Short Stories By Yours Truly

1. The Fall Of Steelmire

The radio crackled as the distant voice spluttered and died. Now we felt completely alone, cut off from the rest of our crumbling world. But surely there must be others like them out there? right? Arabella squeaked and scrambled towards her automaton. She had made it during the last Creo festival. It had won her first prize; she was always proud of it. Now it looked like her heart had been ripped out of her chest.

"He-hey! The radio- it broke! Wait...i-i'll fix it. We can listen to them again!" she rushed ahead and started tinkering with the complex brass knobs. Fishing a Solus rod from her rucksack, she attached it to the radio and started her regular system checks. Byron looked at her with sympathy. "Arabella? You made that. We saw the testing during the festival. It's BRUTAL. You made that radio invincible. The design could handle 1,600,000 Nitons of force. It CANT break. There's just no one online" he said. His words were cautious like he was afraid Arabelle would come and strangle him if he spoke any louder, but she didn't seem to notice as his words fell on deaf ears.

"Structural integrity is at 100%-" Arabella mumbled

"Arabella-" I tried to interrupt

"The power core's at 86% power, not enough to shut down -"

"Ara listen, it's fine-" I tried

"antennae are signaling at 35Bz, the range is fine-"

"Arabella you don't have to fix it-"

"I MUST!"

I jumped. "I-I must fix it! It's our o-only hope!! We NEED to k-know what's ha-happening okay! It's the only w-way to be SAFE!" Arabella stammered, then went back. Her mechanical arm whirred as slim brass fingers fiddled with the screws on her creation. Beeps and pops sounded from her Solus rod as Byron looked at me with sympathy again; I didn't like his beautiful face right then. I could easily say that that is my least favorite expression in his repertoire. It's also a look that I'd seen several times during this disaster.

I looked out of the only window in our safe house. Reinforced Elementium glass panes with 12% steel support; Clearly the best work in all of Steelmire Province. Elementium was the rarest transparent metal known to humankind. It's the type of material used for military class bomb shelters; whoever owned this safe house must have sold an arm, a leg, and his firstborn child to get enough fortune to make this glass pane. But now it was cracked; A single line starting from top right and branching out and joining back like a beautiful cobweb, covering almost half of the bluish-green glass pane

The once-great coppery spires of my hometown were now smoking. This wasn't the usual smoke of industry and forging; It was the smoke of burning buildings and screaming people. I could still remember the bodies strewn amongst the rubble. The one mom trying to lift the boulder to save her trapped child.

Is mom okay, what about dad, how is the business, the shop, what ab- A hand rested on my shoulder. "Al? What are you thinking about darling?" Byron asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft. He was such a sweetheart; he helped me and Ara a lot during this catastrophe.

"Ron...do you think the smithery is fine? What about my mom and dad?" I asked as a tear made its way down my cheek. I could see their faces in my head; Mom's fiery red hair, wild and curly that she would tie back to avoid setting it ablaze while welding metals in the shop, and her face full of freckles that I was always jealous of because of how cute they looked, dad's long locks of raven hair that I inherited that were always a little greasy because of his habit of running his hands through his hair after a stressful day. My body shook as a sob wracked through my body. Arms circled my waist, and a weight pressed on my shoulder "I don't know Al..." Ron answered. He sounded sad too, after all, we never got to tell them about us. They didn't know the wonderful man that was Byron Iaugustus like I do. Maybe they never will. Byron didn't have a mum, his dad already knew about us, at least I can take some solace in that, uncle Brook got to see his son smile after a long time. I can be happy knowing I was the cause of it.