Chapter 1: The Swan Ship

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. Before I tell you any of this, there is something that you must understand. People are born, they grow up, they laugh, they cry, they live, and then they die. It may seem sad, it may seem cruel, but it’s just the way things are.

We can’t change any of it any more than we can change the stars, but there are things in our lives that we can change. And I think that is the real reason that I’m telling you this story. This has happened before, and it will happen again. Now that I have your attention, let’s begin.

Five standard years ago. Shak: fifth planet of the Shakarass star system, colony world of the Elven race, outskirts of Tarrus Imperial territory. Toramirese: isolated settlement in the forest region of the planet. Though mostly populated by Elves, many off-worlders dwell in peace alongside the Elven locals here.

“Bring that back, you blasphemous little spawn,” crooned Alexander, one of the Elven elders of Toramirese colony.

Nine-year-old Ryan Uruks laughed mischievously and kept running as fast as his legs could carry him as he munched on the apple that he’d pinched from old Alexander’s tree. The Elves had a divine respect for all plants, even the ones they ate, so to say that the Elf was a little miffed would’ve been an understatement.

However, Ryan’s revelry came to an end as he ran into his father seconds later. After a good hide-tanning, Ryan was forced to return the apple and apologize.

“I apologize for my son, Mr. Alexander,” said Ryan’s father, bowing his head and putting a finger to his forehead, the Elven sign of respect. “He’s a brick-head like me, so he comes up with stupid ideas to release all his pent-up energy.”

Old Alexander was not a full-blooded Elf, but a descendant from a partial human line, thus, his human name. Although his family practiced the traditions of the Elven race, they still possessed a somewhat aggressive disposition from their human ancestry. The Elven/human descendant had the mismatched features of a balding head with a pristine, wrinkle-free face that all Elves possessed. Tufts of hair poked out from his long, pointed ears, and he wore a green tunic and trousers with brown autumn leaves sewn into the fabric. Alexander still scowled down at Ryan through his spectacles, but his eyes soon softened, and he said, “As long as he learns to respect the laws of nature, in time, even he could amount to something someday.”

“Respect the laws of nature,” mimicked Ryan under his breath.

Being an elderly Elf, Alexander couldn’t hear Ryan, but Richard sure could. Ryan contained a squeal of discomfort as his father stepped on his toe.

“I’m sure he will,” said Richard cheerfully while crushing his son’s toe.

As Alexander walked away, Richard turned to his son with a gentle smile and patted him on the head soothingly. Ryan made a pouting face as his father leaned down and stared right at him. Truthfully, Ryan didn’t mind the spanking that much, he just felt happy that his dad took notice of him.

“Not one tear,” said Richard, shaking his head. “Nine years old, and already a tough guy.”

“Please,” said Ryan decisively. “Like I’d cry over something like this. Only girls cry from a spanking.”

Richard chuckled. “Well, your mother might have something to say about that, but I have to ask you something first. You know why I had to spank you, right?”

Ryan shrugged. “Because I was being a pain, and I knew it.”

“That’s about the gist of it,” said Richard, nodding, regarding Ryan with a loving smile. “But you know that I still love you, right? Just because I tan your hide, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It just means that I want you to grow up right.”

“I know, dad,” said Ryan as he leaned in and gave his father a hug.

Richard held his son for a few tender moments, exhaling contently. Then, picking Ryan up and holding him by his shoulders out in front of him, he said, “If you finish your homework for once, maybe we can do something fun tonight.”

“Dad, I’m homeschooled! All my schoolwork is homework. Mom wouldn’t let me see the light of day if she could help it!”

Richard snapped his fingers, ignoring Ryan’s complaints. “I know! Why don’t we go hunting in Pinnfar Woods tonight? We can catch something good for supper.”

“That’s okay,” said Ryan, giggling as he tried to kick out of his father’s grip. “I can go by myself. You’d just scare the game off.”

“Oh, really,” said Richard, grinning as he wrestled Ryan to the ground.

They had many wrestling matches like this, and Ryan could never beat his father, though that never stopped him from trying. As Ryan rolled around in the dirt with his much larger father, he tried to put his old man in a headlock, but Richard wiggled out his son’s grip and spun him around in a flash. Ryan ended up on his back with his father sitting on his chest.

“I swear I’ll beat you one of these days, old man!”

“Maybe one day, runt, when I’m dead,” said Richard cheerfully as he flicked Ryan on his nose. Richard then brought Ryan to his feet with a strong pull, hoisting him into a piggyback ride. “We better get going for lunch. Mom will have a hernia if we’re late.”

“Dad,” said Ryan, flushing. “I’m getting too old for piggyback rides.”

“But I’m not,” replied Richard as he set off into a run.

Ryan’s father was taller and more muscular than any other human alive; this only frustrated Ryan with him being so short. His father was not completely human, but half Saurian, which made Ryan part Saurian as well. Saurians were sometimes known as Wingless Dragons on account that they had no wings. Some even called them Earth Dragons as they were much more heavily built than their winged cousins. Despite being part alien, Ryan’s father was still hauntingly handsome in a strange, otherworldly way that most humans found intimidating. He had an angular jaw and glistening white teeth that somewhat resembled fangs.

Bright golden scales covered Richard’s whole body, sparkling in the sunlight. He had raven-colored hair and blood-red eyes which Ryan had inherited. When Ryan looked into his father’s fierce eyes, a deep feeling of security and contentment washed over him. Richard wore brown trousers, black leather boots, and a simple white t-shirt for work, showing off his massive golden biceps. His father’s claws were usually retracted so that he could appear normal, but when he got angry they would grow to reveal their lethal potential.

Ryan had started to get scales as well, but they weren’t nearly as prominent as his father’s. For the most part, Ryan appeared human, which made Richard happy because he would always tell Ryan how people could sometimes be cruel to those who were different. Ryan still couldn’t understand why people sometimes treated others differently based on what they looked like, but he certainly knew that it must be true because his dad had said it.

Though most of the residents of Toramirese Colony treated him and his family kindly, some paid him no heed, and even other humans gave him a wide berth from time to time. But Ryan didn’t mind too much, because he still had friends he could play with, especially Henry. The two rogues went on the most astounding made-up adventures together, from saving the Emperor’s daughter, to slaying the Dark Dragon Lords themselves. Though their adventures were just pretend, they got pretty elaborate sometimes, and Henry would always get super into his role. The guy should think about being an actor.

Back in the present, Ryan still rode on his father’s shoulders. Richard ran faster than any man could ever hope to match, so a piggyback ride from him felt like riding a horse as Ryan soared through the colony. Despite technically still being in pouting mode, Ryan couldn’t help but admire the beauty around him as his father carried him effortlessly across the fields. He never did fit in much with the other children, but at least he felt right at home on the beautiful forest world of Shak. It all just seemed right to him somehow, from the mountain-tall trees to the beautiful meadows that he saw on the few places where trees weren’t in abundance. The most fabulous part of living in Toramirese Colony had to be the views. All around Ryan, thick vegetation covered the landscape, as well as exotic plants of every shape, size, and color of the rainbow.

Toramirese Colony was an isolated settlement surrounded by gargantuan trees on all sides. Ryan had even heard his parents tell him that the colony couldn’t even be seen from the sky because the enormous trees covered the colony like a giant umbrella. Despite that, the colony still got plenty of sunshine as the Elves had erected mirrors into the trees to refract the sun’s rays into the village, allowing them to grow their crops.

As Ryan rode on his father’s shoulders, he could see evidence of the Elves’ Caesar Salad lifestyle, from the vast gardens of squash, apples, and other fruits and vegetables of various shapes and sizes. Some crops grew in great spirals, with purple and blue vines. Elves were vegetarians, and dad told Ryan that the word ‘vegetarian’ meant that they only ate plants.

I can’t understand why they’d do that to themselves, thought Ryan idly to himself. Not eating meat sounds like torture! Plus, how can they worship plants and eat them at the same time? It doesn’t make sense!

Ryan didn’t know why Elves loved veggies so much since plants were so nasty and meat was just about the best invention since holovids. Ryan’s father once worked as an archeologist, collecting all these old recordings of television shows and movies from Ancient Earth. They’d watch a new show every night before bed on the holovid, though Ryan’s mom wouldn’t let him see the scary ones.

As for what happened with Alexander, that was pretty typical for Ryan’s days. Being part of one of the few human families living in the colony, but more importantly, being the son of a half-breed, Ryan didn’t really mesh well with many people in the village. His only real companions were his parents and Henry, but his father usually worked late hours in the fields to provide for the family. Although, Richard thankfully made time to come back for lunch.

Ryan’s mother tutored him from home, but he still got plenty of playtime in the afternoon. To entertain himself and to provide the people of Toramirese colony with some much-needed entertainment, Ryan and his sidekick, Henry, had amassed quite the reputation as pranksters. Their repertoire of pranks included delightful gimmicks such as setting loose a swarm of butterbarts during a picnic, to climbing the statue of the colony’s founder and giving him a painted mustache. They never did anything really harmful, just a few ‘diversions’, as Ryan liked to call them, to keep the people’s minds off their troubles.

To the younger Elven children, who had never even heard of mischief-making until Ryan came along, they were legends. However, even if he did perform a few pranks, Ryan didn’t know why everyone made such a huge deal of it. Most of the time, he really wasn’t doing anything wrong, but a lot of people gave him a disapproving scowl. Even the other human residents looked at him disapprovingly, or especially them in some cases.

Honestly, it seemed like everyone had a radar attached to their heads that went off every time Ryan so much as picked his nose. Which never happens without very good reason, declares Ryan to himself. Oh, well! Things aren’t all that bad. I have mom and dad. They are enough. Oh, and Henry too!

Richard reduced his speed, and deftly lowered Ryan to the ground. Together, they slowly ascended the tree house which served as their home for a much-anticipated dinner from Ryan’s mother. As Ryan began the familiar climb up the spiral ramp that served as a staircase to his house that waited in the branches, he looked up to the distant landing platform that towered high above the colony and wondered if he would ever get the chance to explore the universe like his father had.

As soon as Ryan walked through the door to his home, a sweet smell overwhelmed his senses, a sensation that could only be described as his mom’s famous grim jelly pies. Now, normally anything with the word ‘grim’ in it could only be construed as something horrible, but that wasn’t the case with mom’s special grim jelly pies, made from grim berries that only grew deep inside Pinnfar Woods. Ryan knew that because he had been on frequent trips to the woods with his mother to help gather the elusive fruit.

His father also took him on trips through the woods so that they could catch the animals that provided meat, or so his father had told him. Ryan never knew exactly how the animals they caught were turned into meat, and when he asked, his dad would look at him with that grown-up look of his and say, “I’ll tell you when you’re older, son.”

It was like his dad kept this deep, dark secret about the origins of meat, and it drove Ryan bananas just trying to figure out what that secret might be. After his father’s usual dodge of the question concerning meat, he would go into his shed, or his man-cave as he liked to call it, and wouldn’t come out for hours. When he did, he’d have buckets of fresh meat ready to be cooked and eaten. By the time he finally came out, Ryan’s curiosity would dissolve into ravenous hunger, and he’d forget to ask where meat came from.

But even meat couldn’t compare to the all-consuming aroma of his mother’s grim jelly pie. Mom’s pies were so good that she even managed to sell some to the Elves, who hoarded the pies greedily, sometimes getting into fights while in line. Grim jelly pies were considered a delicacy, but the Elves rarely had any because they were afraid to go too deep into the woods. Ryan often wondered why they were afraid to go into the woods when they lived on a tree-covered planet.

Joining them for dinner was the young half-Elf named Henry, Ryan’s notorious partner in crime, and one of the few Elves in the village that his family actually liked.

A bit of history is needed to understand Ryan’s relationship with Henry. Elves lived a very simplistic lifestyle. Despite the fact that they joined the Tarrus Empire, which is predominately human, the Elves were mostly left to tend to themselves, which suited them just fine. More than any other race, Elves were attuned with nature and the forces of the universe, which is one of the reasons that they were considered trusted confidants of the Elementals. Regular Elf men tended to be a little shorter than human males; not as short as Dwarves, but still a few inches shorter than the average-sized man. However, the High Elves tended to be taller than humans with longer ears as well. Ryan had only seen a handful of High Elves visiting the colony. Being Elves, they all had cool, pointy ears that Ryan found extremely fascinating, to his great misfortune one afternoon.

There are very few things in the universe that can anger an Elf to violence, and messing with an Elf’s pointy ears - which Ryan found out later was a testament to their manhood - is one of those things. Even more unfortunate is the fact that all Elves practice a special martial art to keep their bodies toned. That was how Ryan met Henry Junice.

Henry, part-human on his mother’s side, was quite belligerent for an Elf child. Henry had blond hair, blue eyes, and tanned, copper skin – an unusual shade for most Elves. Being a tad shorter than many of his peers, who are already short to begin with, didn’t help his temper on the day of their meeting. Ryan thought it would be funny to stick cotton balls on the tips of Henry’s pointy ears while he slept on a bench, and then he called him ‘poodle boy’ after he woke up. The fight was on immediately. Fortunately, the contestants being relatively short in stature and weak in muscle were unable to inflict much damage on each other before their match was interrupted by the most powerful force known to children kind, human and alien alike; a.k.a. the mom.