The silvery light of the moon dusted the houses and treetops of the Unnamed World, the intrepid light daring to creep where even the bravest of men feared. Hidden deep within the forest, a fortress sat, its rotting appearance holding only a ghost of the grandeur it once possessed.
It’s decrepit rooms and halls yearned for its life to be restored. It longed for galas to be held, for women in flowing gowns and men in ornate suits to stroll, to dance over its cracked floors and once reveled great hall. But, alas, the walls could only dream.
It watched, forlorn and desolate, as a sickly shade of green began licking at one corner of the moon, slowly tinting the world in an eerie shade of green.
The Fatum Lunaris had begun.
One of the doors leading to the courtyard opened, the rusted hinges squealing in protest. A man in a robe so blue it looked black strutted through the courtyard, its once fine stones now cracked and spoiled by dirt and gnarled vegetation as the forest tried to reclaim it. A pale hand gripped a thick tome against his chest. The gems in its decorative binding glittered wickedly in the remaining moonlight.
A second figure lumbered behind him with an uneven gait, the hood of a brown cloak pulled over its head and casting its face in shadow. It held a torch ahead of it with a bony hand, the tight, thin skin the gray of death.
They stopped at the center of the courtyard where a crumbling pedestal sat. The man gently placed the book atop it and opened it to a page marked by a satin ribbon. He ran one of his long, sharp nails down the ancient runes scrawled on the page, the firelight of the torch making the ink glint as if it had been freshly written.
He glanced up to the moon, its silvery light all but consumed by the green. A moment passed, and the last sliver of silver disappeared with a rebellious flash. A grin spread over his face.
It was time.
He turned from the pedestal, extended a hand out in front of him with his fingers bent like claws, closed his eyes, and tilted his face to the sky. Reaching for the magic that surrounded the world, that lived in every being with--and without--breath, he began chanting. His soft, sibilant voice echoed preternaturally around the courtyard. Slowly but surely, with every arcane word, he molded and shaped the code of magic with both voice and mind. The nexus, the pocket of magic resting unseen within the earth and radiating beneath the fortress, strengthened his power, the creatures that fed off it kept at bay by protective enchantments.
As he neared the end of his spell, he opened his eyes. The whites and irises glowed an unnerving red, his pupils a haunting milky white. A dark grin spread over his strong, slender face as he uttered the last of the spell he had studied so ardently. With an exhale, he released the magic that had gathered around him.
An electric crimson glow surrounded his hand, the sparks dripping slowly to the ground. He straightened his fingers and the glow shot from his hand to the cracked stones of the courtyard and collided with a blinding flash.
At last, after all these years, years even the wisest in the land could only fathom, a Child of Destany would be his.
The sound of running water and dishes frantically clinking together filled the main level of the small house. Though it looked like a quaint, happy home from the outside, the lack of pictures on the walls, the bare minimum of furniture, and the dreary, worn aura that hung heavily inside quickly dashed that illusion.
Jazelle, her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, stood at the kitchen sink. She cast a few nervous glances to the clock on the stove, trying to hurry and finish the dishes from the dinner she had made herself before her father got home. A strange, foreboding feeling had twisted at her stomach all day, and her head had been pounding off and on, putting her in no mood to deal with him, even for a minute.
Finally, she placed the last of the dishes in the drain board, dried her hands on a towel, and set to work wiping up the stove. She had just wrung her washcloth out in the sink, when she heard a car door slam shut in front of the house.
With a gasp, her attention snapped to the small window that looked out to the driveway. Her father had gotten home early.
Panicked, she dropped the washcloth in the sink as he strode toward the house. She sidled up to the small portion of the wall between the open doorway and refrigerator, her body just slim enough for the wall to hide her from anyone entering.
She held her breath as the front door banged open, her gaze steady as she waited. She heard her father muttering to himself, his gruff voice agitated, followed by the thud, thud of him kicking off his shoes at the door. She mentally traced the sound of his steps as he traversed the short hall, then came into her view. He passed by the kitchen, his thick shoulders tense and salt-and-pepper hair a sweaty mess from a day of working construction.
As soon as she had enough room, she slipped out unnoticed from her hiding spot and slunk in the opposite direction, careful to avoid stepping on the couple creaky boards in the carpeted hall. She cast him frequent glances as he headed for the television in the living room visible from the hallway. As quietly as she could, she got into the hall closet to grab her backpack from where she had deposited it upon returning home from school. If she was lucky, maybe she could catch Tess, one of her three only friends, once she got home later that evening.
“Jazelle!” Her father’s gruff, harsh voice made her want to shout back, but she stopped herself, her face twisted in hatred.
“Gotta go,” she grumbled as she hurriedly slung her backpack over a shoulder and all but flew out the front door.
The door slammed shut, cutting off a string of obscenities the man had begun shouting after her.
Though she knew he would not follow, she ran down the driveway, keeping a quick, steady pace as she raced through the familiar streets of the neighborhood. Only once she had put a few blocks between her and her house did she slow. She took a couple deep breaths, the hatred and anger on her face and glittering in her honey brown eyes diminishing a fraction.
A slight chill of early October hung in the air, and the leaves of the trees were in transition between summer’s green and the fiery shades of fall.
Jazelle took another breath. She pulled the hair tie from her hair and shoved it in a pocket. Fully shouldering her pack, she placed her hands in the pockets of her current favorite hoodie, its soft fabric a light shade of gray.
With her shoulders slumped, head bent slightly, and her hair cascading around her face, she slowly began her walk toward Tess’, taking a detour leading to her favorite set of train tracks.
The sun began to fall rapidly as she went. By the time Jazelle reached the hill looming above the tracks, the red and orange fingers of twilight brushed the clouds in the sun’s last meager attempt at retaining domination of the sky.
She came to the edge of the hill, its side lined with bricks. A set of tracks ran about six yards below, one end rounding a bend and the other disappearing into the gloom of a bridge tunnel. She stood atop one of the bricks and looked down, admiring the visual of the tracts and multi-colored foliage.
As the sun sunk ever toward the edge of the horizon, the long drone of a train horn sounded from around the bend. Jazelle stood there for a couple more moments as the sun sunk ever lower.
Deciding she should get going before the night fully engulfed the world, Jazelle turned from the tracks as the train rounded the bend. She took a couple steps along the line of bricks half buried in the dirt. As she made to step onto the solid earth, the brick beneath her wobbled, then dislodged.
She shouted as she lost her balance. The world seemed to slow around her as she fell with the stone toward the tracks. The oncoming train blared its horn once more as it barreled toward her. She closed her eyes as she fell, her heart drumming in her throat, and waited to hit the cold tracts, for the monster of an engine to ram into her, every gruesome image of someone hit by a train running through her mind in an instant.
A flash of crimson shone from behind her closed eyelids, and her back hit the ground with less force than she expected, her elbow hitting a stone. But, instead of the hard iron tracks beneath her back, it felt like cracked stone, and the rush of the train had been replaced with an eerie silence.
“That’s it,” she breathed, her heart still pounding. “I died. I’m dead.” At least it hadn’t been as agonizing as she had expected, being ran over by a train.
An airy, yet harsh laugh that sent shivers down her spine made her open her eyes. She gawked at the two figures standing in front of her; a cloaked figure stood as still as a statue, its face hidden in the shadows of its brown hood despite the torch it held. But, it was the second figure that held her attention. A man dressed in robes with what looked like a slivered scar from a burn running diagonally over one eye, beamed maliciously down at her. His pale skin was pulled taught over his face, accentuating his chin and cheekbones, and his dark hair held a tint of orange in the torchlight.
“Dead?” the man said with a wicked grin, his voice almost serpentine. “Far from it, my dear!”
Though his gaze made her want to cower away, Jazelle could not look away from the man’s unnerving eyes. It was not the red where the whites and irises should be that captivated her, but the swirling milkiness of his pupils. Something more than their appearance made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“What the...” Breathing heavily, she scrambled shakily to her feet, the weight of her backpack still on one arm.
She took a staggered step back and cast her gaze around the shadows clinging to the corners of the courtyard where the firelight did not reach. The dead of night had replaced the rutilant colors of twilight, and the sweet smells of late summer filled the air in place of the crispness of early fall.
Maybe I missed the tracks, she thought, swallowing hard. Got knocked unconscious. Lucid dreaming’s a thing, right?
“I admit,” the man continued in a dejected tone, regaining Jazelle’s attention as his grin turned to a frown. “I had expected someone more... experienced,” he took a step toward her, and she staggered back, “but, I suppose, you’ll have to do,” he finished through a sigh.
She backed away when he stepped toward her, and placed her arms in front of her. “Whoa, whoa,” she said, patting the air. “Hold up.” She took a deep breath and crossed her arms, reminding herself it was just a dream--an uncannily realistic dream, yes, but a creation of her unconscious mind nonetheless. “It’s rather rude to not start with introductions, you know.”
The man cocked his head and a sly smile quirked at his thin lips. “Of course,” he purred. “How rude of me.” He took a partial step toward her, and she took the same back. “I have many names, but here, I’m known as Kyrell Valdis, master of the dead and the greatest Necromancer to walk this earth.” He smirked at her. Irritation flashed in his eyes, perhaps at Jazelle’s lack of recognition. “And who,” he growled, “pray tell, might you be?”
The way he looked at her, as if she was a sickly deer and he a prowling cougar, made Jazelle want to shudder, but instead she tapped a finger to her chin, doing her best to hide her fear. “I?” she began in as grand a voice as she could muster. She uncrossed her arms and shouldered a single strap of her backpack. “I am the girl who got away. Toodles!” She said the last in high-pitched mockery, then sprinted for an archway she could just make out across the crumbling courtyard.
But she did not get far.
She screamed and fell to her knees as it felt as if every nerve in her body had decided to flair, a crimson film coating her vision. Her pack fell to the ground beside her.
I thought you couldn’t feel pain in a dream?! she thought through a moan.
A tisking sound came from the man as he approached, stopping just in front of her. “You must know so little, to run from a necromancer,” he said aloofly as she looked to him with gritted teeth. He had one hand raised and fingers stiff in a tight curl, a glittering dark red mist dusting his fingertips. His eyes glowed fiercely with the power he used. “But no matter.” He created a fist and waved his hand dismissively.
Jazelle inhaled as the pain disappeared as quickly as it had come. Breathing hard, she tried to hurry back to her feet and reach into her pants pocket to pull out her butterfly knife, but the man gripped her wrist in an icy grasp. He pulled her toward him, wrenched her arm behind her back, then grabbed the other.
She tried to pull away, to kick back at him, but to no avail as she felt him bind her wrists with a course rope.
“The less you oppose me, the easier it will be for you.” Kyrell shoved her toward a deteriorating door leading inside, making her stumble forward.
She pulled at the binds around her wrists, trying to slip her hands out from them, but had no luck.
Kyrell placed a firm hand on her shoulder, his long nails digging into her hoodie, and marched her toward the door.
If this is a dream, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment, I’d like to wake up now.
