Beyond

Chapter 1

Jamie had been aroused early that morning by someone roughly shaking him by the shoulder.

"What?" he grumbled groggily.

"THE CRONOIDS ARE ATTACKING!" His mum screamed in his face. Instantly Jamie rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed.

"What?" he said again, quite incredulous. He'd known this day would eventually come but he'd never actually expected it. He leapt out of bed, disturbing Cyan who was still miraculously sleeping peacefully on the end of Jamie's duvet. He ran to the bedroom window and drew back his orange, sunbleached curtains. It was dark. Very dark. This was unusual as, although it was only the early hours of dawn, Dwarbtain got a lot of sunlight (due to the fact that it had two suns) and it was the hotter part of the year.

Jamie ran back to his bed, where Cyan was now rising from a dip in the duvet to see what the commotion was, and grabbed his night-vision binoculars from his bedside table, before dashing back to the window. Once he had raised the binoculars to his eyes, the world around him was transformed. In under a second, the black abyss of the outside world Jamie had his eyes on became a mass of jet black and deep emerald lines. Jamie looked closer. The same symbol was repeated again and again as the lines flickered across the binoculars' lense. A triangle with a skull: the Cronoid Triangle.

"Definitely Cronoids," Jamie muttered. As if on cue, a massive 'BOOM' rocked the city. He knew he couldn't sacrifice anymore seconds; too much was at risk. It wouldn't be long until the outskirts of the city became targets as well.

Jamie tore off his pyjamas and tugged on fresh new clothes. Back at his bedside, Jamie opened the top drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a long, twelve inch knife (he kept it close in case of a sudden emergency). This was the basic, light-weight weapon for fighting the Cronoids. Jamie strapped the knife to his belt and, with Cyan hot on his heels, he dashed out of the room and downstairs for something to fuel him for the battle.

Jamie could almost taste the battle now. Blood was pounding in his ears and adrenalin pulsing through his body. He stared out the window, anticipation building inside at the prospect of a real, full-scale battle. Out the window he watched from afar as the battle raged on before him. Explosions rocked the city. Shouts were drowned out and columns of smoke obscured his view. He spotted Charlie; a friend. He watched as Charlie took on a fleet of Cronoid Sword Wielders, the simple soldier of an army. They stood just under two metres high, metal plates forming a silver armour over their maze of wires and circuits. A formidable sight to anyone, even without a sword. Every Sword Wielder carried an identical, half-metre long, massacre device. The blade widened in the middle before ending at a sharp point and a line stretched from hilt to end along the centre, portraying the fattest, strongest place of the weapon. And to fight at least a few dozen single-handedly with a weapon half the size (almost identical to Jamie's) took some guts. Jamie admired Charlie's bravery, but then realised that that soon would be him. It was only a matter of seconds before the door was opened and he left the safety of his house; entering the action and the danger of the battleground. He would crush those Cronoids. All those dreary hours of battle practice (although the upside was that Cyan could accompany him at school) would finally pay off. All he needed now was one thing... Mum.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Jamie's mum came striding into the kitchen, dressed and ready. She wore black combat boots, each bearing a short dagger for close combat; camouflage shorts and upper garments and she held a sword, almost like a small replica of the weapon of a sword wielder; just as strong, far more nifty.

"Are you ready?" She asked.

"Yep," he got up and headed for the door, "wait. Where's dad?"

"Where we should be: outside," replied his mum. Cyan began impatiently scraping his claws across the cream tiled floor: black armour pads glistening on his legs in the little amount of light there was.