by J.T. Stoll
The king stepped into the bright night of the Shadowlands. Remarkable. So much light. Yet so little in the ethereal realm. So utterly stark and bare of magic, the very opposite of Ruach. And above, those sky jewels! Researchers had noted them before, but no one could have sensed just how beautiful they would be.
He felt it, off in the distance, the undeniable signature of a soul armor, like a hook tugging in the back of his mind. No, multiple. Four or five. Strange, the report had only mentioned three men coming through. It was hard to tell… it had to be only three armors. Where had the others come from?
“Breathtaking,” his wife said. Radiant, she stepped out of the portal beside him.
Her apprentice stepped through then shifted them to invisible. The rest of the men came through carrying the supplies, and the portal closed. In this field, surrounded by a short fence, the king simply looked up at the sky jewels. There had to be a Shadowlander word for them. Perhaps James or the soldiers had learned it. They were the first Ruachians to truly hear words in that language.
His queen looked in the direction of the armors. “Should we intervene? It’s not that far.”
“Love, this place is beautiful,” he said. “Of all that I expected from the Shadowlands, I didn’t foresee such beauty.”
“You approve?”
“Look up.”
She gasped.
“I could get used to it here.”
The Adventure is Just Beginning