Thorby Rudbek

Terraless: the Fantasy World Thorby Rudbek

Waking up on a new day with a cat draped over your face might be okay if you, like the heroine of our story, are a cat-lover, but finding out that everything, even the cat, seems not quite the same, and that ? although ?nature abhors a vacuum? ? your mind is as empty as that seemingly impossible-to-achieve state, might make your new day seem altogether too new. Before, though you no longer remember it, you had been living in Canada with your family and two cats, your home had carpets wall-to-wall, light fixtures and switches, flush toilets ? a main (ensuite) one and others, too ? also chairs, tables, couches, interior doors, a double front drive garage, all enclosed in a modern, timber-framed house. Now you are living in Terraless (though you do not know this), you are alone ? except for that intriguing cat and someone or something outside that screams intermittently ? the floorboards are well polished but carpet-less, the walls and ceilings are adorned with ancient paintings and carvings, there is a single, slightly smelly medieval latrine, one solitary bed and no interior doors at all, except for one room which you find is full of medieval weaponry ? a veritable armoury ?and all this is contained in a building more like a Fortress with tiny, barred windows on the ground floor and heavy, overlaid and bolted exterior doors front and back. Add to this a day of continual light without end, magic movements of bolts and rope you discover you can direct, visceral visions, a disturbing presence outside, bows and arrows, and an enchanted well of charmed water. All alone ? or almost so ? you must decide how to figure out where you are, why you are there and what you need to do, and to do this you must protect yourself with the bow and arrows that seem so familiar as you leave the safety of your fortress home. Terraless: eternally lit by creature-power, filled with endless fields of wheat, populated by a scattering of feudal inhabitants controlled by the soldiers of the sinister Seirchaal ? and no one who can remember anything beyond three years before your arrival!