Doc Sherwood
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The Crystal Walls
Neetra turned to the four farns and without the need for spoken words it passed between them that it was time. Flashthunder and the others stepped timidly to the sidelines. Much about Neetra had already won their awe and admiration, but to know she was able to address on equal footing the likes of Manual, Benmor, Prune and Albazorascabaranthi was something else again, and it made the Mini-Flashes downright shy of their new friend. All of a hush they looked on, as Neetra stepped to the centre of the cathedral floor and the farns formed a wide ring around her.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Unto the Breach, Chapter Three
Hangonel too broke into a sprint. Two pairs of bare feet pounded the plain, throwing up twin crimson dust-bowls steadily closing to collide as the counterparts made ready to settle through combat the tie-breaker over which of them was wearing the least. Bendigo discovered the proper parlance was something you could fall back into as if you’d never been away, for without so much as a hesitation he hollered out as he hurtled: “Then learn, impetuous Hangonel Mangonel, that it was none other than my venerable father who first sought to set down the Prophecy you speak of! So perhaps it is indeed meet we are thus enjoined on this battlefield, for only the benign spirits and ancient gods might have ordained a reckoning between two such!”
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Incoming, Chapter Three
All night long the Henry Martin spearheaded Planet Earth’s advance, blazing a trail for helicopters and fighter-jets as together they poured their payloads down upon the twisted tendrils burrowing into Nottingham’s heart. Now with ammunition finally exhausted the great galleon had tacked back from the City Centre to let fresher vessels finish the fight, and was sailing daylight skies at the war-zone’s outskirts in search of survivors to airlift to safety.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Incoming, Chapter Two
Harbin seized the advantage. Thrusting out an arm he turned Gala’s trick against our heroes, with a clench of one fist which telekinetically crunched a wall of hard tangled stalks behind where Joe was standing. The rubble crumbled down and crushed him helpless to the ground, while Harbin whirled back about and fixed his smouldering red eyes on Gala. In an instant the battlefield fell still, almost as if the stare from those dual embers was holding her in place.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Incoming, Chapter One. Top Story - July 2021.
Less than an hour had elapsed for Joe and Gala since receiving the horrendous news that they were already parents-to-be of Harbin, The Foretold One, whose adult life would be distinguished by a universe-wide reign of terror. Now amidst the grotesque greenery of The Back Garden, where living fungi of monstrous size snared whole planets in their twining grip, the first of The Four Heroes and the first of the Next Four braced for battle as that same son barrelled down upon them. Harbin, a grown man on his second time-travelling trip to the present day, was a gaunt blur of twilight wrapped in a ragged cloak as he alighted on the tangled stalks and stems that made up the flooring where his parents stood. Those two at once bore the piercing white light from Gala’s cutlass and the fiery blaze of Joe’s fists directly to the heart of Harbin’s preternatural dusk, as the family reunion made its less-than-promising start.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Incoming, Chapter Four
It began with a spatial misalignment crackling its disturbances across the empty cosmos. Some deployment undreamt of by man was making it possible for one object to simultaneously exist on opposite sides of the universe. The thing itself was a flat oblong of metal too vast to have been constructed on-planet, suspended vertically amid the stars, and perforated once with a circular hole. From out of this aperture shapes began to fly like missiles. They were Vernderernders, robots of the same breed as Neetra’s travelling-companion Vern, each identical individual riding the fiery exhaust of his twin throbbing tailpipes with gears and radials locked for flight. Glinting talons were upraised, rodlike necks extended the die-straight line of the body, and orbicular beaked heads thrust themselves horizontally onward. These, half-vulture and half-motorcycle, were the Lords of Toothfire. And their numbers were legion.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Under Starter's Orders, Chapter One
It was easy enough to mishear Flashshadow, since she never raised her voice above the softest of timid murmurs, and that was why Joe had assumed the name of their destination must be something other than what it sounded like when she said it. Our hero didn’t see how there could be a place called “disqualification tablet,” even in this galaxy. He should probably have kept in mind he was still a comparative newcomer here, and that the literal appellations towards which local cultures so tended nearly always made sense after you’d been to take a look firsthand.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Unto the Breach, Chapter One
A vast luminous sphere of temporo-psionic flux had blinked into existence above Nottingham City Centre. Deep in that enemy-overrun war-zone, three crusaders named Phoenix, Kumiko and Phoenix Prime looked from where they were holed-up to gaze at the spectacle in awe. The winged schoolgirl Carrie, darting over battle-ravaged rooftops halfway to her destination, halted at a hover and gawped likewise. Every Solidity soldier stationed at ground-level was occupied the same way, for as far as these extraterrestrials were concerned, the unthinkable had happened. This swirling swelling ball of supernal energies had eaten a hole in their encirclement of giant robotic Future Fighters. A defensive barrier that the ageless wisdom of the Purplecoats themselves had pronounced impregnable now stood breached.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Unto the Breach, Chapter Two
Erupting from the turbid vapours of an interplanetary heat-field was a very different Flash Club to Lightning’s, this one led by Neetra Neetkins of The Four Heroes. She was making a stand all her own in the battle to save Planet Earth, not from the streets of home where her family and friends waged the war on several fronts, but rather in the distant galaxy whence their enemies hailed. Neetra and the eight faithful Mini-Flashes under her had seconds ago completed a series of gruelling challenges flung at them by Toothfire, a machine-empire dreaded throughout the quadrant but which opposed the Solidity as vehemently as Neetra did, and with whom our heroine in her last hopes of turning the tide sought to forge an alliance.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Unto the Breach, Chapter Four
Back on Mars, the Solidity patrolmen were safely tied-up beside the wreck of their ship while Bret and Max searched through the scrap for the distress-beacon. Meanwhile Amy was sitting on the sand with the Professors and Bendigo, rounding off the long story of how she and her friends came to be there.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
