Ky'Mera: Griffin Storm (The Third Ky'Mera Trilogy)

Book 1: Beneath Ky'Mera

The Drop

         My name is Ebony Long, daughter of Jason and Chiara Long.  I am a citizen of Ky’Mera and live about three miles below the surface of the Earth.  My father is a half-human, half-Furan with brown fur and sandy highlights dotting his body.  My mother is a full-blood Delvi with black fur all over her body except for her chest and belly.  That fur is a pure white, though as she has gotten older it has darkened into metallic silver.  Dad is about six one in height while mother is about five nine.  I’m around the middle at five eleven.  While my mother’s features came out in my face and fur color, my body is more like that of a Furan.  My legs are longer and more muscular than the average Delvi, and my tail is plumed instead of being thin and smooth.  I also have long black hair that cascades down my back to the bottom of my shoulder blades, evidence of my human heritage.  My usual dress is a sleeveless black shirt and camo cargo pants.  I had given up on more girly shoes at a very young age, preferring black combat boots so that I could get where I was going without breaking an ankle.  My one personal item is an armband that rests on my left arm just above my bicep.  It was a gift from my Aunt Gabby that had been made by a Zuni Indian as a gift for her wedding.  She gave it to me on my eighth birthday and I hadn’t taken it off since except to bathe.  My black eyes drew many looks and I had already been with three different boyfriends by the time I turned sixteen.  None ever stayed with me long, given I tended to out-pace them in just about everything.  Mother would have killed me while my father pummeled the poor boy into a pulp if I had ever taken any of them to bed, so I remained a virgin up to the present day.  Part of me wanted to be with a boy, if for no other reason than to lose my virginity, but I had been taught the rights and wrongs of sex before marriage, so the act remained a mystery.

We lived in a modern house on the outskirts of Kioko, the only major settlement in Ky’Mera besides the small town at the train depot.  The city is home to about a hundred thousand people, most of them living in the city center in cavern scrapers that reach halfway to the cavern roof, almost three kilometers above.  Our house is nowhere near that big, being a two-story building with just enough room for my parents and myself.  It wasn’t much, though we didn’t need much when most of the things we needed could be bought at the store downtown.  Our house was back in the woods, hidden from view by thick jungle so that we could have some privacy.  The only way in was a private drive that wound through the forest for almost a mile before it reached the main road. 

In Ky’Mera and on the surface, there are a total of four sentient races that coexist together.  The humans and Furan live mostly on the surface, while the Delvi and the Draconians, or Dracos for short, dwell in the caverns of Ky’Mera.  My grandfather, Kevin Long, was the first to find Ky’Mera and bring the humans and Furan together.  Some twenty years after that, my father and my Aunt Gabby returned to Ky’Mera, discovering the Delvi and Dracos in the process.  Some wondered if there were other races out there beyond the charted caves around Ky’Mera, but no one dared to venture into the unknown without a very good reason.  Some had left on adventures like my grandfather, only to never be seen again.  It was an unspoken rule that you didn’t go into the caves beyond Ky’Mera, for fear of being lost forever.

That is where I come in.  I had been told by my parents that my grandfather lived through me, bless his soul, because I had the same insatiable urge to explore the unknown.  Mom and dad had tried to stop me in the past from climbing into caves and tunnels, but they soon gave it up as a lost cause.  By the time I had turned twenty-one, I had already mapped out several miles of tunnels and cavers beyond the existing records, making me the only person in Kioko to have ventured that far.  My gear consisted of two ten-inch daggers that could be charged with electricity for a short period of time.  Each was curved slightly to make using them together an easier task, and I had a sheath on each side of my hip that that drawing them was a smooth action.  The only other thing I carried with me on my adventures was a small black backpack, loaded with food containers and water bottles so that if I got turned around I could survive for up to a week.  Oh, I almost forgot, I also carry three Ky’Mera crystals with me, each about a foot long and about three inches around.  They provide me with an endless light source so that I never had to worry about running out of batteries for a flashlight.  My usual setup for exploring was to carry a crystal in my left hand and my dagger in my right.  The other two crystals would be attached to my backpack on either side to provide extra light.  I’d stop about every half a mile to map my progress, as well as at every intersection so I could find my way back.  My method worked to amazing effect, and I never once got turned around on my adventures, but that all changed when I stumbled onto what would come to be known as, The Drop.