GateKeeper

• Jessica Rodda Rowe, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2014

Our world is not by itself, parallel to our world is a whole host of other worlds that co-egsist together but eternally separate.That was until the 'Ancience', a race of beings on our planet that were a thousand years more advanced than us in as we call the modern age were. Discovered that if you create worm holes you can get to other dimensions and worlds both past present and future. All around the world they set up these machines. They fashioned them to look like gates. To protect the gates they built jiant metle leopards for there villagence and prowess in battle. They then brought these to life using a combination of alchemy and the Ancience technology . Only select few could actually go through the gates at first these few were the leaders of the Ancience themselves, but the power of the gates overcame and corrupted them. The metle leopard, you see is programmed not to let any pass that have a selfish heart. And will kill anyone it thinks is not worthy to go through. Desperate, the leaders decided to try to recreate the gates in an attempt to control these other realms. But the power of the old gates and the new gates combined unbalanced our worlds central maridians and split the land in half sank the Ancience capital. Today we call there land ' Atlantis '. But the other half of the land survived, well for the most part. And a new race of people emerged. They called themselves the 'Toreg' and they were a race ruled by the mage council and had no need for the Ancience technology for they could summon up energy and make it do there bidding. This was called 'magic'. So over time the Ancience technology disappeared and the Mage council like the leaders became corrupt and power hungry. They wanted all of the magic for themselves and slowly bred it out of the peasants leaving most people with only 1 or 2 abilitys. There is one other major difference between a Toreg and normal people. They don't have any shadows. Instead they have amulets. They call them shadow amulets and they are so closely linked to the Toreg that if you hold a toregs amulet. You control the person. Using these the Mage Council quickly gained control of most of the Toreg population as any of fence no matter how minor it may seam results in you handing over you're shadow amulet. Under the thinking that if you have created some sort of dexter acne you are a threat to the council and the people and therefor you must be controlled. This lasted for thousands of years until a Toreg by the name of Arthur stumbled across a gate and faced the metal leopard. Apon seing that the mans hart was the purest left in the land the leopard let Arthur past.
Arthur emerged in a world were there was but one thing. A sword, glowing emerald green, half submerged into lime stone. Confused he walked slowly over and pulled it out. It was a sword crafted by the Ancience. And was called Excalibur. Arthur looked into the sword and it told him the truth about the Mage council and what he had to do. He gathered up 250 men not controlled, the last free men of the land and fought, what would later be called the battle of justice. Arthur took the thrown and along with the order of the round table King Arthur brought peace and order to The other half of the Island....Camelot.