Prologue

“Allahu akbar!”

Boooooom!

The roar of an explosion echoed loudly near us. An immense cloud of dust spread across the quarry, hiding everything beneath it.

“Nothing better than an explosion in the morning, don’t you think, Peter?”

“What I think is that you shouldn’t be yelling that when you are about to initiate the detonator…”

“What nonsense, people must be alerted before the explosion, as efficiently as possible. Not doing so would be dangerous!”

“Yeah, just… try not to use those words next time!”

“Why?”

“Because one day you are going to end up being arrested, either for being mistaken for a terrorist, or simply for being a jerk…”

I sighed heavily at the words of that 29-years-old man. His almost two meters tall body made of pure muscle combined with his bad jokes, sometimes made people doubt whether he was indeed a human being or just a super-evolved gorilla. However, he is my best friend. My only friend, to be precise: Iosu Per Txapeldun… He always makes a poor first impression, and his bulky build and poor choice of words generally don’t help much either, but all in all, he is a good person.

“Relax dude, after all, nobody seems to care. In fact, everyone laughs their asses off when they hear it. Why can’t you be the same?”

“Do whatever the hell you want, but I’m sure if you go on like this, one day you will have real problems. Don’t come crying to me as if I never warned you when that day comes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it… Anyway, I just remembered, tomorrow is your birthday, right? Thirty years old already… We sure are getting old.”

“Who are you calling old?! I’m still pretty young.”

I hit my chest with my right fist. Maybe this time, the one acting like an ape was me…

“True, your body may be thirty, but your mind is still that of a fifteen-year-old kid."

"The pot calling the kettle black…"

“Yep, not gonna to deny that.” Iosu hit his chest the same way I did just a moment earlier.

After a moment of silence, we erupted in laughter. The both of us started working at the quarry at the same time, five years ago. Our daily routine consists of blowing up stuff and carrying stones from one place to another non-stop. A heavy, dirty, poorly paid job full of dangers. Still, we usually have a good time together.

“Now that I think about it, you still haven’t got yourself a girlfriend, have you?”

“Mind your own business…”

“Dude, I’m just concerned about you. Well, no big deal, even if you never find a girl who loves you, I always will be by your side,” he answered, giving me a thumbs up.

“I... appreciate it… very much…”

His words made me sigh heavily again… I could not deny that my life was a bit lonely. My parents died two years ago, and I don’t have siblings or other close relatives. And surely, neither did I have a girlfriend… But I’m not sad about that! Not at all! I’m just waiting for the right girl to appear… Tomorrow I’ll buy a cat… two cats… maybe three.

“Jokes aside, we should go back to work. There is still a lot of wall to bomb, heh, heh.” Iosu smiled as he watched the last traces of dust scattering in the distance.

“Yeah, you're right. We better stop wasting time and return to earning our salary.”

The day had just begun. Quite a few hours of work remained ahead of us, so we jumped on the truck and headed to our next destination with our other colleagues.

My life was quite ironic. When I was young, I never would have imagined that I would end up working in a quarry. People often made fun of me saying that it suits me… My first name is Peter and my last name Gravel… Nothing more to say about it…

Not only that. I am 1.97 meters tall, and my body is rather solidly build. Not as much as Iosu’s, but close. Growing up, I was a pretty strong kid, which earned me a beautiful nickname: “The wall”... Kids can be extremely annoying… and adults can be even worse…

“How do I always end up thinking about such nonsense?” I mumbled to myself as I reminisced about my school days.

As a child, and as a matter of fact, even to this day, I enjoy role-playing games. I used to spend most of my free time creating wild stories with my friends, leaving the dice to decide our destinies written on simple sheets of paper filled with scrawls.

Because of my damn body, my friends always told me I should be the warrior, although I always liked magic classes better, such as the mage. In video games, I always ended up choosing that class. Magic is the best!

“But life is not a game, I cannot choose a different class.” I smiled wryly.

We reached our destination and resumed work. Moving the equipment, ensuring everything is in place… One must be careful around dynamite, not everyone can handle it. At least, not everyone should be allowed to handle it…

“Wouldn’t it be nice to blow all this up with magic instead of bombs.” I jokingly said while unloading the dynamite from the truck.

“I love the idea! I would give everything I have to learn explosive magic. I would not regret dying for it!”

I said that jokingly, but Iosu was not much different from me… Well, at least when it came to liking the idea of using magic to blow stuff up…

“Well, learning other kinds of magic would be nice too.”

“Why? Explosions are all we need! In any case, magic does not exist and will never exist. Luckily, I have my little girls to make up for that, heh, heh, heh.” Iosu answered while grabbing a box of dynamite.

“Dude, sometimes I’m terrified of you…”

‘How was this guy allowed to take this job? Well, better than leaving him to his own devices… Who knows what he could end up doing...’

Obviously, in real life, there is no magic. As he said, dynamite was our magic here. For everything else we must rely on muscles, and that we had plenty of.

“Well, let’s get on with this.”

I broke away from the group to finish the preparations next to the wall of rock while losing myself in my fantasies.

‘If only I could ever go to a fantasy world…’

“Ha, ha, ha, as if that could happen…” I murmured, shaking my head.

BEEEEEEEEEEEP!

“Watch out, Peter!”

Startled by the sound of a large car’s horn and my friend’s yell, I spun around just in time to see a huge out-of-control truck coming towards me at full speed.

“Who’s the asshole driving this?!” I yelled in panic.

I was barely able to react in time and jump out of its way. I fell on the ground several meters away from where I stood just a moment ago and watched as the vehicle crashed head-on into the rock wall, less than six feet from me.

“Wow… I survived by the skin of my teeth…”

Or so I thought, but a second later, a bunch of rocks that had been let loose by the impact of the track fell off the stone wall that was right above me. Lying on the ground as I was, there was no time for me to move away.

“This can’t be happening…”

I felt like time had stopped. I could see in ultra-slow motion how tons of stone fell over me. I had no way to escape. As I cursed my luck, a slight and almost imperceptible whisper that seemed to come directly from the truck reached my ears…

“Did you really believe that you could get away from me?”