slept like a baby.

The next morning Jake busied himself with more online research, looking for used military equipment. He found plenty, everything from military underwear by the ton, to generators, to armored personnel carriers were for sale. Private purchases were easy, but much of the stuff he wanted was best bought from government auctions, but to buy it from the government required a lot of paperwork, something he knew he could not handle currently. Hopefully Emily came up with some answers. He made a extensive list of materials he was going to need, with the items needed soonest at the top of the list. The first thing he needed to source were the steel ingots, followed by the construction materials and tools he needed to have ready for when the dwarf workers arrived at the ruins in a few weeks. The lumber actually turned out to be easy, as a local mill agreed to deliver the lumber and materials he requested. Tools were ordered in bulk from a large online store, much easier than to go from store to store and buy a handful at a time. He finally contacted a steel company who could deliver the five pound steel ingots he needed at a reasonable price. They would charge their normal steel price, plus one dollar per cut made, plus delivery. It was not cheap to be sure, but it was twenty five percent of what the other places wanted for the same service. Emily called and offered to bring lunch for everyone, to which Jake agreed. They were short on food in the house and lunch would have been sparse to begin with.

Jake met Emily at the door when she arrived. He had to admit she was a attractive woman. She was tall, about five foot eight, with a athletic build, and long legs. He followed her out to her suv, and helped haul the food in. Emily had brought barbecue with her and it smelled amazing, she had even brought fried catfish, fries, and coleslaw as well as jugs of sweet tea. “Im surprised a girl from Spokane is into barbecure.” Jake joked. “Don’t judge me.” Emily laughed. “I spent a lot of time in the south when I was in the Army, much of the food grew on me. I didn’t know exactly what to get, so I brought a selection. I hope its ok.” Jake nodded. “ Oh hell yes, it smells amazing! I love barbecue and catfish.” He called loud enough to be heard through the entire house. “ Hey Emily’s here with lunch! Come n get it !”  He helped set the food out, and laid out plates and glasses. Once the women arrived they ran him out of the kitchen, and told him to wait at the table. He sat with a glass of tea as the ladies talked and made plates of food.

They passed out full plates, and everyone dug in. The food was a big hit, and except for the fried catfish none of the ladies had ever had anything like it before. “ It is delicious !” Miranda gasp between bites of food. “What am I eating exactly?” Emily pointed at her plate. “ That sandwich is made from pork, the other one is made from mutton. They cook it over a fire until it falls off the bone, shred it and treat it with a sauce. The shredded stuff in the cup is chopped up cabbage, lettuce and carrots that has a different sauce on it.” “Well its delicious Bru said. “You people will make me fat if I keep eating like this.” Emily laughed. “Nonsense woman, there is no fat on you at all.” Bru grinned. “I know, Elves cannot get fat. Our metabolism changes to match our food intake, when we eat little it slows, when we eat a lot it speeds up. I could eat everything on this table several times a day and I would never gain a pound.” that had the other ladies casting her dirty looks. “Must be nice.” Asmund muttered. “If I eat like this very often I will gain five pounds over night, and not in my boobs where id like it to show up I might add.”

Emily looked at Bru. “ If you could make women here have a metabolism like yours Bru you would be the richest woman on the planet. People would pay dearly for it.” Bru looked up from a bite of food. “Really? I know of several traditional plants from my home that can be made into a very effective weight loss treatment. The pounds melt right off, very quickly, you are not hungry while taking it, and it has few side effects as well.” Emily nodded. “Id like to try some, it could be a big hit.” They finished lunch and then it was on to business. She laid out a few folders, that were filled with documents, and photo’s of different things.

“What do we have here?” Jake asked. You were only gone for fourteen hours, didn’t you sleep?” Emily laughed. “Nope, not really. Too excited. I found solutions to several of your problems already.” Jake looked surprised. “Well lets here it.” She nodded, and opened a folder. “Ok, as far as short term money issues. I found a guy willing to buy your gold from you. He will have a armored truck meet you in town, where you can pass it off to them. They will weigh it on the spot, and hand you paperwork. They will take it and sell it, and the next trip you make to drop gold off, they will hand you the money for the earlier trip. I believe the guy is trustworthy, he owns a lot of those places who buy gold from you, and he would simply mix this in with other shipments. The downside is he will only pay you fifty percent of spot price.” Jake looked shocked. “Fifty percent? That sounds terrible to me, why so bad?” Emily shrugged. “Its not exactly easy to hand off hundreds of pounds of gold to just anyone. That stuff usually has a lot of paperwork attached to it. We want to avoid that paperwork, until we have the capital to get to the next level, once there, the price per spot jumps to around ninety percent.”

Jake smiled. “That’s more like it, why not just do that now?” Emily shook her head. “Because you can afford it right now. My plan to move large quantities of gold is for you to buy a abandoned gold mine, or poorly producing gold mine at a bargain price. We take your gold to the mine, and ship it out as a normal mining product. We pay takes on it, and as a result we have proceeds direct deposited into the bank. I have a small mining operation lined up already but we would need about five million bucks to buy it. So, you need to start saving.” Jake looked sad. “Don’t fret Jake.” she laughed. “I have better news. I have a high end jewelry buyer who’s interested in buying some of your gems. He will give you a good price, and they should bring in enough money very quickly to pay for the mining operation.” Jake thought for a moment. How do we explain me blowing five million on a mine?” Emily smiled. “I’m already working on it, my legal team is filing the paperwork to create a corporation for you. You will be the ceo of the corporation, empowered to use investors money to make investments, one of which will be the mining operation.” Jake frowned. “That sounds complicated.” Emily smiled. “No its extremely complicated. They will make dozens of corporations, which all have dozens of bank accounts, which are attached to larger corporations that they created twenty years ago for this very thing.

When they are finished it will be a tangled mess, with most of it being located offshore, and mostly safe from government meddling, as long as you keep the paperwork straight, and pay your taxes you will be fine. I also have started a local business for you, the paperwork is all being filed as we speak. Reynolds Surplus LLC, will be a real thing in a few days, and totally legal. Financed by investors. That will allow you to buy surplus equipment from the government, buy, sell, trade, even import. I am also going to start up a few smaller companies that are part of Reynolds Surplus, that will allow us to buy other bulk supplies, such as building materials, steel, food, and more, buy and sell them, with a little creative accounting, that’s legal mind you, you can get all the supplies for your new base, and no one will even know where they went, they wont even be missing.” She flashed him a big smile. “Damn Jake exclaimed. You are taking this thing big, do we really want that? I mean you seem to really know your shit, I'm just concerned about getting on someone's radar.” Emily shook her head. “You will be getting on peoples radar either way, its just how do you want to appear on radar?

Do you want to look fishy, dealing in large amounts of gold, and materials, and huge amounts of cash, with no apparent financial assets, licenses, bank accounts, or worse dodging taxes? Or do you want to look like a large multi-pronged business entity, with ties to the community, public relations, bank accounts, assets, business locations, and taxes paid? I want to remind you Al Capone was a notorious gangster, who dealt in a ton of criminal enterprises, the gov could never prove, however, they did send him to prison for tax evasion. The moral of the story is, you can appear crooked as you want, but as long as taxes are paid you avoid most of the really bad things the government has to throw at you. We will have a sterling reputation as a company when we really get rolling, s long as you do what I tell you, everything will be fine.”

Jake smiled. “That sounds amazing, Emily !” What do you need from me?” She smiled. “Well a bag of gems would be a good start. I will pass them off to my jewelry guy and get the ball rolling, I can take my sign on bonus out of that if you like. Then You need to make some small one pound gold ingots for the gold exchange, Im sure that will take some time.” Jake shook his head as he handed her a paper bag. “Id rather pay you your bonus up front in cash if that’s ok.” She grinned cash is always good! I don’t need to count it, I trust you Jake. I am going to stay in my hotel for the time being, as this is my new full time job, getting this operation off of the ground. I will bring you documents everyday to sign, related to getting the business off the ground. We need to apply for a business license locally as well. Dot worry, you just sign the papers and me and my minions will get it all rolling for you. We will eventually have to hire employees as well, but that’s a little way off just yet. Why don’t you rest those ribs, and maybe take your harem out on the town, let those girls have some fun.

Don’t worry, things will come together quickly.” Jake thought for a second. “ I have a few deals I need to do in the next few days or a week, how do I handle those?” Emily thought for a second. “Easy, just pay cash, and sign everything Jake Reynolds, Reynolds Surplus LLC. It will give us a paper trail. Save all receipts. If I were you, I would start getting a warehouse or two constructed out here.You can use it as business storage, and have deliveries made here, then you can delivery product through the portal as needed. I should have the payment for the Gems in a week at most, I will drop it off to you in cash. Within a few weeks we will have them start making direct deposits to our corporate accounts, to get things rolling.” Jake nodded. “ Hell I never thought about that at all, hell yes. That would solve several issues at once. I will get started on storage buildings at once. I’m really glad I met you Emily. There’s no way in hell I could pull this off on my own. What do you get out of this, besides some money I mean?” Emily laughed. “ You mean besides a huge amount of money? Well I have a new challenge I have never had before, I love challenges and this has a ton of them. Besides that, there is adventure. I will be exploring some of that new planet myself I assure you. I would also probably be interested in buying a large piece of land there as well. A girl has to have options you know. This is the biggest discovery since America was discovered, I want to be part of that.” Jake smiled. “I want you to be part of it too Emily. I don’t think it will ever happen without your help. The only thing I have learned by hiring you, is just how little I understand about all of this.” “Emily smiled. “ We all have our specialties.”

Good update Buck. Thanks and keep them coming.

I think the Emily stuff worked out well enough. However the next chapter started having too much business related stuff in it, and gets a little boring. Luckily I didn't get too far into it. I think I'm going to jump into some adventure next. I'm thinking of the portal having some operational issues and everyone gets stuck on the other side, and while there, adventure / a bad guy comes a calling.  

I would like to know how he gets the items he needs and such. But whatever, just hurry up Buck. I need something to read as I sit and watch display of machines.

@buck19delta.

I agree with zoe, definitely enjoying it and regularly checking in for updates.

next update will be next week sometime. iv got a bunch of stuff I have to do that's going to keep me busy. the next updates will have some excitement, and violence as well.

I love it! cant wait for the next installment.

Still busy. I'm upgrading 10 acres of cattle fencing so I can install a electric fence for the FIL. much of it is in bad shape so have to install new wood posts, t posts, wire, cut trees and brush, install insulators, poles to take wire over gates, etc. its a lot of work. Plus a bunch of other smaller things that need dealing with.

I did come up with some good stuff for the book for down the road.  maybe not for the first book, but definitely be in later ones. Part of it is going to be the gates were created thousands of years ago, by a scientific race obsessed with observing " lower" life forms. they created  hidden gates / portals as well as hidden observation posts that allowed them to monitor other races secretly. This is where the science fiction aspect of my book will come from.  Elves, Dwarves, orcs, etc are all actually the results of genetic experiments conducted thousands of years ago. Still Working on the details in my head as I'm fencing.

I just discovered this story a few hours ago and have read everything written so far.  Normally I am not into elves or casting of spells.   That being said I am into science fiction and military fiction.  I love this story and believe other people will love it also.  I have enclosed two different web sites you may be interested in posting it to get even more feedback.

http://pawfiction.proboards.com/board/21/stories-written

http://www.survivalistboards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33

Ok, first off I'm not usually into the fantasy genre, but this is pretty entertaining.
You've got a great imagination, cool start.

I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but I'd rewrite the first sex scene. It was pretty graphic for a story that might appeal to preteen as well as adults. It felt forced.
I would treat it like the later scenes, where Jake wakes up and thinks about the night he just had, but leave the porn aspect out, where it described so graphically.

Not trying to be a prude here, because I think you have a great start.
Dave

thanks, I appreciate it.

I need to say once again, that what iv posted so far is only maybe 50% complete. it needs a lot of work. what your reading is basically a rough draft version. once I get the story line right, ill be working on the content. there WILL be a lot of science fiction in this, aliens, alien tech, etc, as well as fantasy, D&D style stuff, and also military fiction. the magic aspect of things, will be tied to alien tech which allows magic like things to happen, and magic items, like the sword, are more advanced technology than dark arts etc.   the story covers a wide spectrum of things, hell, there will even be tank battles, between Jakes WW2 surplus vehicles, and advanced alien stuff.( obviously not all will be in the first book however )  I think it will be pretty cool to read when finished..

I tend to agree with that, and it will likely change a bit. I appreciate the input, and I'm glad you like it. ill try to post more soon, I have chores to do still before I can concentrate on writing.

Here is a new update. I went back and added some action to when Jake first discovered the fortress. I think I need to put more stuff into the story befoe he finds the sword, and make things more gritty, and dangerous.

hope you enjoy.

He gripped his rifle and headed inside the tall defensive wall, as he was stepping over the remains of the castle gates, he noticed something. The metal reinforcing on the gates, and all the metal fittings, were not iron or steel, but some greenish metal, maybe copper? It reminded him of the front door of his house, he realized suddenly his front door must have come from here as well. How crazy is that? He thought to himself. His front door was actually imported from another planet. The thought made his head hurt, he was so out of his depth here it was insane. He once again wished he had some help here, but again found himself stuck. How the hell could he get help, and keep the secret, and control of this place? He was stumped. Every time he considered getting help, he could not get over the fear that he would lose all of this, should someone tell the wrong person about it, or hell, even decide they wanted it for themselves. No, he was stuck doing this alone, at least for now.

He stepped through the gate openings into the long abandoned fortress, the walls were massive, easily thirty feet thick, all built from massive stone blocks the size of his truck. He had never seen anything like it before, not even in real castles, how the hell had they moved blocks that big? The stone blocks had a very old look to them, the tool marks in the stones were worn smooth from the many years they had sat here exposed to the elements. How damn old was this place? He wondered. Once Inside the wall he discovered the fortress had wide cobble stone roads running between each building. Green grass and scraggly little shrubs grew up through the paving everywhere, telling him if the place did have visitors, they were few and far between.

He realized it would be a mistake to just assume he was the only one here though. He stood there quietly for several long minutes, just listening to his surroundings, being on the lookout for anything that might suggest he was not alone. The wind made a whistling sound as it blew through the ruins, he could hear ancient boards creaking when the wind blew against them. The squeal of a hinge made him grip his rifle tighter and he gazed in the direction the sound was coming from, but he realized after a few moments the squeal had a rhythm to it, coming only when the wind gusted, it was nothing but the wind, he realized. He relaxed his grip on the weapon and breathed a sigh of relief.

He slowly walked through the ruins, on high alert, as he explored what the place had to offer. The area inside the walls the fortress covered was huge, at least ten acres he guessed, maybe as much as twenty. He had seen dozens of buildings so far, they came in all sizes and shapes, everything from tall skinny towers, to short far warehouse looking buildings, and everything in between. Most of the buildings he had seen so far seemed to be structurally sound, only requiring minor work to make them habitable. While the stone work was in excellent shape, the wood aspects of the buildings were pretty much either burned or rotten from age and neglect. The roofs of most buildings had collapsed into the interiors, leaving them filled with piles of debris that would make searching them a pain in the ass. It would take him forever to really search everything properly by himself. He realized that if he was going to use these ruins as a base of operations, he was eventually going to have to get some help for this project, the sheer amount of things that needed to be dealt with were staggering.

He was smart enough to realize the biggest thing was going to be covering all the problems and issues he didn’t even know existed, for that he needed specialty people. Eventually he would, but for now it would just be him, so he better get to work. Just as he had that thought the rumble of thunder echoed across the mountains. He gazed in the direction it had came from, and frowned at the dark clouds that were just now appearing over the mountains. He realized the temperature had started dropping as well, it looked like it was going to rain soon, maybe a lot from the looks of things. He groaned in frustration and annoyance. He was not looking forward to sleeping in a wet tent, or sleeping cramped up in the cab of his truck.

He was seriously considering returning home until the weather got better, when a small building caught his eye. He stood there looking at it wondering what had caught his eye, and realized it had a greenish roof, a intact roof he realized, as well as a door that was still in one piece. He walked over to it to take a better look at it. From the outside it looked like it was in much better shape than most of the other buildings he had seen so far today. The door on it looked heavily reinforced, the entire front of the door was covered in a thick greenish copper plate. He gripped the metal door handle and pulled against it.

The door refused to open, so he pulled harder, then yanked as hard as he could. Slowly the thick heavy door moved scraping across the stone with a loud squeal, as its long unused hinges protested loudly. He finally got it fully open and peeked into the dark interior, there was really not much to see. It looked like the building had a single large room, the remains of long rotted furniture littered the floor. He stepped inside the room and looked around the interior, again, there was not much to look at, it had a fireplace on one wall, and featured small narrow windows. The windows  were little more than slits and too narrow for a person to fit through, he guessed they were arrow slits or something.

There was a back door as well, which was much like the front door, thick and heavy. There were heavy copper bolts on the back door locking it closed, he turned to the front door, and discovered it had the same kind of heavy bolts as well, and when locked this would be a snug little mini fortress of its own. He gazed upwards at the beams supporting the ceiling, and noticed it was all open space above him, most importantly though he realized he could see no daylight through the roof, it appeared to be weather tight, it also appeared to be a copper roof, which explained why it was still in such good shape, a well made copper roof could last about forever, as long as it was not damaged. Why sleep in his truck, when he had this nice little building he could use?

He thought this would do nicely as a base of operations. He returned to his truck and drove it back to the little building. Out back he discovered a small barn, which he guessed had been stables at one time from the smell. The little barn was in not nearly as good a shape as the building out front was, but it would be a perfect place to hide his truck. He parked it inside, and was satisfied no one could see it unless they actually walked inside. He didn’t think he would run into anyone out here, but it was better to take precautions all the same. Jake started unloading camping gear, and setting up his camp inside the snug little building he had found. The timing worked out perfectly, just as he sat the last box down inside his new temporary home the sky opened up and heavy rain beat down on the roof. He stood there for a few minutes watching, and waiting, but except for a small drip in one corner, the roof didn’t leak at all.

He felt blessed at having found this place, it would be a great base camp. He put his cot against the wall close to the fireplace, set up a folding table, and a couple of folding camp chairs, he slid his heavy cooler under the table, and set up a lantern. The cardboard boxes of canned food, and other supplies were stacked against the wall, and arranged so he could find things easily, even in the dark. The narrow slit windows didn’t offer much light to begin with, and once the dark clouds had blocked out the sun, it was hard to see inside. He lit a few lanterns, which did a great job of illuminating the little room with a warm glow. The temperature was dropping quickly as well due to the storm, and he realized he could see his breath in the air. Might as well tackle the fireplace next, he thought. He had brought some seasoned firewood with him on this trip, and had stacked it beside the fireplace earlier, so it only took a minute to get a fire going. He crossed his fingers, as he lit the fire, and was pleased as the smoke was sucked up the chimney, indicating it was going to work, and not smoke him out. The interior warmed quickly making the room warm and comfortable, a hell of a lot better than being stuck inside his small tent. He thought happily.

Jake sat cooking dinner over his camping stove, and he was soon even more glad he had relocated into this building. Right after dark the temperature plummeted and the rain turned to sleet covering everything with a thick layer of ice. He busted his ass several times when he attempted to go back to the truck for another box he had forgotten. The cobblestones were slick as hell, and almost impossible to walk on. He finally managed to get back inside without breaking his ankle, just as the wind started gusting hard, actually blowing the sleet sideways. It was a hell of a storm, and anyone caught out in that mess would be beyond miserable. He was warm and snug however, he sat eating his dinner of dehydrated beef stew and sipping bourbon, while watching the flashes of lightning, through the open doorway. Damn sure not a night to be out and about, and he was glad he had good shelter, he wondered what kind of weather this place had, and hoped storms like this were not a common occurrence.

This was dangerous weather and he would hate to get caught out in it. He yawned heavily and realized he was exhausted. Time for bed then. He wrestled the heavy door shut, and slid home the thick metal bolts, locking the door. The thick heavy door, heavy bolts, small windows and thick walls made him feel very safe. Once in his warm sleeping bag he was asleep in minutes. It stormed like that for hours, late into the night, booming thunder woke him more than once, but he was warm and toasty, and fell asleep again quickly. Something with claws tore at the door frantically, as Jake tumbled from his sleeping bag onto the stone floor. He grabbed for the zipper, ripping the sleeping bag open and stumbling to his feet. Something heavy thudded against the door again, actually managing to rattle it in its hinges, then instantly tore at it again with loud squealing sounds as claws scraped down the thick copper plated door, he could hear the growls of several animals as they tore at the door. Jake raised the rifle to his shoulder, and flipped the safety off. “ This is your last warning !” A shiver ran down his back, as the growling turned to a vicious guttural sounding laughter, like a monsters laugh, then words came, the voice so thick and harsh he could barely make out the words.

“Open….human die..quick.” Then there was a long pause. “ Fight... suffer..long” Harsh gutteral laughter followed. Jake had never heard anything like it. It sounded like something from hell was just outside the door. It was not just the sounds though, as terrible as the animal sounds were, the voice was ten times more scary as that meant it was intelligent, but there was something more. There was a feeling to it, a dark, feeling of terror ripped through him, part of him wanted to run away in terror, while another part of him wanted to open the door and embrace the creature. He needed to touch it, he needed to embrace it. “Yesssss…. open.” The voice spoke again, it sounded as if it were right against the door. Suddenly something crashed against the back door behind him, making him jump. He realized he had his hand on the bolt, and was about to pull it back unlocking the door. He blinked his eyes and shook his head rapidly, trying to clear his head. What the fuck was happening to him?!

“Fuck you !” Jake screamed. He raised the rifle and rapidly squeezed off a half dozen rounds through the front door, He thought he heard a squeal of pain, but that didn’t slow him down, there was something clawing at the back door, he pivoted on the balls of his feet spun around and dumped another half dozen rounds through the back door. Something squealed loudly in pain, a terrifying, soul wrenching sound that cut through him. There came a hell of a ruckus from the back of the building, loud screeching, and squeals of pain, it sounded like a combination dog and cat fight to him, it was horrifying. Something thudded against the door again, and he dumped the rest of the magazine through the door. He stood there with his ears ringing painfully from the enclosed gunfire, and realized his rifle was empty. He stumbled towards the corner and grabbed his vest and slipped it on. He pulled a fresh magazine from it and reloaded his rifle, then threw some wood into the fireplace with one hand, while he kept the rifle pointed at the door.

He stood there for what seemed like hours, but didn’t hear another sound from outside. Suddenly he felt weak, and his hands started shaking badly, and his knees felt like they were about to give out. He dropped into a camping chair, and sat facing the door, he held the rifle in one hand, and fumbled with the bottle of bourbon with the other. He took a long deep drink from the bottle of Knob Creek, the bourbon burning its way down his throat. He felt his nerves calming as the liquor took effect. His arms slowly stopped shaking, and slowly he regained his calm. He sat in the chair for the rest of the night, until the sun had risen enough for beams of sunlight to flood in through the high narrow windows. Only then did he finally get out of the chair, . He realized he could not stand here forever, its not like he could call 911, or someone would come looking for him, he was going to have to deal with this himself. He realized he was still only wearing his underwear, and got dressed. Once he was fully dressed and had his vest on, and pistol strapped around his waist, He took a few more drinks of bourbon for some added courage. He had not heard a sound for hours now, and figured this was a good a time as any. He checked his pistol and rifle, yanked back the heavy locking bolt, and kicked the door open. He stood there and stared at the scene before him.

The temperature had risen quite a bit once the storm passed and the sleet had turned to water. The area in front of the door was smeared with blood, thick smears of blood covered the ground out front. He assumed he had hit something with his rifle fire after all, there was no body, but there damn sure was a lot of blood. The thick blood smears left the door and traveled across the cobble stones and disappeared down a alley across from his building. The smears of blood had multiple tracks in them, as if something had followed the blood trail, and stepped in the blood leaving tracks. Strange. He returned to the front of the building, examined the front door, the thick copper plate on the door had deep gouges scratched into it, whatever had done that had been strong as hell. He slowly moved around the towards the back door where he had heard the fighting, and stood there staring in shock.

There was blood everywhere, as well as thick tufts of thick black fur, in the center of the blood was a pile of gore. He edged closer, to get a better look at it, and was rewarded with a view of shattered bones, ripped fur and entrails. He had no clue what he was looking at, whatever it was was had been ripped to pieces. He was no expert, but he knew whatever it was, there was a lot of it missing. He found a bullet hole in a bone, that told him he had definately hit it. Apparently, what had happened was, he had wounded one of them, and the rest had attacked the wounded member of the group ripping it apart in a feeding frenzy. It was not a comforting thought at all. He did feel some satisfaction though at putting some hurt on whatever it was, that had tried to attack him last night. He figured this was a really bad idea, but he was going to follow those tracks.

He hefted his rifle, and slowly and carefully followed the blood trail the wounded creature had left behind. The trail wound around buildings, and through them. He followed it across the ruins and until he ran into two things, another bloody scene with another pile of gore where another slaughter had taken place similar to the first. Bloody tracks left the scene of the slaughter and a short distance away they disappeared into the collapsed ruins of a small building that sat off by its self. The ground around the building was covered in tracks, whatever it was has been coming and going from this spot for a long time. He peered through the door where the tracks went, and discovered a jumble of wood timbers, and a narrow tunnel leading into the debris. The bloody tracks led into that tunnel, He peered into the dark tunnel, his rifle at the ready, a stench of rot, shit  and wet dog came from it, and he swore he could hear something moving around in there. Could this be a den of some kind? He wondered. Well, one way to find out.

Two hours and a lot of work later, Jake was peering at the den through his rifles combat optic. He raised the sight slightly and easily found the five gallon can of mixed gasoline, and diesel fuel he had worked hard to place at the rear of the building. The can of fuel had been lowered from the top of the wall until it sat on top of the rubble. The rubble was filled with rotten old wood beams, and they should burn easily he thought. He slipped the tracer round into the rifles chamber, slid the bold closed, and inserted a full magazine. He had chosen his spot well, he has located directly across from the den, in the ruins of another building. He had barricaded himself into the little building, by stacking wood, against the door and windows. He had left a slot large enough for his rifle and that was it, if this went badly he didn’t want those things to be able to rush him at once. He figured as long as they could not easily get to him, he could pick them off.

Jake raised his rifle, and centered the green dot of his optic on the metal gas can. He hated the thought of shooting one of the surplus jerry cans, as he loved those things. They were not easy to come by, and the new gov mandated safety gas cans sucked. It was for a good cause though. He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and slowly squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The gun fired, and all hell broke loose, the fuel can exploded spraying burning diesel across the ruins, the fuel flowed into the cracks of the debris setting it ablaze. He dropped his aim slightly and shot the second fuel can that was just inside the entrance, sending up another fireball of burning fuel. A few seconds later he was rewarded with screeches of pain coming from the burning debris. He aimed at the tunnel and started firing, keeping up a steady stream of fire into the approximate area where the tunnel was, he could not actually see it anymore due to the fire and smoke. The rifle bolt locked back on a empty chamber and Jake quickly reloaded, keeping up the firing.

Something dark streaked from the doorway, running away from the burning building with its fur ablaze. He shifted to follow it, quickly putting a half a dozen rounds into it, it flopped onto the ground writhing in paid as its flesh burned. He put his gun back on the doorway and opened fire again, just as several more creatures erupted out of it, he got a lucky hit on the first dropping it in its tracks, the second leapt onto the first and attacked it, apparently crazed by pain and blood lust. Jake dropped it as it ripped hunks of flesh from the first one. He reloaded several more times, as he kept of his firing, his rifle was getting pretty hot, so he slowed his rate of fire to a shot every few seconds. He kept firing at this slow pace until he had shot all six of the spare magazines he had brought with him for this. He reloaded with a magazine from his vest, and sat watching the burning ruins.

The massive old timbers burned brightly for hours, He dug himself out of his little bunker and approached cautiously. First he checked the creature he had shot as it ran away, it was dead, and looked like hell with half of its fur burned away. It was hideous, and he had never seen anything like it before. It was about the size of a great dane, and sort of resembled a dog, with a large mouth filled with sharp teeth, but it had hands like a human, the fingers tipped with long sharp claws. The fur was thick and black as tar, and its limbs were heavily muscled. It had very large weird eyes, which Jake thought indicated it was mostly a night creature, and hated daylight. What was more disturbing though, was it was wearing jewelry. It had a thick silver necklace around its neck, with a large ruby set in it, and it had matching bracelets as well.

They looked very valuable, he carefully removed them and slipped them into a pocket of his vest. He moved to the two creatures that had died in the doorway, but he could not get very close due to the intense heat from the fire. He could see though that his rifle fire had done its job, as behind the first two creatures, he could see the burning bodies of several more jammed in the tunnel behind them. The sun was setting now, and he figured he didn’t want to be out here at night. He doubted he would be spending any time outside at night anytime soon after this. He hated to think what would have happened to him had he been sleeping in a tent last night as he had originally planned to do. It was mostly luck he had not been, he was going to have to start making every decision here as though he were in hostile territory. Jake turned and walked back towards his camp to lock himself in for the night, he needed some bourbon to help get this nightmarish stuff out of his head for a while..

Awesome chapter!

@buck19delta

First, I have serious concerns about you and this story:
1. You are a 19D.  We all know 19Ds are DATs.
2. 19Ds are best known for trying to run over my 12Bs and spraying us with mud as you gun it through the breach.
3. It is a well known and established fact that 19Ds can barely read -10 manuals, which is why tanker -10s have lots of pictures for you to color in with crayons you borrowed from our Marine brethren.
4. This is too well written to comply with the preceding statement or to be from anyone who came out of FT Knox.  I have serious concerns you lied to your recruiter (Enlistment Under False Pretenses) and Drill Sergeant about only having a second grade education (max allowed 19D MOS, I'm pretty sure).  I should immediately contact CID and JAG about this serious issue, but that would cause the story to stop, and that would make me sad.
5. A 19D is also one of the few people who can properly write-up a Sherman vs. Dragon plot line, so all is forgiven.
5.  I'm probably that son-of-a-bitch who forgot and left out that strand of concertina wire that you ran over and got tangled in your drive sprocket.
6. Keep up the good work - this is better written than several published stories I've read.

From a feedback perspective, there are a couple of spelling and grammar mistaksmistakes such as your/you're and some other minor ones, but it is pretty tight from that perspective for a raw draft.

The only editing revisions I don't like, is the last one with the wolf creatures right after he enters the world for the first time.  I think your first version was better, because the pacing allows him (and the reader) to explore the new world before jumping feet first into life or death combat.  I think that is important to help paint the picture and develop the story.  Every other edit makes the story stronger.

That said, I do like the wolf creature plotline, but I think it should come later.  I really like the use of the AR the way it is supposed to be used, instead of charging around waving the sword.  Right weapon, right time kind of thing.

Keep up the good work DAT! Friggin' Awesome!

I did ten years as a 11 bravo, and another 11 years as a 19delta.

I appreciate the feedback. I keep jumping to far forward in the story IMHO, and I need to slow it down a little, and not go so fast, in the first version I had jake starting out with a crew of twenty people and establishing a base, when I realized there was a lot of story that could come before that point. I want Jake to explore a bit, and get a camp set up before he meets thoran, etc, and starts dealing with other people. explore  bunch, and deal with some dangers on his own. the deal with the ruins is, it has a history of weird shit / portal activity / magical experiments and as a result, there are some oddball creatures, and other things lurking around the ruins, that exhist nowhere else on the planet. the ruins are also in the wilderness, and that wilderness needs to be dangerous, something I have really not worked on much before now. I want the exploration to be dangerous, but extremely rewarding financially.

heres more about the wolf creatures, I reworked a little of it, and added some more to it. glad you guys like it.

He was smart enough to realize the biggest thing was going to be covering all the problems and issues he didn’t even know existed, for that he needed specialty people. Eventually he would, but for now it would just be him, so he better get to work. Just as he had that thought the rumble of thunder echoed across the mountains. He gazed in the direction it had came from, and frowned at the dark clouds that were just now appearing over the mountains. He realized the temperature had started dropping as well, it looked like it was going to rain soon, maybe a lot from the looks of things. He groaned in frustration and annoyance. He was not looking forward to sleeping in a wet tent, or sleeping cramped up in the cab of his truck. He turned and started working his way back towards his truck. He was almost to the gate he had entered through, and was seriously considering returning home until the weather got better, when a small building caught his attention.

He stood there looking at it wondering what had caught his eye, and realized it had a intact roof he realized, as well as a door that was still in one piece. He walked over to it to take a better look at it. From the outside it looked like it was in much better shape than most of the other buildings he had seen so far today. The door on it looked heavily reinforced, and the windows were narrow slits with bars over them. It looked like a small jail to him. He stepped up to the door to get a closer look at it, and realized the door was covered with a thick copper plate, and heavy hinges as well. The door opened inward, but there was actually a second door that opened outward, and it was open and against the wall. It was not really a door though, more of a heavy gate made from heavy copper bars that resembled a jail cell door. He looked at it for a moment, and guessed it must be used when the temperature was hot, you could lock this outer gate, and leave the solid interior door open.

It offered good protection, while allowing air to circulate inside. It definately gave the building a jail feel to it, but then he noticed the gate locked on the inside, in a way that was obviously meant to keep people out, not in. Weird he thought, cant be a jail with a door built like that, but what was building used for? He wondered. He gripped the metal door handle and pushed against the heavy door.

The door refused to open, and seemed stuck, so he shoved his shoulder against it hard and was rewarded by the door sliding a few inches. He rammed his shoulder against it again and again and slowly the thick heavy door moved, scraping noisily across the stone floor with a loud groan of protest, the hinges squealed loudly in a way that made him wince as the high pitched sound cut through him, and echoed through the abandoned buildings around him. He sighed. So much for being stealthy, if there was anyone around for miles, they damn well knew someone was here now. He finally got the door fully open and peeked into the dark interior, he stepped inside and found himself standing in a large open room. He looked around the interior, It had a large fireplace on one wall, with a battered heavy table close to it, across the room were rows of bunk beds that were falling apart. The narrow windows let in little light, but he was able to make out what he thought were weapon racks as well on another wall.

He realized this was not a jail at all, but most likely a guard shack of some kind, the fact it was so close to the gate reinforced this hypothesis. The building had a back door as well, which was much like the front door, thick and heavy, he peeked out one of the narrow slit windows and noticed there was a small building of some kind out back. Looking closer at the door he realized there were heavy copper bolts on the back door locking it closed, about eye height was a small peep hole, covered by a small metal door. He turned to the front door, and discovered it had the same kind of heavy bolts on the inside of it as well, and when locked this would be a snug little mini fortress of its own. He was really liking what he was seeing. He gazed upwards at the thick hand carved wood beams supporting the ceiling, and noticed it was all open space above him, most importantly though he realized he could see no daylight through the roof. It appeared to be weather tight, the roof also appeared to be made from copper, which explained why it was still in such good shape, a well made copper roof could last about forever, as long as it was not damaged. He smiled. Why sleep in his cramped truck, or a leaky tent when he had this nice little weather tight mini fortress he could use?

He thought this would do nicely as a base of operations. He returned to his truck and drove it back to the little building. Out back he explored the other building and discovered it was a barn, which he guessed had been stables at one time from the smell of it. The little barn was in not nearly as good a shape as the building out front was, but it had a doorway big enough for his truck and would be a good place to hide it. He parked inside, and covered the truck with a camo tarp, it was impossible to see a dozen steps away, as it blended into the dark interior perfectly. He was satisfied no one could see it unless they actually walked inside the building. He didn’t think he would run into anyone out here, but it was better to take precautions all the same. Jake started unloading camping gear, and setting up his camp inside the snug little building he had found. The timing worked out perfectly, just as he sat the last box down inside his new temporary home the sky opened up and heavy rain beat down on the roof. He stood there for a few minutes watching, and waiting, but except for a small drip in one corner, the roof amazingly didn’t leak at all. He felt blessed at having found this place, it would be a great base camp, that was close to the gate, offered good protection from the elements, and offered great protection from being attacked. He doubted he had anything to worry about from humans, as the place appeared deserted, but there were always wild animals to worry about, and a hungry bear could really wreck your day.

He put his cot against the wall close to the fireplace, set up a folding table, and a couple of folding camp chairs, then he slid his heavy cooler under the table, and set up a lantern. The cardboard boxes of canned food, and other supplies were stacked against the wall, and arranged so he could find things easily, even in the dark. The narrow slit windows didn’t offer much light to begin with, and once the dark clouds had blocked out the sun, it was hard to see inside. He lit his lantern, which did a great job of illuminating the little room with a warm glow. The temperature was dropping quickly as well due to the storm, and he realized he could see his breath in the air. Might as well tackle the fireplace next, he thought. He had brought some seasoned firewood with him on this trip, and had stacked it beside the fireplace earlier, so it only took a minute to get a fire going.

He crossed his fingers, as he lit the fire, and was pleased as the smoke was sucked up the chimney, indicating it was going to work, and not smoke him out. The interior warmed quickly making the room warm and comfortable, a hell of a lot better than being stuck inside his small tent. He thought happily. He grabbed a quart of motor oil from his truck, and with a little work he had the door hinges, and locking bars lubricated, and the door opening much more easily and quietly. Jake opened and closed the heavy door several times, and played with the thick locking bars sliding them in and out, locking and unlocking the door over and over. There was something very satisfying about the heavy door, the sound it made as it thudded shut, as well as the clunk of the heavy locking bars slamming home. The sounds soothed something primal in him, the way it solidly stood between him and the outside world. He smiled at the feeling. I might not need a door like this. He thought to himself, but it damn sure felt good knowing it stood between him and the unknown world around him, especially tonight while he would be sleeping.

Jake sat cooking dinner over his camping stove, and he was soon even more glad he had relocated into this building. Right after dark the temperature plummeted and the rain turned to sleet covering everything with a thick layer of ice. He busted his ass several times when he attempted to go back to the truck for another box he had forgotten. The cobblestones were slick as hell, and almost impossible to walk on. He finally managed to get back inside without breaking his ankle, just as the wind started gusting hard, actually blowing the sleet sideways. It was a hell of a storm, and anyone caught out in that mess would be beyond miserable, hell fast moving storms like this were dangerous as hell, and could easily kill the unprepared who were caught in one without shelter.

He was thankfully warm and snug however, he sat eating his dinner of dehydrated beef stew and sipping bourbon, while watching the flashes of lightning, through the bars of the locked gate blocking the doorway. Damn sure not a night to be out and about, and he was glad he had good shelter, he wondered what kind of weather this place had, and hoped storms like this were not a common occurrence. This was dangerous weather and he would hate to get caught out in it. He yawned heavily and realized he was exhausted. Time for bed then. He wrestled the heavy door shut, and slid home the thick metal bolts, locking the door. The thick heavy door, heavy bolts, small windows and thick stone walls made him feel very safe. Once in his warm sleeping bag he was asleep in minutes. It stormed like that for hours, late into the night, booming thunder woke him more than once, but he was warm and toasty, and fell asleep again quickly.

Jake lay on his cot with his eyes open, staring into darkness. Something had woken him up, but he didn’t know what. He lay there for a moment listening, and was almost asleep again when he heard a sound. It was a soft scratching sound, something was scratching at the door. Suddenly the soft scratching turned into a loud banging rattle as something beat violently at the heavy metal gate outside. There was loud growling, and something with claws tore at the door frantically, making shrieking sounds as claws scraped across the metal door. Jake tumbled from his sleeping bag onto the stone floor startled by the sudden loud violent noises. He grabbed for the sleeping bags zipper, ripping the sleeping bag open and stumbling to his feet. Something heavy thudded against the door again, actually managing to rattle it in its hinges, whatever it was sounded big, and mean. Whatever it was tore at the door again the sound the claws made as they scraped down the thick copper plated door were awful. He could hear the growls of several animals as they tore at the door, and a moment later the back door was attacked in the same way, indicating they were out back as well. Whatever they were began growling loud enough to be heard through the thick door.

Jake raised the rifle to his shoulder, and yelled loudly to be heard. “I’m armed, and not afraid to defend myself, you had best move on !” The clawing sounds instantly stopped. A shiver ran down his back, and goose bumps sprouted on his arms as the growling turned to a vicious guttural sounding laughter, like a monsters laugh. Then it spoke. The voice so thick and harsh he could barely make out the words. “Open….human…die quick.” Then there was a long pause. “ Fight.. and... suffer..” The words dripped with malace, and Jake had to fight down the fear that was threatening to over whelm him

He flipped the safety off. “ This is your last warning !” Harsh gutteral laughter followed. Jake had never heard anything like it. It sounded like something from hell was just outside the door. It was not just the sounds though, as terrible as the animal sounds were, the voice was ten times more scary as that meant it was intelligent, but there was something more. There was a feeling to it, a dark, feeling of terror ripped through him, part of him wanted to run away in terror, while another part of him wanted to open the door and embrace the creature. He needed to touch it, he needed to embrace it. “Yesssss…. open.” The voice spoke again, it sounded as if it were right against the door. Suddenly something crashed against the back door behind him, making him jump. He realized he had his hand on the doors bolt, and was about to pull it back unlocking the door. He blinked his eyes and shook his head rapidly, trying to clear his head. What the fuck was happening to him?!

“Fuck you !” Jake screamed. He raised the rifle and rapidly squeezed off a half dozen rounds through the front door, He thought he heard a squeal of pain, but that didn’t slow him down, there was something clawing at the back door, he pivoted on the balls of his feet spun around and dumped another half dozen rounds through the back door. Something shrieked in pain, a terrifying, soul wrenching sound that cut through him. There came a hell of a ruckus from the back of the building, loud screeching, vicious snarls, and squeals of pain, it sounded like a combination dog and cat fight to him, it was horrifying in its ferocity. Something thudded heavily against the door again, and he dumped the rest of the magazine through it. He stood there with his ears ringing painfully from the enclosed gunfire, and realized his rifle was empty. He stumbled towards the corner and grabbed his vest and slipped it on. He pulled a fresh magazine from it and reloaded his rifle, then threw some wood into the fireplace with one hand, while he kept the rifle pointed at the door.

He stood there for what seemed like hours, but didn’t hear another sound from outside, it was dead quiet. Suddenly he felt weak, and his hands started shaking badly, and his knees felt like they were about to give out. He dropped into a camping chair, and sat facing the door, he held the rifle in one shaking hand, and fumbled with the bottle of bourbon with the other. He took a long deep drink from the bottle of Knob Creek, the bourbon burning its way down his throat. He felt his nerves slowly calming as the liquid courage took effect. His arms slowly stopped shaking, and slowly he regained his calm. He sat in the chair for the rest of the night, until the sun had risen enough for beams of sunlight to flood in through the high narrow windows. Only then did he finally get out of the chair, he stayed put for several hours, peeking out through the narrow windows, looking for any sign of the creatures that had attacked him, but seeing nothing except for a huge wet spot on the ground that he guessed was blood.

The temperature rose quickly, and the sleet melted away in a few hours. He realized he could not stay in here forever, its not like he could call 911, or someone would come looking for him, he was going to have to deal with this thing himself. He realized with a start that he was still only wearing his underwear, and quickly got dressed. He pulled out his equipment, and put on all of his combat gear that he had. Once he was fully dressed , he buckled on his pistol and tactical vest, and picked up his fully loaded rifle. He was well armed, but It honestly didn’t feel like it was enough when compared to the horror he had faced the night before. He took a few more drinks of bourbon for some added courage, and sighed heavily, he had to do this eventually. He had not heard a sound for hours now, and figured this was a good a time as any. He checked his pistol and rifle, making sure both had a round in the chamber, then yanked back the heavy locking bolt, and kicked the door open. He stood there and stared at the scene before him.

The area in front of the door was smeared with blood, thick smears of blood covered the ground out front. He assumed he had hit something with his rifle fire after all, there was no body, but there damn sure was a lot of blood. The thick blood smears left the door and traveled across the cobble stones and disappeared down a alley across from his building. The smears of blood had multiple large animal tracks in them, as if something had followed the blood trail, and stepped in the blood leaving tracks. Strange. He returned to the front of the building, examined the front door, the thick copper plate on the door had deep gouges scratched into it, whatever had done that had been strong as hell. He made a mental note that he needed to reinforce this place better if he planned to stay here in the future, he was also going to need some heavier firepower. He shouldered his rifle, and slowly moved around the building towards the back door where he had heard the fighting. Every nerve in his body was on edge, and his eyes darted to every alley, and every bush big enough to hide anything bigger than a rabbit.

He had no clue what he was looking for, but figured he would know it when he saw it. He turned the final corner and stood there staring in shock at the scene before him. There was blood everywhere, as well as thick tufts of thick black fur, spread around the small court yard were piles of gore. Pieces of meat, and bone lay scattered about on random places. He edged closer, to get a better look at it, and was rewarded with a view of shattered bones, ripped fur and entrails. He had no clue what he was looking at, whatever it was was had been ripped to pieces. He was no expert, but he knew whatever it was he was looking at, had a lot of it missing. He found a bullet hole in a bone, that told him he had definately hit it. He kept moving around the court yard, his eyes constantly scanning for danger, as he thought about everything.

Apparently, what had happened was, he had wounded one, or several of the creatures, and the rest had attacked the wounded member of the group ripping it apart in a feeding frenzy, similar to what he had seen happen in shark attacks, the creatures had ripped apart and eaten their fellow wounded members. It was not a comforting thought at all. He did feel some satisfaction though at putting some hurt on whatever it was that had tried to attack him last night. He shuddered to think what would have happened had he been sleeping in a tent last night. He knew what he had to do, and figured it was a really bad idea, but he was going to have to follow those tracks. He could not stay here and have a threat like this unchecked. He needed to figure out where he stood, either it was a small threat, with only a few animals and he could deal with it himself, or it would be dozens or hundreds of creatures, too much for him to deal with and he would have to evacuate until he had more help, and heavier firepower to handle it.

He hefted his rifle, and slowly and carefully followed the blood trail the wounded creature had left behind. It was not hard to follow, bloody footprints, and bloody smears where the creatures had drug the bloody carcass’s of their dead with along with them. The trail wound down alleys, around buildings, and through them. He followed it across the ruins almost to the other side of the fortress until he ran into another bloody scene with another pile of gore where another slaughter had taken place similar to the first. Bloody tracks left the scene of the slaughter and a short distance away they disappeared into the collapsed ruins of a small building that sat off by its self. Jake cautiously walked around the building, always careful to keep the wind in his face, he carefully studied the ground and discovered it was covered in tracks. There were hundreds of tracks in the dirt whatever it was had been coming and going from this spot for a very long time, he also discovered that there was only one entrance to this place, which would make things a lot easier. He peered through the door way where the tracks went, and discovered a jumble of wood timbers, and a narrow tunnel leading into the debris.

His hair stood on end, and every fiber of his being was screaming for him to run from this terrible place, before these monsters discovered he was here, and came pouring out of this hole after him. It took everything he had to keep from running. He peered into the dark tunnel where the tracks led, the ground was littered with feces, and bones of all kinds from other kills, he looked uneasily at a human skull sticking out of the dirt. That pretty much removed all doubt that these things would kill a man. He gripped the rifles stock with sweaty hands as a terrible stench of rotting meat, shit and wet dog came from the tunnel before him. He strained his hearing, and swore he could hear something moving around inside there. This was obviously the creatures den, how many of those things were down there? He wondered. Well, one way to find out.

Two hours and a lot of work later, Jake was peering at the den through his rifles combat optic. He raised the sight slightly and easily found the five gallon can of mixed gasoline, and diesel fuel he had worked hard to place at the rear of the building. The can of fuel had been lowered from the top of the buildings back wall until it sat on top of the rubble. The rubble was filled with lots of rotten old wood beams, and they should burn easily he thought. He slipped the tracer round into the rifles chamber, slid the bold closed, and inserted a full magazine. He had chosen his spot carefully, he was located directly across from the den in the ruins of another building. He had barricaded himself into the little building, by stacking wood and blocks of stone, against the doorway and windows leaving only a slot large enough for his rifle to poke out and that was it. If this went badly he didn’t want those things to be able to easily get at him in a rush. He figured as long as they could not easily get to him, he could pick them off eventually. Next to him was a five gallon can of water, a box of canned food, and a extra can of rifle ammo. He could stay here for quite a while should he be forced to, he damn sure didn’t want to, but better safe than sorry. There were a dozen ways this could all go to shit. Once again he wished he had some help in this, and was not forced to do all this crap alone. No time to dwell on that right now though, he had work to do. He checked everything again, and realized he was as ready as he was going to get.

Jake raised his rifle, and centered the green dot of his optic on the metal gas can, and let out a heavy sigh. He hated the thought of shooting one of the fuel cans, as he loved those things. The steel military surplus fuel cans were not easy to come by, but he greatly preferred using them to the new gov mandated safety gas cans, those things fucking sucked ass. Whoever designed those things deserved a kick in the nuts. It was for a good cause though. He relaxed his body, took in a deep breath, then let half of it out and held it, and slowly squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The rifle fired, and all hell broke loose. The 5.56mm tracer flew across the distance like a flaming comet and disappeared through the side of the fuel can, a instant later the fuel can exploded into a huge roaring fireball, spraying burning fuel across the debris the den was built in. The fuel flowed into the cracks of the debris setting it ablaze and within moments it was a roaring inferno, thick black smoke rose into the sky, and wood popped and crackled under the intense heat. He dropped his aim slightly and shot the second fuel can that was just inside the entrance, sending up another fireball of burning fuel.

A few seconds later he was rewarded with screeches of pain coming from the burning debris. He aimed through the doorway at the general location of the tunnel which was obscured by the smoke and fire and started firing his rifle, dumping round after round into it. He kept up a slow steady stream of fire into the approximate area where the tunnel was, hoping he was hitting something. The rifle bolt locked back on a empty chamber and Jake quickly reloaded, keeping up the stream of bullets. Something dark streaked from the doorway running away from the burning building with its fur ablaze. He shifted to follow it, quickly putting a half a dozen rounds into it, it flopped onto the ground writhing in pain as its flesh burned. He put his gun back on the doorway and opened fire again, just as several more creatures erupted out of it, he got a lucky hit on the first dropping it in its tracks, the second lept onto the first and attacked it, apparently crazed by pain and blood lust. Jake dropped it as it ripped hunks of flesh from the first one. He reloaded several more times, as he kept firing, the stack of empty magazines beside him was growing, and his rifle was getting pretty damn hot, so he slowed his rate of fire to a shot every few seconds. He kept firing at this slow pace until he had shot all six of the spare magazines he had brought with him for this.

He reloaded with a magazine from his vest, and sat watching the burning ruins. The massive old timbers burned brightly for hours, and he sat watching it to ensure nothing escaped. Finally, as dark was approaching he knew he could not sit here any longer. He dug himself out of his little bunker and approached the smoking ruin cautiously. First he checked the creature he had shot as it ran away, it was dead, and looked like hell with half of its fur burned away. It was hideous to look at, and he had never seen anything like it before. It was about the size of a large great Dane, and it even sort of resembled a dog. It had a four legs, a tail and a large mouth filled with sharp teeth, but the resemblence to a dog ended there. Its ears were large and resembled a bats ears, the front limbs instead of paws, had hands like a human, with the fingers tipped with long sharp wicked looking claws. The fur was coarse, thick and black as tar, and its limbs were heavily muscled. It also had very large weird eyes, which Jake thought indicated it was mostly a night creature, and likely hated daylight.

What was more disturbing though, was it was wearing jewelry. It had a thick silver necklace around its neck, with a large ruby set in it, and it had matching bracelets as well. They looked valuable, so he carefully removed them and slipped them into a pocket of his vest. He moved to the two creatures that had died in the doorway, but he could not get very close due to the intense heat from the fire. He could see though that his rifle fire had done its job, as behind the first two creatures, he could see the burning bodies of several more jammed in the tunnel behind them. The sun was setting now, and he figured he didn’t want to be out here at night. He doubted he would be spending any time outside at night anytime soon after all this. Jake turned and walked back towards his camp to lock himself in for the night.

He spent most of the night fully dressed in his combat gear with his rifle laying across his lap. He sat staring at the fire place for hours carefully considering his next move. The only thing for sure he decided was he was going to need a much more secure camp site to operate from. Jake woke up and stretched, every muscle in his body seemed to hurt this morning, his back especially. He stood up and twisted his body back and forth trying to get his back to pop. He sighed in relief when it finally did. Weak sunlight was coming in through the narrow windows, and a glance at his watch told him it was only about seven am. He was going to have a busy day ahead of him. After carefully checking the area through the narrow windows and ventured out and cleared the area around the building. He was relieved to find he was alone today, finding no evidence anyone or anything had been outside during the night. He knew he was not going to be living like this anymore, waking up each morning wondering if something was waiting outside the door to eat him, he had a plan to fix that. He unloaded everything from his truck, stacked it in the barn and covering it with his camo tarp, when the truck was empty, he climbed inside and headed for the portal, he had some shopping to do today.

A week later, Jake sat drinking bourbon watching the sun set. He glanced at the monitor on the table and was pleased to see the camera system was finally working properly. It had taken him half the day to get them set up, and the other half to get them working. He had installed a total of eight cameras with night vision capabilities, on the outside of the building, and in the back court yard where the truck was parked. He flipped through the cameras, and smiled at how easily he could see the everything now, he could see the entire area around the little building, the court yard out back, his truck, everything. The cameras also had motion detectors, which would alert him to anything moving, even if he was not watching the screen. Hell yes he thought, nothing would be sneaking up on him anymore, and he never had to wonder if something was outside again, he could see everything now. He stepped outside and inspected the gate and fence again, to make sure he had not missed anything.

The building had a walled courtyard outback large enough to hold a half dozen trucks, and he had installed a steel gate on the entrance, as well as steel mesh fencing along the top of the wall. The fencing was useful by itself in keeping people and animals out of the courtyard where he was storing his supplies, and vehicle but the powerful electric fence chargers he had hooked up to it took it to another level entirely. He had four one hundred mile cattle fencing chargers hooked up to it, and they sent enough voltage to his three hundred feet of fencing to knock the hell out of anything that touched it. The four chargers took the voltage of the fence to dangerous levels, but he thought it was necessary, considering he was not trying to keep cows out, but instead dangerous predators. Hell he had considered hooking a generator up to it, but that would use way too much fuel, and be a pain in the ass to keep it running all the time. He had instead bought solar powered electric fence chargers, as well as enough extra solar panels and batteries, to keep it working through any weather. He had also bought a small honda generator that was set up to automatically turn on and recharge the batteries should they get too low.

He was proud of it, it should work through any weather, and it had enough power to strongly discourage trespassers. He had also installed led floodlights on the outside of the building, as well as led lighting on the inside as well. All of it, as well as the camera system was powered by by the same solar panel set up the electric fence was. The cameras and fence were all working to his satisfaction, so the last thing to check before he locked himself in for the night was the new doors he had built. The original doors while strong, had left a lot to be desired in his opinion, for one they were very old and the wood core was weak, for another copper was not nearly as strong as steel was. He had built the new front and rear doors himself, they had a steel concrete filled frame, and the outside skin was half inch armor plate. He had a hell of a time getting them mounted by himself, as each door weighed about five hundred pounds. He had also replaced the weaker copper hinges with five hardened steel high security hinges, there were now three, thick steel locking bars on each door as well as a small port in the door he could shoot through.

The outside of the door was also hooked into the electric fence system as well, and anyone touching the door would get knocked on their ass. The last thing he had done was install gutters on the roof, and plumb them into a thousand gallon water tank out back to be used as drinking water. He shivered against the cool evening air, and figured it was time to turn in for the night. He stepped inside, and pulled the heavy door closed behind him, the heavy thud it made when it closed was comforting to him. He slid home the thick steel locking bars, and smiled in satisfaction, nothing was coming through that door, and anything capable of getting through it would be getting a belly full of rifle fire through the port he had installed. It had been a stressful week, as he worked on the upgrades, while also trying to watch his back as he worked, but it was all finally finished. He felt snug, safe, and comfortable in his new home, the comfort part came from the interior upgrades he had made. He glanced around the room, which was softly illuminated by the cracking fire in the fireplace and the new interior led lighting he had installed, and took in everything he had accomplished in the last week.

First he had cleared out all the old broken furniture, and cleaned up best he could. Then he had put in new furniture and appliances to make his time here more comfortable, there was the large oak desk where he had set up the monitor for the security cameras, and his laptop computer, next to that was the flat screen tv, with collection of movies and xbox gaming system, a comfortable recliner, a large twelve volt rv refrigerator that was currently filled with beer and food, shelves were installed, and stocked with canned and packaged food, in the corner was a full sized propane stove for cooking, a microwave, and a real kitchen table. Close to the fireplace he had placed a very comfortable full sized bed, beside the bed was a well stocked gun cabinet, along the opposite wall were new bunkbeds, should he bring more people in.

The back corner featured a curtain that was concealing a comfortable sit down chemical toilet, and outside the back door was a home made shower with small water heater. He had accomplished a lot in the last week, and was pleased with the progress. Now that he had a safe, comfortable base of operations it was time to start exploring this place. He grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and sat down at the desk to study the aerial photo of the fortress he had taken with his new drone earlier that day. The detail was incredible, He could see everything, all of the buildings, alleys, streets, and more. He had already marked the location of his base, and the building he had burned that had the animal den in it. He was making a few additional notations on it marking the buildings he was planning to search the next day when a alarm beeped.

He glanced at the monitor, and saw a camera that was highlighted. He looked closer and sure enough, something was moving in front of that camera, as he watched he realized it was another one of the dog things. It slunk along the bottom of a wall stealthily, and if not for the cameras night vision capability he knew he would have never been able to see it. He was pondering what he should do when he realized there were two more of them behind that one, and they were headed towards the rear gate. He sipped his beer and waited to see what would happen when they touched that fence. The creature approached the fence cautiously, and reached out to grab it in a clear intent to climb the gate. The instant it touched the fence there was a shower of sparks and the creature stood there like a statue unmoving. Jake blinked in surprise, wondering why it had not recoiled from the voltage, when he realized it could not let go of the fence. The second creature approached the first , reached out and touched it and recoiled violently when it felt the bite of electricity, it tripped over the last creature falling onto its back.

Jake laughed out loud, he thought the fence would work, but he never dreamed it would work so well. He took another gulp of beer, and pushed a button, that would cut current to the fence for ten seconds. The creature that had been touching the gate collapsed in a heap when the power stopped flowing through it and lay there for several moments without moving. He wondered if it was still alive, when finally It struggled to its feet unsteadily, and stumbled away from the direction it had come from. One of them was not moving, it was just standing there staring at the building. He flipped another switch and tuned on one of the super bright flood lights. The bright light flooded the area where the creature stood, illuminating it perfectly for the camera. The damn thing really was hideous to look at. It instantly covered its face with a clawed hand and recoiled away from the bright light, and fled down a alley. Jake chuckled for a moment, but then let out a heavy sigh.

So there were more of those things around here then, he had hoped he had killed them all, and those were the only ones. He should have known better, at least they stayed away long enough for him to get properly set up, so he was glad for that, he was pleased to see his defenses worked well against them at least. It had been luck on his part they had stayed away the last week while he was working, and a mistake on their part, now that he was solidly dug in here, there was no way those things could get to him now. Unless of course they managed to get at him during daylight that is. He had thought they didn’t like light, and from how the creature had reacted to his flood lights he felt that was a pretty safe bet. Whatever those things were, they seemed to dislike bright light, and preferred to only move at night.

Still not sure how the gennies, and thus the portal, are turned off and on from the other side. If a timer is used, what prevents the wrong sort from walking through? Oh, and the three moon side needs a backup. One is no one and all.

Good chapter.

A crunchy and a DAT!? Talk about a conflicted person!

I served with plenty of good ones of both.

Of course, I could never admit that publicly, so let's keep that a secret.

The portal can be activated from either side, and takes a pretty small amount of energy to power it. I considered having it be one way only, ie, you soon it and you can go thru, but to come back it has to be activated on other side. Still might do that, I'm not sure, gets a lot more complicated though.

Paper Rater helped me with proofing what I have written.  It will accept a couple pages at a time in the free section.  It also grades you on various aspects of your writing.

Moar please?

Been busy on projects, but June is looking pretty slow, so probably write a lot. Probably drop a new update this week. I know the story is rough, my main goal  right now is to get the storyline finished. Once I get the storyline correct, ill add details, and work on grammar. About 50% of what I've posted so far will probably end up in the second book, I keep pushing the story backwards because I feel like I'm missing out on some good story line by jumping too far too fast. I really appreciate the comments, although I'd rather they be focused on story line right now vs grammar etc.

Here is another update.

The next morning Jake locked the gate behind him, and drove his truck back to the portal on another supply run. He had thought of a few more things he might need last night, and meant to get them today. This was going to be his last supply run for a while though, as tomorrow he planned to switch from base building to exploring finally. It had taken everything he had to not run off exploring before now, but discovering last night that there were more of those creatures lurking around had made him damn glad he was being as cautious as he was, and had a strong secure base to operate from.

He flipped the switch and the generator instantly rumbled to life. His mind was on where he was going to go shopping today, he had already added more items to his shopping list. He flipped the power button sending power tot he portal and returned to the truck. He stepped on the gas only half looking where he was going, as he wrote a few items on his shopping list. He glanced up and his eyes went wide in surprise, he stomped the brakes and barely stopped the truck in time to prevent ramming into the stone wall of the cave. “What the fuck”, he exclaimed. He put the truck in reverse and backed up, sure enough there was no portal. He walked back to the generator feeling panic well up in him. He must have flipped the wrong switch, thats all. He glanced at the panel, but found everything was the way it should be, the generator was running, and creating electricity. He followed the power cable to where it had a meter installed on it to show voltage. Sure enough, there was plenty of power going through it. The damn portal was just not opening.

Jake held the panic down as he thought for a moment. Maybe he needed more power? He nudged the power needle higher and higher, watching for the portal as he did so, finally as the generator reached its maximum output the portal sprang to life. He sighed in relief and was walking back to the truck when he thought he saw the portal flicker, sure enough even as he looked at it it flickered more and more until it vanished again. The panic started welling up inside him again.

The rest of the day Jake worked on the portal trying to get it to work . he had added more and more power hoping that would make the difference. He had hauled out the two spare military generators he kept as backup and hooked them all together, when he dumped all the power they could produce into the portal he had been rewarded with it springing to life for ten seconds, but then flickering and dying again. He could not get it to appear again, and he really had no way of adding more power to the portal to try. He broke everything back down, and returned it to storage, and locked himself back in base right before sunset. He sat drinking and thinking about the portal for hours, finally reaching a hypothesis about it. He had no idea if he was right, he hoped he was right, but only time could prove if he was or not. His thinking was, the universe was enormous, and perhaps the distances involved played a part in how the portal worked. If the planet he was on had moved to a area where the portals signal was being blocked, that would explain it. Maybe there was a supernova, or black hole or something between this planet and earth right now, that was causing interference of some kind that was keeping the connection from being made.

Adding more power had temporarily overrode the interference, but as the planet moved or the interference had increased the power had not been enough. Again, there was no way to prove this except by waiting, depending on how long it took for the planet to move past the interference, it could start working again in ten seconds, or ten minutes, or ten years or even ten centuries. He took another deep drink of bourbon, he damn sure hoped the portal would not be down for a long, but there was really nothing he could do but to wait. He finished the bottle, and fell into his bed exhausted, it took him forever to fall asleep.

The next two weeks passed slowly for him. Every morning he would hike up to the gate and try it out, and it was always the same, no portal. He would spent the rest of the day drinking or exploring the ruins, and lock himself back in just before dark. It had been two weeks since the portal had failed. He checked his inventory and discovered he had used very little in the way of supplies in the last two weeks. He felt proud of himself for making the decision to build this base and fully stock it “just in case”, because “just in case” had damn sure reared its ugly head. Surviving for two weeks on what he had on hand now was a cake walk, surviving two weeks on what he had originally arrived with, would have put him in a bad situation about now. He had become more comfortable about his situation over the last two weeks, at first he had been a bit scared, and even depressed at the thought the portal would not reopen and allow him to get back to earth, but as time went on he realized he really didn’t have much of a life back on earth anyway. Damn sure there was no one there who missed him, and if there was no one to miss him, what kind of life did he have? This place might be desolate, with no humans for companionship, but he was damn sure living a adventure many people would kill for.

He also realized he had not been more than a half mile from the portal in the entire time he had been here, there was a entire planet to explore, there could be thousands of people within a days walk from here. He shrugged at the thought of finding people, did he really miss people that much? He realized with a start that he did not, he missed the idea of people much more than the actual people. The portal was not opening, and there was no point in wallowing in it, either it eventually would, or it would not. He needed to get off his ass and get to exploring this place, he needed to get these ruins searched, and find out if those creatures had a den here inside the ruins, or were coming from someplace else. Starting the next day he got serious about searching the ruins.

He started searching buildings, marking each building with a can of spray paint after he was finished with them to keep track of what he had and had not looked through already. The first interesting thing he discovered was solid gold candle stick holders, he got really excited standing there holding what had to be five pounds of gold in his hands, he thought he must be extremely lucky to make such a find like this, he soon realized that luck had nothing to do with it, gold was simply everywhere. He found many things made from gold, there were statues, tools, figurines, oil lamps, and many more items he could not identify, what was not made from gold was copper, or brass. He didn’t find a single thing made from Iron or steel, and he found that puzzling. Why make door hinges, or a pitch fork, or a ax from brass and copper when iron would have been a much better choice?

If Iron had not been invented yet, then why was so much stuff made from gold, when copper would have been way cheaper to use? It was puzzling. He had a large amount of gold items recovered from buildings he had searched so far. They were in a pile out back next to his truck, easily a thousand pounds of it so far. There was a enormous fortune in gold just laying here, and he had not explored a fraction of it yet. Well a fortune if he could ever return home with it, if he did though he would be set for life. He didn’t find any iron though, not a single piece, could it be possible it didn’t exist here, had not been invented yet, or was as rare here as gold was back on earth? It sounded crazy, but it would explain a lot, he didn’t think people made knives and ax’s from copper if they had another option.

The variety of gold items he was finding was astounding, spoons to combs, to door knockers, to lamps and much more. He was going to have to figure out a way to melt it all down into ingots, ingots would be easier to transport and sell than random items made from gold. The exception were the statues he found, whoever had made them had been a master craftsman, they were beautiful. He thought he might try to sell some of those as artwork perhaps. The next discovery he made was that the buildings, and the fortress were actually in great shape. The level of craftsmanship the masons used to build this place was incredible, the stone blocks in the buildings walls were tightly fitted together, and as a result the walls were still all in excellent shape for the most part. It obviously needed a lot of repairs, and many buildings had burned, but many buildings also were untouched by fire.

The building he was living in was a good example, all it really needed was a good cleaning, and a leak repaired and it was livable. That was a lot of good news to him, minor repairs, and renovations were a lot better than having to tear down and rebuild entire buildings. Some where over the last few days he had decided to renovate the fortress, and make it a base of operations for his future plans. He could not think of any place better honestly. It was located right beside the portal, it offered a enormous amount of storage room, and housing, and to top it off, it was a fortress, and would offer a high degree of protection against anything hostile that might be encountered. The damage that was evident was mostly caused by fire from what he could tell. It looked like someone had simple set fire to everything, the wood items, such as doors ,furniture, and wood roof support beams had burned, causing the roof to collapse into the buildings, and everything inside was burned, or buried in the rubble that fell from above. He was pretty sure that after clearing out the rubble, the buildings would be easy to put back into livable condition, simply put on new roofs, doors, and windows, and you would have solid working and living areas.

He didn’t know if he was interesting in colonizing this place, as his grandfather had planned to do, but he did know he was interested in exploring it, and he would need a support team to do it right. The more time he spent searching the ruins the more he realized just what a large job it would be, the place was enormous, and he knew there was a lot of things he was missing in his search, it could take him years to search all of this alone. Even though much of this was just a simple clean up, and minor repairs, it was still a staggering amount of work. He would need a large work crew who was skilled in construction, and one he could trust, and would not have to worry about them spilling the secret about this place, it was a perplexing problem, and not one he had a answer for just yet. He had been searching for a week or so when he made his most interesting, and exciting discoveries yet. The first discovery was a building where someone had obviously been digging in the rubble, there were mounds of dirt, and a shovel and pick laying on the ground next to it.

The digging was obviously not recent, the pick and shovel were heavily rusted, and the handles were rotten from age and weather exposure. He looked closer at the tools, and got a little excited that they were actually made from steel apparently. He looked closely at them, and rubbed away the rust on the pick, discovering words were stamped into it. He could just barely make a few words out. Plum, Philadelphia, Penn. Well, definitely not from around here then Jake thought, this must have been left by his grandfather when he was here, back in the 1940’s. The center of the buildings had a hole dug exposing stone stairs, the stairs lead a short distance down to a small empty basement room of some kind. Maybe this was where his grandfather had found his treasure he thought.

Each night he was careful to locked himself inside his little fortress before sunset, but he had not seen the weird dog creatures again on his cameras. Maybe they decided to hunt something easier elsewhere? He hoped so, but somehow doubted it. He would take a shower, update his map to keep track of what he had searched, make dinner, then watch a movie, and go to bed. It was a quiet life, and a little boring, but the treasures he kept finding made it worth it.

One morning about a week after the portal had failed, he sent the drone up to look around the ruins, mainly looking for any sign of the dog creatures. He had been doing his search for about ten minutes, carefully sweeping the ruins from low altitude when he spotted something odd that caused his pulse to start racing. Smoke ! There was smoke coming from a little tower at the rear of the ruins. There was someone else here ! He focused the camera on the little tower, and discovered something else, it was completely surrounded by junk. Odds and ends of all kinds littered the ground around the tower, there was furniture, both broken and usable, tables, chairs, barrels, and wood beams There was also a great deal of metal, piles of copper tools, and seperate piles of gold items were strewn everywhere. It looked like a hoarder of some kind lived there. The smoke was coming from a small fire in the courtyard beside the tower, he zoomed in closer and saw a large copper pot sat on the fire, and it looked like something was cooking. He caught a glimpse of movement beside a window in the tower. “Well, someone appears to be home.” He thought.

How had he not seen them before? This was the first time he had really used the drone for low level recon, which could explain it, or maybe whoever it was had just recently arrived here? Jake decided there was only one way to find out. He put all his gear on, picked up his rifle and headed for the door. He paused beside the open door for a second. If he was going to go heavily armed to meet his new neighbor, he had better take a gift with him. He glanced around the room, and his eyes came to rest on the half empty bottle of bourbon on the table. “Perfect”. He thought. He pulled a full bottle off a shelf, and shoved it into his vest.

Jake leaned against the wall of the abandoned building, searching the tower through his binoculars. He had been doing this for close to a hour, but had not seen any sign of his new neighbor just yet. The fire was still burning in the courtyard, and occasionally he caught a whiff of a awful stench, whatever it was they were cooking it smelled terrible, like a combination of road killed skunk and burning rubber. His his eyes starting to hurt from looking through the little binoculars for so long, so he said screw it. He wanted to be cautious, and to scope things out as much as possible before jumping into anything, but he only had so much patience. He pocketed the little binoculars, stood up straight and flexed his back causing it to pop. Might as well get this over with he thought. He stepped out of the buildings ruins, and headed across the courtyard, winding his way between piles of broken furniture, twisted pieces of metal, pots and pans and all kinds of other assorted mess. It was like walking through a primitive junkyard of sorts. There were all kinds of things strewn about, some of them he realized were contraptions of some kind, there were dozens of them, in all shapes and sizes, some were metal pots with pipes connected to them, some with wires hanging off of them, one such setup looked a lot to him almost like half a steam engine if you looked at it sideways, or at least a primitive one.

It looked like a place where science experiments went to die or something. He was about to take the next step, when he spotted a wire of some kind crossing his path about knee high, he knelt down and sure enough, it was a damn tripwire. The wire disappeared into the piles of junk on either side of him, he didn’t know what this tripwire might be attached to, but he was not eager to find out the hard way. He didn’t want to alarm his neighbor unnecessarily either, and possibly get things off to a bad start, so, he just did what came naturally. He yelled loud enough to be heard. “ Hello the house !” His voice boomed out and echoed through the ruins, and almost instantly there came a crashing sound from inside the tower. It sounded like someone had turned over a huge pile of pots and pans, metal rattled and banged, and Jake thought he heard cursing. “Hello the house !” He called again.

There were more rattling and banging sounds followed by more cursing, that sounded like someone was coming closer to the door, then a couple of pots flew out the door followed a moment later by a small figure who stepped into the open doorway of the tower holding a big copper spoon clutched tightly in one hand. Jake blinked, not sure what he was seeing at first. It looked like he was looking at a skinny, long haired kid, dressed in a combination of old worn leather, and tarnished copper plates. The figure stood there silently just staring at him. He guessed they were at most four and a half feet tall, maybe they were a midget or something? He cleared his throat and spoke again. “ Hello?” He repeated again. “My name is Jake Reynolds.”He began. “I guess we are neighbors.” Jake smiled in what he hoped was a friendly manner. The figure blurted something at him, that was nothing but gibberish to him, obviously some language he didn’t speak. “Just Great.” He thought, so much for communicating. Jake shrugged. “ I don’t understand you.” He said frustrated.

The figure held up a hand, which he took as a indicator for him to wait, then they started rummaging in a pouch on a belt a their waist with one hand, the metal spoon still gripped tightly in the other hand. Jake didn’t know what they were looking for, but it was making him nervous. He placed his right hand on the grip of his pistol, just in case. The figure spotted the movement, pointed the metal spoon at him and shrieked out a long string of gibberish he didn’t understand. Jake looked at the spoon in the figures hand and chuckled, but removed his hand from his pistol. The figure glanced at its hand and seemed startled to discover they were holding the spoon. The figure threw the spoon away angrily, and yanked a wicked looked dagger from a sheath and pointed it towards him. The absurdity of it all caused Jake to snort in laughter. The figure obviously didn’t take this well, and they spewed another long sting of gibberish at him, that he was pretty sure were all curses. Finally they found what they were looking for and yanked their hand from the pouch, and Jake saw it was clutching a red looking gem on a sting.

The figure slipped the string around its neck, and he realized it was a pendent of some kind. The figure said a few words that he still mostly didn’t understand, but a few of the words actually sounded a little closer to english to him. Jake shrugged again and shook his head. “Still don’t understand you.” He said. The figure sighed and shook the pendant angrily and actually seemed to be talking to it, jabbering out a long tirade at it in their strange language. “Awesome .” Jake thought to himself, they are nuts. He was about to give up and walk away, when he heard English clear as day, or it was at least mostly english, he still could not make out a few of the words . “What do you want Human scum ?” Jake blinked in surprise. The voice he heard was feminine, but not girlish like he would have expected from the persons size, the voice was that of a grown woman, not the child he thought he was facing. “Um, Human scum? That’s a bit harsh isn’t it Miss? You don’t even know me.” He replied slightly hurt.

The figure put her hands on her hips. “ Nor do I wish to know the likes of you human, now what do you want?” Jake shrugged. “I just discovered that you lived here is all, and that we were neighbors. I just wanted to introduce myself is all.” The figure laughed at him. “Just discovered? I have heard you banging around in your camp since the first day you arrived over a month ago. Im sure the entire world heard you as much noise as you were making. You are not very stealthy, I might add, I think its a miracle you were not eaten by the Dire hounds.” Jake grunted in annoyance. “Me not stealthy? What was all that clanging just now, did I startle you much? It sounded like you fell off a ladder into a pile of pots and pans !” The figure kicked a pot back inside the door with the heel of her boot. “ Don’t be redicilous human, I was looking for something, if I were being stealthy you would never know I was here, until you tasted my knife !” Jake rolled his eyes. “Whatever, look, I just wanted to be friendly, that’s all. I even brought you a gift.”

Jake pulled the bottle of bourbon out of his vest and sat it on top of a big dented pot that was next to him. “Here, I brought this as a gift to you. Hope you enjoy it.” The figure leaned slightly forward. “ What is your gift?” Jake shrugged. “Its bourbon, a drink from my homeland, its alcohol, you know liquor. You drink it.” The figure nodded. “ I know what alcohol is, Leave it and go.” Jake nodded. “Its yours, and I will go.” Then he had a thought. “Wait, you mentioned a what was it? A Dire Hound? Is that what those dog things were that attacked me? Those things are nasty.” It was now the figures turn to shrug. “They are not called Dire Hounds, because of their friendly disposition.” She replied flatly. Jake sighed. Great, his neighbor was a grade A bitch, just what he needed. “Well I wiped them out, nest and all.” Jake explained. “So you should have a lot less problems from them now.” The strange little woman laughed at this. “ I had few problems with them before, they are not very smart you know. I don’t expect I will have any problems with them for a while, since they are all focused on killing you, in revenge for wiping out that den.” He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Wait, you mean they hold a grudge? They are out to get me now? Is that what your saying?” She nodded. “ I believe my words were clear to you.” She held the pendent up and seemed to be talking to it again. “ Unless my little friend here is playing games again.” Her face darkened in anger, and she began screaming at the pendent. “ A joke?!? A Joke!?! What was funny about it ?!? You translated my words to the witch wrong, and She almost killed me for it! How in the nine hells is that funny !?!” Jake sighed. “Yup, this bitch is crazy.” He interrupted the womans crazy rant she was giving. “Hey, look, crazy pants, I’m not going to stand here all day while you argue with your jewelry or whatever it is your doing. My name is Jake again, and I’m leaving your gift here on this pot. I must warn you, if you come to my camp, do not touch the door, or any of the shiny metal fencing, I have rigged defenses and you will get hurt you if you do. Call my name or toss rocks at the door to get my attention.” He had another thought, as he glanced at the crude knife the figure held tightly in her hands. Whatever she was doing here, she seemed to be doing a lot of tinkering, he had something he thought she would find useful. Jake slowly and carefully removed his multitool, and set it and the pouch next to the bourbon.

“ Here is another gift, I believe you will find it useful.” Jake turned and left, and as he rounded the building across from the courtyard he caught a glimpse of the figure picking up the bottle of bourbon. He didn’t know if he wanted to befriend this crazy woman or not, but since he was stuck here for a while, maybe a long while, he didn’t think it could hurt. He was going to need help to survive here long term. That night as he was making himself dinner something banged loudly against the heavy front door. He checked the security camera, and was a little surprised to see the crazy midget lady from next door standing outside. He pulled back the locking bar and swung the heavy door open. There standing before the door was the weird little neighbor woman. He could make her out a lot better this time as she was standing in bright sunlight, instead of the shadowy doorway he had seen her in the other day. She was not wearing the same leather and copper plate outfit, and big floppy hat she had on the other day either. This time she was wearing a snug fitting light green colored dress, and without the big floppy hat he could see she was actually pretty danged cute, and a tiny very petite lady.

She had a wide leather belt around her waist that was covered in pouches, and there were all kinds of small tools attached to it, which he thought was very curious. “Can I help you?” He asked. She smiled at him, which made him instantly wary, as it was such a change from the last time he had seen her. “Yes, Jake was it?” Jake nodded. She smiled again, and continued. “Yes, Jake, I think I might have been a little rude earlier today, I wish to apologize for that, and to thank you for your wonderful gifts you gave me.” Jake nodded. “ It was nothing, just some bourbon is all.” She shook her head. “ I was not talking about the spirits you left, although they were fine by themselves.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out the leatherman multitool he had given her. “No, I meant this, this wonderful contraption you left me ! Where ever did you get such a thing? It is the most marvelous thing I have ever seen, I have never seen its like before. Tell me What kind of metal is it made from? What smith created it? Was it you?” She blurted out her questions so fast he could barely follow them. He held up a hand to stop her. “ Wait, Wait, stop asking questions, so I can answer some.” She blushed, but stopped talking.

Jake sighed. “Its made of a kind of steel thats called stainless steel.” He explained. “It will not rust. No I didn’t make it, the people who made it live very far from here.” She nodded. “ I see. Why would you give me a gift so valuable? What do you want for it? Do you wish to lay with me, is that your game? I dearly love your gift, just as you knew a gnome would and they would be powerless to resist such a wonderful creation such as this.” She sighed heavily. Her eyes looked down to the ground in shame. “If laying with you is the price you ask, and that is what I must do to keep it, then I will do so.” Jake could not believe what he was hearing. “No, hell no ! I didn’t not offer a gift to you to have sex with you, I did it to be friendly, that’s all. Where I am from that gift is not very valuable, it is a trinket and can be purchased with only a few hours of work. I just wanted to be friendly is all, and I saw your knife was not very good, and I just thought you might need a better one is all, and what in the hell is a Gnome?”

She looked at him closely for a few moments before she spoke. “Do you mean to say you have never heard of Gnome’s before? I do not see as how that is possible.” She looked at him doubtfully, obviously not believing him. “ Jake shook his head. “No, I have not, well I mean I have heard of garden Gnomes, but that’s not what you are, at least you don’t look like one. I come from a place far away, you would not believe me if I told you. I know nothing about this world, I am actually from another world called earth, I came here through a doorway, or a portal or something.” The gnomes face lit up in surprise, and she appreared about to burst with excitement. “You came through the traveling gate !?! That’s amazing ! I know the stories of the gate, but I could never find it myself, I looked for years ! You must tell me everything about it!

That is how Jake met Jinker Cobble. Jinker as he later learned was a Gnome, not a short fat looking Gnome like a garden Gnome, but a short, slender very cute Gnome. They were apparently a short petite race of people, who were renouned for being extremely curious, ( which got them into all sorts of trouble apparently ) and many Gnomes were also apparently inventors, notorious for it according to Jinker. Jinker, from what he understood was a bit of a recluse and she was all inventor, its what she lived for and she had moved out to these ruins so she could work on her inventions in private. His gift of a modern multitool was something she simply could not pass up.

Jake refilled Jinkers glass with bourbon, and his own as well, as he listened to her talk about the Dark gate as she called it. He had invited her in for dinner, which had turned into a hour long question session about everything in his house, Jinker was enamored by almost everything he had, the cameras, his computer, his weapons, his fridge and how it cooled, and especially the led lighting. Once she had a few glasses of bourbon in her, he was able to get her to forget about all of his wonderful technology and actually sit down for dinner and talk. Hell even the dehydrated lasagna they were eating had seemed like magic to her. They talked for hours, he told her about his world, and she told him about her world. “So”. Jake began. “Whats the deal with your necklace? Why do you talk to that thing?  Jinker groaned. “Must we talk about that? Jake shrugged. “You look a bit crazy when you talk to it, I think I deserve a little explanation, unless you really are crazy of course.”

Jinker sighed. “I suppose. Fine, I will tell you,but only because I don’t want you to think I’m insane.” She grabbed the Pendent and held it up to the light. Jake saw it appeared to be a large ruby, inset in a silver frame, and attached to a heavy silver chain. “Its pretty.” He observed. “Looks expensive.” Jinker looked at it with a far away look in her eye. “I suppose its valuable in a jewelry sense.” She began. “ Its true purpose  however makes its worth incalculable.” Jinker looked at Jake uneasily. “Do you seek riches, Jake? Would you rob me of this treasure?” Jake shook his head. “I don’t need to steal from anyone to acquire riches.” He explained. “Gold on my world, is a rare and valuable commodity, a piece of it the size of your pendant could buy a man a nice home where I am from. Jinker looked relieved at hearing this. “Good.” She said. Jinker’s mood turned even more sullen as she spoke.“I assure you though, if you did steal Asbinor from me, you would live to regret it.” Jake laughed. “You would make me regret it huh?”

Jinker sighed, and shook her head. “ No, not me. The only way you could take Asbinor from me would be literally off my dead body. There is no other way to pass it on, its bearer must die for that to happen. It will only pass on to another person on my death. The very next person to wear it after I die, is stuck with it for life. They put it on, and they are stuck with this abomination till their dying day.” Jinker took a deep sip of bourbon, and Jake took a drink of his as well, enjoying the way it burned down his throat. He was a little drunk, and feeling pretty good. “You talk about it as though its alive, or cursed or something Jinker. “She looked him in the eye. “It is both of those things.” She explained. The pendant’s ruby is a prison, it contains the soul of a witch, a very unhappy witch I might add that greatly enjoys making my life difficult. The enchantment that imprisons her is powerful magic, it forces her to perform her duty, which she mostly does, but occasionally she likes to give the wrong translation. Wrong translations that can have dire consequences for the wearer, she thinks its funny.”

Jinker held the pendent up and looked directly at it. “ Hateful bitchy things like that, are why you wound up stuck in there.” Jinker said angrily. “Your lucky translating is all your required to do, I would have thought of something much worse for you to do, had I cast the enchantment.” She dropped it back into her dress, and took another deep drink of bourbon. Jake stared at Jinker for a long moment, troubled by what he was hearing. He then took another deep drink himself. “ You cant be serious.” He said. “Witches, a soul imprisoned in a ruby, enchantments, magic, your pendent being alive and talking to you. It sounds insane to me.” Jinker shrugged. “You asked for a explanation, I gave you one. You don’t have to believe it, but its the truth. The witch must translate languages for the wearer, its why we can understand each other. I promise you its not worth it though.” She sighed. “I wish I had never found it.” Jake shrugged. “So, get rid of it, toss it in a river or something.”

She shook her head unhappily. “I cant, I tried trust me. If I misplace it, a feeling of dread comes over me, I become obsessed with getting it back, and will do anything to get it back, I feel like I will die without it. The entire time its in my possession, I can hear the witch in my mind, and she does not have nice things to say most of the time. Its like having a bitter old mother in law following you around all the time bitching and complaining. The only time I’m free of her is when I’m asleep, but even then i have dreams. I don’t know why someone would create such a terrible thing like this, it punishes the wearer as much as the one imprisoned. I personally believe there’s more to it than it being simply a prison, but the witch denies it.”  “Honestly, The entire thing sounds insane to me.” Jake said uneasily. “Witches, magic, enchantments, all of it.” Jinker shrugged. “Believe me or not, I don’t care. You asked for a explanation, and I gave you one. I don’t know what kind of world you come from, perhaps magic does not exist there, but I assure you, it exists here, its very real, and very dangerous. You would do well to remember that.”

Jake was not convinced. Jinker smiled. “ You can look at me with that expression all you want, it changes nothing. You have much to learn about this world, I am trying to help you.” The conversation had turned weird and depressing. Jake smiled, wanting to make things a bit more light hearted. “ You said it translates all languages. Well, what do animals have to say to you? Have you ever tried to talk to them?” Jinker rolled her eyes. “Yes, I tried that. I thought it would be really wonderful to talk to animals, I talked to a dog once, and tried talking to birds a few times.” Jake leaned forward interested. “Well?” He asked. “What did the dog have to say?” Jinker sighed. “ Not much. The dog was barking at me, and I asked the witch to translate it. I heard the dog say. “Hey , hey, hey, hey ! Over and over. The birds all said the same thing as well. Hey, Hey, hey ! Not very helpful.” Jake blinked in surprise. “ Damn, that’s messed up.” He said.  Jinker only nodded in return. She had picked up the multitool, and began playing with it. Jake could see my her expression she was enamored by it for some reason. The girl was a technology junkie for damn sure, maybe this was a angle he could work with. She might be a little crazy, or even just messing with him, but she was the only person around to talk to.

Finally he asked her a question that had been on his mind all night. “Jinker, tell the truth, would we be friends right now if I had not given you that multitool?” Jinker looked unhappy at the question, and she took a big gulp of bourbon before answering. “No Jake, we would not. I had no intention of ever becoming friends with a human, and I still do not. Truthfully, even though I’m now learning that you seem to be a nice human, at least nicer than any I have ever encountered, the only reason I am here is to learn more about your technology. If you didn’t possess these wonderful devices, I would not be here right now.” That hit him harder than it should have. Probably because he was totally alone here, and Jinker was the only other person around. He must have looked unhappy, because she started looking unhappy herself. “Look Jake, do not take it like that. You must understand where I stand in this, humans in general have always treated my people unkindly at best, and usually much worse than merely unkindly. I have good reasons for not liking humans.”

Jake shrugged. “I guess I understand. You need to remember though that I have never even heard of Gnomes before today, and I have never wronged any of you.” Jinker looked at the table for a moment before answering. “You have been nothing but kind to me, and friendly.” She admitted. “I still cannot believe you don’t want something from me though. Humans always do. You don’t know how hard it is for me to sit at this table with you. Every fiber of my being tells me to flee from you.” She had a far away look on her face as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “ The only reason I force myself to stay is because I want to learn more about your technology, I love building and inventing things, its my reason for living, and what you have to offer is more than I could even dream.” Jake sighed. “All I want is your friendship Jinker. That is all, I want nothing from you but friendship.

I tell you what though, I can tell your not comfortable with being friends, so, how about a business arrangement. Would you find that more tolerable?” She looked at him carefully. “What kind of business arrangement?” Jake smiled. ‘A simple one. You pretend to be my friend, you be civil towards me, and occasionally spend time with me, and teach me about your world, and in return, I will give you access to mine. I will give you more gifts like the multitool, and even teach you about my technology and how it works, and how to make some of it yourself. A simple business transaction. Deal?” Jake tried to smile a friendly smile. Jinker stared at him for a long time. “You only want me to pretend to be your friend, and teach you about my world? I wont have to serve you, or lay with you?” Jake sighed unhappily. “ I would rather you actually be my friend, instead of pretend to be, but yes, those are my terms. You will never have to serve me, or lay with me or do anything you don’t want to do.”

Jinker smiled. “ I agree under those terms then. When can you teach me about your technology?” Jake laughed. “You are all inventor aren’t you?” Jinker grinned and nodded. “Jake thought for a moment. “Tell you what. I saw you had been trying to build a steam engine of some kind, right?” She nodded. Jake continued. “ How about if I could teach you how to make it work?” Jinker gasp in surprise. “ You could do that? I had a idea of how to turn steam into power, but have not been able to make it work, everyone thought I was stupid for believing it would work, that’s why I came out here to be alone, so I could invent it in peace. I have been working on it for years. You could really do that?” Jake nodded. He stepped away to his laptop, and pulled up a program he had installed on it. It had a ton of basic technology on it, everything from farming practices, medical, first aid, natural remedies, how to build tools, blacksmithing, and much, much more, including how to build basic engines like steam engines.

He highlighted a diagram of a steam engine and printed a few copies off his printer for Jinker, and handed them to her. “Here you go little buddy, this should help you as it shows the basic design to create one. Im not expert, but if you have questions I might be able to help you some. Be careful though, steam can be extremely dangerous, and even cause explosions.” Jinkers eyes bulged out in surprise as she stared at the papers in her hand. She didn’t know what to ask first, even the way the machine of his had instantly printed the paper for her seemed like magic. To think a problem she had toiled over for years, was simply handed to her like this. It was incredible. If this human only wanted her to be his friend in return for his secrets, then she would do it. Jinker smiled a huge smile. “Would you be upset if I left right now to go work on this?” Jake laughed. No, go ahead. I understand.” Jinker was already closing the door behind her. Jake watched her on camera and she ran across the courtyard towards he home, the papers gripped tightly in her little hands.

Buck,
Please continue with your story.  I understand that this is a rough draft and some is out of order with the chronology of your story but I want to see it finished in book form.  Please don't give up on this story, I think it is really good!

I'm not going to stop. I'm mostly happy with the storyline so far, I just think the details need to be tweaked a bit to make it better reading. I've got a lot of summer projects keeping me busy right now, and taking up my writing time. When I'm working I like to run the story thru my head, and think of ideas for it. It works pretty well. I will finish it. / keep working on it.

I like it...looks like a fun read.  

Come  on Buck. Quit doing stuff around the farm and get back to writing.

Sorry, just busy. Logging cedar trees right now to turn into fence posts,  need about 200 of them, plus 12 twenty foot cedar poles to use for supports to build a small barn. Buddy is letting me have cedar for free, for helping him clear trees, and drag logs for firewood back to his house. I'm buying a few acres from a neighbor next spring, and just getting ready to be prepared to fence it.

I am working on the story in my head though.

I think the authors on forums like this should put a crypto wallet(or two or more) in the original post so we can send financial encouragement. Except I’d add some way to make the crypto expire to motivate production, such as “if another substantial post is uploaded within X time period, place the transaction.” Preferably a crypto with low fees. Like Verge

I love reading these stories and would happily pay a reasonable amount for them but this stringing along stuff really gets old. If I had to guess I’d say more than 9 in 10, maybe even as high as 95 or 97 out of 100 are never finished.

I love reading the stories people post, after many years I started my own on the PAW board forum.

Buck, surely you have had enough messing about on the farm by now!  Get back to the important stuff in life......................you know, writing this story down so we'uns can read it!

iv just got a lot going on right now.

making a anvil, so I can play blacksmith. ( making a forge next )

its going to look like this basically when done.

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what iv done so far.

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making a base for more weight. 1.25" steel

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where im at right now. total weight is 150lbs right now. still need to make a horn, weld it together, grind it flat on top, weld on a ar500 top plate, and paint it.

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been working on the anvil for a week, as its been too wet for the other wood cutting project.. for the past two months iv been helping my buddy clear some land by hand, and I get the cedar trees in payment. next spring / summer im buying land from my neighbor, and im going to use the cedar to fence it in, and make a small barn. so far, iv got 120 cedar posts, and approx. 18 big assed cedar tree trunks that im planning to cut into beams to use as support posts.

this so far.

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I tried to cut one free hand, but it didn't work out as well as I hoped it would, so, I bought a chainsaw guide, which attaches to the chainsaw, and runs on a 2x6 board as a guide, you can get pretty nice beams with the guide.

guide.

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heres pics from another arfcommer doing the same thing.

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that's whats going on / been going on for the last 2-3 months, plus I did a lot of fencing, helping install electric cattle fencing for a few weeks. cutting the wood beams starts Monday, and should take about 2 weeks to cut all 18 of them.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE writing. however, its something I have to do as a stand alone project. I get into it and live it, and think about nothing else. its a process I guess. I will take a occasional break, and work on other things for a few days, but the entire time im thinking about my characters, plot etc. I just cant write part time, I cant focus enough to do it.

probably in another 2 months I will get back to the book, and be writing everyday for weeks at a time. hopefully get the first book done before Christmas.

im glad you guys like my story, I will be back to work on it soon. im getting lots of ideas, and its definitely going to be a series.

Buck, I see from here and the other threads that you have your priorities all screwed up!  Here you go making anvils, timbers for buildings, putting up fences, and other "work" type stuff when you should be writing and giving us this fine story!  Now you say that you are so wrapped up in this "adult" type "work" stuff that you are going to have to make us wait for 60 whole days for moar?  Who do you think you are?  You must have delusions of being a guy with a job and a family and bills to pay or something!

In all seriousness, the anvil and the other projects are pretty cool.  Please keep those other projects updated so we can watch and keep tabs on you.  I suggest that you somehow identify it as an "ACME" product when you are done.  Just watch out for coyotes trying to steal it from you to drop on a Roadrunner!

58 days and counting!

beams are turning out great.

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Really cool projects you have going buck. Can’t wait to see more pictures.

Hey @buck19delta any idea when we could expect another chapter?