Making the Horizon by Charley Daveler

Author:Charley Daveler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy books for adults, fantasy adventure, fantasy romance, fantasy mage, fantasy god, fantasy books, fantasy comedy
Publisher: Block Press
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty Two

The God of Invention

9 MONTHS AFTER THE WORLD WAS MADE

Listening from his hole in the ground, buried in dirt, Jack could tell that the Daniel boy had not only stopped but was with someone. The dirt bath didn’t work well for sleep; Jack’s nightmares could lead him to toss and turn all of his coverage off, and there had been a couple of instances when he simply got stepped on by the monsters pursuing him.

Though some of the monsters could run in spurts, none of them could maintain the same speed as him. As long as he kept aggressively moving, he could stay ahead of them well enough. Their lack of intelligence also led to simple tricks, like self-burial, that worked wonders. It didn’t seem they had a great sense of smell.

In fact, now he realized they were overly simplified golems. Each one could only take one real command at a time—outside of self-preservation. Many were likely made in a group. He had seen things like this before, never left to their own devices for a long period of time. Their creators usually stayed close by. Legally, they were required to, and it was hard to get a license.

Sunrise appeared on the horizon. The hunter stood, shaking dirt off his cloak. The voices were close, though—muffled, but close. Jack briefly considered they’d be in the sky, or were invisible even. It wasn’t until he finally stepped onto a shifting surface that he understood the obvious; they had done the same as him.

The voices came through in choppy bits. A young girl’s words: “Right.” “Please.” “Will.” Who was she?

He walked along the top, which clanked and buckled like wood in some places, slithered like cloth in others. The voices stopped.

“Hello?” Jack asked.

At first, silence. Then, something creaked. Up ahead, dirt began to move as a trap door slid open. It clunked to the side, a circular, wood-like object, and then waited.

“Come in, Jack.”

The hole proved fairly dark, spiral stairs descending a short distance to a small, square room. He could have been suspicious, but, tired and fed up, he ignored the instinct.

Daniel stood a little shorter than Jack, his wings silhouetted in the dim. With a big gesture, the boy showed him another door. Jack bowed his head as Daniel closed the trap door.

Behind the door was a bigger room of red plush and pink lights glowing along the walls. A girl sat surrounded by pink and orange blankets, blinking at him curiously. A mostly healed scratch ran down her cheek, and another old wound above her eye. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Jack replied.

“I’m Lera.”

He bowed in greeting, then turned back to Daniel.

“This was the only way I could think to keep her safe,” Daniel explained.

Jack narrowed his eyes but entered the room. “Mind if I sit?”

“No,” Lera said.

“She was traveling with some others, but...” Daniel squinted an eye, hesitating.

“We were being punished,” Lera explained. “For not doing what the mage said. My friends asked me to go on ahead so they could talk about something.

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