The Awakening Series: Volumes 1 - 3

by Dean Murray

  The fangs and claws were only feet away from me, and I knew in that moment that I was going to die. That knowledge tore something free inside of me and a bolt of blinding light shot from my hand. What was left of the creature was blasted back into the forest and I knew that my life would never be the same again.

  Time stuttered forward and I was running through the jungle, unarmed but unafraid of anything that might be out there stalking me. I crashed into a clearing and sprinted towards a squat stone pyramid only to have the ground underneath me give way before I could take my third step.

  My head hit a rock and I lost consciousness. When I woke, I was tied to a post facing Byron…facing my father. He was the reason I'd come. The others, the ones who walked on two legs like us, had captured him. They feared me, feared what I was capable of, and their answer to the fear was to sacrifice both my dad and me to whatever strange powers they believed in.

  I'd thought time was my only enemy, thought that merely arriving soon enough would guarantee my victory, but I'd been overconfident. Byron looked at me, desperation in his eyes as he struggled against his bonds, but there was nothing either of us could do about the priest who approached me with an obsidian knife held high. I reached for my sun fire, but the blow to my head had left my thoughts muddled and my powers useless.

  I closed my eyes, preparing for death, and then I heard a crack as Byron ripped his post from the ground in a feat of strength that was beyond anything I'd ever seen before. The others attacked him, but the ropes around him snapped and they were as children before his strength.

  He saved my life, but just as important, he saved me from the unending loneliness I'd been able to see stretching out before me. I wasn't the only one of my kind any more.

  Time stuttered forward again and I was once again standing at the edge of a river, a mountain at my back. I was surrounded by people, but more alone than ever. I hadn't wanted to become a goddess. All I'd wanted was to be safe, to be left alone to expand the boundaries of my ability.

  The others hadn't been willing to let that happen. They'd pursued my father and me for years. Eventually we'd found another group, one in the middle of a war, and we'd been taken in.

  We'd tried to keep a low profile, but that had gone out the window the first time one of the others had attacked us in broad daylight in the middle of the village. I'd killed him with my sun fire and from that moment we'd been forced to become gods to be worshiped or demons to be feared.

  All efforts at peaceful negotiation had failed, and our people couldn't leave—not with the others behind us and the new enemies before us. For decades we fought a defensive war to hold the fertile valley that made life something other than just a cold drudgery.

  Our people gave us the best gifts they knew how to give, crude though they were, but all of the gifts in the world couldn't make up for the fact that we were forced to kill for them at every turn. Our enemies were possessed of a savage cunning and the kind of determination possible only when religious zeal was married with greed.

  We had something they wanted, and they came at us in an unending stream. My father and I killed them by the dozens, but eventually one of them got lucky and I was once again all alone.

  I was inconsolable for months. I led war bands into the territory of our enemies and I killed them by the scores, but eventually I realized that no matter how many of them I killed it wouldn't bring my father back, wouldn't fill the hole inside of me.

  Somewhere along the way I realized that I was losing my memories more quickly than I was creating new ones. I was just one person, and even a god—this god at least—had limits. I eventually hit on the solution to our problem, but it took another decade before I was able to work out how to make it happen, a decade in which my people were harried from all sides, a decade in which men died in battle and their wives and children rarely survived to see the next sunrise after their defeat.

  Looking back over that time, I expected to feel anger or hatred as I contemplated the possibility of destroying the new enemies, the ones who'd killed my father and ravaged my people. I didn't though. I felt a sense of satisfaction and joy that my power would finally be used to create something, to carve a permanent change of the face of our land.

  It was time. I reached deep down inside of me and tapped into the joy for once rather than the anger I usually used, and it was a vast power, a force stronger even than the river before me. I reached toward the mountain at my back and pushed it over, damming the river a mile or two upstream from where I stood, sealing the pass that our enemies used to reach our land, and flooding their home.

  When it was all over my memories were measured in months rather than decades, but my people were safe. The others were still a threat, but we could deal with just one enemy.

  A few hours later I met her for the first time.

  She was no longer than my thumb, physically weak, but loyal and unyielding. She was a companion who was just as different in her own way from my people as I was. Even better, she didn't seem to age, and as time went on, she grew.

  It was a slow process, one that resulted in just the tiniest of gains after even the passage of decades, but it was measurable. I was getting very good at measuring things. With her as our scout, my warriors and I had chased the others back several days' journey.

  We still experienced occasional harassing attacks, but by and large my people were finally safe, and I'd turned my attention back to understanding how I was able to do so many things that others weren't able to match.

  Back in the present, I felt a growing sense of pressure pulling at me as Kyle redoubled his efforts to kill me, and I temporarily lost the thread of memory I'd been following. I shored up my defenses, pushing him far enough back that I could return part of my attention to my past, and returned to the memories that were finally answering some of my questions.

  I was sitting in an open-air room at the top of a stone temple, a room that was still crude, but which was luxurious in comparison to the way my people lived. Normally the stone floors were packed with functionaries, but tonight things were different. It was just me and my fairy companion—a three-foot-tall woman who I finally recognized as the Lady.

  "Are you sure about this? You don't even know if something like this is possible. I don't want to lose you for no reason."

  I reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder. "I don't want to be lost any more than you want me to be lost, but I have to do something. I never thought that the others would eventually ally themselves with another of my kind. I should have rooted them out decades ago and turned everything on that side of our border into a desolate wasteland, but it's too late now."

  She shook her head. "No, it's not. Let's go, just you and me. We'll leave behind the army so we can travel more quickly and we'll go drop a mountain on their favorite pass."

  "We've talked about that. The conditions aren't right for that. I couldn't manage to drop anything that big, not in a way that would accomplish what we're after."

  "Fine, we'll come up with another plan. If we sneak into their capital we can probably assassinate both of them and get back out before their guards can respond."

  "I don't think we can. They always seem to be a step ahead of us. No matter what precautions I take, they know exactly where I'm going to be. They always manage to make sure that one of them is there to foil any attack I lead, and while I'm tied up saving our army at that location, the other one rampages through our defenses somewhere else. I don't know how they are doing it, but I'm becoming convinced that they can sense me from a long distance away."

  That stopped her. She was small, but she was already decades old, and she'd seen more combat than any of my generals—rarely on the front lines, but from her vantage point in the sky she usually had a better idea of how things were developing than I did. The information she relayed to me, and then from me to my commanders, had been a major component in our success so far in keeping the others from completely overrunning our defenses.

 
"How long have you suspected that?"

  "I'm not sure. There was just something in the back of my mind that kept telling me that nobody could have such a fantastic string of luck. It wasn't until the battle last month that I realized what was going on."

  "That's why you sent the reserves around their flanks like that. You know that the others wouldn't be expecting you to operate our people that far away from you."

  "I didn't know—I still don't know for certain that they can sense me—but it's starting to look like my theory is correct."

  "In that case, I'll have to go after them myself. They can't sense me."

  "No, I'm not going to let you throw your life away, you're too important for that."

  She shook her head, lip stuck out in something dangerously close to a pout. "I'm not important and you know it. I should have gone after them years ago. I may not be big enough to drive a spear into their chests, but there are a lot of other ways to kill someone. I could poison their food, or barring that, stab them in their sleep with their own knife. They can see me, but the rest of their people can't."

  I took a firmer grasp on her arm, making sure that she wouldn't be able to fly away. "Their army outnumbers ours by nearly three to one. Your ability to pass messages is the only thing that has allowed us to survive so far."

  "Not true."

  "Fine. It's not the only thing, but it's one of our few advantages. Don't get too caught up with the idea that they can sense me. I made that mistake for a while, but the truth is that even if I learn how to replicate whatever it is they're doing, it still won't change the fundamental balance of power. There are two of them and just one of me. I've got an edge in that my research has made me more effective than either of them is individually, but at the end of the day they are gaining memories twice as fast as I am.

  "That is why I have to proceed with the creation of the weapon. I have to change the fundamental balance of power—and soon—or nothing else will matter. This weapon has the potential of making it so my powers are more efficient. If I'm successful it could mean that I'll be able to face the two of them on equal footing."

  "What if you're wrong? What if you waste all of those memories in an attempt to create this…artifact…and at the end of it all you're left without a weapon, without any memory of how to fight, and without any idea who I am?"

  I pulled her to me and hugged her, careful not to put pressure on the delicate wings growing out of her back. "It's a risk, but it's one I have to run. Just know that no matter what happens I'm incredibly proud of you."

  She tried to shake her head, tried to deny my words, but I didn't let her. "You're something unique. I'm still learning what it is I can do, but I can't shake the feeling that eventually I'll reach the end of my capabilities. You, on the other hand, show every sign of being able to get stronger and stronger. Not only that, you don't age, so there's every reason to think that eventually you might end up as the single most powerful being to have ever lived. Our people call me a god, but that was disproved when my father was killed. I'm powerful, but I'm not a god. You, though, you just might be the next best thing to a true god, and if that's the case I'm glad that you're you—a truly good and caring individual—rather than someone like those two monsters currently leading the others."

  The memory stuttered again, but I got the sense that hours passed. When I finally collapsed down onto the floor a familiar-looking sword was buried to the hilt in the stone floor of the temple. I finally understood how the Lady had come into possession of Excalibur—I must have given it to her.

  The years skipped forward in flashes. I saw more fighting than anyone should be forced to endure. The Lady was taller than she'd been—either a product of having been nearby during the creation of Excalibur or because of the constant expenditure of power by all three of the Awakened involved in the war—but we were always outnumbered, always on the run.

  In the end, her fears proved to be valid. It took almost a decade, but by the end of it all I barely remembered my own name. The two Awakened at the head of the other army killed me and then razed the beautiful city that my people had spent unimaginable hours creating.

  I died with a set of memories that were measured only in days rather than centuries, but I died happy. I'd managed to give Excalibur to the Lady, and she'd hidden it away in the in-between, the place that only she could access.

  Flashes of other lives followed. In one the Lady found me and gave me my old journals—the ones that had survived the fighting. I spent decades learning how to read them again, decades during which I managed to keep my abilities secret, but the journals proved to be insufficient.

  There was an arms race going on. Our kind—the demigods—had started out with just my father and I in a past incarnation, but by this point there seemed to be Awakened at the head of every developing civilization. There were scores of us, and they all spent most of their time discovering better ways to kill each other.

  I died deep inside a cave, hunted for days by a pair of Awakened in the hopes that I knew something that would help them fight off the threat on their western border.

  The lives flashed by one after another, mostly in bits and pieces. The clearest stretches were the ones when the Lady was nearby, often without my knowledge. I was too young and naive to understand what was going on, but it was apparent to me now—viewing history in flashes that covered years.

  The war between the Awakened was bad, but the unseen one between the fae was every bit as terrible. The fae were slow to be born. It was a rare Awakened who survived long enough to amass sufficient memories to fuel the birth of another fairy, and Awakened who found themselves in circumstances where they were able to sustain the necessary emotion were even rarer.

  The Lady started out with an incredible advantage. She'd been fortunate to see both the creation of an artifact and more than a century and a half of sustained warfare. She was bigger than the first few fae she found, and quickly figured out how to feed off of their deaths. She never attacked first, but she nearly always won in the end.

  The entire earth spun towards darkness, an endless cycle of war and destruction as Awakened banded together to pull down their strongest neighbors before then turning on each other. I should have caught only the events that took place in my part of the world, but instead I seemed to be picking up things from all over—even other continents.

  I saw the rise of Atlantis, saw a pantheon of twelve Awakened unite to create something good and beautiful. I was one of them, still young, but more than willing to throw myself into the task before us. Kat was there too—a lighter, happier Kat—as was my father, the man who would someday come to be known as Byron in a different time and place, a different life.

  We didn't recognize each other, didn't share any link beyond what we'd developed during that incarnation in Atlantis, but that link was enough. He became my mentor, my father in everything but name. He was the leader of us all, the man who united us into a force that managed to hold off the barbarians at our gates for more than two centuries.

  The last hundred and fifty years was a constant picture of death and destruction, but through all of it he kept me separated from the bulk of the fighting. He told me—told us all—that it was because I was an even more gifted researcher than him, that we needed me to be doing what I did best if we were to have a chance of winning the war.

  I did my best. I created dozens of new ways to kill and nearly an equal number of ways to heal the injured. Kat used my discoveries to patch up our soldiers and feed them back into the meat grinder again and again until there wasn't anything left to patch up.

  Each time the pressure from Kyle's attack in the present shifted and demanded my attention, I staved him off. Each time I was pulled partway out of the flow of memories, I told myself that the things I was reliving were nothing more than an echo of the past, but it didn't help. It all felt so real.

  I watched as a failed experiment resulted in the creation of another fairy—once again a female. She started o
ut small, but she was the only one of her kind in a city that teemed with the energy of expended effects. I watched her grow over a very short period of time, watched her throw herself into the hottest parts of the battle, the spots where my pantheon used their abilities to fight other Awakened, other pantheons.

  I watched her accompany Byron and the others on daring missions where they cut off the head of the enemy armies, killing the generals and Awakened who were attacking us. Time and time again the other members of my pantheon seemed on the verge of total victory, but no sooner had we defeated one enemy than another rose in its place.

  Our success had painted a huge target on our fair city, and by the end of the war we started seeing Awakened we'd defeated and killed reborn to fight us again.

  In the end, I once again wagered everything on a single throw of the dice—ignorant of the ways in which history was repeating itself. This time my research had gone down other paths, but once again, my fairy familiar stood at my side as I embarked on an act of creation that was beyond the imagining of most of my kind.

  When I finished with the shapeless lump of metal I'd started with, it was more than just recognizable, its form was burned into my mind, both in the past and in the future. I created the second artifact of my existence, and then I carried the Scepter of Storms into battle and slew entire armies by myself.

  It was addicting, and there was so little of me left to fight off the scepter's influence. This time I'd created something that could function on its own, something that didn't require my memories to wield it, but I'd misjudged the effect it would have on someone who was little more than a child by then.

  My fairy companion—Intravil—wasn't much help. She'd grown up in a different environment than the Lady. They'd both seen the horrors of war, but things had become even more horrible as our ability to kill had improved. Intravil didn't look at life and death the same way that the Lady had. She was still good, still created from predominantly positive emotions, but she saw nothing wrong with my using the scepter to destroy our enemies and then pursue them back to the lands from whence they came.