The Immortals Part One: Shadows & Starstone

by Cheryl Mackey

  ***

  Ivo jerked to the present as his brother stumbled beside him with a keening cry. Jaeger bent at the waist, hands on knees, as grief tore at him.

  “Jaeger, you must stop. Mirena is gone. Anya is gone.” Ivo swallowed the words he wished he could say, wanted to say, but the unrelenting wind shoved them back into his throat.

  “Maybe, maybe they are here too. Maybe they are like us,” Jaeger whispered. The wind returned and whipped sand about their feet as he spoke. “There are so many lands left to search, so many other Immortals.”

  Ivo closed his eyes, feeling very old and tired. Thunder rumbled, closer this time, the reverberations shaking the ground beneath them.

  “I’m sorry Jaeger,” Ivo moved away from Jaeger and retrieved his helm with a sigh of despair. “I’m sorry.”

  Jaeger straightened and turned to look at his brother. Sad blue eyes locked with troubled green and held for an eternity.

  “I know. I—I don’t know why,” he swallowed, his blue eyes misting, then freezing into anguished chips of ice. His breath fogged the air with his despair. “I wish I had stayed dead.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ivo growled as the wind eddied and swirled about them in a rush of fury. It settled as Ivo stilled and his pained gaze dropped to the gritty red ground. “Don’t say that.”

  A deep, earthy rumble filled the air. He stopped and traded frowns with Jaeger.

  “What is that?” Jaeger asked. He spun and stared up the barely visible trail. The rumble continued, louder and angrier. The rock and dirt beneath their feet groaned and creaked as if cracking from within.

  Emaranthe shot upright with a gasp as her cold stone bed shifted and buckled, sending pebbles and debris raining from the cliffs above. She stumbled toward the brothers, dodging the raining rock.

  Jadeth followed on her heels, coughing. The rumble became a roar as the sky darkened and clouds swirled and frothed above them. A thread of light and a flash of purple streaked across the sky far above them.

  “What’s happening?” Jadeth asked. She squinted at the odd clouds as she fought the shifting, shaking ground to remain upright.

  They watched the roiling purple clouds swirl and mass together until a sharp flare of inky light lit up the sky. Black shadows erupted out of the light, shifting and slithering with each crackle of lightning. The ground beneath their feet shook, buckled. Dust billowed, covering everything and turning the garish purple light into a reddened miasma. The inky shadows spread until they blanketed the top of the plateau.

  “That’s where they’re coming in!” Jaeger snarled, pulling his great axe free. Ivo followed suit and his sword sang and whistled in the sharp wind. Fury darkened his face, fueled by bitter memories. “If we don’t stop the spread of the darkness the whole valley will be overrun in hours!”

  “Dro-Aconi,” Emaranthe said. She shuddered, unable to look away from the eerie scene. “They are here in person this time. They are growing stronger. If we don’t hurry they will break through this time.”

  “Why? How?” Jadeth asked. Her scarlet braids whipped in the dusty wind.

  “They need the stone,” she said. She rubbed her bare arms with her gloved hands where goose bumps rose freely. “They are desperate for it. Without its power they can never fully materialize.”

  “We need to stop them,” Ivo said. “Now.”

  Glancing between the brothers, and then up at the writhing shadows of evil high above, Emaranthe sighed, but the wind dragged it away unheard.

  The men launched into motion with wild cries that defied the wind. Jadeth followed at their heels— her hammer high and bright. Emaranthe drifted after them, her feet a blur, barely touching the quaking ground, blonde braids trailing.

  Her gaze steadied on the backs of her friends. Her chest tightened with a sudden, unnamable fear.