by James Somers
The Realm Shift
( Realm shift - 1 )
James Somers
James Somers
The Realm Shift
“When the demon born conqueror rises to power and darkness rules in the land of Shaddai, then shall come the Deliverer walking seen and unseen. Salem’s son who shall be a rod in the hand of the Lord to smite the wicked-and Shaddai’s priest shall be a sword of judgment and a king to bring the hearts of the people back to their God.”
STORYTELLER
A stranger walked into the city of Emmanuel. The House of Nod, the family line of the king, resided here in this chief city of the Realm. The palace of the king, Leole, stood there surrounded by great, white granite walls on every side of the city. The southwest and northwest walls sat upon white granite cliffs, descending into the sea with the Bay of Emmanuel beyond, and the Royal Naval Armada moored at one hundred piers stretching into the clear blue waters of the Azure Sea.
Strangers of every sort commonly traveled here, but this man differed altogether from most. People recalled his appearance but not his name. He may have once been a great man, perhaps even a warrior, but their memories failed them. Folk simply did not remember with any accuracy.
Clouds prevailed on this day-thick, dark clouds fighting with the bright sunshine for dominance. The Old Storyteller, as we called him, regarded the weather with a slight nod as he sat at the King’s Fountain. We expected rain, but something in his expression said the struggle between the light and growing darkness concerned him.
He wore deep, scarlet colored robes-clearly quality made, but they bore tattered fringes, revealing much age and wear. The Old Storyteller carried a leather bag draped over his right shoulder with the bag itself resting upon his left hip. He leaned upon a straight, unadorned piece of oak, standing the height of a man.
A fair crowd of children had gathered to listen today. The children of the city had played games in the streets, but this man, whom the adults spoke of in hushed tones, tore their attention from play.
We sat upon the polished stone path encircling the fountain, waiting for the storyteller to speak. He sat there on the fountain’s short retaining wall, watching us through bushy, white eyebrows with a full beard lying upon his chest. He turned his head and regarded the idol statue, Dyfore, adorning the center of the fountain. The old man cleared his throat of mucus and spat upon the idol in disgust. Then he turned around and caught our astounded expressions.
We looked at one another, then to him ready to devour his words. Profaning an idol held a death sentence in Emmanuel. Only a prophet dared to do such a thing. Perhaps, at the very least, we might witness his arrest if someone reported this to the authorities.
The old man gave us a knowing wink as we stared. He leaned his walking stick upon the fountain’s edge, preparing to speak. His every movement caused us to stir in anticipation. Knowing the stories our parents had shared, we expected a real treat.
My name is Phineas Bogg and I sat among the children that day. When this man finally began to speak, he told us, “The story I am about to share with you, regarding Shaddai’s Deliverer, is the absolute truth as it occurred nearly one hundred years ago. You see, children, the strangest thing about Ethan’s first encounter with a demon was not that he could see the creature, but rather that it could not see him.”
By the time the old man concluded the telling of his tale, my life would never be the same again.
STRANGER
Little Ethan watched the odd fellow with fascination. “Momma?” he said, tugging at her long skirt.
“Honestly, I don’t know how you always have such a good crop,” a woman said, speaking to his mother.
“Just the Lord’s grace, that’s all,” his mother replied.
“And how old is your son now?”
“Five last month,” his mother said proudly.
“I had no idea you’d been in Salem that long already. Seems like just the other day you arrived in that rickety wagon. I don’t know how you got here without going into labor with all that jostling about.”
Ethan tugged again. “Momma, who is that man?”
She turned to Ethan, then followed his finger. “I don’t see anyone. Now go play, but stay close.”
“Have you heard the rumors going around?” the woman continued. “They say a village was sacked near the northern border.”
“I hadn’t heard,” his mother replied.
Ethan had fixated upon something-something he had never seen before. The demon appeared almost human at first, although far more regal. Ethan noticed his brilliant clothing, red against black and gray cloth of the finest quality. A bare sword hovered near his left hip. The intricately crafted weapon remained in exactly the same position no matter where the demon moved.
Though beautiful, the demon’s appearance fluctuated. Every few seconds, his form morphed from a near-man to something wolfish, then to something reptilian, and back again. The light blurred around the demon, as though light could not quite keep up with his movements. Ethan pointed a little stick at the odd creature. Everywhere the demon wandered in the village, Ethan followed him with his stick.
The demon searched among men, but never regarded the small, blonde-headed boy standing near the muddy puddle in his cut-off tan breeches. Dust coated Ethan’s bare feet. He had smeared dirt on his white pullover shirt, despite his mother’s admonishing.
The demon surveyed the village and its inhabitants, searching for something. The demon crept near people unawares, listening to their conversations, trying to catch clues. He moved on to different houses, disappearing inside briefly, then reemerging in the street again. Ethan remained still, awe-struck.
Then the demon came back toward Ethan. By now, the child had completely lost track of his mother among the market goers. The demon stopped. Something caught his attention. He bent low, examining the stick Ethan held in his hand. He did not regard the boy.
The demon had such a puzzled look on his face and knelt so close that Ethan moved away a little. When the stick moved with him, the demon’s expression of surprise frightened the child. He swatted the piece of wood from Ethan’s small hand. The child ran into the crowd to find his mother, and his tiny feet left imprints in the dusty ground.
The demon smiled wickedly. His face flashed through his wolven and reptilian forms. “So, you are here, after all,” he whispered.
The footsteps disappeared in the throng of people milling about in the market. He had still not seen the child printing them in the dust, but that didn’t matter now. He knew the place, and that would sate his master. The demon left Salem in a blur of light imperceptible to mortal eyes.
The children lay tucked into bed inside the loft over their parent’s bedroom, while the adults sat in the main room of the house, cozy beside the fire burning in the hearth. Ethan whispered of his experience to Elspeth. His beautiful sister, a young woman at seventeen years of age, pretended to listen intently. Auburn locks swept around the milky skin of her face as she lay on her bed, indulging another of her little brother’s wild fantasies. Strangers who appear as reptiles and wolves, indeed, she thought.
“It’s true, I promise,” Ethan said. He even proffered the very fingers, which had been struck by the peculiar creature when it batted away the stick from his hand. Elspeth examined the bruise. “That doesn’t prove anything,” she said. Ethan is a five-year-old boy and prone to getting into trouble, she surmised.
“Other than the bruise there’s nothing unusual about it,” she said. Elspeth noticed the odd birthmark upon Ethan’s right forearm. The mark had the appearance of a star. Elspeth rolled her eyes for the third time and then lay back down on her pillow. “Go to sleep, Ethan,” she whispered.
Ethan slamme
d his head back into his pillow. “No one ever believes me.”
“Goodnight,” Elspeth said.
Ethan yawned. “I’ll show you tomorrow, Elspeth, when we go to sell at the market.”
“Good night, Ethan.”
The boy exhaled deeply, studying the bruise in the half-light. Soon he drifted off to sleep.
SUFFER THE CHILDREN
A low steady rumble, like a stampede, woke Elspeth from sleep. The waving firelight of distant torches and the screams of women and children stirred her parents from their chairs in the main room below.
Elspeth heard voices shouting and the sound of her father’s sword loosed from its scabbard, which normally held it secure upon their living room wall. Her mother scrambled up the ladder into the loft, trying to reach her children. “Elspeth, we must run!”
What’s happening? Why is mother so afraid? Elspeth wondered.
Her mother grabbed Ethan from his bed and thrust him into Elspeth’s arms. The child gazed about through eyes half cocked in slumber. He clung to Elspeth until their mother climbed back down the ladder. Then she reached for Ethan as Elspeth handed him down to her and followed.
Elspeth heard the sounds of horses galloping toward the front of the house. The glow of several torchlights flashed back and forth through the windowpanes on either side of the front door. Her father left the house with his sword in hand, shutting the door behind him.
Voices exchanged threats outside. The horses stamped and whinnied beyond the wooden walls of their home. Elspeth heard the piercing song of swords meeting in combat and the cries of war.
Her mother went to the window and peered into the darkness beyond. She ran back to the children, her face contorted in anguish and horror. She forced Ethan into Elspeth’s arms once again. Her mother grabbed the pail of water sitting next to their sink basin, then threw it onto the burning embers within the hearth, sending a cloud of steam hissing into the room. With her skirt wrapped around her hand, she reached to the back of the hearth to the small iron door built into the chimney for removing the ashes.
“Elspeth, take Ethan through!” she screamed as she grabbed the iron handle with a wad of her long skirt and forced it open. Steam billowed from the coals, filling the room with hot vapor.
“But Mama, what about Papa? We must-”
“Papa is gone,” she choked, grabbing Elspeth by the shoulders to shake the truth into her. “Now go before it’s too late! Keep your brother safe!”
She ushered the girl and her brother into the cloud of vapor and through the small door beyond as the wooden door to their home exploded inward. The door closed on a spring as Elspeth pushed her way through, emerging with Ethan into the damp night air.
Inside the house, several lightly armored soldiers appeared under the lintel, pushing the splintered door out of their way. Elspeth’s mother emerged from the white cloud of steam with an iron poker in her hand. The men brandished swords. She saw her husband’s blood upon their blades. “Henry.” Her hand tightened around the poker. “What do you want with us?”
The men walked over the splintered wood, holding their swords in front of them. They kicked over the table and chairs, clearing a path to their next victim. Tears escaped her eyes as she whispered, “Help us, Lord Shaddai.” She raised the poker high. Her hand trembled. She tried her best to avenge her beloved.
Ethan’s terror kept him silent. He clung to his sister for dear life. Elspeth treaded the cold, wet grass in her bare feet as she emerged in her nightgown from behind their family’s modest log home.
The trees bordering Salem lay before them amid a thick layer of thorns and brambles. Ethan looked past his sister’s shoulder and saw creatures, like he had seen earlier, emerging from the trees all around them. Demons sailed through the air into their village. Some appeared like wolves, others as humans, and still others as indescribable monstrosities born from man’s worst nightmares.
As Ethan looked over Elspeth’s shoulder, he saw the village burning behind them. Silhouettes of frantic villagers raged against the fires, then fell like hewn wheat before the riders. Ethan turned to see where they were going and found a demon coming toward them from the trees ahead. The creature frothed at the mouth, its long claws extended like the talons of an eagle, reaching for his prey. Ethan gasped and closed his eyes.
The beast passed right through them and kept going, completely unaware of the girl and boy escaping from the net of destruction cast over the village. Elspeth ran from the carnage behind them. Thick underbrush tore at her flimsy nightgown, but nothing slowed her pace. Ethan heard screams of pure anguish as their neighbors and friends fell in the night like cattle to the slaughter. A voice cried out from the house behind them.
“Momma?” Ethan whispered.
Elspeth stopped, turned, then choked down the lump in her throat. With hot tears streaming down her face, she ran into the night.
The village of Salem burned. The inhabitants lay massacred in the streets. Wraith Riders, clad in black and crimson leather-plated armor, filed through the ruins of the burning village, searching for stragglers they might have missed. Demons glided through the air, searching as well.
A demon in semi-human form appeared before the warlord, Mordred, as he sat upon his black stallion. His intricately designed, armored breastplate was embossed with the gold of leadership. His broadsword lay across his lap baptized in the blood of Salem’s citizens. Upon his head sat a molded black helmet covering all but his eyes. A constant fury burned in his eyes-a lust for power never satisfied. “My lord, Mordred, we have found no other children present in the village,” a wolf-headed demon reported.
Mordred listened. The screams had grown quiet now. “Have you killed Shaddai’s Deliverer then?”
“If he was here among the children then he is surely dead, my lord,” the demon said.
“If he lives, then my invasion will be for naught.”
“I understand, my lord. He is dead. The invasion will not be hindered.”
“And the others?” he asked.
“We have left none alive, my lord. Even the wounded have been dispatched.”
“Be sure of it,” Mordred said. “I want none left who might oppose me. By tomorrow, the House of Nod will have fallen. I will cast their king into chains. Gather your demon army and tell Jericho to prepare for battle.”
The demon bowed and flew from Mordred in haste.
The warlord surveyed the grim scene again and smiled. “This night will forever mark the hammer stroke, ending the reign of Shaddai upon the earth.”
BENEFACTOR
Another sunrise. Elspeth and Ethan had seen so many. She did not even know how many days they had been walking. Her feet had blistered long ago. Now they were forming calluses. Ethan strolled beside her, keeping up, then falling a few steps behind as different things caught his attention. “It’s hot already,” he said. “Do we have any water left?”
Elspeth brushed the tangled hair from her face. Bits of leaves and twigs fell away. “I gave it to you last night.”
Ethan lagged behind again. “But I’m thirsty. Can’t we find another town so someone will give us money again?”
“The soldiers are in the towns now.”
“Not the last one,” he complained.
Elspeth shook her head. “No, but they soon will be.”
“What do they want, Elspeth? Why are they killing people?”
She looked back at her brother as he hurried to catch up again. She remembered the mark on his arm. They want you, she thought, but she dared not say it. Ethan wouldn’t understand. Her mother and father had once told her what the mark meant. Still, she only half understood its meaning. “It doesn’t matter what they want, Ethan. We just can’t be found by them.”
A signpost appeared on the road ahead. “A town!” Ethan reported.
Elspeth had seen the sign, but hoped to ignore it.
“Please, Elspeth, may we at least see if any soldiers are there? I’m hungry too.”
I
t was a bad idea. Elspeth felt her own belly grumble its complaint. She had taken very little water for herself, trying to keep most of it for Ethan. However, she couldn’t go much further without sustenance. “All right, we’ll leave the road and then come upon the town,” she said. “But if I see any sign of soldiers, we leave immediately. Is that clear?”
Ethan nodded enthusiastically.
The signpost read, Grandee, as they entered the town. Fortunately, there wasn’t a soldier in sight. “Come on,” Elspeth said, leading their way out of the woods.
Grandee was larger than most of the small villages and towns she and Ethan had come upon in their journey. People hurried to market through busy streets. Here and there, gentlemen and ladies wore fine clothing-pretty colors that reminded Elspeth of the homemade dresses her mother used to make for her.
She held Ethan’s hand as they kept to the side of the street. Elspeth could not bring herself to look the people in the eyes, but she felt their stares just the same. Despite her efforts to wash their clothes in creeks and ponds along the way, they had become stained and torn. Her nightgown bore grass, mud, leaves and the occasional insect. She realized the two of them were a sight. It made her want to cry, but she didn’t.
“Look over there,” Ethan said. He broke loose from Elspeth’s grip and shot across the earthen road.
A team of horses whinnied wildly. “Ethan, No!” Elspeth cried.
The driver pulled the wagon up short, stopping his animals just shy of running Ethan down. “What are you doin, boy?” the driver said, hopping down from his seat. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” His voice bellowed, and Ethan froze before him like a hypnotized frog.
The man grabbed Ethan’s arm, pulling so hard the boy’s feet began to leave the ground. Elspeth ran up to them. “Please, I’m sorry, sir. My little brother got away from me.”