Gates of Eden: Starter Library

by Theophilus Monroe

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if not taking any risks was the riskiest thing we could do…

  “I do still have the Druid’s stone,” I said.

  “The one with Dad’s old memories recorded in it?” Lily asked. “I thought you said you’d seen everything he had to show you.”

  “I did, but there’s more to it than that… Dad also impressed his memory, something of his consciousness, upon the stone. We can ask Dad…”

  Lily looked at me blankly. “For six months you’ve had a way to talk to Dad and you didn’t tell me?”

  I sighed. “It isn’t really Dad. It’s just a memory. Talking to him in there, it’s him… but it isn’t. I knew if I told you about it, you’d want to use it, but trust me, it doesn’t help. It just makes it hurt more… missing Dad, I mean.”

  Lily nodded. “You know, you don’t need to protect me, Elijah.”

  I nodded. “Alright, we’ll use the stone. It’s back at the Shire—I’ll meet you there tonight. Before we leave, though, I really need to stop by and see Gene and Lois.”

  Gene and Lois Harley were my adopted parents, and the actual biological parents of my best friend Tyler. I hadn’t spoken to them in weeks. I felt bad about it, but truth be told I didn’t know how to explain to them what was going on. As far as they knew I was just going through a phase, trying to sow some wild oats before I settled on a college. In fact, I had no plan to ever go to college. They thought I was being irresponsible, when in fact it was responsibility that was weighing me down. Responsibility to guard Annwn and the Tree of Life, responsibility to stop these incursions from Samhuinn, responsibility as a soon-to-be father before I’d so much as sprouted more than a dusting of peach fuzz for chest hair. And if I wasn’t enough of a worry for them, their real son, Tyler, had been AWOL for as long as I had been. He had a full ride to MIT but had never showed. He’d texted me and said he stumbled on something huge, some great opportunity. But that was all I knew.

  “Gene and Lois are a mess right now,” I said. “I don’t feel right ignoring them completely, even in the midst of everything we’re facing in Annwn.”

  Lily nodded. “See you tomorrow, then? At the Shire?”

  “At the Shire,” I confirmed as Lily spun her staff overhead, channeled a cone of vibrant energies over her head, and gated who knew where.

  CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING THE BARD’S TALE

  Wyrmrider Ascending

  Copyright © 2021 by Theophilus Monroe.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover art by Luminescence Covers

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information : www.theophilusmonroe.com

  In the beginning… the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

  Genesis 1:1 (KJV)

  1

  I NEARLY THREW my hip out of its socket as I flipped my tail to my left, barely escaping the massive creature's jaws. Not a bad maneuver considering I'd only had a mer-tail a total of fewer than three days...

  I'd never seen anything like it. Whatever it was. It had the face of a dragon and a body like a serpent—sort of. I mean, what snake have you ever seen with the girth of a double-decker bus and the length of a half-football field?

  And on top of that, it was pissed.

  As if an angry regular-sized snake wasn't frightening enough.

  Add to that a dragon's powerful jaws ...

  At least I didn't have to worry about fire-breath... as dragon-like as this creature was, it was a sea creature after all. Fire-breathing wouldn't be an evolutionarily advantageous trait.

  Still, whatever it might be, I suspected that it had other methods of devastation at its disposal...

  I remained on my guard. There was no telling what this thing might try to do next.

  "Come and get me, beautiful!" I screamed. I was being ironic. You know, like when the lineman on the football team gets the nickname "tiny."

  Not that there wasn't a beauty to the creature. But when something is trying to eat you, your aesthetic judgments skew toward the unsightly.

  The dragon-serpent twisted its body into something like a figure-eight before diving after me a second time, chomping its way through the water.

  My home-ec teacher during my senior year told me that a career in the culinary arts might be right up my alley.

  I don't think becoming the meal was quite what she had in mind.

  No time to reminisce. I gripped my trident tightly. Never go out into the ocean depths without one. That’s’ what Admiral Agwe told me before I left Fomoria.

  It tingled slightly in my grip as I pointed its three-pronged end toward the sea monster. My trident was an ethereal weapon—I could summon it at whim, its magical signature mystically embedded into the sigil on the back of my hand.

  Storing mystical items in sigils was convenient. It meant I didn't have to lug my trident around. It also meant I never had to worry about being caught in a precarious position without it.

  Did this monster sense that it was a magical item? It seemed to move a bit more cautiously once it realized I was armed.

  The trident itself was fashioned from my wand. My wand was a powerful item on its own right, hewn from the Tree of Life. It allowed me to channel any magic I siphoned more precisely than otherwise.

  Agwe added the enchantment to my wand, insisting it was mine by birthright. Apparently, several generations ago, the last of my Fomorian ancestors who lived there had devised it. As the next of my great, great, super-great grandfather's kin who set fin in Fomoria, the enchantment fell to me according to his will. And the wand was the only enchantable item I had.

  But to use the trident, I had to be in mermaid form. Summon it as a human, it would become a wand again.

  My momma always said it's rude to refuse a gift. Little did I know I'd need the damned thing so soon.

  So far, I’d been lucky.

  Supposing the sea serpent did sense I had a weapon, it wasn’t enough tame the thing. Hell, chances were my aggressive posture only ticked the beast off more.

  The monster came at me again.

  A forceful wag of the tail and I did something of an underwater back-flip, evading the beast's bite before jamming the end of my trident into its snout.

  That'll teach it, I thought.

  It lashed its body side to side, the sheer force of the water it displaced tossing me head-over-tail through the water.

  I dispelled my trident and focused a small amount of magic from my medallion into the sigil on my right hand. My trident reformed itself in my grip.

  Where had this sea serpent come from?

  I sensed its magic the moment my trident struck the monster in the nose. As a magical creature, no wonder it had detected the magic I’d used to summon my trident. This creature’s magic, though. It was a different sort of magic. But it was familiar magic... too familiar.

  I didn't dare draw on it. Not after what happened the last time... when I tried to siphon magic from a dragon.

  I was still living with the consequences of that debacle.

  The dragon's essence, still haunting my soul, was a burden. It gave me instinctive urges that were nearly impossible to ignore.

  But right now, it gave me an opportunity...

  I could listen to the creature. I could try.

  C'mon Joni. You can do this... clear your mind...

  I took a deep breath.

  Would I ever get used to breathing underwater? Such an odd sensation.

  I exhaled.

  Focus, Joni, Focus...

  I dr
ew in what remained of the magic contained in the small medallion around my neck. A gift from the Fomorian merking. A token of goodwill. But it was uniquely prepared for me. They meant it to be helpful. They knew what I could do, that I needed a source of magic, something I could siphon, to wield any magic at all. But I didn't need a lot of power. Just enough to connect my mind to the creature’s…

  A blue glow filled the waters around me—the light was emanating from my eyes as the magic tingled its way through my body.

  A cacophony of emotions blasted through my mind. They were the beast's feelings... reptilian, in a sense, but still familiar.

  Fear. Anger. Confusion.

  And, of course, hunger.

  When I was cursed to a dragon's form, I'd connected to a similar dialect.

  A primal language, not words but urges.

  The creature was disoriented. She was a mother... separated from her baby...

  All she wanted was to find her child... with, perhaps, a side of filet-o-mermaid.

  I could relate to that. Not eating mermaids. But missing my child...

  The pangs of leaving my own baby behind still ached in my chest.

  Not like I had any choice... it was for his own good.

  I wasn't myself anymore.

  I was a danger to him. Hell, I was a danger to everyone I knew from my life before.

  In Fomoria, with the merfolk. It was the only place where the rage inside me, the dragon instincts that had taken a seat in my soul, was calmed.

  It's why I was trying to go back... but this hybrid dragon-snake seemed to have other ideas.

  Still, I understood her pain.

  For a mother to leave her baby behind, even though I knew my son was better off with his father...

  It left a void in my soul. A darkness...

  This creature’s heart was aching. We were the same... more alike than different, despite the disparity in appearance and size.

  I had to wonder—could she feel me, too? Did she sense our connection?

  I suspected she did. The moment my mind touched hers, her body stopped thrashing.

  She swam around me, encircling my body with her own.

  All it would take would be a half-second if she wanted to wrap me up, to squeeze the life out of me as if she were a boa constrictor.

  But I knew she wouldn't...

  The creature wasn't evil. She was hurting. And she was terrified.

  Probably just as scared as I was...

  I'd say she was more afraid of me than I was of it. But that's a cliché that didn't hold water (no pun intended) in this situation. I mean, compared to the creature, I was basically an insect. A nuisance, maybe. No more a threat than a spider might be danging from a light fixture in a human house.

  Yes, I know, a lot of people are scared of spiders.

  But there's a difference between that kind of phobia and the fear you'd feel if you ever encountered a creature who could eat you in a single bite. That was the difference between the kind of fear that I might represent to this sea serpent and the terror she evoked in me...

  But when we sensed each other’s pain all the fear turned to something else. A combination of empathy and awe. I pitied her situation, knowing what she was going through all too well… even while I remained enthralled by the majesty of what she was.

  I reached out and touched her as she swam around me. She even felt like a dragon, a thick, scaly body, cool to the touch. The touch amplified all the emotions I'd sensed before.

  Yes, she was reptilian. Possibly, amphibian. Though I suspected that whatever she was defied such categories. She was something else. ..

  I already knew what drove her—finding her baby—and now I could put that pain to words.

  You’re a mom, I said, utilizing our psychic connection. I know what you’re feeling… I feel it, too…

  Lost... they took all of us... help us... help my baby.

  Who took you? Took you from where? I asked.

  The one who pulled us through the magic... he has my baby...

  Us? I asked. How many of your kind are here?

  All of us...

  I cocked my head. Whatever these creatures were, they might not understand numbers. There wasn't anything in its dialect, the messages I was receiving, that could account for their population's size. All of them could be two or three. It could also be thousands. Or hundreds of thousands.

  Either way, someone had brought them here... through magic... was it a portal? Did they come from another place? Maybe, even, another time? I'd had enough experience with trans-dimensional magic to know that either was possible.

  At least it made some sense why I never knew such creatures existed until now. Not that it wasn't theoretically possible that undiscovered creatures lurked in the ocean depths. Hell, the Fomorian merfolk themselves were such creatures, technically speaking. But most unknown species, so far as I knew, were much smaller and lived in deep waters. The merfolk were something of an exception. Their status as “unknown” was by design—they used their intellect to generally avoid being discovered.

  Sure, they might have been seen by a few sailors or pirates through the years. Frequently enough to inspire tales and legends. But not by any credible researchers...

  Of course, in the age of smartphones, everyone has cameras. I hadn't spent a lot of time with the Fomorians, but I was there long enough to know that the secret of their existence was essential to their way of life. There was no crime in Fomoria taken more seriously than transgressing the laws meant to guard their secrecy. To so much as appear to a human was a capital offense.

  The only reason they allowed me to leave was that, while there's no law against it, I was a half-breed. Half Fomorian, half-human—and raised as a human, I was more "other" than kin. And while some of them accepted me—if they hadn't, I never could have convinced them to help heal my baby— a significant contingent of their population had no tolerance for what I was. Some might say I was both mer and human. To this particular crowd of merfolk, I was an abomination—neither mer nor human.

  As much as they hated humans, a sentiment they shared with all the Fomorians, they hated whatever I was even more.

  Can you go back home? I asked the creature as she continued swimming around me.

  I will not leave without my baby...and I don’t know if he will allow it…

  I nodded. Who is he? The one who took you?

  I am uncertain... And there's something else...

  "Did you see him? What did he look like?"

  He...

  Before the creature could finish her thought her words changed into a shriek, exploding through my mind.

  Her body thrashed around me. I kicked my tail out of the way... barely escaping what would have been a painful blow.

  Then I saw it—there was a trident sticking out of its body.

  I turned.

  "Agwe!" I shouted. The Fomorian admiral floated there, flanked by Titus—one of his right-hand men—and another merman I hadn't met.

  "Joni," Agwe yelled. "Come with us! We'll get you out of here!"

  I looked at the creature again. I tried to speak to her, but I couldn't get through. The magic I'd used before was fading. What I had left couldn't get through the terror that consumed the sea serpent's mind.

  I kicked my tail, swimming my way toward Agwe. Titus, whom I'd only met briefly once before, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me behind him.

  "I don't think we can fight this thing," Agwe said. "We need to regroup in Fomoria."

  "Aye, sir," Titus replied in concert with the other mer warrior whose name I didn't yet know.

  Agwe called it a thing. Clearly, they were as confused about this creature's presence as I was.

  2

  THE FIRST TIME I came to Fomoria, I was captivated by the luster of the underwater merkingdom. The magical dome protecting the city reminded me of the snow globes my momma used to bring out on Christmas time. As a young girl, I still remembered the sense of wonder I had when I shoo
k the globes, and the miniature model cities inside came to life. Though, the dome of Fomoria was made of magic—blue magic that served to illuminate the city. It was so bright that you could spot it from miles away, provided you were deep enough in the ocean. It was a wonder, given the city's magnificence, that humans hadn't discovered the place until now.

  Giant, twisted spires, rivaling any skyscraper in both size and majesty, formed the primary buildings or structures within the city. The openings through which the merfolk passed when entering the towers were in seemingly random locations. Since the citizens of Fomoria weren't dependent on gravity, very few entrances were on the ground level.

  The spires appeared as if they were grown naturally, then adapted for merfolk use. They were asymmetrical. Not likely designed by architects. This was the kind of beauty inherent in nature, the sort you might see on a mountain range or one of those rare, pristine places still untouched by humanity.

  Yes, the place was magnificent.

  But this time, entering the city, it was different.

  Everything looked... gray...

  The magnificent blues, radiating through the sea...

  Now, it was dull.

  The city hadn't changed.

  I had changed.

  I could have been passing through the pearly gates of heaven itself, and I still would have been in my own personal hell.

  Even before, when I came to Fomoria with all the desperation to save my baby... at least, then, we were together.