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Part I - Chapter I

D'kal walked slowly down the street in his home town, having taken a break from his hard work. He was a metal worker in his community, probably the most skilled in the area. He loved making blades the most: swords, daggers, even butchering and kitchen-knives. It wasn’t that he had a malevolent tendency to use them, but he found the process of making a blade fascinating and enjoyable.

His slightly glossy sable robe drifted around and behind him as a gentle breeze drifted by. His dark hood lifted and his matching hair flew about his face. His pale features, looking much like his brother's (except for their pallor) became lighted by the crystal lamps illuminating the street. The three moons, A'ri, the largest; A' col, the middle; and A'sa, the smallest, were bright and full in the sky, the palest blue. This fact was to contrast the twin suns that crossed the sky: Z'shen and his smaller, redder brother Z' ekk.

These D'kal thought of constantly, wondering what was beyond their orbits. D'kal's brother, K'lar, happened to be an astronomer, a very prestigious position in their society. He knew a lot about the celestial bodies that lighted their sky by day and by night, and was in the process of studying bodies far beyond that, far beyond the borders of their race's sector. Unfortunately for D'kal, it had been some time since he had seen K'lar; he lived with the Lighted, while D'kal lived with the Shrouded. Their society was split by their values and where they chose to live: although both sides of the large continent where lit evenly by the celestial bodies, the quasi-natural atmospheric makeup of one side of the continent meant that the clouds blocked out more of the suns' light. The people living in this area tended to be material-oriented: metal-working, fabric crafting, and building were well-paid jobs in the Shroud. In the Light, society focused its resources on jobs such as astronomy, mathematics, and anatomy; this made the Lighted more of a discovery-based society. In effect, both societies helped each other: improvements were discovered and made to already existing ideas and objects, then these improvements were used to make tools and other such things that would help others make improvements in other areas.

D'kal thought about this further as he walked down the streets of the Shrouded. Turning the corner, he faced his forge. The actual coals and large items of the forge were farther back in the structure, whereas most of the smaller items, his hammer and anvil, for example, were out in the open air. The structure, to D'kal, looked somewhat like a cave, the home of a fire-breathing beast. Some of his latest projects sat in the hot coals, awaiting their final phase of shaping and moulding. D'kal took a blade, the beginnings of a medium-sized sword, out of the forge and laid it on the anvil, where he banged out any imperfections in the metal, then cooled it and set it aside. He would build the hilt tomorrow. Though the government still put blades of varying sizes to use, their Guard also used guns, which emitted a type of laser beam D’kal knew little about. The one thing he was certain of about these guns was, although they were superior in most situations, they were quite expensive; the metal used to keep the gun from melting in the heat of the beam had to be imported by another continent entirely (this continent was small, had few permanent inhabitants, and many mines), and was still very hard to find.

It had been two years since he had chosen to live in the Shroud, every person coming of age at 20 having to choose a side. His parents had thought that since he and K'lar were twins that they would choose the same side of the continent to live on. He, though, chose to live in the Shroud, where neither his brother nor his parents lived. This gave D'kal a sense of independence: living completely on his own, making a living by himself. The slightly darker atmosphere soothed him, while the bright, ever-changing environment of the Lighted unnerved him. The direct daylight, his doctor had learned years before, gave him migraines.

His thoughts turning once more to the present, D'kal readied another piece of metal for shaping and began lovingly beating it into the desired shape. Sparks flew to the sky to join the stars. In houses nearby, other Shrouded residents went to sleep, soothed by the constant rhythm of the metal-smith's working.