Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 1 Version 5 (Patreon)

Growing up, every kid thinks they're special. Not me. Normal parents, normal school, normal life. Overall, I was as normal as they come. But my childhood best friend was anything but normal.

Her name was Myrina, and whenever we played, there was bound to be trouble.

"Roll me, Carter!" Myrina said, arms tucked tight within an abandon tire we found by the side of the road.

"You sure this is safe?" I asked, cheeks puffy with baby fat. The two of us were about ten years old at the time.

"Who cares! Push!" Myrina yelled, and I pushed the tire. She rolled down the street within it, squealing all the while. I raced along on foot trying to catch up. But the gentle slope soon turned to hill, and she started rolling faster.

"Myrina, you're going too fast!" I yelled.

She giggled, and I raced to catch up. Down the street, there was a car coming our way. From the speed of the vehicle, it didn't look like the driver had seen us.

"Hey!" I yelled, waving my arms. "Stop! My friend is in that tire!"

I yelled trying to get the driver's attention, but it was an evening in winter and the sun was already down. A black tire rolling down the street was hard to see amid the evening shadows. From the glow on the driver's face, he was probably fiddling with his phone and not looking at the road ahead of him on this quiet suburban street. He wouldn't spot Myrina in time.

My yelling must have gotten his attention, because he glanced up and saw the tire rolling toward him with Myrina inside it. He swerved, avoiding her by mere inches. But the sharp turn took him off the road and in my direction.

My heart leaped in my chest as the twin headlights of the sedan barreled toward me. Time slowed down, and I felt my short ten years of life flash before my eyes.

And then the car came to a sudden stop, as surely as though it struck a brick wall. The hood crumpled in on itself, and the entire car twisted as metal hissed in protest. When it finally came to a stop, the bumper bore the imprints of two child-sized hands sunk in steel, exactly matching Myrina's outstretched arms.

She stood between me and the car, back arms against it with a grimace on her face. I hadn't even seen her get out of the tire rolling down the street. She moved faster than my eyes could follow and stopped the car with her bare hands.

"Are you okay, Carter?" Myrina asked as she pulled her arms free from the bent and battered car.

"Yeah..." I said, glancing at the busted car and the dazed driver before us. "We should get out of here. He's going to be mad about his car."

The two of us ran off into the woods, hidden from sight before the driver could recover enough wits to unbuckle himself.

Years later, I read the car accident became something of an urban legend in the area. The hand prints in the car's hood made the front page of our local newspaper. People came up with all sorts of explanations for the crash. Maybe he'd hit a deer that limped away from the scene, and the hand prints were just coincidence. Maybe the driver faked the accident to make an insurance claim.

Nobody suspected the little girl down the street and her best friend.

That wasn't the last time Myrina exhibited abilities beyond the norm. Once, when playing baseball with her, she hit the ball so hard the metal bat broke in two and the ball flew far enough we couldn't figure out where it came down.

Another time, when we were trying to start a fire and couldn't find any wood, she punched a dead tree until it fell down, then split the chunks into firewood with a chop of her hand.

I was young back then, but I wasn't stupid. I realized the things she was capable of weren't possible for a normal human.

"So, are you an alien? Are you some sort of superhero in disguise? If so, you're not very good at hiding yourself," I chided her while we were playing on the beach. It was winter, and the beach was empty. I was bundled up tight, but Myrina wore her usual shorts and t-shirt without a care in the world. She brought a jacket just for looks, but had tossed it aside at the first opportunity.

"I'm great at hiding myself! I just don't have to around you," Myrina replied.

"Why?"

"Because you'll keep my secret?"

I nodded. "Makes sense. But tell me! I wanna know!"

"Hmm... I'll tell you under one condition." Myrina put her hands on her hips and grinned.

"What?" My eyes brimmed with childish curiosity.

"You have to pin me to the ground in a wrestling match!"

"Ha, you're a girl. I'll totally beat you," I teased.

"As if. I'm a tough Amazonian princess! You? You're more like the scrawny wizard type," Myrina replied.

Then, without any warning, she dove at me and dragged me down to the sand.

I lost that wrestling match, and the one after it. As well as the next two that followed. I wasn't really sure how I ever thought I could win in the first place. The girl could stop a car with her bare hands. She could overpower my entire body with just her little finger. I had no chance at winning against her.

Every time I brought up her mysterious powers, she brought up our little bet. The day I finally beat her would be the day she revealed her secret to me.

I spent months roaming the local quarry looking for strange meteorites or green rocks that I could wave at Myrina to see if they would nullify her powers. I tried drawing weird diagrams and chanting. I even tried begging her to give me super strength as well so I could finally beat her.

"Ha! There's only one way to get as strong as me!" Myrina replied. "Slay monsters and gain levels!"

"Like a video game?" I asked.

"Yeah, like a video game."

But try as I might, I couldn't find any monsters to slay. I wasn't about to go trawling the woods hunting wild animals, so I confined my tests to the occasional bug here and there. Many of them were nasty-looking things, and in my searching I found a log with a couple of tiny snakes under it. I hoped I'd finally hit the jackpot and found real monsters to slay, but when I hit them with a stick, but I didn't get any levels no matter what I tried.

But I remembered something. Myrina was afraid of snakes.

That was when I got another idea. I picked up one of the snakes and stuffed it in a jar for safe keeping. Maybe these things couldn't make me as strong as Myrina was, but perhaps they could help me beat her anyway.

And so the next time I pestered Myrina about her abilities, she challenged me to another wrestling match.

"Ha, got you again, Carter!" Myrina teased as she pinned my right arm over my head and sat straddling my stomach. Her grip was like iron, and I didn't have a chance at breaking it. But I kept struggling all the same just to make sure she kept both arms on that hand. "Give up and admit I win again!"

"Oh yeah?" I asked, grin splitting my face as I opened my jacket pocket. I pulled out the jar and twisted it open with my free hand, then dumped the live snake on my chest right in front of her.

"Ah!" Myrina screeched in surprise and disgust, jumping off me in an instant.

I'd looked these snakes up online and learned they were basically harmless, but Myrina didn't know that. She screeched and squealed just as planned.

"Eww!" Myrina said as I picked the snake up and waved it at her.

"It's coming for you, Myrina!" I cackled evilly as I waved the snake at her, dangling with its tail pinched between my fingers. "It's going to get you!"

"Carter, drop that thing!" Myrina said, scrambling backward.

"Nah uh. This little guy here is my new buddy. I'm going to bring him with me on all our new adventures!" The snake wiggled as I dangled it in front of Myrina's face.

"No! Carter, get rid of it! Snake monsters are dangerous! It's going to eat you!" Myrina yelled.

"I'll only get rid of it if you admit defeat."

"That's cheating!"

I shook my head. "That's strategy!"

"Okay, okay. I admit defeat. Just get rid of it!" Myrina yelled.

I set the snake back down on the ground, and it slithered away through the sand while Myrina scooted along the ground and positioned herself at my side. I sat down next to her.

"Well?" I prodded.

"Well what?" Myrina pouted. Her cheeks were puffed up and her face was locked in a scowl.

"I won. Now you've got to tell me your secret!"

Myrina was silent a moment. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than before. "I'm not supposed to share this with anybody. My family would be mad if I did."

"Tell me!" I insisted. "I won, and you promised!"

"Okay. I guess I did promise..."

"Tell me! Tell me! I promise to keep your secret." I was so excited. Was she part of a government experiment? From an alien planet? Was she secretly a robot? I couldn't wait to find out.

"I'm from another world," Myrina explained. "We live under the authority of a powerful intelligence known as the System. I guess you earthlings might consider it to be an AI. It's with us all time time, and it monitors our growth while helping us get stronger by fighting each other, as well as monsters. The levels I've mentioned before are something I earned by training with my clan back home. We're a clan of Amazonian warriors who live in a sprawling empire of our kind. My father is the king of an allied world, and my mother is the matriarch of our clan."

"A clan of Amazon women..." I frowned. "Like Wonder Woman?"

"Yeah, but we don't chase off men. It's just that we only want the strongest," Myrina replied. "If I brought you home, you'd probably have to fight like a thousand other guys in duels to the death. It can get pretty scary."

"What about you? Do you have to fight duels to the death?"

Myrina shook her head and smiled smugly. "Nope! My clan captured a bunch of monsters for me to fight so I could gain levels quickly and easily! All the tournaments I fought in were only to surrender, not to death."

"That doesn't sound fair."

Myrina told me all about her home world. There, her family dominated a vast swath of territory on a massive alien world. They wielded swords, axes, spears, and other melee weapons in a never-ending fight against the local monsters and the other Amazonian clans. It was quite the fantastical story, and my young mind was completely enraptured.

But eventually the sun started to set, and I was getting cold.

"I think it's getting dark, and I have school tomorrow," I said. "But tomorrow you're answering the rest of my questions! I want to know all about this Amazonian Empire!"

Myrina gave me a smile. "Sure. I'll meet you here tomorrow! Same time and same spot!"

I returned home, was scolded by my parents for staying out so late, had dinner, then went to bed. School passed swiftly the following day, and I could hardly wait to get back to the beach to talk to Myrina again.

But when I arrived at our usual spot, she was nowhere to be found.

"Myrina?" I called.

All I heard was the sound of wind whistling over the rocks.

I went back to look for her the next day and found her missing then as well. I tried again the day after, wondering what was holding her up. Maybe her parents had finally grounded her for staying out so late.

I tried every day for the rest of the week, and then every day the following week as well. I didn't see Myrina a single time. I even checked the sand for her footprints and got excited a few times when I thought I saw signs of her. But when I saw my own prints next to them I realized how old they were. She hadn't been here in weeks.

Weeks turned to months, and months to years. I never forgot about Myrina, my best friend. But I did move on.

By the time I entered high school, I only visited that spot once a month or so. I made new friends and picked up new hobbies, like table top and video games. I even used Myrina as the inspiration for a barbarian character I played in one of our longest-running Dungeons and Dragons sessions after school.

As my memories of her faded into my childhood, I began to think the amazing things she could do were nothing more than the overactive imagination of a child. Perhaps we'd played pretend so well those things we made up were starting to seep into the things we'd actually done.

I looked for her online, hoping to get in touch with her again. But there was no sign of her. She wasn't on social media, and public records didn't mention her even once. I ran her name through a search engine every once in a while and couldn't find her anywhere. Maybe she dyed her hair and changed her name, but I still thought there had to be some sign of her. There had to be some trail I could follow.

But even the house she used to live at was gone. I remembered her just three houses down from me, but when I looked there was just an empty plot of land dotted with trees. It was city property, and always had been. It was like she'd never existed at all.

***

More than a decade later I lay on the beach in our spot in the cold of winter. I'd come back from college, almost done with my final year and wondering what I was going to do with my life.

My parents passed away in a house fire the week before just as I was finishing up midterms, and I stared up at the nighttime stars wondering why. I was alone, and the world seemed so dark and empty. A single tear dripped down the side of my face as I lay there on the sand.

And then, suddenly, someone was laying there next to me. I wasn't sure when she appeared or how she'd gotten there, but she lay on her side with her cheek resting on her hand. She ignored the night sky and had eyes only for me.

"Hello Carter. Sorry I'm late."

I jerked upright, wiping my face with my sleeve.

"Sorry, I didn't see you there. I'm not sure how--" I tried to push myself to my feet, but the woman twisted her leg over my waist. She straddled me, pressing her stomach against mine with her bosom pressed to my chest.

This was the first time I got a good look at her in the dim starlight. Long scarlet hair cascaded over her shoulders. High cheekbones and a pointed chin spoke of a noble bearing, and a silver circlet wound around her brow. It was hard to tell with us both laying down, but she was almost as tall as I was and had the toned figure of a career athlete. She wore leather and steel scale armor over her body, and I was pretty sure I felt a scabbard pressing into my thigh. I wasn't able to look because a pair of piercing green eyes bore straight through to my soul.

"Don't get up. I have a lot to say and little time to speak." Her hot breath tickled my neck, and if I wasn't transfixed by her gaze I would have been hypnotized by those plump red lips.

I spoke the words that lay inscribed on my heart, left there and abandoned on that beach so many years ago.

"Myrina? Is that you?"

She pressed her hand to my lips. "It's me, Carter. I'm sorry I had to leave so suddenly. Our time on Earth came to an end unexpectedly when our clan went to war back home, and my education had to be accelerated. But I'm here for you. I'm here to warn you. The System that came to my world so long ago is headed to yours. Life as you know it will come to an end, and your world shall be drawn to mine and those like it. When this happens, most of humanity will die. Only the strongest of you will survive to see the end of the integration, and I want you to be one of the survivors."

I gulped. "What do I need to do?"

"Fight, level, and conqueror," Myrina replied. "And take this. When the day finally comes, I'll be able to explain more."

Myrina reached into her pocket and withdrew a gold medallion the size of a quarter. It had a small hole punched through its top and a strip of leather tied into a loop ran through it. Myrina wrapped that loop around my neck and tucked the medallion beneath my shirt.

"Keep that safe. Survive long enough to activate it, and I can explain more then. Just remember, the Integration is coming, and the end of the world is near. The System shall bring an apocalypse to your world when it arrives."

I felt her lips press against my cheek, and I reached out to touch her. But my hands found only empty air. Just like before, Myrina was gone.

But this time, she'd left something behind for me. My fingers wrapped around the medallion Myrina had given me, still warm with her touch.

"So... a System apocalypse, huh..."

<Note>

Alright, I know you guys are probably sick of rereading this chapter over and over, but I had to do one more. I tried implementing my planned edits on version 4 and I just didn't like how they turned out. It amplified what I hated and weakened what I liked.

In the end, I decided version 4 needed to be completely scrapped and I had to start over from scratch with a new idea, so that's what I did. And here it is! It hits the right tone and character presentation I was going for, while also being considerably shorter and wasting less time getting to the meat of the story.

I've reached the point where a lot of this time spent rewriting chapter 1 would be better spent improving other aspects of the story, so I'm just going to stick with this version for a bit and forbid myself from rewriting it any further for a few weeks.

We'll see if I still like it when publication time comes around, but for now this is what we're going with.

As for story-wide news; at chapter 27 I've reached a natural endpoint in the story. It wasn't planned to be the book 1 ending, but it could be used as such and I may use it as a temporary break point and give you guys a different book for a few weeks so I can touch up what I've already written.

That other book will either be Spellheart 9 or Paladin 4. I'm partial to Spellheart 9 because I already have a decent amount of that written (but unedited) but I really need to get Paladin 4 done too so interest in the series doesn't cool too much, since that series is currently my breadwinner. Not sure. I may be extra indecisive and air both of them. Or do one to everybody and one to the high-tiered patrons. We'll see.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!