by Kealohilani
The
Half-Hearts
Chronicles
Revelation
By
KEALOHILANI
Artwork by Steven Squire and Kealohilani
Markados Whovern Adventures
An Imprint of Keep It 100 Books
Text copyright © by Kealohilani
Illustrations copyright © by Kealohilani
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Markados Whovern Adventures
An Imprint of Keep It 100 Books
Henderson, Nevada
Visit The Half-Hearts Chronicles Website at www.HalfHearts.com
First Paperback Edition: September 3, 2019
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Summary: Earth continues to suffer daily premature deaths without knowing what is truly causing them, while Lani Thomas and her friends remain trapped on Earth’s sister planet— Alamea— slowly accepting the reality of just how unlikely it is that they will ever return home to California.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019911944
ISBN-13: ..978-0-9909770-4-9
Full-Color Map at www.HalfHearts.com
Pronunciation Key and Guide in the back of the book (Right before “About The Authoress”)
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to “Sir” Steven “Calin Knight” Paul “Robert Paige” Squire. Where do I even start? My magical artist who believed in me, always, from the very beginning. My one-time summer romance. My epic Night Swim, which you immortalized in song with your gorgeous voice. My December 14th, 2018 “elopement” (inside joke) that never happened but would have been epic. One of the best people I know on Earth or Alamea. One of the beloved real-life Half-Hearts I was blessed to meet in this life. And, my dear, dear friend of ten years now— with only forever to go.
What People Are Saying About The Half-Hearts Chronicles
…a wondrous world of magic and imagination. Half-Hearts is right up there with The Hobbit, Chronicles of Narnia, Wizard of Oz, and Harry Potter! ~ Lisa Linsky, voting member of the Grammys
The female Tolkien. ~ Mark Kubr, stunt man and actor from the Iron Man movies, about the authoress, Kealohilani
For those of us who grew up with Harry Potter, our next adventure awaits! ~ Shaun Laqeretabua, composer
Too many movies nowadays try to show the ugly and the dirty “reality” of our world and our daily lives. What I love about Half-Hearts is that it inspires you to dream again. ~ Khotan, actor and international soap star sensation
In this literary masterpiece of… [Heaven] only knows how many words - four of them jumped out at me: “magically prepared” & “gastronomic nirvana.” These two pairs sum up the whole succinctly. I literally was transported to another world [and] I am now having severe Alamea withdrawals. Never in my life have I eagerly anticipated Books two and three of any series which such ferocity. ~ Veronica Grey, popular TV guest and critically acclaimed author.
I could not put it down. As I read it, it took me on an adventure… I went through a broad range of emotions; exhilaration, anxiety, grief (I wept), anger, fear, the whole gamut and even felt/experienced the joy & serenity of true love and its confusions and mysteries when challenged! ~ Sakura Thompson Williams, Film Development Consultant
It certainly is a magical world that could have the success of Harry Potter or Twilight… I knew that it would be good but I didn't know that it would be THIS good. The characters are fantastic! ~ Tiffany Hofstetter, actress
Book One of the Half Hearts [Chronicles] is an epic tale of love and loss, good and evil, and the fight for justice, woven together beautifully by Kealohilani… Half-Hearts will leave you touched, tearful, hopeful, and shocked, making you desperately wish the next novel was in your hands so you could find out what happens next to the characters you have become so involved with throughout book one.~ Amanda Meredith, author and blogger
So awesome! I loved every bit of it. I felt all the emotions… It was written so well. And [the] vision and imagination is incredible! I believe this book will help so many [people because] it’s very inspiring! ~ Jay Mataele, professional dancer
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
What People Are Saying About The Half-Hearts Chronicles
Murdered by Dragons is Good
Too Late for THIS Information!!!
Isn't it Supposed to be Damsels in Distress?
Watch Your Step
You Know What Else Is Intense? Glamping?!
Staycation
Sometimes Life Just Refuses to Act Like A Chick Flick
Surrounded
Hitchhiking Elves
As Fate Would Have It
True Identity
What if the Second One Arrived First?
The Enemy of My Enemy is Not Necessarily my Friend
Repressed Emotions
Traitor
Oh Snap
And We Thought Drakne Was Bad
The Parting of Ways
A Deadly Word
Creepy
Regrets
Trapped
Visions From The Past
Disastrous is an Understatement
The Story of the Half-Hearts Will Continue!
Acknowledgments
The Half-Hearts Chronicles Pronunciation Guide
About The Authoress
Murdered by Dragons is Good
Scraped and bleeding and face to face with a ferocious beast, Lani was paralyzed with fear. This day just kept getting worse and worse! Now— to top it all off— she was about to be dinner for a dragon. Fantastic! A dragon!
Of all the ways she had ever imagined that she would die— a dragon had never even made it on the list! She stayed very still— hoping that maybe dragons were like T-Rexes, which were supposed to be unable to see you if you didn’t move.
Wait— how could anyone know how a T-Rex behaved? What was she even thinking believing she had great tips on T-Rex behavior at her disposal to apply to a dragon? She was being ridiculous!
Not only was she about to die— but now she was also going to die with ludicrous dying thoughts. She’d get to the other side and when they asked about her death, she’d have no choice but to say, “I got eaten by a dragon because I thought he would be like a T-Rex—so I stayed still and made it easy for him.”
The dragon reared its giant shiny black scaly head, narrowed its golden green-and-black-flecked-trash-can-lid-sized eyes, and inhaled deeply. After a moment, it lowered its face. Closer and closer. Its gaze trained on Lani. She braced herself and threw her arms over her terror-stricken blue eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
Nothing happened. She was still alive. She barely dared to open her eyes again. When she did— Jharate stood defiantly between her and the dragon.
Flames blasted out in all directions off the charmed shield he held in his hands— which Jaresh had thrown to Jharate as he ran after Lani. The bulging muscles of Jharate’s massive brown arms flexed to the seeming limit as he fought the force of the blowback.
Although the shield diverted the fire away from them— and provided a bubble of safety— Lani’s face felt like she was being sunburned. Heat swirled tempestuously around them and the air was almost too hot to breathe.
“RUN!”
Lani obeyed and ran about a hundred feet away to the opposite canyo
n wall. Heart pounding, she turned to watch for Jharate. Without the shield— even at this distance— the flames were blinding and the heat was so intense that it almost burned her.
She couldn’t see Jharate anymore.
All she could see was the gargantuan beast wading through a sea of fire— its black scales pulsating with anticipation and rage, as if they had a life of their own.
Lani’s heart nearly stopped. Where is Jharate?!
She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw him emerge from the torrent of fire, which receded as the dragon took another breath. Although the shield was diverting the inferno, Lani didn’t think that any human could withstand the overpowering heat much longer— magic shield or no.
Drakne’s eyes lit up and he laughed. Still invisible to all around him, he casually lifted his black-leather-gloved hands from his sides toward the sky— arms outstretched and bent slightly, just below shoulder level— palms facing upward. As he did so, he rose over one hundred feet into the air and set himself down on a ledge where he could have a perfect bird’s-eye view of the battle in the red sandstone canyon below.
The exhilaration of this sudden ascension made Drakne wish that he could do more than just levitate himself vertically. What must it feel like to fly?
His black cape and long bone-straight jet black hair fluttered in the wind as he stood on the ledge. The handsome features of his pale face appeared more ghostly than normal beneath the diffused light of an overcast sky.
From this vantage point, he could also see into the main grey granite mountain pass where Arante and a few of the other rebels were now running toward the commotion. He smiled and snapped his fingers.
Two enormous bolts of lightning struck opposite sides of the main pass. The rebels stopped dead in their tracks as they heard a low rumbling sound. The ground began to shake.
An avalanche of hundreds of boulders and rocks of all sizes plummeted from above as the mountainside crumbled. Arante threw her hands up in front of her face as she scrambled backwards.
Kendra concentrated on extending her domed-shaped shield around Arante. Rocks and debris bounced off Kendra’s invisible shield— but everyone watched in horror as Arante disappeared from sight.
Justin pushed Erik out of harm’s way as he jumped and rolled.
Both narrowly escaped the landslide.
They found themselves stuck only twenty yards from the entrance to the box canyon where Lani and Jharate were trapped. Arante was buried beneath the rubble.
“That ought to keep you busy,” Drakne sneered.
“ARANTE!” Erik bellowed.
Erik rushed with Kendra, Raoul, Justin, Ka‘ern, Jaresh, and Ja‘el to the hundred-foot-tall pile of rubble and clawed fiercely at its base. Arante was under at least three feet of debris.
Every time they pulled some off, more would slide down on top of her. Even with Jaresh’s, Ka‘ern’s, and Ja‘el’s phenomenal strength, the relentless rock pile kept defeating their efforts to uncover Arante— as if it were a living thing that wanted to swallow her whole.
“Justin, move some of the rocks off with your gift!” Kendra ordered.
“I am!”
“Use it better!”
“I just barely learned how to levitate a few pebbles! I’m doing the best I can!”
“At least stop the rocks from falling while we dig!”
“What a great idea, Kendra. Wish I’d thought of that… Oh wait! I’M ALREADY TRYING!”
“Ugh!”
“Less fighting— more focus,” Raoul directed between strained breaths as he continued to dig— the rocks and debris tearing the flesh on his hands with every resolute motion.
“Why don’t you open your shield from inside where she is and lift the rocks off of her?!” Justin asked Kendra, with a tone more accusatory than inquisitive.
Raoul sighed as he realized that— yet again— they were only going to ignore him.
“I already tried to put a shield around her when the rocks started to fall! It didn’t work!”
“Try again!”
Jharate dodged the great shafts of fire that spewed incessantly from the dragon’s mouth— one deadly blaze after another— but did not attempt to flee. Rather, he purposely drew the dragon’s attention to himself to keep it from remembering that Lani was there too.
The murderous beast was blocking the entrance, so that Jharate could only retreat up the steep rocky terrain at the closed end of the box canyon. Jharate enticed the dragon to attack him as he climbed higher and higher— until he was level with the top of the dragon’s fifty-foot-tall legs.
Jharate could now have clambered to the lip of the canyon and escaped up the mountainside. Instead, he stood his ground and redoubled his efforts.
He slashed at the dragon’s head and arms, dodging its attacks as he leapt from rock to rock and ledge to ledge. He slashed again. And again. And again— keeping it at bay, but only just.
Jharate waited until the dragon inhaled once more. As it did so, he dropped his shield so that he could hold his sword high above his head with both hands.
He raced over the rocks toward the dragon’s soft underbelly. With an impossible leap, he flew through the air and plunged his sword deep into the dragon’s chest.
The dragon howled in anguish and smacked Jharate onto the rocky ground with one of its enormous claws, before crashing to its death. As its head hit the ground, a huge blast of fire escaped the dragon’s nostrils directly towards Lani.
She scrambled desperately to avoid being scorched, but she ran out of space. She whipped around to search for an escape pathway, but it was too late and she could not bring herself to look. Instead she closed her eyes tight and flattened herself against the wall— hoping she had somehow outrun the fire.
Her heart beat frantically as she waited for the flames. When they did not come, she took in a deep smoke-filled breath and coughed as she slowly opened her eyes again.
The silence that followed as the smoke and dust settled was almost more frightening than the roars of the dragon. The only sound was the crackling of the remains of the single tree by the dragon’s cave, which had been charred in lieu of Lani.
The haze slowly faded until Lani could see what had happened. Jharate’s sword was deep in the dragon’s heart. Her eyes searched wildly through the wreckage until she found Jharate. He lay motionless on the ground.
Lani’s heart jolted. Before she could take a step toward him, searing pain ripped through her head. Her heartbeat grew louder and louder in her ears, blocking out all other sound. White was all she could see— eyes open or closed. It felt as though her skull was literally about to split in two.
Lani fell to her knees in agony, cradling her throbbing head in her hands. More blinding white searing pain. Louder heartbeat. Torment.
She cried out in a blood-curdling scream and smacked the ground with both fists.
Her headache disappeared. Breathing hard, she was covered in cuts and bruises, and her hands and knees were bleeding— but losing the headache was liberating. It was as if she had been imprisoned somewhere inside herself— the oddest feeling she had ever had. And, all at once, it was gone.
Looking up, she saw that Jharate still had not moved. She jumped to her feet and flew to his side— desperately pulling him into her arms.
“No! Please, no! Stay with me! Jharate, please!”
Drakne’s mouth fell open.
“Not possible!” he whispered to himself.
He had never seen anyone do that before. His power had always been stronger than his victims. Always! No one had ever escaped the effects of any of his spells on their own. What a fascinating development.
Much more powerful than she looks. Resisting even my magic! No matter. Beginner's luck never holds out.
He was starting to think that he would like to study her more before killing her anyway. It had been so long since anything had been challenging for him— and the fact that she had been such an unlikely threat only made things more interes
ting.
Drakne moved his palms slowly downward as he floated effortlessly back to the ground. A thin smile stretched across his face as he spoke to himself.
“Let’s see how Jharate fares with the same challenge.”
Drakne was sure that Lani couldn’t even see Jharate anymore through her torrents of tears— let alone anything around her.
Now was his chance. Drakne threw a purple pulsing energy ball— directly into Jharate’s heart.
Jaresh found Arante’s fingers where he was digging.
“I found her!”
Erik lunged toward the spot Jaresh was working and helped uncover her head while Jaresh and others worked on freeing her arms and torso.
“Oh no,” Erik barely breathed out, as he saw the bleeding gash near her hairline.
When Arante was finally uncovered enough for Erik and Justin to pull her limp body out from underneath the rubble— they picked her up and set her gently on the smoother part of the ground.
Tears streamed down Erik’s face and his bloody torn-up hands began to shake.
“Hurry, Raoul!”
“I’m on it!”
Raoul knelt at Arante’s side, took a deep breath, and went to work— ignoring the pain in his own bleeding hands— the white light pouring out from his palms. He started with her head— healing the external and internal damage. Next, her heart to return her pulse to normal.
He kept his eyes open as he continued, so that he could watch the change in Arante’s condition and see when he was done with one spot and needed to move to another.