Chapter 1: Chapter 001: Seperation

"Atlas! Grab the other side!" An oldish man yelled as he hoisted on edge of the huge sheet onto his shoulder. 

A tall, golden-haired, and emerald-eyed, 20-year-old young man dropped the metallic staff he was holding and rushed to the other edge of the sheet. He made are to not step on many olives as he hoisted the other edge. 

"On 3! 1...2...3!" Said the old man once again and the two of them began pulling. Their heels dug deep into the soft dirt, their quads flexed as they held onto the 10-meter long sheet tightly with their hands. The more they pulled the heavier their load got as more of the sheet stretched until they were essentially pulling more than 200 pounds of olives through the humid soft mud.

They walked up to the last olive tree of the row and opened the sheet up so that it could cover as much space as possible. One huge pile of olives and leaves had been created in the middle of the sheet as Adam and his old man took one huge staff each and began the process of extracting olives from the tree. Hitting it till it gave up. 

They had been going at it for more than 8 hours. By now the time had reached 4 PM and both Adam and his father, as well as all the paid hands, were reaching their limit. 

"This is the last one for us boys! Let's go!" Atlas shouted loudly in the gaps between his strikes to the team he had been assigned in. 

The relatively cold weather of autumn made their job a lot more refreshing but the fact that the sun was already coming down proved to be the better driving factor. No one wanted to work without any light and so they had to beat this last olive tree quickly and gather all the olives into their sacks and ship them to the trusty old Oil Press. 

And they managed to finish relatively quickly. It took them only half an hour to pack everything up on the trucks. 

"That... Was super hard...Why did they have so many olives this year?" Atlas whipped the sweat off his eyebrow as he sat down on some roots.

"Why? You'd prefer we get no money, boy?" The tough old man, Jack, passed his son a water bottle as he also smacked him lightly on the head. 

"Yeah, You're right. I wouldn't... Is mom coming?"

"You bet she is... She just called me, saying she finished up with the rest..." Jack said with a grin as he mentioned his beloved wife. 

"Ha~~ Leave it to mom when it comes to making you feel like you were lazing around all week." Said Atlas with a resigned sigh, though his smile still stretched widely on his face.

"Mmmm. Hannah sure is great," Jack said a goofy smile on his face. 

"Ain't that right!?" A loud and boisterous yet at the same time all so feminine voice came from right behind them as mama Hannah popped up out of nowhere right next to her husband. 

You are reading story End of Times at novel35.com

"Mom! Nice timing! When did you get here?" Atlas got up and hugged his mother as he looked around for her pickup truck. 

"I was here for a long while, you two were just too impressed by my prodigal worth ethic and abilities to notice anything... Come one, let's get you two back home." She said after pausing to hug her husband and beckoned them towards their black pickup truck, which was eternally stained with dirt and mud after many years of use. 

"Is our daughter doing fine?" Jack asked Hannah. 

"She has probably already finished eating dinner Jack."

Atlas was happy looking at them from behind as they walked side by side. They had been together for more than 20 years at this point and still going strong. Jack may look like an old man with grey hair but in truth, he was only 50 years old, and below the loose farming clothes was hidden a very sturdy body, crafted by 40 and more years of relentless work and nutrition provided by the most impressive woman Atlas had ever known. 

Jack got in his car and Hannah entered from the passenger seat. 

"A shit wait! I forgot my stuff back there. Wait for me!" Atlas remembered right as he was about to enter the car and looked at his parents and said right as he rushed to get his jacket and handmade staff from the olive he and his father had been sitting under.

It was only a few steps later. Only a few meters. Nothing more. Those few meters though would make all the difference. Atlas, for the longest time, believed that this was planned out. But that would be his weaker side speaking. It was a coincidence, and it fucked with him more than he could possibly imagine. 

******************************

A cut, a pause. Right as Atlas was about to place his foot on the dirt the world seemed to crash into a still. Game-like glitches appeared in Atlas's vision. They broke the fabric of the world, in the sky and in the ground they appeared, they shook and soon after they left. 

And just as suddenly, right as vertigo was about to set in, like a glass window cracking into a million pieces everything was snapped back into place. 

"What the actual fuck?! Am I going crazy? Mom, Dad did anyone-!" Just as Atlas turned around he was immensely shocked to find a semi-transparent, flowing wall of lights standing tall and piercing the skies only a meter behind him. It shimmered a deep orange as it reflected the light from the setting sun. It was immensely beautiful and yet to Atlas it only further drove his mind to the breaking point.

"Mom!? DAD!!!?" He yelled again. His fist swinging at the elastic wall again and again. He tried to get them to listen,  hear his voice, the sound of his punches, anything. But he knew they weren't on the other side of that wall. He could see an unclear picture of what was beyond and with absolute certainty, he could say it was not the dirt road next to the grassy fields he had grown up to but instead an incredibly steep and yet almost fantastical mountainous region.

---