by Lucia Ashta
HOLOGRAPHIC PRINCESS
LUCÍA ASHTA
AWAKEN TO PEACE PRESS
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Purple Worlds
Purple Worlds Preview
A Note to Readers
Titles by Lucía Ashta
About the Author
Copyright 2017 Lucía Ashta
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction.
Cover design by Lou Harper of Harper by Design
Awaken to Peace Press
Sedona, Arizona
www.awakentopeace.com
I strive to produce error-free books. If you discover a mistake, please contact me at [email protected] so I may correct it. Thank you!
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For those who follow their guidance into other worlds
Don’t fear the impossible. Overcome it.
ONE
PLANET SAND
Present day
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING storms get my blood boiling as effectively as a suggestive look from a man capable of backing it up with some action. So when even the daredevil storm chasers began to turn back, resigned to seek refuge from the pummeling rain and lightning flashes, sheltering cameras within their rain slickers, I was the only one to persist along the wet and slippery craggy mountain wall.
“You’re crazy, Ilara! Turn back!” a man from one of the popular TV stations yelled at me as we passed each other, heads tilted down against the ferocity of nature. I didn’t answer—there was no way I was turning back—and my silence seemed to concern or infuriate him all the more. “Ilara! You’re out of your fucking mind!” he yelled after me, grinding out the consonant sounds of fucking as if that would call my attention to the fact that I was, indeed, mad. He had no more influence over me than most men, which is to say, very little. I continued on, watching my step, bringing each footfall down solidly across the gray stone before taking the next, clutching the nearly vertical rock wall with my fingers.
A particularly spectacular flash ripped across the sky with a thunderous, cracking sound, loud enough to shake the bones of the dead. If the sky had been made of anything solid, it would have shattered to its irreversible end. The lightning was nearly above me. It was one of the few things that tempted me to believe in a god. If indeed there were a god—a power responsible for our creation—then lightning bolts must be its tools, to smite and burn the undeserving. Why did I think this? Because if I were some kind of god, with every possibility at my disposal, I would definitely fling lightning bolts to the ground to shake the faith of humans until they accepted my mightiness.
I wasn’t a god—nor even a believer in one—but the crackling energy alive in the air just then was enough to make me feel invincible. When everything around you is teeming with life, contemplations of its fragility feel impossible.
I marched on, knowing I’d soon have the crown of this mountain all to myself. Up ahead, the last of the storm chasers were about to reach me. After they passed, I’d be alone on this path of ascension. I’d be left to occupy the one place on Sand where lightning converged in a choreographed dance of destruction. The magnetics atop the mountain, combined with the dotting of tall, slender trees that did their best to meet the lightning at its birthplace, drew the bolts to this one remote location. As if the god enjoyed target practice, it hurled lightning to this summit more than anywhere else.
The approaching team was yelling, but their voices were lost to the wind, nearly as powerful as the lightning. With laughable ease, the current picked up the shouts of three men and tossed them aside, refuse in a world where the humans didn’t get to determine what was, and what wasn’t, important. Realizing I couldn’t hear them, the man in front started signaling, pointing frenetically in the direction they were headed, as if I were incapable of noticing my surroundings and the soup of electric energy in which we bubbled. I ignored them, keeping my head down so the rain, which was coming down diagonally, would run off the hood of my jacket.
The path was wide enough for two people to walk it at once. But it was treacherous. In these conditions, it would be stupid to pass anyone. These storm chasers thought me crazy, but I wouldn’t give them cause to think me stupid. I needed to reach the highest elevation where I could view the lightning converge upon this point on the planet. And I needed to get there alive.
I reached a place on the trail where a piece of rock jutted from the otherwise sheer wall. I could get a firm grip on the backside of the rock, so there I waited for the team’s approach. They were close, but their progress was cumbersome. They were burdened with photographic equipment, where I wasn’t. I was climbing this mountain in a storm for myself. They were doing it to capture that one image that would set them apart from all the other storm chasers of Sand.
Right before they reached me, the man second in line lost his footing and nearly fell. It would have been a long fall that ended in a fast death, but his quick reflexes spared him from it. Still, he was shaken when they drew close enough that I could see their faces. They’d taken risks enough for one day.
“I have a good grip. You can grab onto me as you pass,” I said while turning the front of my body toward the rock face. I settled my legs into a solid stance and offered myself as a handhold.
The first and second men didn’t hesitate. Their fingers dug into my shoulders and waist, the hard edges of the cameras within their slickers slid across my back, bony knees rubbed against my legs, and they were past me and continuing down the mountain. The third man stopped next to me until I faced him.
“Ilara,” he said as gently as he could when he had to compete with the howl of wind, the slash of rain, and the rumble of thunder overhead. “Please don’t do this. Turn back with me.”
This man I knew, though I didn’t know him well. I knew he was a storm chaser, that he liked to suck on hard candy as a substitute for smoking, that he liked eclectic music that I’d never heard of, and that he liked to fuck all night long, waking me in the middle of the night to go at it again. If there was anyone I would have followed down the mountain, it might have been him.
“Sorry, honey. I have to keep going.” I didn’t call him by his name because I didn’t remember it. I would have put a hand to his cheek when I said it, but I wasn’t about to let go; my fingers clutched the sharp rock like the lifeline it was.
“You don’t have to.” His attempts to convince me were valiant. The wind whipped, renewed, spanking our backs with our raincoats.
I gave him a coy smile meant to soften the blow. “But I do.”
On that night we’d shared, we’d talked about the storms. In between fucks, we’d talked about the thunder and the lightning, the wind and the rain, sometimes hail, and the
exhilaration of all of it. If he remembered what I’d said then, he’d understand that I couldn’t turn around. I’m sure I hadn’t given an explicit reason—because I didn’t have it.
I had to push on simply because I had to. Because every part of me urged me onward, to climb ever higher, to reach the source of things—of something. Why? Because I didn’t fit in. I never had. I was different. I didn’t know how or why. All I knew was that I had to do this. I had to reach the top of this mountain, in this storm, on this day, when the lightning had never struck as often or as much.
Atop this craggy demonic rock known for killing anyone who developed the grand notion that he could flirt with immortality or its opposing forces lay something in wait. I might not know what it was, yet I knew it lay in wait for me.
The man with whom I’d shared that one long night, in the bed that creaked when he rocked his body over mine, slunk past me. As if he were clairvoyant and knew we would never see each other again, he moved against me more slowly than the storm warranted. His hot breath started at one ear, crossed my neck, and ended at the other. He brushed his chest against mine. He dragged his dick across my ass purposefully enough to urge me, as determined as I was, to reconsider this whipping storm for a cozy bed and another memorable night with him.
Once on the other side of me, he knew he hadn’t won. “Ilara. Please.” He whispered so that his hot, humid breath tickled the inside of my ear.
“Robby. Come on!” The desperate cry of his colleague was fainter than it should have been. They weren’t far away, even though they hadn’t waited for him. “Let’s go!”
I leaned my head into Robby’s. Our faces were slick from the rain. I parted my lips, and he kissed me. His tongue was hot against the cold of the sky’s waters.
“Oh fuck this,” the first man in line said. “Robby, we’re going.” Then, “Come on,” to the man behind him, the one who’d almost fallen and didn’t need encouragement to continue his descent.
“Go. You’re safer in a group,” I told Robby.
“I’ve never seen eyes like yours before,” Robby said, staring, strangely removed from the bullying efforts of our surrounds. “I’ll always remember them, even if I never see you again.” He kissed me another time. “Be careful,” he said and then turned without another word. The forecaster of weather took his forecasting of my life with him and moved down the mountain.
I followed his progress with my gaze until the next strike of lightning ricocheted across the rock with a thunderous roar. “Bye, Robby,” I whispered to no one and nothing, also feeling without reason that I would never see him again. Then I turned my sights back up the path that led toward the heavens, where something as powerful, and as elusive, as thunder and lightning beckoned.
TWO
BY THE TIME I reached the summit of that fierce, cold, dark rock, I was certain that I could have been convinced to abandon my goal on another day. My resolve was ordinarily strong, and only pelting rains and slashing winds as ferocious as these could have suggested reason. However, today wasn’t an ordinary day. I’d known it when I first woke that morning, as the sun was rising, splattering color in what seemed a haphazard array of boldness. As soon as my feet hit the cold of the tile beneath my bed, I’d understood that I wouldn’t survive the day as the same person who started it. By the time the sun put on its second and final show, announcing the night, I would be different in a way that I couldn’t as of yet identify.
And so, all day long, I’d felt as if a shadow clung to my back, and every time I turned, it would move before I could glimpse it. It wasn’t my death that was coming—at least I didn’t think it was. Still, it was something that would make changes in me I didn’t think I was prepared for.
I wouldn’t fight what couldn’t be fought—how could one fight a nebulous, gut feeling?—but unease tumbled in my stomach as I finally stood at the top of the mountain. The final twenty feet had been worse than the two hundred before it. Wind and rain turned violent; if someone had told me they had a personal vendetta against me, I’d have believed it. Each foot gained in elevation was hard won, and even now, the elements were battling to tear my gains away from me.
I stood between two trees, whose canopies towered far above. I gripped each trunk with an arm, grateful the trees had grown close enough together that I could borrow their combined strength. I leaned forward to push my face farther into the storm. Beneath the treetops, the rain hit my face in an irregular pattern, shifting with each swing of the wind.
Lightning flashed terrifically bright, startling me even though I expected it. Almost immediately after, thunder clapped, and forced my heart to skip a beat. A second later, when my heart resumed its normal rhythm, another deafening crack, and one of the many tall, slender trees split right down its middle, maybe fifteen or twenty feet ahead of me. I watched the smoking, blackened trunk, waiting to see if it would fall, then to see which way it would go. It fell slowly at first, as if it were a skinny, lumbering giant reluctant to be taken out, thinking it unfair that it was the only one to have to go when the fun was just getting started. But once its trajectory passed the twenty degree mark, it gathered speed exponentially. When it finally hit the ground, missing all other obstacles in its path as if by a miracle, it did so with such great strength that its death knell rivaled the thunder.
Then there was stillness amid the pattering of the rain, temporarily tamed. The calm lasted only a few moments, but it was pronounced. It was enough to fill me, to invigorate me with that unidentified life experience that I craved.
And then all hell broke loose and forced my hand. If I was going to do this, whatever this was, I had to do it now. Nature was making it plain that this mountaintop wasn’t intended for humans. One had to be made of greater stuff than flesh to play with the big boys and girls.
I wasn’t there to play, of course. I wasn’t there to give up either. So I did the only thing I could do: I moved forward. I abandoned the relative safety of the twin trees that helped me hold my ground against a wind strong enough to move a human body that weighed, oh, about a hundred and twenty-five pounds. I staggered ahead, swinging from one tree to the next, until I could see the small lake of pristine water that nestled inside this mountain crest like filling in a pie.
The lake was at the center of a clearing, at the bottom of a shallow bowl. I couldn’t use the trees for protection any longer. I went down to my hands and knees. As the trees faded behind me, the plants that grew across the rocks became sparse and the stone slick. It was like a wet roller skating rink, with speed bumps, and I needed brakes.
There were few that ever reached this point, and fewer still that passed it. If the storms here bothered to brew, then they also bothered to rage—because, why not do things fully? That’s how I’d do it, if I were a storm. Half-assing had never been my style. The other storm chasers that came up here stopped short of the lake. They came to photograph the spectacular lightning shows, not to go for a dip. There was no point for them to continue this treacherous path to reach the water. If the lake was ever considered, then it was to capture the lightning as it reflected across the water’s glassy surface; as a backdrop, it made for an award-winning shot.
I didn’t have a good reason to go down to the lake either, especially not in the most violent storm to hit this mountain in recent memory. But a lack of good reason had never stopped me from doing much before. I was being urged forward by something greater than reason. I needed to reach this lake just as I’d needed to climb this mountain in this particular storm.
I half slid, half dragged myself toward the rim of the bowl until my hands could grab its edge. I splayed my legs behind me and pressed my body flat against the rock. I was less of a target for lightning this way, apart from the forest of natural lightning rods.
I pulled in a deep, wet breath, steeling myself for whatever would come next. Because I knew whatever was going to change me was just on the other side of the lip of this crater. Then I dragged my prone body across the ground until
I could stare into the water that no human touched.
THREE
MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW what hand fortune or destiny—or whichever abstract and unprovable element to which people attribute power—dealt them on any given day. Most of the time, I didn’t either. But even though today I did, it still did nothing to prepare me for what happened. Little could have.
Viewing this lake up close was remarkable. The water was extraordinarily pristine, purer than anything I’d ever seen on any of my previous adventures. It was as if lightning had struck this water so many times—a likely scenario—that nothing bothered to grow within it anymore, knowing death could strike at any moment and condemn the effort to futility. If the wind and rains weren’t chopping up its surface, I might have been able to see all the way to its bottom.
As it was, all I could see was a distorted, fragmented reflection of myself. The sky overhead was ominous; it cast a gray overtone to my usually bright skin. I couldn’t make out much of my dark hair and unusual eyes; my nose and lips were a blur. Yet I couldn’t draw my gaze away. At the moment, I didn’t understand why.
I was already contemplating a retreat, back into the cover of the trees, a much safer place from which to view the lightning storm. Now that I was at the water, there seemed little point to the additional risk to my life.
As usual, I ignored the rational arguments. My body responded in kind, tightening an already fierce grip on the stone lip of the lake’s edge. I couldn’t leave yet. Whatever was supposed to happen hadn’t happened yet.