Book 1, Chapter 1: This Isn't Like Jordan

[truthmeasurer.livejournal.com]

I get this now, press the letters and something anbaric makes them show up on this photogram. Like a projection, only it's a little screen. I saw something like this once, I haven't used one before, but it isn't so hard. The last one I saw was a lot bigger than this one. And this here, they called it a network and said it was for talking to the other people in this big metal dome.

I've been to a lot of places, but never one like this before. They said there was lots of others from different worlds, that right? I haven't really looked around yet, but nobody around here has a daemon, I saw that much. That's not so strange, I've seen people without them. Anyone know how we get here? I'd really like to find out, see, there's still something else that I have to do; and to do it, I really need to know how people can pass through worlds like this. All that stuff about being fake? I don't believe a word of it. People been telling me things all my life and en't half of it's been true.

All the worlds I've been too have been to have been open, and this one's all closed off like something scary's outside. I think something went on in here too.

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[truthmeasurer.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll tell you something special.

It seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't; but time doesn't mean much when you travel from world to world. There's just one step from one world to the next. On the tip of the world, there was an island covered in ice, and it wasn't inhabited by anything by bears and witches. A young traveler went there seeking her father, because she had heard something that he needed to know, and she had heard it, and she knew that all she could speak was the truth. The Authority traveled after her night and day, knowing that if they caught her first, that she would tell them all the secret truths that she had heard; and alas, her journey would be destroyed.

All she could do was keep going. Over ice and snow, watching the witches rise like ravens among the white clouds; she kept going. One night, she sought refuge in a large metal palace, and as she pulled the door shut with her small hand, she realised that the smell in the air was the stench of blood. She froze in fear when she realised that she was in the palace of the Bear King.

Before she knew what was happening, the armored bears of the north captured her! And they took her as a prize to their king. She stood before him, tiny against his might. He was so large that his great white skull brushed across the metal ceiling of his domain. His head was as wide as a horse, and his jaw could devour a sled, and all the dogs that pulled it. He came so close that she could smell the rotting flesh on his teeth, his white, stained eyes; and he said in a mighty voice, "What is your business in my Kingdom?"

"I merely wanted warmth," she said in reply, unphased by his mighty presence. "I have come to the north to see my father."

But he was a terrible King, only obsessed with his greed and power. There was one thing, he wished above all others, and that was to own the Aurora, though he had never seen it for himself. There were often whispers among his council of an uprising among the bears, but they never thought of usurping their king.

"And what can you give me in return?" was his reply, a low, guttural growl from his stomach where corpses of elk lie.

She merely said that she could give him nothing but the truth!

Ah! the truth! The laugh that rolled from his belly shook his fortress. The girl stood among his subjects, before their king, her expression unflinching. She had decided since they had taken her there that she would not give in to her fear. To conquer her fear, that took true strength.

"Tell me about the Aurora," he said. So the small girl, tiny against the great monster of a bear, curtseyed, and began to tell him about the Aurora. The vibrant, beautiful gradations of colours; and how if one glanced at it, they felt as if they were part of the sky. So impressed and moved was the bear, that he stepped down from his thrown and bound outside, fated to chase the Northern Lights until the end of his days.