I started working on Venture Imperium in my late teens before setting it aside for a few years. Back then, Book 2 was actually going to be Book 1, and Black Zone Reports, which technically acts as a prequel to these novels, wasn’t even an idea yet. Now that I’ve changed so much about the series, this chapter no longer fits the current cannon that well, nor is it up to my standards anymore. However, I did do a little polish work on it a few months back to enter it into a YouTube compilation for first chapters.
Even though it’s out of date and pretty rough in some places, I wanted to post it so that I have a record of my progression. I always wish I could see the rough beginnings of other authors and books, but most authors end up deleting their first drafts after revision, leaving nothing but the perfected piece behind. Even this chapter has been edited at least five times over the years and I no longer have a copy of the original version, but I would like to make the occasional post about the progression from original draft to final revision sometime in the future. Maybe the first version of this is out there somewhere in some forgotten file, and if I happen to find it, I’ll post it.
Seeing how writers turn a jumble of muddy ideas into well-formed, artistic expressions would’ve been really helpful for me early on, and still is helpful to me now, so I figure I might as well contribute what I can before I accidentally misplace these early drafts. I may never become a great writer, but at least by saving early works, I can see if I’ve progressed over time.
Venture Imperium Book 2 [Oh yeah, I also changed the title since then]
Vladeti Initiative Book 1, Chapter 1:
Avery peered out the corner of the large foyer window one last time to ensure the coast was clear. The dusty Arizonan pines were swaying in the breeze as well as a cluster of little summer flowers in the front garden, but no other movement was present that she could see. The white concrete drive that vanished into the thicket was also empty aside from a scattering of pine needles where there would normally be at least one vehicle.
A mischievous glint caught in her unnaturally green eyes as she pulled away from the view. Now was her rare opportunity to snoop around all the rooms that were normally occupied by Uncle James and Aunt Melody or that were otherwise considered off-limits, even if such a rule was never truly acknowledged out loud.
“Hiding things from me in the attic, throwing away secret keys, arguing with each other in the middle of the night when they think I’m asleep…” She mused aloud as she trotted from the foyer to the narrow stairs which opened just before the crescent-shaped kitchen and its little island of a similar shape.
“All these years and they still forget that I can hear them across the house.” She added with a hint of slight frustration.
Gripping the stair’s railing, she took a final cautionary glance to the other end of the house that was separated into a dining and living area. A small dining table with four chairs on the white tile floor was on the left along with the door to the back porch. On the right were two large sofas behind a glass coffee table that often doubled as a footrest despite Melody’s frequent protests. The Holographic TV was still on from earlier, paused on one of Avery’s games.
Shadows cast from the harsh daylight outside played through the tinted glass encompassing the space, spattering everything in a soft, natural light that temporarily took the edge off of her nerves. She’d never really been one for snooping and sneaking or creeping around like this, but if Melody successfully kept one more secret from her, she thought she might blow a gasket the next time they argued. No one wanted that firework display, she reasoned.
Another compulsive pass of her charcoal, cat-like ears around the house assured her again that she was, in fact, alone. Finding no other excuses to waste more of what little time she likely had, she climbed to the second floor and turned right down the long hallway. A white door with a paint-stained bronze handle sat at the end as the only one out of the four on this floor that always remained shut. The doors behind her lead to a storage closet, a bathroom, and Avery’s bedroom.
Turning the handle as quietly as she could despite there being no one to hear her intrusion, she crept in and was met by the pungent smell of fresh paint washing out of the room. A worn, paint-speckled tarp covered the entirety of the carpet inside. Dozens of canvasses, most of which were backlit by a single window on the far wall, were scattered on and around several easels.
Most of the paintings were in dark, muted colors; their abstract lines curving into a kind of longing appearance that made one think of abandoned buildings or fallen trees. The rest, however, were bright and even picturesque in their depictions of dense city life or merry gatherings of friends. Arrays of brushes and paints were tossed into buckets and trays haphazardly, making the floor more like a minefield than anything else.
Melody really has got some artistry in her after all. Wish she wouldn’t be so sour about not sharing it though; or about any of the other things she’s always so sour about for that matter. Avery mumbled internally.
The tarp crumpled and warped as she picked her way through the mess, heading for the left corner of the maze. A short, silvery chain hanging from a hatch in the ceiling drew her eyes, and she hastily cleared away the piles of art supplies until she could stand beneath it without causing an avalanche.
The chain was well above her head and out of arm’s reach, so she stood on her toes and extended her dark gray, leathery wing to grab it. Unfurled, the tips of each wing easily reached six feet, giving her a total wingspan of just over twelve feet. The wrist joints halfway up had hands with three strong fingers, a thumb-like appendage, and a sharp talon where the first finger ought to have been.
She tugged down on the metal cord with her wing-hand, mindful not to accidentally yank it off entirely. With a light click, the tiny door slid away and a grey ladder slowly descended from the dark pit above with the smooth shifting of metal on metal. An anxious knot settled in her gut as she stared into the shadow that loomed in the hatch. It felt like it was stretching out, curling its way around the ladder’s steps with long fingers… Or perhaps that was just her overactive imagination.
Glancing back over her shoulder to the window on the wall, her ears nervously perked forward to listen for the engine of a car outside. The driveway was still empty like it had been only a few minutes ago, and no telltale sounds of habitation could be heard over the rattle of the air conditioner down the hall.
Stop being so skittish! She berated herself in a huff. What’s she going to do if she caught me anyways? Yell at me? Throw a fit? Ground me for a month? As if that’d be anything new, you wimp. Are you really going to let a routine scolding scare you off again?
Avery leaned against the ladder, hands clamping to its sides as she suppressed the uneasiness in her gut. She tip-toed up each step until her head popped into the attic, followed by her wings getting scrunched up to her sides so as not to snag anything on the way up. It was black as night and her eyes were taking their time to adjust to it, making the rest of the ascent a clumsy one.
She crawled onto the floor, wary of smacking her head on an invisible beam or low ceiling that might be just above her. The air was suffocating and musty with an unpleasant tinge of old dust that was already putting a tickle in her throat. The hollowness of the space seemed to push down as if trying to ward her away from its long, undisturbed quiet while she fumbled for a light switch on the ragged walls.
“Ow!” She yelped as a jagged splinter snatched at her pinky finger. “Ugh, does this black hole even have light bulbs in it?”
Tracing her talons up the walls instead, the plastic click of a switch suddenly flooded everything in a bright white glow. She winced and her pupils shrank into thin vertical slits against the blinding LEDs dangling by red wires all along the supporting beams.
Her eyes eventually adjusted, bringing the blurred shapes of dusty old boxes stacked in unstable pyramids into focus along with lumps of unrecognizable junk lining everything else. At the center of the clutter sat an antique, maroon, and extremely ugly chair covered in attic grime. Behind it were a couple rows of metal shelves supporting even more forgotten knickknacks and old blankets wrapped in clear plastic storage bags.
Avery gawked at how much was here, having expected a small crawl space with a sparse collection.
“Ah yes, just ‘full of air ducts’.” She irritably quoted what Melody had dismissively rehearsed to her over the years, gazing around the room that didn’t have a single air duct in sight. “Time to find what’s mine.”
Starting on the left-most shelving unit and bushing aside monster-sized dust bunnies, she picked through box after box. Most contained a predictable assortment of random items which she occasionally stopped to wipe clean and examine before moving on. Snow globes, ornaments, articles of clothing, and old woodworking tools that must have been some of James’ starting equipment years prior all passed through her fingers.
None of it stood out to her as things that would be hidden from her though. Certainly nothing worth arguing over at three in the morning with hushed voices. Not to mention that none of it could’ve accepted a key, something that Melody had supposedly thrown out the week before. That, in particular, had seemed to set James off. He was never one to shout, but that had just about drawn one out of him when Melody admitted to it.
Rounding the end-cap of the shelf revealed a clump of boxes conspicuously shoved into the corner and draped over with a white sheet. The floor creaked under her footsteps as she made her way to it and tossed the sheet off to the side, kicking up a cloud of even more grey dust. One stiff beat of her wings sent it all swirling out of her way before it got the chance to properly choke her, but it still gave her a brief coughing fit.
Cardboard boxes with her name written on them, all of which were empty, surrounded a forest green chest with swirling patterns carved into its sides. Bright silver handles were mounted on the front as well as a battered chip-lock. She pulled up on the handle, but the lid wouldn’t budge.
Her heart leapt up into her throat like she’d just found buried treasure. “Ah-ha! Found you!” She exclaimed, falling to her knees and beginning a close inspection of the chip-lock. The screen was mounted in a steel frame, but the seam between it and the wood was a simple adhesive that her uncle often used in his work.
“Throwing out the scanner key wasn’t good enough, Melody.” She said spitefully and drew a sleek folding knife from her pocket.
She aligned the razor-sharp blade with the lock, then jabbed into it and plucked the scanner clean from the socket. The damaged wood made her cringe, but she couldn’t stop now. Piece by piece the hole was whittled away until it exposed the metal casing that protected the inner mechanisms. She pried at it, but her little knife couldn’t pierce it.
“Alright, plan B.” She said, grasping the mechanisms in her wing-hand until the metal began to crumple under the force. She braced against the chest and yanked once, twice, then fell back against the shelves when the little bolts flew out in a rain of fragments. The shelf groaned and tilted to one side before leaning back and throwing a couple of boxes onto the ground, hitting with a muffled shatter.
“…Oops.” She hissed in a grimace, “Hope those were the ornaments.”
The chest was now permanently cracked open, the latch sheered well beyond repair. Electricity ran through her with the anticipation, but she quickly checked herself before it manifested into the real thing at her fingertips. Then, delicately, she pushed the lid open.
It was a bit disappointing to see a velvety toy cat staring back up at her instead of a heap of ancient tomes or some other stereotypical treasure, but she eagerly pick it up anyhow. She brushed her fingers over its fake fur, her vivid green eyes mirroring the toy’s plastic lookalikes. It reminded her of herself a little, especially those pointy ears.
Luckily, the contents of her discovery were not limited to one stuffed animal. A little jewelry box with tiny yellow flowers painted on it and several plain folders also littered the bottom of the chest.
Setting the cat aside, she lifted the painted box. Resting on a cushion inside it was a black ring with bands of beautifully woven patterns. Fitted at its center was a sea-blue gem in the shape of a pointed oval. Looped through the ring was a sturdy necklace chain. It was one of the most elegant pieces of jewelry she’d ever seen, but looked far too expensive to possibly be real.
She went to put it around her neck, but stopped halfway with a sigh. Better not. Aunt would notice it for sure and figure out where I’d gotten it, and that’s one explosion I don’t feel like dealing with right now.
She reverently settled the necklace back down into the chest and closed it, getting one last peek before setting it aside.
Only the folders remained now. Anxiously flipping one open, a yellowed envelope slipped from the pages and landed in her lap. The seal was broken, but otherwise seemed undamaged. Avery gently pulled out the letter inside, unfolding several sheets that were laid one on top of the other. The corner of the opening page read, “From: Ashley Collingwood. To: My Precious Girl.”
Avery’s gut sank and her skin went cold as if the blood had just drained from her body. She glanced through the pages, glossing over bits and pieces of the fine handwriting. “…A letter from mom?” She almost choked on the words.
Her mind spun as she stared at the header, hoping that she had misread it the first time. No… No, they wouldn’t have hidden something like this from me – not something from mom. Even Melody wouldn’t… would she? Her eyes stung as she stared down at the papers for a minute longer, a hint of nausea churning in her stomach as every explanation she tried to muster wasn’t good enough.
Wiping away the glass forming in her eyes, she forced herself to read the words.
“I know it will be hard growing up without your mother, and I know you may not understand why it had to be this way, but I also know that you will be strong enough for it. You’re probably angry with me for leaving you behind with James and Melody, but they promised to care for you when I had nowhere left to turn. I couldn’t keep you safe, and my family couldn’t know about you. James hardly knew me, but he and his wife took you in as their own. I hope that they will become family to you in time.”
Avery’s teeth ached with the tension in her jaw, but she hardly took notice of it now as she hissed between them, “They’re not even related to me?”
She resumed reading, though it was already becoming difficult to do so with the heat burning into her veins. “If everything has gone as planned, then you have already been brought up to speed on what I did, but I’ll try to fill in any blanks that might be left.
“I was working with Imperium before Olympus went down, so I saw it all. The crisis was immense. Frankly, it’s a wonder civilization didn’t fall apart around our ears that year. There were so many problems to solve and not nearly enough time to find solutions for them all. We worked around the clock, and we did a lot of things in that time that we shouldn’t have just to keep things from collapsing. I won’t make excuses for it, but you should understand how complicated it all was. Life isn’t a simple thing, and choices don’t come color-coded for our convenience.
“Once the immediate panic was over, the real problems started. And I was one of them.”
Avery quickly tore herself away from the words as charred marks began to spread into the paper at her fingertips, blackening it like it had been held over a candle. She directed the energy away before the letter burst into flames, sending two white-hot cracks of electricity from her dark gray wings into the floor.
The thud of the front door below and the echo of Melody’s voice downstairs shattered what calm remained in her control. A spike of fury shot through her like a branding iron, wrath boiling up from places she hadn’t even known existed. She bolted up from the floor with letter in hand and strode to the ladder, sliding down it to the second floor. She marched out of the hall and down the stairs with her large ears flattened back against her head.
Aunt Melody came into view when she reached the bottom. Melody was a stout, somewhat overweight woman with dirty blonde hair and a tint of pink in her skin. She was taking off a pair of sunglasses that were a bit too large for her face, revealing pale, critical blue eyes. She was in the middle of a rant with her nails-on-chalkboard voice, oblivious to Avery storming into the room.
“Those good for nothing teenagers are out on the street again. I almost ran them and their skateboards into the ditch! If I see them on the road one more time, I’m going to call the HOA for a meeting and-“
“YOU LIAR!” Avery shouted at the top of her lungs with such venom that Melody froze, staring dead-eyed back at her. “How DARE you keep this from me?! How dare you lie to my face about mom?! What do you think I am, huh? You think I’m your pet? Your plaything?!”
Melody stood bewildered with wide, frightened eyes blinking dumbly as if her mind was spinning in circles behind them. The oppressive weight that swept into the foyer made her want to cower back out the front door, but she was far too stubborn for something like that.
“…Excuse me?” She weakly tried to counter, but was completely drowned out.
“I did everything for you. I never broke your rules, I never fought you- I let you walk all over me! And for what? FOR WHAT?! So you could stab me in the back?!” Avery slammed the now crumpled letter down on the table beside her while fighting to keep her throat from closing, caught between an overwhelming sense of anger and childlike despair.
Melody’s expression became some ugly mixture of pride and fear, scrunching up like a growling dog as she snapped back, “Now wait a minute. You hold your tongue, Avery! You can’t speak to me like that after all I’ve sacrificed for you!”
“SHUT UP!” She screamed, matching her aunt’s silencing tone and using it against her. Fire was burning behind her acid green eyes, not stopping herself despite the rapidly growing tingle of static in the air around her. “You told me James was her brother, you told me she left me for dead, you were going to hide everything from me! What is wrong with you?!”
With that, a concussive bang lit the airborne static into whips of electricity. Bright white and blue sparks snapped to every surface in reach, leaving thin scorch trails in their wake. Melody’s shrill screech and sobs of terror could easily be heard over the brief explosion as she scrambled behind the chair next to her.
The outburst only lasted a second before Avery shrank back, snuffing out the energy in an instant; but the damage had already been done. Smoking trails had been cut into everything within three feet of her and sprinkles of dust from the ceiling slowly drifted to the floor like ash.
Before either of them could regroup themselves from the shock, Uncle James swung open the front door with a load of grocery bags in his hands. “Hey guys, I’m… Back…?” His cheerful greeting quickly faded, as did the gentle smile on his scruffy face. Scanning the room with round eyes, he eventually passed a wary glance to Melody, then Avery, then back again.
Everything fell into a tense silence, not one of them wanting to be the first to break it and risk resuming the carnage. James, always being the one to lead with the calmest approach, finally dared to disturb it.
“Um… So… What’s going on?” He said, cautiously setting the bags on the floor.
Melody clung to the back of the chair and wailed, “Well isn’t it obvious?! Avery nearly burned down the whole house! She could have electrocuted me!”
James waited for Avery to speak up, but when she remained silent, he quietly continued. “And how did all of this start?” He gestured broadly.
Melody was about to pitch in again, but James swiftly added a stern, “Avery?” To what he’d said before she had the chance.
Avery finally budged, but only to stiffly turn towards him. Her tone wasn’t as biting now, but it was still hindered and cold, “Years, uncle. You’ve never told me that I had things from mom here. Right above my room…” She tried to swallow the welling sobs to little effect, wiping away fresh tears, “You had no right. You’ve both been lying to my face… Tell me I’m wrong.” She almost pleaded, wishing he’d give her a better explanation.
James took a breath and lowered his gaze while slowly closing the front door. Her heart sank when he shook his head, “No, you aren’t wrong. Those things up there rightfully belong in your possession…” He awkwardly shifted in place and looked about the room as if searching for the right way to say something.
“But?” Avery sharply prompted.
“…But, there are things about your mother that are dangerous, Ave… Even knowing who she is could’ve put you and us under more of a microscope than we already are here. Maybe this was a selfish way of going about all this, but we didn’t know how else to keep this family safe. I’m sorry-“
Melody had been looking at him with an accusing glare and she intervened on the apology, “It’s all from her mother, an abominable person, James! She didn’t need any of that stuff anyway.”
“Shut. Up.” Avery shot back with a sharp turn of her head, “You don’t get to decide what I need and don’t need from my family. My real family.”
Avery saw something break behind James’ eyes at that, but he quickly stepped between her and Melody before her aunt retaliated. “Now that all of this has come out, let it be, Melody. I think we all have a lot to discuss.”
Avery chuckled bitterly to herself, sneering at nothing and everything all at once. She went to pick up the letter, but the tabletop she’d left it on was covered in smoking scars. The heat of wrath dissolved instantly, replaced by a numbness that seeped into her bones like ice as she brushed the precious ash between her fingers. She’d vaporized it, and she hadn’t even noticed. All the words had either been destroyed or rendered illegible, reduced to a hollowing lump of char.
She dropped the crispy paper and spun to leave.
“Ave, come back, we still need to talk about-” James tried to call her back, but she had already crossed the house and vanished through the back door, slamming it after her.
He sighed heavily and watched the back porch window, then turned to Melody with an accusing grimace, “Well that was smoothly done. You shouldn’t have been so cruel to her. This is already going to be hard enough as it is.”
Melody crossed her arms in a huff and shot daggers his way. She didn’t try to argue, but neither did she agree.
For the fun of it, My Badly-Drawn Portrait of Ave (I swear I’ll get a better one eventually):