Feeling weariness from his own wounds, Thomas swung his glaive desperately about, trying to ward away his adversary. When he could, he spared a glance through the driver’s door to see if Elly’s condition had worsened.
It was when Kaelan was only several feet away from him, that one of his backward glances caught Gareth climbing atop the car and making his way across the bonnet towards the open window where Elly was knocked out. Not double thinking who to attack, Thomas crouched low, then back flipped onto the roof the car, landing right in front of the Revenant. His strength was finally gone, his feeble attack with the glaive hit dully and ineffectively against Gareth’s hardened, bark skin. The Revenant laughed, and knocked the sword from his hand, sending it bouncing off the roof and onto the road. He then grabbed Thomas in a bear hug and began to squeeze the life out of him.
* * * * *
Kaelan stumbled to the hole in the car where the driver’s door had once been, and reached a bloodied hand for the unconscious Eleanor. Psychic energy danced between his fingers, and his white eyes glowed like torches searching the darkness of the car’s interior. Life is hanging on a thread. He thought, searching the young woman’s mind and finding the encroaching darkness of death still some distance away. He withdrew the Akashic Eye, and held it near her beautiful face. A light from the archaic, ocular-device illuminated her soft features. Memories and dreams projected on the roof of the car. Kaelan’s eyes watched eagerly, pushing further back into her past. Back to when she had first met Thomas. The location of the Crown of Dreams was not revealed. Damn you, bitch! Damn you both!
Then he saw something. An old photo sitting on the open lid of the glove box depicted Thomas, Eleanor and their son Jack huddled together at the beach. Kaelan focused on Jack’s smiling face, then turned his attention to the Akashic Eye, and searched Elly’s memories once again. He finally found a memory of Elly watching Thomas as he sat with his son Jack, teaching him how to fish. Even from this memory, he could sense that the boy obliviously held the secrets of his father buried deep within his subconscious. Genetic memory. His frustration faded, and he grinned darkly. Thank you my dear, for sharing that memory. Death is not far from you now. All you need is a little nightmare to quicken your journey...
* * * * *
Thomas’ vision was hazy and almost black, when he heard the thoughts of his enemy beneath him, inside the car with his wife.
No! his mind screamed. He knew what Kaelan intended. The leader of the Dark Tide was about to channel a nightmare into her subconscious that would weaken her greatly. Send her into a coma... or worse, death.
The last of his psychic energy was waning. Desperate, he reached out with his mind and found his glaive laying upon a patch of wild flowers growing along the edge of the road. Using what was left of his power, he pulled at the glaive, lifting it shakily into the air, then turned it around to face it at Kaelan’s exposed back as he leaned into the car.
The air was almost gone from his lungs. He could feel his bones breaking. Not long now. Gareth will soon snap my spine... and Elly...
He heard her moan, call out. Her voice muffled.
Gareth heard it too, then laughed hideously. His eyes were burning red, and there was a sadistic glee in them.
Thomas’s last breath rasped through his teeth as he hurled the glaive through the air, and straight into Kaelan’s back. There was a thud, followed by a whispered cry from the rebel’s thin lips, then silence.
Now I can die. Thomas thought, a bitter-sweet smile playing on his lips.
Not today. Elias’ voice spoke back in his mind.
There was blur of movement in the right of his vision, and then a flash of steel. Two, long Nysaean daggers were suddenly deeply embedded in the soft flesh of Gareth’s upraised armpits, where the bark did not completely cover. His ugly laughter was silenced. His eyes wide in disbelief.
Weightless arms dropped to his side, freeing Thomas from their death-grip. Before the giant fell, Thomas saw Elias grab the handles of his daggers, wrench them out, and smash the black prism buried in Gareth’s forehead with their pommels, one after the other. The force of the blows dislodged the stone, dropping it onto the roof of the car. Gareth’s red eyes flickered, then went out.
Bark skin suddenly burst into flames, and the Revenant flesh dissolved, revealing a black-boned skeleton. The remains crumbled into brittle debris and ash.
Thomas leaped off the car, pulled Kaelan’s still body from the front seat, throwing it to the ground, and climbed inside. Holding Elly in his arms, he kissed her pale cheeks, his tears smearing her make-up.
“There is a way to fix this,” Elias said from behind him. “There is a way to save her.”
Thomas looked over his shoulder at him. “What more do you want to take from me, Elias? She is all I have left.”
“After all those years we spent fighting together against Rama, against Osiria, I have not forgotten our friendship. However, the Crown of Dreams is something our people need. This world is dying. The ideals of hateful and wasteful people. Can’t you see this?”
Through his tears, Thomas could see nothing else. He had heard this rant before. He knew why the rebels had fought so hard in Avalon. Why they had killed so many of their brethren. They wanted to take the modern world by force. They wanted a weapon that could destroy anyone who opposed them. And only Thomas knew where that weapon lay.
He did not respond.
Elias reached out, offering the black prism of the dead Revenant. “Gareth was a fool.”
“You are offering me a curse?”
“I am offering you life. Take this stone, and you will be able to channel your life into her. Bring her back from death.”
Thomas knew the power of the life-stones. He had fought many Revenant in his time. “What do you want in return?”
“The memory. Give me the memory of where it is. Kaelan need not be the one to wear the crown.”
Shaking his head wearily, Thomas sighed. “I would die with her, to prevent such a trade. This world, our world Elias, does not need another Fall.”
Before the rebel could retort, there was a loud clamour of other people’s thoughts in both their heads. A cacophony of urgent and worried voices.
...I hope they are okay...
...the shouts definitely came from the road...
...people fighting, but who?
Elias turned his head towards the farm that buttressed the fence line, his eyes glowing a soft white. “There is a couple of trucks full of people heading this way. I can see the dust on the horizon. They must have heard the fight.”
“Then you must go,” Thomas replied. “There is no use in staying here.”
Kaelan stirred from his heap on the ground. Elias hurried over, and lifted the man into a sitting position. The glaive’s blade protruded from his stomach, glistening with blood. A weak hand secretly withdrew the photo of Thomas’ son Jack and passed it to Elias. The man studied it, and its significance sunk in.
“They are almost here,” Thomas said, not seeing what Elias was doing. “I will not tell them what happened, if you go now.” There was expectation in his voice.
Elias nodded at the temporary truce. He lobbed the black prism to Thomas, who caught it with both hands. “I will take Kaelan. You can tell them that Gareth and Darroch were highway men, wanting your money.”
“Yes.” Thomas accepted the ruse.
Elias dragged Kaelan across the road, towards the tree line. He whispered a word to the wind, and suddenly a shimmering wall of light dispersed, as a hologram of a tree faded. Where it once stood, hovered a large, metallic, circular platform with grooves for footings, and several upraised handle bars for five people. In the centre of the machine was a large diamond, that spun horizontally within a spherical pit. It was a skyjammer, an ancient Atlantean vehicle that was propelled by thought. Elias lifted Kaelan up and laid him on it, then climbed on himself, standing behind the pilot’s handle bars. He placed a small silver circlet upon his head, which activated
a link between the pilot and the vehicle.
“We are now even,” Elias said to Thomas. “Farewell.”
The skyjammer lifted over the opposite fence line, its diamond humming and increasing speed. Then, turning his back on the car wreckage and his old friend, Elias urged the vehicle into motion with a thought, sending it speeding across a wide grass field beyond, into the orange sunset.
Thomas did not wait until he lost sight of Elias, before facing Eleanor with the life-stone. He fastened it firmly in one of her hands, and then clasped her other hand with his. He smiled sadly, kissed her forehead, and shut his eyes.
There was a bright flash of light from within the car, and then all went black for him...
* * * * *
“She is still alive,” the old farmer said, his grey eyes looking deep into hers as they slowly fluttered open. “Bless her.”
There was tears in his eyes, and Elly did not know why. Behind him loomed the silhouettes of more people. They were crowding around her, talking and whispering. Further above them was a mesh of leaves from a distant canopy. She assumed it was late afternoon, for there were a couple of stars twinkling faintly between its branches, and a warm orange glow still lingered in lower half of the sky.
It was slowly coming back. Thomas and her were driving back home, down Old Mill Road...
“She’s so pretty,” a little girl’s voice whispered, timidly.
“Stay away from her, dear,” a woman’s voice answered. “Stand back, let grand daddy and the others look after her.”
The shrill sound of an ambulance in the distance shattered her grogginess.
“W-what is going on?” she asked, her throat was dry.
“You’re okay, miss,” the old man said. His skin looked like cracked mud, and his straw hair and beard were as white as snow. “But—”
“—But what?”
“The others... I’m sad to say, they didn’t make it.”
“Others?” Elly sounded confused. “Thomas?” Before the old man could reply, she started to shake, tears rushing down her face. He didn’t have to say anything, his sad face said it all. “Thomas!”
“It’s okay,” he said softly, stroking her hair and doing the best he could to hold her down, while the other men began to splinter her broken legs together. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“Thomas!”
* * * * *
Love, no matter where it is shared, is as necessary as the air we breath. It is what makes us human, what makes us strive to achieve our greatest triumphs, what makes us want to live. You are what makes me want to live. But if you need my life, my life force to live, then I will give it to you freely. Without a second thought. And I am glad that I go now, knowing that when you wake you will be safe. I love you, Eleanor. And I always will...
BOOK 1
THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST KINGDOMS
THE BRIGHTEYES CHRONICLES
Prologue
Layla ran into the forest as if her very life depended on it. She had left the house to the intruders, not risking a confrontation without backup. If they found her, if they managed to know what she knew, then Layla and her companions’ mission would have been for nothing.
Her companions. They were out there somewhere in the night, running for the Gate. She had lost them when the intruders broke into Thomas’ house. They had to run. There was no time to regroup.
Soft, bare feet––she had discarded her shoes––carried Layla across the damp ground with little to no sound. Even when the forest-floor was strewn with rocks and branches she glided across them effortlessly without a scratch. The night time noises of the wild had returned now she was deeper in the forest, but all she could hear was her own heavy breathing and the pounding of her heart. Her soft-glowing white eyes aided her in the darkness, and she did not stumble as much as she would have if she had been a normal human being––however her legs were slowly giving way to fatigue. Growling in anger at her slowing pace, Layla forced her legs to keep her up and running. She did not know where she was now or how far away from the house she was. She didn’t even know if the intruders had picked up her scent and were following. All she knew was she had to run until she could run no more. And then run again.
The crashing of branches and the shouting of voices behind her finally confirmed her fears.
Layla reached up her hands to brush away some low hanging branches, when she noticed the ring on her finger was glowing a fierce blue. The light curled and dissipated off of the band like fire, but the girl could not feel any heat. It was a beacon, guiding her towards the Gate. The light would grow bright if she neared it, and faint if she steered away from it. But where was it?
The young woman felt she was almost at the end of her endurance, when she threw a glance over her shoulder to see if she could see her pursuers...
Suddenly her foot hooked under an exposed tree root and her world came crashing down. Layla tripped and fell. Her outstretched hands hit the ground heavily, which prevented a face-plant, but her momentum kept her moving and she tumbled and rolled down an unseen slope. When she finally reached the bottom an empty ravine, everything went black.
* * * * *
The sound of rustling in the underbrush brought her out of her unconsciousness. Layla sat straight up, and then quickly climbed to her feet in one motion. Her head was thumping from the fall, but she shrugged it off and looked about to find a place to hide. The pursuers were close now, she could hear them. Somewhere out in the dark, searching for her. Not wasting any time to rest, Layla’s glowing white eyes scanned her environment for shelter. Nothing but a narrow strip of grassland for hundreds of feet.
Then Layla saw it. On the opposite bank of the ravine was the sparkling white domes of mushrooms. She looked down at her shaking hand and saw the ring's blue light glowing extremely bright now, almost blinding. She had found what she was looking for. Frantic footprints in the soft soil nearby were tell-tale signs that her friends had beat her there.
The young woman climbed out of the shallow side of the ravine, and stumbled into the large ring of mushrooms that lay upon a grassy clearing under the bright gaze of a full moon. The fog seemed to have receded in this part of the woods, leaving the clearing exposed to the star-studded night sky. Not hesitating, Layla dropped to her hands and knees, and began to dig into the soft earth near the edge of the ring where others had done just the same only moments before. Her fingers searching for something.
Angry, incoherent voices in the distance suddenly broke her concentration. They echoed down off of the higher wall of the ravine from where she had fallen; somewhere amongst the tall trees, like supernatural creatures of the night hunting their prey.
She swallowed fearfully. Surely in this clearing, and with this glowing ring, they will see me! The girl thought as she continued to frantically dig. How did they get here so fast? After a few more shovels of soil, her fingers struck a metallic surface, which cracked one of her nails. She held back a cry of pain, then exhaled slowly.
Layla smiled wearily, pushed her ring into a small crevice in the metallic surface like a key in a lock, and then dropped onto her back with her arms stretched out, running her fingers through the dew-moist grass. She closed her eyes.
The mushrooms began to glow even brighter––their white domes glistening like pearls in the moonlight. The large metallic ring beneath the ground was coming to life. Gradually the white domes changed to an eerie blue light––much like her ring––and a low humming sound rose up from the ground. It shook the woman’s little body like a bean-shaker. Then the Gate’s light rushed in from the mushroom ring’s edge and consumed Layla in a pool of blue light.
In the blink of an eye she was gone.
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