Dreamworlds 11: Silver and Clans

By Victory Low

The Copper Age was where things were supposed to go right. They were supposed to finally get down to business as they should have. They were supposed to at last be able to Adventure in Adventura the way folks their age enjoyed it.

"Supposed to" just never works out. Not for them in Adventura. Not for Gracie in Nakama. It just doesn't.

Colin keeps his secret and his secret keeps him
Alicia walks with the lions
Katrin tries to chase a call while not letting go of her people
Jonah tries to reclaim the past but the past has left him behind

Gracie learns that Nakama World
Is not what it was supposed to be
And Larry...
Larry would never be the same again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victory Low
• Release date: Jan 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311482570

Victory Low

Loves martial arts, performing arts, anime, manga, sci-fi, fantasy, philosophy and theology.Really likes to think ahead.Doesn't believe in 'dumbing things down for kids'.Mixed Chinese and based in Malaysia, a land of many cultures and all that comes with multi-racial communities.Currently serving as Vice Principal in SCM, ordained Pastor of LRCM with a Master's in Ministry.

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Dreamworlds 11

Silver and Clans

Silver and Clans

Dreamworlds 11

Victory Low

Copyright 2015 by Victory Low

KDP/Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

(Tap links below for shortcut to chapter, tap chapter headers to return here)

Prologue

Phase 157: Larry

Phase 158: Copper Age

Phase 159: Copper Ore

Phase 160: Colin

Phase 161: Train of thoughts

Phase 162: Gracie and Nakama World

Phase 163: Lamico Revisited

Phase 164: South Port

Phase 165: Colin’s Party

Phase 166: Younger Generations

Phase 167: The Last Tribe

Epilogue

Prologue

They are coming.

A man armored in gray scale mail lined with green approached the Lady of Light upon the balcony of Haven’s Cathedral. Dents and tears in the armor bore mute testimony that he’d been in a rough patch recently.

She turned to him in half-disbelief. That’s not possible. It’s too early! We’ve barely even gotten here.

Something must have changed the rules. This world... it’s acting differently than it should. He said, shifting uncomfortably, his gaze straying to a certain armor shop he favored to fix his armor. Some of those dents looked quite deep.

"But there’s no time! she protested. People need time! Most of them are still back in the Bronze Age! To have the Horde come at us this soon, this suddenly... we need more time!"

I thought that’s why we’re here early. He grunted. To prepare the Iron Age for those who must face its horrors. Maybe it’s backfired. Maybe our coming here is what triggered the Horde’s advance.

"That’s not possible. In every cycle, they’ve always started small and it always took them time to grow big enough to pose a threat. We came here early enough that we should be able to take down at least one or two Warchiefs before they become overwhelmingly powerful. We came here early to nip threats in the bud before they become threats. We came here to give everyone else more time. It worked last Cycle. She fumed. But this? How did the Horde grow this big, this strong, this fast? It shouldn’t be possible! Even here, the rules should..."

The rules seem to have gotten messed up. He admitted. It’s not just the Horde. Strange things are happening here, my lady. Very strange things. Three Cycles I’ve been here and never have I seen the likes.

What is happening? She whispered. Why? What has changed?

I wish I knew, my lady. I wish I knew.

Phase 157: Larry

For Dreamworlds, dawn rose as night fell on Hiranor, two universes cycling, one going into rest, the other coming to life. When the sun in the waking world set over the Imperial City and the home of the Emperor greeted the night, it rose upon every World on the Dreamworlds Psionic Network as the citizens of the Empire of Hiranor wore Dreamworlds Headsets to sleep and entered the virtual realm.

It was the same in reverse; the sun would ‘set’ in Dreamworlds at the time when it rose in the Imperial City and Dreamers awoke.

Four nights ago, Larry began to Dream on Adventura Dreamworld. This new World was nothing like the one he’d left behind, yet was very similar. Entering it was similar enough. The place he stepped into was hot and damp, with big creatures all around, but that wasn’t all that different.

What was different, to begin with, was the people there were not actually people. At least, Larry didn’t think they were. They looked like people and talked like people, but they didn’t seem to know anything about anything other than their own problems in the Stone Age. They wore furs, and ran around trying to salvage fish and dinosaurs were eating their food and them. And Larry too, when he tried to help them.

But he tried anyway. They looked so hungry, so desperate… so sad. He just wanted to help them, so he kept trying, even when he kept getting eaten by dinosaurs and Respawning way too many times.

Eventually his failure destroyed them. After dying so many times, Adventura itself seemed to give up on Larry and dumped him in the place he most wanted to be; by his sister’s side.

See, this was because Alicia was smart. She, too, had started out among these strange Adventura non-people, but she managed to save hers where his had gotten eaten over and over again. She had her tribe all nicely huddled up in a Safe Cave. Jonah and Rita too, had started anew at Adventura at the same time, and they too, couldn’t manage their tribes, but under Alicia’s leadership, the three of them managed to keep the Shoehill Tribe safe enough as they figured out how to move forward in their new World.

That was when Larry met Umi.

Umi was a smart girl, like Alicia. She always seemed to know what to do and she knew a lot more than they did about Dreamworld Adventura. She had this really cute smile when she tilted her head to one side, like a little bird Larry once saw in a children’s cartoon. She usually had a sharp look to that rounded face of hers, like a librarian about to scold you for being noisy, and her skin was rather fair which made her look even more like a librarian, but she could swing a hammer hard enough to pound metal into whatever shape she wanted.

Umi opened the world for Larry.

It was she who showed him how to build his own strength. She showed him that Adventura was a World that would not just allow you but help you to grow as you wanted, become whatever you wanted, if you just tried hard enough and long enough.

That feeling of the hammer in his hand striking metal. The weight of the blows, the shock of the impact. And then that feeling, that awesome feeling, as what was so very hard the first time slowly, oh-so-slowly started to become easier, more familiar, until it became something he could manage, that he could control as he himself became stronger.

Larry would never forget the moment when the hammer, once so hard to handle it almost flew out of his hands, finally scored a perfect, dead-on smithing strike on that little bar of metal Umi gave him for practice.

Yes, she gave it to him. She was generous that way. She didn’t charge him anything, never once asked him to pay for her teaching, never even looked at him like he was some sort of beggar that was bothering her. She always smiled at him as if she was happy that he was there, getting in her way at the forge, wasting her time to teach him when she herself could be leveling up and growing stronger the way she gave him time to.

That bar of metal… he kept it still. It was just copper, soft, red copper, and at first it was little more than a mishapen lump, but as he kept practicing, hammering and hammering and hammering, his Strength grew, and his Hammer skills grew, and his Smithing skills grew until he could shape that lump into either a flat disc, or a copper knife blade.

Umi had thought a knife blade would be more useful, easier to sell whenever he wanted, especially since Rita and Jonah seemed fond of copper knives. But no. He’d use it for protection, he’d told Umi, like armor. Larry flattened it out into a disc, and then had it tied into the inside of his fur clothes, right over his heart. He did not tell her that he just wanted to put it there. It was his very first piece, and that meant something to him.

The next thing Umi gave him was freedom. She gave him the space, and the time, and allowed him the full range of her Copper Age smithing tools to test and experiment and try out whatever Crafting recipe she had on hand. She never said he couldn’t try this or that item when he wanted, no matter how badly he failed at the last one, she never got mad, never ever scolded him for wasting her time or her metal. She always had a good idea about what he could do, or how he could do it, but never once stopped him from trying something different. She was always kind, always encouraging.

Larry secretly thought she liked him.

That wasn’t all. After he and the others had gone to hunt stuff for money, she sold them the weapons they needed to gain power. At discount rates.

But of course, Larry wouldn’t take up anything else but the hammer. Smithing had become something important to him. It was how Umi taught him to become stronger in this world. It was how she taught him to build what he wanted, both in metal and in himself. It was how she earned money in this strange, new world, and he could too. Smithing was what they shared… and smithing used a hammer. Larry wouldn’t take anything else.

The one she gave Larry was unique. It wasn’t like the other hammers she sold in her shop. Some of those little more than heavy heads tied down onto sticks. Others were heads with holes that had wooden handles fastened inside. But the hammer she sold Larry… that was different.

Larry’s hammer was a single piece. Head and handle… all of it was copper, but the handle had wood fastened around it. It was glued and it was tied… but looking closer at it, at how perfectly it fitted, Larry suspected that the metal had cooled inside the wood. How that happened without the wood burning was a mystery. He had no idea what kind of wood she used, but it felt solid, and afforded a good grip in his hands.

This wasn’t one of the ‘weapons’ she sold on her shelves. Larry knew it because he couldn’t help but recognize it. The hammer Umi ‘sold’ him was hers. It was the one she used to make everything else in her shop, the one she lent him to experiment on all those learning pieces, the one he used to hammer out the disc that protected his heart. Her hammer. His hammer.

Theirs.

Larry kept crafting as they progressed through the Stone Age. After earning more money and buying more tools, he’d tried his hand on other sorts of item creation. Baskets for fruit collection. Backpacks made of vine ‘nets’. Wood carving and carpentry. It was he who built the Fishbone Spears that Jonah designed for the Shoehill tribe’s defense. It was he who personally designed and built the very hand-carts that the Shoehill Tribe took up as they finally began the trip from the Stone Age to the Copper Age.

It was the happiest time of his life. They went through a lot that night, they fought hard and they got hard-bitten, and Larry himself got killed plenty of times by ferocious dinosaurs, but he had been happy. He had his sister. He had his friends. He had his hammer, and his disc over his heart. He had built so many things for his tribe with his own hands, with his own tools, with his own time, with his own skills. He had been the leader of the tribe after Jonah, Colin and Alicia had gotten separated from them. He had led them all through space and time and he had been at the front of the tribe when finally, they reached an entirely new Age. He had brought his people through the hardest of times, with his new friends, with his new strength, and with his new skills. He had been proud.

But that all changed now.

***

Larry woke up and blinked his eyes a few times before remembering where exactly he was. This weird room wasn’t his. This room was Colin’s. That brown wooden desk. That lampstand. The white cupboard. All of it was unfamiliar. All of it was Colin’s.

Until today, for the past few nights, Larry and Jonah had been roughing it out with Colin, all three of them sharing the room while their dads were off together somewhere. But now Colin’s father had returned and Jonah’s and Larry’s dads were going home. That meant it was time to say goodbye.

Larry washed up, took a quick sonic shower (Colin’s bathroom had that function even though they could afford water, Larry didn’t want to waste it), then packed the last of his things, being careful not to forget his mouthbrush. It had been odd staying here for as long as he did, Larry reflected. Even going to the same school as Colin felt weird although he had been able to download all his study work and continue where he left off. Just having a different place made everything... strange.

But it was ending, wasn’t it? Larry was going back to his usual life, back with dad to their house and Alicia was going back with mom to theirs...

He stopped. Right in the middle of heading down for breakfast, Larry stopped. He usually didn’t stop on the way to food. Food was too important for that. Usually.

But he stopped now.

My sister’s going back to my mom’s house. I’m going back with dad. We won’t be seeing each other every day any more. It’s going to be just the weekends all over again.

Larry stood still. His feet did not move. Could not move. Would not move.

He did not want to leave. He did not want his sister to leave. He didn’t want to go back. Back to the way things were. As strange as all this was... Larry wanted to stay. He wanted things to go on like this.

Larry, move, you’re blocking the way. Jonah said crossly behind him.

Larry shuffled aside, letting Jonah stomp past. Jonah was already carrying his bags down. He looked like he wanted to get out of here as fast as he could.

But Larry...

Larry stood still, on the stairway, and did not move for a long, long time.

***

He stood still and silent later that day as dad drove the car up. Dad’s car was a sleek Turboman Type-E Grav-car capable of Fourth Tier hovering. Dad liked to drive it fast, but Alicia hated it when he did that on their weekend outings, so Larry didn’t like it either.

Time to go. Say goodbye, Larry. Dad told him.

Larry stood still. He said nothing. He did not move.

Goodbye, Larry. I’ll see you again tonight. Alicia whispered, hugging him fiercely. His sister sounded like she wanted to cry, but of course she wouldn’t. She would always put on a brave face. Always.

Come on Jonah! Uncle Blake called his own son. Let’s get a move on while those wusses play their soap opera!

Larry didn’t know what a soap opera was, but Jonah seemed to think it very funny. He was laughing as he ran to his dad’s car and they soared up above the driveway to take an airlane toward their house.

But Jonah was the only one laughing. Nobody else was laughing. Especially not Larry.

He glanced around instead, looking for a certain car. Is mom... coming?

Want to say hello to her? Dad queried. Sorry, champ. Not today.

Larry. Alicia said softly. Mom is still in the hospital. I’m not going home today. I’m going to stay here with the Rivers a while more.

Come with us! Larry raised his head at once. It’s okay, right dad? Right?

Dad froze. He just stood there staring at Larry.

May I? Alicia perked up too.

But... Dad trailed off. I’m so sorry, kids, I wish she could, but...

Custody. Alicia said the word as though it tasted bitter.

Larry wasn’t sure what that meant either, but he understood well enough. Alicia could not come with them.

Then... can I stay? Larry asked at last. I won’t cause trouble.