THO: Better Days

Written by MattShadow.

He stood in front of the steps leading down to the basement, his orange plad shirt already getting dusty from just being near the entrance to this gods-forsaken place called the basement. The orange shirted boy brushed off his cargo pants and shirt before taking a hesitant step onto the old wooden steps, carefully avoiding a rather large crack that bore through the middle of the plank. The board creaked, but held fast to its hinges, and Cal took that as a sign that the step was safe.

Funny how this place has to make wooden steps when there is an elevator three corridors down, he thought to himself as he took another carefully placed step down another flight of stairs. It was Cal's luck, or maybe just the fact that he was the newest member, that he was given the orders to retrieve another stack of blank paper for the printer, which had recently run out of it. Normally you would go out and just buy a new stack, but the printer just so happened to run on a very fine-tuned set of magical papers, that were only housed in the base's ancient basement.

Another creak came along as Cal slowly paced along the stairway, stopping every so often to recheck the stability of his current location. A sudden vibration caused Cal to latch onto the splintered rail along the right side of the staircase, a result of his fellow THO members using the massive 127' inch TV and surround sound system Hephaestus recently installed as a thank you gift to Annie and Arthur for some unknown service rendered.

"Turn of the damned surround sound guys!" his voice only slightly muffled by the crazed weather forecastings of Aeolus interrupting his team's usual programing. He heard a couple of stomps and voices, but couldn't make it out until one of them called out.

"Hurry up with that paper Cal! I need to print something out urgently and we sent you down there 20 minutes ago!" He sighed anxiously and increased his pace to 2 steps per minutes while awaiting for the bottom of this seemingly endless torment. ''Great, one more problem to add to this list. First this horrid job and now Kat's rushing me.'' Suddenly the endless creaking came to a halt and Cal felt something other than rotting wood underneath his feet.

"Oh thank the gods, I've reached the bottom." Cal looked around the dark basement room, taking in the grand scope of just how big the basement truly was. He walked past several crates, which he swore what sounded like growls were eminating from them. The teen in the orange shirt maneuvered around the crates, making sure to stay as far away from them as possible. As he turned the corner around the last ancient crate he knocked into a rusty pedestal, causing both it and himself to crash onto the floor. "That can't be good," muttered Cal as he picked himself up and surveyed the wreckage. He passed over the broken shards and noticed a glinting short sword on the ground. He picked up the gleaming weapon and turned it around. He couldn't see any special markings, but the sword was beautifully crafted nonetheless. "I wonder what you're doing down here in this dark forsaken place," said Cal eagerly as he picked up a shard of the pedestal, on which a name plate had been attached.

Əpsıĸӣ (Ehpsihkor)

"Stone-turner?" translated Cal bewilderly. "I havn't seen this language in a very long time." He paused for a minute before continuing to talk to the sword. "Alas, you have a very interesting name."

To be continued/finished (tomorrow)