The Ghost Of A Chance Read online

  The Ghost Of A Chance

  By: Jonathan Antony Strickland

  ………..

  From the notes of Collin. Leader of the tribe North East:

  I have lived half my life in ignorance. Not knowing anything of the past, how old I am, were I originated from, and never dreaming of the future. I used to live only for the day and until the first appearance of the babblers I can truly say that this is the case for not only myself, but also I believe every other one of my kind who is of a similar age and who still walks the earth.

 

  First let me tell you something about me, as the last fifteen or so years I (and my kind) have changed quite a bit. I grew up a savage, and was part of a family of six, (consisting of my father and mother, two brothers and one sister) running and savaging the land for food. Back then I was called Orano, it seems a simple name now since I have taken on one of the mysteriously strange and alien sounding names that some of the babblers have talked of. Sometimes we would meet other people like ourselves, even becoming friendly for a short time with them but our father would never let us become too close to any stranger. He knew that it was safer to remain within a small group, this way we could communicate to each other without any confusion or danger arising. He explained to us with pictures he drew in mud on the ground or sometimes painted with animal blood on trees how many times he had witnessed large groups form in the hope of starting up some kind of community. However it would always end in tragedy. As we all know, numbers always attract orcs and wargs, always coming in gangs or packs, and always far too many to defend against. Any group that tried to fight them would be killed and eaten. If they were lucky they would be scattered apart and lost from the rest, but if they were unlucky they would be captured by the orcs and taken for food or something even worse.

 

  Throughout my early years all my family were eventually killed by what my daughter now calls the orcs and the wargs (though at the time of my youth our people had virtually no language and what language there was, was extremely basic. We, for example, as a family would make a low grunting sound as a warning to each other that an orc had been sighted), it’s hard to believe now that but twenty or so years ago I and the rest of my kind were hardly much better than those big-faced beastmen who gorged themselves on all forms of raw meat.

  First of all let me explain why I write this account. It is my attempt to try and make sense of all the stories and try and give our new blossoming race some sort of history of what things were once like. Also, as the appearances of the babblers becomes less and less as they materialize within the chosen-ones, and our people become more and more, the story of there lost civilisation and our own history and survival can serve great purpose and show future generations what times of old where once like before the orcs and the wargs came to be.

  But first let me begin by telling you a little of the babblers, the strange invisible ones who saved our race from possible extinction. We have learned throughout the years very little of the babblers since they first chose to help us. It seems that for some reason they refuse to talk about what happened to there own kind. All we’ve managed to piece together from the odd tales they tell, or the rare pieces of ancient literature found when out exploring our land, is that they belonged once to a mighty civilization that was destroyed, but how and why is still a mystery to any of us. Several have tried to ask a chosen-one while she or he was inhabited by a babbler what happened to cause such destruction, but the babblers refuse to answer, or become more cryptic in their speech.

 

  We ourselves have speculated, and various theories have been thought up as we learn more and more from the babblers’ teachings of survival. Some have suggested a great war exterminated their race, my very own daughter has dreamt up the idea of an alien invasion (she apparently got the idea from one of those new set of books we found buried in the earth). Most of us though believe it to be the wrath of the gods, unhappy at the babblers for past sins or sordid reasons we can only fathom at.

 

  So what have we learned?

  Well, it seems that before me and my kind even existed on this land, the strange beings we call the babblers ruled. They were all powerful; there people stretching far and wide across a thing we supposedly stand ourselves on called a world.

 

  There were apparently many different tribes, and some of the tribes grew powerful and mighty, creating great new inventions, houses stretching up into the sky, metal wings called planes that could carry people through the heavens. One such story that my daughter told me was of what many of them consider perhaps there greatest achievement when a select few travelled on a very special plane that took them to the great white moon that floats above our heads and lights up the night sky.

 

  One thing I must point out is the strange system that the babblers use to communicate with us and how we have evolved from being slightly more civilised from the animals, wargs and orcs, to being able to read and write and talk in a complex language to one another. It all started when my daughter was but a child. I think she would have been around seven or eight (Days, months, and years, are all still new to us but the concept of time management makes great sense.). One night while asleep she suddenly woke up, her eyes wide and staring blankly into the darkness as her body shook as if overcome by a terrible fever. Her mother went over and put her arm around her, trying to comfort her. It was at that point that the strange sounds, like nothing I have heard before began to utter from her lips. I now know that these sounds were from the voice of a babbler frequenting within her. The voice was deep and croaky, talking in a way none of us knew, a voice that erupted fourth in a strange babble of nonsense.

 

  The next day she remembered nothing of her strange chant, though as she talked in our own primitive tongue certain strange alien-like words were spoken by her. She claimed she knew their meaning and that we must have taught her them. At this we guessed she was playing some kind of childish game (she had always been incredibly intelligent for one so young and dreaming up such a prank was not beyond her, even at such a tender age) and I remember the confused look upon her face as her mother and myself scolded her every time she uttered one of the strange foreign words.

  We thought with telling her off for her cheek that that would be the last of it but the next night the same thing happened. This time we shook her (quite violently I’m ashamed to say) but still she went on staring into space and talking in that strange baffling babble (the voice being slightly different from the first night, though equally disturbing). And no matter how much we shook her or shouted at her to stop, she continued, and then we knew that she was not aware of us and the thing inside her had for the present taken over her person.

 

  I remember the first few nights were terrifying and we worried for our child’s sanity.

  At that time also there was with us another two, the mother of my daughter’s mother and a man called Ulk. Ulk had joined us when his own small tribe had been attacked by a vicious onslaught of wargs. He had been the only survivor from four others he lived with. At least that’s what he told us. After getting to know him a bit better, I personally believe he had been chucked or chased out from his own tribe.

  I never really liked the man, and should have never have let him join with us. I thought having an extra hunter with us would be helpful, but their was something about him that was odd. The only way I can explain it is the way in which he would act and communicate, always shifty looking and whispering his thoughts to individuals so no one else could hear what he said. I believe he purposely did this to make others suspicious. The other thing I didn’t like about him was that he and my daughters mothers mother go
t on well together. This was a problem as I knew that she never liked me from the start, and I think she always harboured a secret desire for her daughter to replace me and get with the Ulk.

  When the two of them heard the voices my daughter made at night they came to believe that my daughter was turning into an orc, and at one point Ulk became so convinced that we harboured with us a soon to be killer that he picked up a stone (egged on by the mother of my daughters mother) as my daughter chanted in her strange and frightening way. A fight ensued as I wrestled him to the ground, biting his hand so he dropped the bludgeoning stone. Then we fought with fists, feet, heads and teeth. Fortunately I was much bigger and stronger than him and it was my hands that first gripped his neck and shook the life from him.

 

  Afterwards, the mother of my daughter’s mother was sent out alone for her part in encouraging Ulk in trying to murder our daughter. Out into the wilds she was sent by her own furious daughter. We have never heard tale of her since and I believe and hope