Foundations: A Cultivation Academy Series (Bastion Academy Book 1)

by J D Astra

  Elise grinned and pulled out a chair. “Ready to play?”

  The heat in my cheeks disappeared, replaced by excitement as I remembered Terra’s Heroes in my backpack. I put the ruddy bag down on one of the chairs and I pushed past bags of dice, play mats, and full notebooks to pull free the new, cellophane wrapped box. I hadn’t wanted to let the smell of fresh cardboard and paint out until I could share it with my closest friends.

  Norah clicked the tiny space heater to life, then joined us at the game table. I slid my fingernail between the box and the lid, cutting the thin clear wrapping and ripping it off. My fingers traced the art on the front of the box. It was stunning.

  The characters’ backstories were all amazing, too. At the forefront was the character I wanted to play: Raven Gressahla.

  She was a half-demon Skro, with horns that snaked down to her cheeks, decorated in gems, metal cuffs, and the teeth of her defeated enemies. She could see into the minds of others and wielded the truth of all things. She was the spiritual leader of a village destroyed by the war of two neighboring cities. Her people, the Skro, were destined to lead nomadic lives, unwelcome in either kingdom.

  Behind Raven was Groff, the giant Tree Ogre. He was cursed to live a dual life, one of light and the other of darkness, paying for the crimes of all those who came before him. Flanking Raven and Groff were two other females: Xebaria Dark-Dancer and Penelope Denetore.

  Xebaria sported daggers to the teeth, tight black leathers, and a mask that obscured everything but piercing blue eyes and tall, pointed ears. She was a Sky Elf, dubbed as such for the floating islands on which her people made their home. The Sky Elf lore went deep on the internet, and I hadn’t had time for all that...

  Then there was Penelope Denetore, the character I knew Norah would nab. Penelope was decked out in gold and bronze bandoliers, a short skirt exposing orange-tinged legs and a fluffy tail sprouting from her behind. She was a Foxian, and kinda cute, but I thought it was just a cheap ploy to reel in the Manga readers.

  But that wasn’t why I thought Norah was going to pick her. I knew Norah had also done her research on Terra’s Heroes, and I could tell that throwing grenades, whacking enemies with lightning rods, and shooting pistols was going to be right up her alley.

  The cast went on and on, about six other playable characters with their own story arc and potential resolutions, but those were the highlights.

  I pulled the lid back with a fthp fthp fthp as the air slipped past the tight seal. At the top was the manual; crisp and pristine. I grabbed it as the other girls went in after the figurines.

  Terra’s Heroes: The Master’s Guide.

  This was one of the first games that provided a basic guide in the box, and then over six hundred pages of lore and story information online. It allowed us to play together, without a game master, since we’d be using one-part chance and two parts internet.

  We didn’t need a computer to get started tonight, so I pulled open the first page to the table of contents and scanned over it, then moved back to the box for the next goodie. Under the character sheets was the Encounters, Enemies, and Creatures handbook, but I could look at that later.

  “I want to be Xebaria Dark-Dancer!” Piper declared as she slammed her game piece down on the table. It was the black-clad Sky Elf. I wasn’t sure a high DPS, low health class was for her, but she was almost eleven now; it was time for her to make her own choices.

  “I will be Penelope Denetore,” Norah said as she grabbed the Foxian figurine, and I smirked.

  Something, fear maybe, made my hand reach out and snatch up Raven Gressahla and put her out on the table. Elise looked up at me, her mouth slightly open. I couldn’t guess if it was the character she wanted... but I wanted her. She grimaced and grabbed Groff.

  “I’ll be the ugly ogre, I guess,” she said, her voice downtrodden.

  I put the booklet aside. “There are more girls, you know.”

  Elise nodded. “Yeah, I know. But you idiots are always getting in trouble, and you’ll need a character like Groff in your party. He has healing magic and can harden his tree-person skin to be strong as stone, like a tank.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Elise seemed to hate my tabletop fascination, but she’d actually done some research on the game. She knew, the same as I did, that two DPS and a Mentalist hybrid would be doomed without some muscle.

  “Thanks, Elise.” I gave her a fist bump.

  Norah followed, then Piper, adding, “Way to take one for the team.”

  The energy in the room was palpable as Elise smiled, happy to be the martyr this time. We’d all taken turns being “the boy” since so many games didn’t provide enough female characters for an all-girl group to play.

  There was a knock and one of the cellar doors creaked open. “You girls want to watch the meteor shower?” Zack, Norah’s dad, asked. He and Beth were amateur astronomers, and very excited about the rocks falling from the sky. Apparently, there was some big deal on the news about this meteor shower, but who cared about space when Terra’s Heroes just released?

  I mean, sure, there were some worrying reports of one of Jupiter’s moons “disappearing,” but it reappeared five days later and lots of people on channel five thought it was something wrong with the telescope equipment. There were other reports of some weird storm showing up on Mars, but that died down a week ago. Some quack scientist said there was an invisible “event” happening in space, headed towards Earth this very weekend, but there wasn’t any real evidence of that, and I certainly wasn’t going to let it ruin the game.

  “We’ll catch the end of it,” Norah yelled back.

  There was a pause, then, “Alright. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “We won’t!” we all chimed in a singsong tune, then giggled as we looked at one another, knowing full-well we certainly would.

  The door closed and I sat down, pulling the game booklet closer. “Alright, nerds, let’s lay out the board.”

  We got to work setting up the first campaign. There were dungeons and cities and groves, but our main home base would be The Tower of Zewan. There we would train, upgrade our skills, and get quests. We could do all of those things out in the world too, but it was mostly for specialized training, or quests outside of the main campaign.

  The board was placed. Markers set. Characters poised for entry.

  “Tonight,” I started in my gameteller’s voice.

  “This morning,” Elise interjected.

  “This morning,” I started again without missing a beat, “we embark on a journey to defeat the Cursed Arborium. Who dares?”

  “I dare!” Elise declared loudly in a low-pitched, gravelly voice.

  Norah smiled, raising her hand. “I dare!”

  “And me!” Piper finished, and we put our fists together over the table.

  “Let the game begin!” I threw the two ten-sided dice onto the table to determine where we would begin our journey.

  The dice came to a stop on four and eight. Twelve it was, though the dice trembled defiantly as if that was not what they wanted to choose. I grabbed the encounter booklet and looked up twelve in the starting combat spreadsheet: Shapeshifters in the deep. I scanned the highlights, being well versed in guiding our ragtag gang through many RPGs, then set the book aside.

  “Outside of Terrasil, on the road to the next great city of Feldaust to begin a trade barter, our great Company is of high spirits. But danger lurks in the shadows of the tall trees, and creatures with poisonous fangs that stab deeper than any sword wait for us in the darkness.”

  The dice on the table shook harder, then so did the picture on the wood paneled wall, and the antenna on the old TV. There was a rumbling coming from overhead. Was it a plane? We looked up to the cellar door as light, first deep red, then orange, then yellow, pushed through the cracks in the wood.

  The table bounced from leg to leg, and I slapped my hands down to stop the game board from being upset. My stomach tightened as the chair trembled and shook my
body. The TV wiggled off the stand, its glass face smashing on the carpet-covered concrete floor. Glass jars from the canning shelves shattered, splattering preserved tomatoes across the wall, and the rumble grew to a roar. The light outside the cellar pierced through the cracks and filled our little space with white.

  “What’s happening?” Piper yelled as she reached out for Elise and Norah. Their hands found mine on the table, and my wide-eyed gaze jumped from terrified face to terrified face. It was hard to see them, and my eyes burned from the blinding light.

  “Get under the table!” I screamed over the noise and slid down my chair. I remembered the training from school and followed through the motions with fear as my friends crowded around me at the center of the thick wood table. I wrapped my arms around them, putting our heads together.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered softly, knowing it wasn’t true, as the white and the sound swallowed us up.

  Click here to continue reading Zero.Hero 1.

  Acknowledgements

  THIS YEAR HAS BEEN hard on all of us in one way or another. My shelter in this storm has always been you. When I couldn’t take the pain of the world, I collapsed and found solace in your unwavering strength. You didn’t always know what to do, but you held tight anyway. You don’t always know where to go, or how to take the first step, but you always do it with kindness. I hope my strengths can lift you as yours have for me. <3

  To everyone else, thank you for being there, listening, sharing a drink or a laugh, playing a game, and just existing. Thank you for reading. Thank you, despite our challenges, for moving forward. Thank you for being your best self every day.

  Onward and upward, my dudes.

  To my super awesome patrons on Patreon, THANK YOU X 1,000,000,000,000! Your donations help keep me fed while I slam on the keyboard like an insane word-monkey: David E., Richard J., eden H., Janet F., Tyler O., and Kenneth R.

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  Copyright

&
nbsp; Foundations is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by J.D. Astra and Shadow Alley Press, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher, subject line “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.

  JStrode@ShadowAlleyPress.com

  About the Author

  About me... I'm a baller. Keyboard crawler. 20 inch display, on my ink scrawler. Holler. Getting flayed tonight, all my characters getting splayed tonight! In my spare time I love to cook, hike, play video games, and spend quality time with my people. Three questions people never ask me are; how do I look at myself in the mirror, what's in the box, and what does it take to build a story with likable characters in an interesting setting with important goals? The answer to the last is determination, dedication, and sacrifice. I've been working at being a writer since before I could string more than two sentences together, and it never gets easier, but it does get better. I'm surrounded by people who love and support me, which is the most amazing gift the universe could ever give. I will never give up, never surrender, and hopefully, keep on entertaining for the rest of my life.