The Adventures of Tam Denehy

By Tristan Biggs

As a child, Tam Denehy once met a young 'Sylvan' girl. This was during the period in history where most humans considered the sylvan as undesirable. Nonetheless the friendship that the pair established then outlived the times of strife.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tristan Biggs
• Release date: May 2, 2018

Tristan Biggs

I was born in Zimbabwe (then still Rhodesia), and was brought up in a home without television. This was why I developed a great love for books. Unlike most boys of my age, I did not go for the likes of Enid Blyton - we were not allowed to read those books - or the Hardy Boys. Instead I preferred books like the Seven Chronicles of Narnia (C.S Lewis), and of course The Hobbit from which I graduated to the Lord of the Rings. I also enjoyed listening to audio dramas on the radio. When I reached my teen years, I used to smuggle magazines like 'True Confessions' and 'Intimate Confessions', so that I could mix some spice into my reading matter.I was also an avid writer, and actually enjoyed the Creative Writing part of the school's English curriculum, something that was encouraged by my English teacher at the time. A few years ago, I decided to try and publish some of my own work. My first attempt was in printed form, and was not very successful. So instead I turned to online publishing sites, and have not looked back. My work combines my love for fantasy/Sci Fi with more spicy content.

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THE ADVENTURES OF TAM DENEHY:

Chapter 1:

Tamros - Tam for short - was born and raised in the city of Rukine, the second largest city on Nouthesia, the biggest being Hildara. The Capital was older than Tam's home city, and thus the latter was better planned for the most part. The city centre boasted broad streets and pavements. Buildings were erected with sufficient space between them to avoid the typically crowded feeling one often experiences when in the midst of a large metropolis.

But alas, as with all cities, Rukine had a darker side to it. Just East of the city centre the streets were closer together, and the condition of the streets and buildings deteriorated. This used to be the commercial centre, but gave way to the new complex about twenty years before Tam was born. Now this once bustling district had become home for the massive sex trade that was fed by the thousands, if not millions, of people visiting from the city's space port. Not long after this started, the area became extremely dangerous, with street gangs and drug-lords seemingly in power. So much so that it was deemed necessary to pull the local police out of there, and replace them with heavily armed troops, specially trained in urban warfare.

The suburbs began on the other side of the Neshar River. These were the opposite to the inner city. Closest to the river were countless high-rise apartment buildings that towered like a host of modern and futuristic statues. Many of them were over one hundred storeys high, the tallest having one hundred and thirty floors. These buildings accommodated what could be considered the lower-middle class, the lowest inhabiting the ones in the city centre.

Then came the middle class suburbs, consisting of a combination of housing estates and apartments, the latter being somewhat bigger than those previously mentioned. There were no stand-alone houses as space was at a premium. Even in the most affluent of suburbs, gardens were a luxury unless they were established on the roof.

Tam's father, Emon, worked as an archaeologist, and thus spent most of his time away from home. He didn't even have an office in the city. Instead he worked out of his auto, in which he had built a workplace, complete with computers and vid-screens. He had designed an extension in which he was able to build a large sloping table. This was used to display and inspect any of the artefacts he found on the site. The vehicle was large enough to double up as living quarters, but small enough to fit in the holding bay of a freighter. Of primary interest to him were the many ruins that existed within the systems surrounding Nouthesia.

Parma, Tam's mother, worked at the local medical facility. She was a radiologist, specialising in M R I, Sonar, and C A T scans. Although she worked shifts, at least she was at home more often than his father was. Thus Tam was mainly brought up by his mother. Not that he minded though, because whenever his dad was home, he would make sure that he spent most of his time with his son. The best times were when Emon would take Tam with him on one of his field-trips. Parma could not accompany them as much as she would have liked to, because she was more often than not unable to take leave at those times.

By and large, Nouthesia was a rich and prosperous member of the I P C, or Interplanetary Charter, a loose union of some two hundred star systems in the Gita Quadrant of the Galaxy. But it was certainly no Eldorado. It was originally a rich, fertile planet, with huge forests covering most of the single continent, that was the only land mass apart from a number of islands, some the size of a province while others were no bigger than a small village. The planet had been populated by members of the Charter only eight hundred years ago. The predominantly human population soon built villages, towns, and eventually cities. These inevitably became megalopolises that ended up covering most of the southern and eastern parts of the Pangea - or super-continent.

Alas, this brought them into direct conflict with the original inhabitants of Nouthesia, the folk known as the Sylvan. The resulting discord soon became all-out war, one which the indigenous folk had little chance of winning. Their weapons were primitive compared to the energy based arsenal that the visitors possessed. The Sylvan's only advantages were that they were fighting for their own territory, and a superior knowledge of the land for which they fought.

As was to be expected, the Sylvan finally were forced to surrender. In the so-called 'Treaty' that followed, these once proud and noble people were rounded up and relocated in camps. These were situated in what was left of the great woodlands, the pine forests in the North, and the dense jungles of the West. The latter was only a remnant by that time, whereas the former, although covering a much larger area, were barely fit to support any form of permanent population because of their close proximity to the planet's North Pole. This was a vast, arid plate of ice, inhabited only by large bears, seals, and other creatures that had adapted to those harsh environments. It was one such camp that eventually became the so-called Capital of the Sylvan. It was called Erumye.

Where the Sylvan had been forced to settle in the jungle, there were mainly swamps. These had become polluted to the point that the water in them was hardly capable of sustaining any lifeforms in the foetid, stinking quagmires. Nonetheless, using what little technology they were left with, the Sylvan were able to survive. Generally, however, the settlements in these areas were little more than slums or reservations.

But there is an old Sylvan proverb that says: 'Milme istya nae vautye'. This roughly translates as: "Greed knows not constraint'. Not even fifty years after forcing the Sylvan into the camps, it was discovered that many of the areas to which they had been sent were rich in minerals, and so they began to demand that the Sylvan leave.

When these demands were met with resistance, the humans began to burn down the villages that the Sylvan had struggled to establish and maintain. They captured young she-elves and raped them, so that if they became pregnant as a result of the abuse, they would bear half-elves. The males that were captured were tortured until their bodies gave out. The aim of this was to strike terror into the Sylvan, and force them to leave. And still the burning, the abductions, and the abuse continued. Those who dared to stand against these brutal acts were soon found dead, their bodies left in the forest to rot. Those that could work were sent to labour camps, where they became slaves. Soon slave markets were established in which the Sylvan would be sold to the highest bidder.

Some of them were sent to so-called medical facilities, where they were subject to brutal scientific experiments. To begin with, most of these were nothing but sadistic torture, designed to cause excruciating pain. The she-elves were impregnated with human sperm, more often than not that of the scientists themselves, after which experiments were conducted to see whether they could speed up the gestation period, while reducing the possibility of the she-elf's body rejecting the human semen. Later there were even attempts at replacing the male elves' sperm with that which was genetically identical to that of humans. The idea was that, instead of them fathering elven offspring, they would produce human children.

Often these experiments would cause the victims' death, and more often than not this was long and lingering. The 'Semen Replacement Tests' resulted in offspring that was so badly deformed that many of them did not survive being born. Most of them were naturally aborted by the mother ,while the rest perished within the first month afterwards. These births caused the death of the mother. Many of those that did not die committed suicide upon seeing what they had given birth to.

And then a discovery was made that would change the fate of the Sylvan, at last for the better: In the far North of the continent, there was a huge range of mountains that were virtually inaccessible for all but the most fleet-footed. Because the only route was through a massive field of ice boulders, the only way to get anywhere near the range was by hover-car, and even that was perilous because of the lack of landing sites.

Despite the immense challenge, a human explorer by the name of Alexander Tremayne led an expedition to these mountains, which was why they became known as the 'Alexander Range'. When he was later asked why he'd embarked on so perilous a challenge, his reply was that there were so few places left on the planet that had not yet been explored, that he could not pass up the opportunity of investigating one of them. While he was exploring, a violent storm blew up, and forced the party to find shelter. This they did in a spacious cave. As the team waited for the squall outside to abate, Tremayne and a few other decided to explore the cavern. Soon they discovered that this was only an entrance to what appeared to be an extensive system, the size of which they could but estimate.

Alexander Tremayne was very sympathetic to the plight of the Sylvan. When he decided to explore the caves further, he selected a new team, in which all but one of its members were Sylvan. He told no-one about his find, and forced the rest of the original group to take a vow of secrecy concerning the cavern system.

The second expedition took seven and a half days, and even then Tremayne and his team were convinced that they had only just begun, and that the cavern system was even bigger than the explorer had initially thought. On the fourth day of the journey, they heard the roar of rushing water. It seemed to come from a long way off, but it was difficult to be certain because it echoed from all directions. This was an indication that the cavern in which they now stood was gigantic. Later it was discovered just how huge it was when the Sylvan took refuge, and eventually were able to build a small city within it. The roaring that they could hear came from two subterranean rivers that met just beyond the boundaries of the city, and cascaded over a massive waterfall, plummeting some eight hundred metres into what seemed to be the very bowels of the planet. Alexander Tremayne and his party returned from their expedition, and swore not to tell anyone about what they had discovered. The Sylvan reported back to their own people about what had been found.

Tremayne was not the only human that supported the Sylvan's cause, and soon technology was made available to them in secret, that allowed them not only to survive in their new city, but to thrive. This was despite the fact that they knew that this would only be transitional, and that soon they would have to make plans to find a new home, even if it meant leaving the planet upon which they had dwelt since time immemorial. Eventually, in huge workshops hidden away in what became a giant metropolis, the Sylvan were able to build mother-ships, and fighters to protect them from possible attack.

The new city was still in its early stage of construction, and the Sylvan remnant was scattered in small concealed shanties. These were squalid and unhygienic to begin with, but conditions began to improve, mainly thanks to certain groups that put pressure on local authorities to upgrade services and facilities. Some of these villages, if one could call them that, were even built on the outskirts of the ultra-modern human cities. Because of strict laws and restrictions, any form of trade or commerce between the two was forbidden, something that many within these cities found to be abhorrent, and ignored completely. Nonetheless, it was said that entering these settlements was like going back in time.

In one of these, far from any of the human cities, there lived a young she-elf by the name of Hellia. She had recently been widowed as her husband was a member of the resistance, and had been captured by human authorities. When they finally found his body, left in an abandoned shed, his captors had removed his genitals, and left him to bleed to death.

The autopsy report stated that, prior to his death, Helia's husband, whose name was Dreshure, had been forced to ejaculate repeatedly, and had been in the process of cumming when his captors mutilated him.

It was common knowledge that certain groups of human extremists had invented machines, similar to those used in dairies for milking cows. The difference was that these were designed to stimulate a male to the point that he climaxed. The semen was then collected in a jar placed at the top of a tube attached to a catheter. The latter was inserted into the urethra, keeping it open, while the machine extracted the semen as soon as it came out. Some used strong aphrodisiacs in order to make the victim cum more than once. It was this that clued the investigators about the events before Dreshure's death.

His abdominal muscles and upper thighs seemed to be tensed, as though they had contracted just before he died. This is an involuntary reaction that occurs as the sperm is thrust out of the male's penis. Under normal circumstances, it assures that the semen is propelled deep into the female's uterus. These contractions are very intense, but usually the male is able to rest just afterwards, thus relieving the stress on his body.

It was clear from the bruises on his upper thighs and midriff, that this had happened many times, so much so that some of his muscles had eventually ruptured. It appeared that the had removed the so-called 'Milking Machine' at the last second as there were traces of semen in the blood, that poured out of him when his tormentors removed his penis. Some of it had coagulated in the hairs on his upper thighs. This they thought was the residue that remained when they castrated him. His anus had been stretched open, indicating that they had used some form of tube to both stimulate his prostate, and to inject the drug that prevented him from relaxing.

There were bruises on his lower arms and ankles from the restraints that held him while he was being tortured. The expression on his face, one of extreme agony and terror, seemed to have been frozen in place. It was all so macabre that some of the people involved in the investigation could not bear to look at his mutilated corpse.

Those that found him did not tell his wife how he died, only that he had gone down fighting.

But at least he had not left her alone. Three months after her husband's death, Hellia bore a daughter. She named her Talia, meaning 'Princess', and raised her the best she could with the help of the small community in which she lived. She grew up to be strong and independent, but with a gentle side of her. She lived up to her name.

Tam's father was investigating a site near one of the first Sylvan villages that had been destroyed. In fact, it was because of the devastation that the site was discovered, or else it may have remained buried under the floor of one of the houses. Over time, the floor collapsed, revealing a shallow pit underneath it, almost like an ancient cellar. But this was no basement. It was a burial site, and the remains that were unearthed changed the perceptions of many academics, especially those whose loyalty tended towards the Sylvan. Although there could be no disputing the fact that the Sylvan had arrived on Nouthesia before the humans, some questioned the length of time between the so-called arrival of the Sylvan and the planet's colonisation by the humans.

This find proved that the Sylvan had not arrived on this planet at all. In fact they had evolved there in the same way as Homo sapiens had on the planet Earth. Many speculators had put forward the theory that there had been a humanoid species on the planet before the Sylvan, but that these beings had been extinct for millennia. This was an attempt to explain the numerous ruins that dated back to before the time when these same theorists claimed the Sylvan had arrived. Of course, no attempt was made to explain just how they were able to land on Nouthesia without ships or space-faring technology.

The evidence collected at the dig almost proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Sylvan were indeed the rightful inhabitants of Nouthesia. The burial site contained four adults, one adolescent, and one child of about three years of age. The Sylvan on Nouthesia were characteristically short of stature, very seldom growing to above one metre tall. Unlike those suffering from normal dwarfism, however, their bodies were in perfect proportion. The remains of one of the humanoids found in the graves was complete enough to prove, that like their modern successors, these beings were also extremely short, being just less than a metre in height. Compared to hominids of the same evolutionary scale, these were also well proportioned. When the finds were dated, they showed that they were approximately two and a half million years old.

Not only that, but when they took DNA samples from the remains, they found that they were identical to that of the Sylvan, proving even further that these were their ancestors, and thus supporting the claim that Nouthesia rightfully belonged to the Sylvan.

One school holidays, Tam's father had brought him along to the archaeological site. Fossils and that kind of thing were not really of any interest to Tam, but the opportunity to explore the surrounding bush did appeal to him. His dad had told him not to wonder too far away, and instructed him to remain in sight of the ruined village so that he did not get lost.

It was on one of these adventures that he met someone who would change his life from that day onwards. Tam had found a path that seemed to lead to a small river. It was not far from the village, although he could no longer see it. But he reckoned, that if he followed the trail back, he would easily find his way from there. As he was following the path, he spotted something glistening off to one side and went to investigate. He found that it was a tiny pendant in the shape of a leaf. The veins seemed to be made of silver, while the blade was crafted out of mother-of-pearl. He picked it up, put it in his pocket, and then continued down the path.

He hadn't gone very far, when he saw a young child, he reckoned about the same age as he was. She was crying as she looked this way and that, as if she was searching for something. He took a step closer, and stopped.

Heya. He called out. The girl looked up, and was about to try and run away, when he said: Don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you.

She stopped, turned round, and came towards him cautiously. Her eyes watched his every move, as though she would run off again if he did anything to threaten her. Tam noticed that there was something different about the stranger, but at the moment he could not quite work out what it was. He reached into his pocket, slowly so that he did not startle her, and produced the pendant. The girl's eyes sparkled, and she took it from him, putting it around her neck.

She smiled at him at last, saying: Amin anonly illye.

Tam shook his head, and responded: I'm sorry. I don't understand you.

The other child frowned a little. Then she nodded, and said in