Authors: Rain Oxford
“Vretial is pushing you?” He nodded. “Has he said
anything about Dad… maybe having made it to the spirit world?”
“Blue Jay, Phoenix, and Ronez were all watching the
passage between the universe, the spirit world, and the void during the war.
They felt the disturbance of Dylan’s presence in the void, but it was gone
before they could find anything. He never made it to the spirit world because
his soul was altered when he became a Guardian. Hell, I think his soul was changed
before that. The Land of the Dead is for the souls of mortals.”
We sat there in silence for a while. I knew there was
no hope. “I had a dream,” I finally said. “Dad said to pay attention, like he
always did when he was about to give me a clue. He then asked me what happened
to the echo.”
He frowned. “I’d think even in your dream that he
would ask about the real book.” The demon wore the same clothes as he always
did, but I noticed finally that he had a black leather bag in the same style as
Dad’s around his waist. Maybe if he ever wore anything that wasn’t black…
Xul pulled the echo out of the bag. It looked so much
like my dad’s book that I almost shivered when he handed it to me. I only had a
second to see it before it disintegrated into dust. My instincts went nuts as I
sat there with my hands out. Dad had told me the books disintegrated when their
worlds were destroyed. Obviously, Earth wasn’t destroyed, because we were here.
“This has to mean something,” I said.
“You mean, it wasn’t just the creepiest thing you
have ever seen?”
“Why would the echo disintegrate? Vretial wasn’t
destroyed, and it was his magic that created it.”
“But it was made for your father.”
“Then it would have disintegrated then, not now.” The
dust remains of the book vanished after a moment. “I think this is a warning.
I’m not a seer, but I am the son of Dylan. Yes, I’m sure of it; this is a
warning that Earth is in danger. Where is the real book?”
“With your mother, I suspect.”
“We have to get back.”
To protect our family’s secret, and with some
complaining from me, we got back in the truck and Xul drove us into the dark.
Even in the dark of night, there was enough moonlight to illuminate the sand
and cacti. We were in the desert. After a few miles without seeing anyone or
any stores, he pulled over to the side of the road and I flashed us home… and
found something straight out of a horror movie.
* * *
Hail and Mom were both in Mom and Dad’s bedroom,
standing by the door. Xul and I appeared right in front of them, but neither of
them paid us any attention. They both had twin expressions of shock and
disbelief, which I completely understood when I turned and saw my dad sitting
up.
Mom had kept him clean and shaven. He wore a blue
shirt and jeans. Ignoring us, he picked up his boots from the floor and put
them on as if he was about to leave the house.
“Dad?” Hail asked, his voice weak with hope.
I grasped his arm to stop him from approaching the
person on the bed. “No. That’s not Dad. Who are you?” I asked. I could feel
power emanating from him, but it wasn’t my dad. This man’s power was sinister.
The being inside my father’s form grinned. “I am Dleso
Atos. Finally… after all these years, I
finally
have the power I
deserve.”
“How?” Mom asked.
He reached for the iron pentagram around his neck
that my father always wore. “This can contain energy, as well as souls. All I
needed was a genetic bridge, and then I just waited. I fully expected Dylan to
be killed in the demon war, but this worked out so much better because the body
is completely uninjured.”
“But magic doesn’t work that way! If Dad’s soul is
dead, you can’t use his power!”
“His body is a creation of magic more so than
Tiamat’s or Vretial’s. Thus his power is intact in this body, and both are now
mine.”
I was sitting on the porch swing, watching Ueme and Regar
run in the fields. Regar was small, identical to me as a child, with black hair
and ice blue eyes. Regar was able to shift into his person form before he
really knew what he was doing. His sister was even smaller. Because Regar
already understood the need to hide as a person, or maybe because Sydney and I
were always in person form, Regar would carry his baby sister around for her
first two years. He was always trying to teach her to act like a person, even
when he needed help. It was quite a sight to see a four-year-old try to feed a
baby dragon with a spoon.
Ueme’s dark red hair made her light blue eyes appear
purple. When she finally did learn to shift, she was constantly surprising
everyone with her intelligence. It was a good thing my mother never met either
of my children. I would never let them be subjected to the same harsh training
and rules as I went through. Dragons were no longer at war with people… we were
just in hiding from them.
Sydney sat beside me on the porch swing. The low sun
made her deep brown hair glow.
Arazel had black hair.
I pushed the
thought away and put my arm around my mate. Dylan, Divina, and the boys would
be coming after dark. Ueme and Regar loved their cousins, and I loved that
Dylan volunteered to take them for the night. Regar was at the age were sleep
was a bad thing, so Sydney and I could do with a night of peace and quiet.
“Mordon, pay attention,” Sydney said. I frowned at
her. She never even glanced at the children and instead stared straight at me.
The wind died and the sound of the children playing vanished.
“What’s wrong?”
“These aren’t my children.”
“Yes they are.”
“No. They’re Arazel’s. And they’re not yours either;
they are Rojan’s. This is just a dream. I died, Mordon.”
“Stop it.” I knew she was right, but I wanted this. I
wanted this life. Rojan and I were the same in that. When Sydney tried to say
something else, I interrupted her with a growl. She let it go because I wanted
her to and this was
my
dream.
“Mordon, pay attention.” It was Dylan this time.
Suddenly, Dylan and I were on a natural rock
platform, high in the mountains. We were above the clouds! Dylan sat across
from me with a dark gray shirt, black pants, and a thick, dark blue cloak. His
iron pentagram hung outside of his clothes and pulsed with a strange green
aura.
I shivered from the cold air, which felt ridiculously
real. Even knowing this was a dream, I felt Rojan shudder. It was the first
time I sensed Rojan since Dylan’s death. Before I could complain about
suffering in my dreams, the wind and the chill faded.
“Is that better?” he asked.
“What is this?”
“Pay attention,” he said slowly, deliberately. He
always said that to me when I was missing some vital clue. I wasn’t a moron,
but nobody except for Ron could spot clues like Dylan did. When he explained
things, it often came across as far-fetched, but he understood things that we
didn’t.
“What is it?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
He sat back slightly with a sad frown on his face.
“Wrong question.”
* * *
I was back in the war at Lore, but I saw things
strangely. It was not washed out like when I was seeing through by dragon eyes.
Actually, every person looked very vivid and unique.
A woman in front of me stopped and faced me, just for
a moment. I saw her as the red-haired, blue-eyed person that everyone else did,
but I also saw her as a tiny child. I saw every moment of shame and pride,
every lie and every awkward truth, every heartbreak she had ever experienced
and ever would in her future. I saw her die here in this battle, and I saw her live.
Then she was gone and I saw Dylan speaking with the
Ancient right before the battle began. He was the one who said he was friends
with Janus. This time, however, I couldn’t hear the words he spoke.
“Mordon, pay attention,” Dylan’s voice called again.
“To what?” No response. “Okay… to whom then?”
I started looking around us, scanning each nearby
face and seeing more than I could bear. Only the immortals were exempt from
this strange power. It wasn’t my power. Although dragon eyes could see much
about a person’s soul, we could not see the future.
“Where am I?” In reality, I was next to Dylan when
the Ancient wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t see myself there.
“You are dying.” Dylan appeared next to me and
everything else froze. Then Ron and Hail disappeared. “They need you, Mordon. I
depended on your strength to get them through this. Wake up.”
“No. They needed
you
. How dare you ask this of
me? How could you let yourself be killed?”
“I saw a thousand paths, and none of them were easier
to face.”
The scene changed until I saw the last moment of
Dylan’s life. Dylan stood there, frozen in time, surrounded by his family. I
stood across from him while Divina stood to his right and Ron stood to his
left. Hail was behind him. In an odd sort of stop-motion, Sen appeared with his
staff raised.
Dylan moved to the side and Hail was struck by the
power instead of my brother. Before the boy could hit the ground, the scene was
reset. It played again, except Dylan used a shield of energy to deflect the
burst. This time, it rebound and struck me. Again the scene reset, and in the
span of an instant, this happened over and over, each time resulting in someone
dead, no matter what Dylan did.
“What would have happened if you gave the staff to
Vretial?”
Once again, I was sitting on hard, cold rock on a
mountain with Dylan across from me. “Four of the Ancients were expecting that;
they were waiting to overpower him. Vretial is powerful, but not enough to
defeat so many Ancients at once. He thought he could have kept it safe, but he
was wrong. The only thing worse than Sen getting the staff was for the Ancients
to have it.”
“How did Sen get the staff from the magic room?”
“The witch hunter gave us the book, knowing I would
use it to cut their army down some. He never cared about the war. Instead, he
used the chest as a trap, which allowed a gateway into the room for Atos.”
“While we were distracted by the war, Atos used the
passageway into the magic room, got the staff, and gave it to Sen. Atos didn’t
have the power to use it himself, but he knew from the listening to demons that
Sen was poisoned against me by his mother.”
“I should kill him.”
“You will not. This wasn’t his fault. Unfortunately,
it was preventable. Had Sydney lived, you would have been with her and Emiko
would have moved on, along with her son. Divina only saw this after stopping me
from saving Sydney, but she didn’t know who was going to kill me.”
“How are you telling me all of this if you’re dead?”
“Pay attention. What did the demon call me?”
* * *
With a jolt of adrenaline and feeling like I had been
shocked, I woke. I was in my bedroom. It was dark and warm with the fireplace
crackling cheerfully. Since I had slept for at least five or six days straight,
I knew it had not been lit by me.
As I suspected, I saw Sen curled up in front of the
fireplace when I sat up. I rose slowly from the bed, wary of aching muscled due
to lack of movement. I felt surprisingly fine. Hell, even my fire felt
stronger.
Why am I getting better instead of worse?
Vretial appeared in front of me, causing me to shout.
Sen jerked up, ready to fight an attacker, only to shrink back when he saw
Vretial. “What are you doing here?” I asked the god, although I really wanted
to ask the child that question instead.
“You seem to be doing better. Perhaps your soul is
stronger than I thought. It makes sense when you think about it; you had to
become strong as Dylan did. Samhail had a vision. Since it was an impossible
vision, I wanted to come and see about this for myself.”
“Maybe I am still dreaming.”
“When it comes to Dylan, is it ever that simple?” he
asked. “Sorry, but hold on, I can’t take you seriously like that.”
I felt his magic flow through me before I could ask
what he was talking about. When it was gone, I felt no different, except my
loose shorts were replaced with black pants and a dark blue sweater.
“You look weird with facial hair.”
I touched my chin and gave the god my best deadpanned
stare. “That is the weirdest use of magic.”
“At least Ron won’t scream when he sees you,” he
said.
That, I could see happening.
“I am going to send you to Kiro. The Guardian of
Duran has been trying to uphold his duties, but he is distracted.”
With a flash of light, I found myself on Bulde,
Mijii, one of the most haunted islands of Duran. It was primarily forest here
and some trees were more than five thousand years old. It was a place where
people went to and were never seen again. Because of its right rich history,
Bulde was protected even as it was the source of many dark fairytales and legends.
Mist swarmed my ankles and the howling wind caused
the trees to sway ominously. The harsh wind was caused by the location of this
island between the currents of the sea. According to stories, this was the
meeting place of the minor gods, which accounted for the odd sounds that could
be heard all the way to the mainland of eastern Mijii.
A sharp snap was the only sound before a huge tree
fell right in front of me. Edward, who had been in the falling tree, jumped and
landed gracefully on his feet with his gun aimed into the darkness. “Mordon,
what are you doing here?” he asked, not affording me a glance.
“Helping you, I guess.” Then dark, glowing red eyes
focused on us from the trees, far enough apart that I knew this was the largest
creature I had ever faced. “Or… maybe dying.”
The creature stomped into view and I wanted to
breathe easy, for this was not actually as big as the monster on Dayo, but it
was too large to put me at ease. The creature stood bipedal and had the general
shape of an extremely muscular man, except it was covered head to toe in thick
black fur. Its hands were stubby with short fingers that ended in claws. Its
face was not like a man’s either, but somewhere between a person and a draxuni,
as it had a short snout full of sharp teeth.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The manifestation of a terrified little boy’s
nightmares,” he answered. I stared at him. “I am absolutely serious.” He shot
the gun, but the bullet glanced off the monster’s skin without leaving a
scratch. Edward proceeded to empty the gun of its bullets into the creature’s
face with the same effectiveness.
I shifted into a dragon, accidentally hitting Edward
with my wing, and flew up into the sky. I blew fire at the monster that was
tall enough to stick out over the trees. When it just swatted its hand at me, I
dodged the hand and risked a hit in order to dig my claws into its flesh. I did
bathe my talons in blood, but the creature couldn’t have cared less. So I shot
lightning at the monster.
This hurt it. Finally, the monster was knocked off
its feet, if only for a minute. When the giant creature reached for a nearby
tree to pull itself up with, I knew Rojan and I were in trouble. The ancient
tree snapped in half.
I opened my mouth to strike with lightning again when
the creature made such a loud, horrifying sound that the trees shook and
animals in the forest cried out. I instinctively wrapped my wings around me to
block out the sound as I fell from the sky. The vibrations of the monster’s
approached spurred me to move. I unfurled my wings, took Edward as gently as I
could in my talons, and rolled out of the way, wrapping my wings around us both
to propel my roll and make us a smaller target. The monster swiped at us, but
we were already moving, so its aim was off.
My shift couldn’t have taken me any more by surprise.
At the mercy of my enemy, I was shifting uncontrollably back into my sago form.
To my even greater shock, we were not immediately attacked. I looked up in time
to see Dylan appear in a burst of light, facing the monster.
Every instinct in me demanded I rise and protect him,
but I never had the chance. Dylan raised his hands at the creature. When a
three-dimensional shadow was torn out of the monster’s body, the creature
screamed, but I was frozen and couldn’t cover my ears. Then the creature and
the shadow vaporized.
My fire squirmed inside me defiantly and Edward rose
before I could stop him. He moved towards my brother, but Dylan held up his
hands to tell the Guardian to stay back. “Don’t touch me,” he said, backing
away. His voice was bold, almost angry, as power greater than any god’s
emanated from him.
“Dylan?” Edward prompted softly, as if speaking to a
wounded animal.
Unable to contain it any longer, I held up my hand as
my fire formed a sphere in my palm. When it instantly formed into a ball of ice
so cold it could only be called burning, I knew this was bad. “Zero.” But then
the ice turned back into fire, then back into ice. It turned back and forth
with increasing speed until I thought my body was going to be ripped in two.
“Mordon, pay attention.”
It stopped. The sphere in my hand was now a globe of
ice that was burning with fire. I looked at the being who was both my brother
and not. “Who are you?” I asked.
Edward moved again to touch him, gently, but Dylan
retreated a few more steps. “I will kill you if you touch me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. You remember me, right?”
Dylan was the only person that the Guardian loved as
much as his twin brother. Dylan was the perfect son for the man who feared failing
his children. If Dylan turned Edward away, it would break the older man’s
heart. It would be too much for the Guardian who had already lost everything.