The Dominion Pulse

by Brad A. LaMar

  Bibe’s face shook back and forth again and returned to its normal grayness. “How do you intend to do that?”

  “I don’t know yet, but whatever he’s done to the pulses I’m going to undo.”

  Bibe waved her hand; she and Morna’s castle vanished as they had appeared. “That sounds very wise to me,” her words softly echoed throughout the cottage until Brendan was entirely alone.

  …

  Oscar and the shadowman had entered the cave an hour ago, and the journey through to that point had been dark and fruitless. Somehow he was able to see in the pitch

  black cave, though he wasn’t sure how.

  The cave had a long entrance and then it jogged in a sort of zig-zag pattern until he reached a pocket cave that opened up and was about sixty feet tall and just as wide. There was a cold stream that flowed slowly off to the right just below a high shelf. Oscar remembered this spot from his last adventure here. He had to choose a cave path to follow, which wasn’t an easy decision since there were no less than twenty that could all lead to a hundred more cave paths and that could mean becoming trapped in the bowels of the desert. Like before, Oscar wasn’t worried about getting lost or being trapped, he was following a beacon—essentially a map—to whatever it was that he was supposed to find.

  Surprisingly, he selected the same cave path from before and hopped over the stream, leaping up to grab the overhang from the shelf. He was pleased with how quickly he was able to pull himself up and onto the landing. He squatted to enter the small cave opening at the rear of the shelf. Walking inside some thirty feet he came to his previous cave destination and stopped to examine the hole he had put in the cave wall. He still wasn’t sure how he was able to get his prize from the hard-packed stone and red clay wall.

  He wanted to linger there a moment longer but the shadowman urged him onward. Oscar sighed and listened for the beacon. It was there, but it was different than the heartbeats he had hunted or the other treasures that called to him over the years. This beacon was cold and foreboding. He shivered involuntarily as it called to him. His mind heard the call as if it were a serpent’s hiss.

  Hissss! it called again and Oscar reluctantly moved ahead.

  …

  “Intruders are not wanted!” ghost Ewen shouted from behind the bar. He snatched a long machete from under the bar top and hopped onto the counter.

  “I got him,” Frank said, joining the barkeep on the bar top brandishing his falcata. He whipped it in front of his chest to bring the old feel back to his sword skills. “Let’s take it easy there, gray man.”

  Dorian shook her head, sure that trying to reason with these phantoms was out of the question. “Get ready,” Dorian barked her orders as her hands came to life with fiery red energy. “We’re not dying today!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Simmons replied, pulling out two 9mm pistols from his holster and his shoulder sling. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

  Rohl transfigured his form into a giant bear and looked back at the others. “Remember to not blast the guy running around with these bright orange eyes!”

  “They sure are pretty eyes, if you ask me,” Patty said, fanning her face dramatically.

  “Pay attention, girl,” Wanda warned. “These things ain’t here for a tea party. Wands out!”

  Both Smith sisters pulled out their wands. Meanwhile, Garnash clapped his hands together and made his father’s ancient Gnome magic crackle to life, dripping from his hands like molten streams of plasma. Ken stood there weaponless, but he stretched his knees and hopped up and down, loosening his muscles.

  “Kill them!” Ewen ordered as he brought his machete down at Frank.

  Frank brought his falcata up and met Ewen’s blow with a hardy clang. The sword felt so perfect in Frank’s hand, like an extension of his arm. He knew every bit of that curved sword like he knew his own skin. It was as if the sword had accepted Frank and wanted him to know everything about itself, so when the heft of the falcata felt different in his hands, he wasn’t surprised. He recognized that the weapon’s metal had changed, and he knew that it changed into the perfect material to combat his opponent.

  Frank and the falcata were one.

  The solidified phantoms in the room rushed Dorian and her group. Lizzie stretched out her staff and thwacked a phantom Selkie right in the face. Its seal nose crunched upon impact causing it to yelp and stumbled backwards, tripping up a phantom vampire, Brag, and Gnome.

  “Let’em have it, lads!” Garnash shouted as he hopped into the air and smacked a Banshee right in the face leaving a trail of molten magic plasma sticking on her skin before he spun away, landing on top of a fachen’s shoulders. He slapped the beast’s big eye leaving a connecting tether to the Banshee. He plucked the line between them and instantly they were pulled together, slamming impossibly hard due to the incredible force of the Gnome magic.

  “Fachen meet Banshee,” Garnash quipped before darting back into the melee.

  …

  Brendan followed Brett into a third spotlighted cottage. The room didn’t transform at all. It remained a modest home that he could find in Corways, only this one was a bit more familiar.

  “So, you’ve brought me to Dorian’s house,” Brendan noted.

  Brett nodded. “What further truth do you seek?”

  “I know that I am going to have to go to Otherworld, and when I’m there I will need to be able to find the dominion pulses, so my problem will be locating them on my own. Where is my father?”

  Brett folded his arms and smiled brightly at Brendan, a version of the man Brendan had once fought alongside. “That is an interesting question. Wouldn’t it be nice if he was where he has been?”

  Brendan hated when people spoke in circles and code—as if he had time to play Sherlock Holmes. Why couldn’t Brett just tell him what he needed to know without being so cryptic? Brendan waited and stared at Brett thinking that the gray figure would finally give in and tell him where Oscar was, but after a few moments Brett looked more and more like a statue. Brett was obviously not going to offer any help.

  “I need to think through important places that Dad has been, places that are significant for Elathan.” He began to pace around the small cottage, feeling somewhat at home in the Corways-like domain. “Dad has already found every dominion pulse for Elathan, that much I know for sure.”

  “Do you?” Brett asked offhandedly.

  “Yes,” Brendan replied, a bit unsure of himself. He had to rely on his visions and his intuition. Humans were emotional beings, but logic should have some sort of say in his decision-making process, shouldn’t it? “I trust my visions, Brett.”

  Brett held his hands up. “I was just asking.”

  Brendan continued his pacing, talking, and looking around the room, searching for any visual triggers that might help him think it all through more clearly. There wasn’t much in the space, with the exception of the tables, chairs, and some cabinets. He walked over to the cabinets on the far right and pulled the pair open.

  “What are you looking for?” Brett asked curiously.

  “I don’t know… something old.”

  Brendan moved over to the next set of cabinets and pulled them open. Inside he found the Flask of Airmid, the medallion, the bracelet, the bell, and the falcata. He stepped in front of the third set of cabinet doors and pulled them open. Three coffers and three Celtic knot charms were tucked inside.

  Brendan turned back to Brett. “These are all things that my father found at one time or another.” He stepped back and looked at them all and his mind began to work. “All of these are just things, but Elathan isn’t seeking a thing right now.” He strutted over to the last set of cabinets and yanked the doors off of their hinges. He stepped back immediately when he saw what was concealed inside.

  “That’s what he seeks, Brett,” Brendan said, pointing back at the last cabinet. “He seeks Caoranach.”

  “Is that likely, Brendan? Hasn’t she been hidden away for years?”


  “Exactly, and I know where she is,” he said, looking back at the smoky image fluidly dancing in the cabinet.

  A small, pinprick-sized hole in the upper left corner of the cabinet cast a ray of light the way the sun often does through billowing clouds. The light cut right through the entire cabinet revealing two small shadows winding their way down a darkened cavern. In the bottom right cabinet corner Brendan saw nothing, but what he heard chilled him to the bone.

  Hiss!

  “That’s where I need to go. That’s where I’ll find Dad.”

  “I’m afraid that you will find much more than that,” Brett added cryptically.

  Brendan hung his head slightly. “I just need to get there before my dad unleashes her.”

  Brett smiled. “Looks like you’ve got things figured out. We better get you back before it’s too late.”

  Brendan stepped back out of the cottage and into gray Corways. He was alone and that was a truly eerie feeling. The fog began to drop back down and thicken all around him. He groped the air, searching for anything solid. His hand bumped up against a cool metal. He felt around it and found that it was curved. He felt higher on the wall and his fingers gripped a rounded edge and pulled his body up. He poked his head out over the fog and looked around.

  “So, Brendan O’Neal,” the Morrigan began. “Am I to escort you to the Realm of the Dead?”

  Brendan pulled out of the cauldron and smirked. “Not yet.”

  …

  Dorian didn’t bother to wait on the phantom crew to attack her. She began blasting them with her red energy discharges, knocking the gang from their feet. She was holding back some of her power, trying not to kill these things if she didn’t have to—though she wasn’t even sure they were alive in the first place—but their sheer numbers and aggressiveness could change her mind.

  She glanced over at Simmons who was using a combination of bullets and good old-fashioned barroom brawling to defend himself. The Smith sisters flitted here and there and zapped the phantoms with little bolts of annoying energy. Once a group of phantom Sidhes took to the air to get them, Dorian lost track of them. Rohl was using his massive bear form to slap and slash the phantoms in a very effective way. Lizzie, Frank, and Garnash fought like true warriors and nimbly kept the enemy at bay.

  The one she was worried about was Ken, so she called out to him. “You okay, Ken?”

  Once she looked over at him, she knew that he was. He jumped and front kicked a goat-headed Goborchind phantom square in the chest and sent it sliding across the floor. “I’m a second degree black belt, Dorian. I can hold my own against these things.”

  A massive, horrible roar from somewhere on the path rattled the windows and brought all of the fighting to a standstill.

  “What was that?” Simmons asked the crowd.

  …

  “Protector,” the Morrigan began. “Why do you think that you are wise and should not be ushered into the next realm?”

  “Because, Morrigan, while I was in the cauldron I thought about a saying I heard once. I don’t remember it exactly, but the gist was that a wise man knows he knows nothing.” Brendan shook his head. “I learned in there that the saying is not exactly right.”

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “I didn’t really need to go in there to discover knowledge, but I did need to wrap my mind around the whole situation. The only way that I’ll stand a chance is to trust my intuition.”

  “Wisdom comes from experience and contemplation, Protector, these are truths of man.”

  The building shook a little as a horrible roar echoed from somewhere beyond the walls of the Morrigan’s room. Brendan stepped towards the door.

  “I’ll be back,” he declared.

  “We shall see,” she replied.

  He opened the door and looked out at a room full of grizzly phantoms and his friends, which was not what he expected to find, but the real surprise was the giant eyeball that was peering through the front windows.

  “What are we looking at here?” Brendan asked Dorian as he hopped over the bar.

  “Nice of you to join us, O’Neal,” chided Simmons.

  The creature outside the pub issued another roar just before a deadly sharp horn was thrust through the window, collapsing that side of the front wall into dust and debris. A few unfortunate phantoms ended up skewered on the tip of the horn.

  “That is one big bull!” Frank pointed out needlessly.

  The phantoms turned their attention back to the intruders and began to attack again.

  Lizzie swatted a few more away and turned to the others. “How do we deal with that when these slugs keep coming?”

  Brendan’s body took on a soft silver glow as his eye briefly flashed over in the same metallic energy. He thrust his hands out and used an invisible force to round up all of the phantoms and sling them towards the front of the pub. They hit the walls with a concussive force and burst through the front walls, which exploded outwards, some of them slamming into the giant bull. Ghostly bodies briefly littered the path outside before they vanished into chalky puffs of smoke.

  “Whoa!” Ken said excitedly. “Man, you are scary.”

  Brendan stalked forward and stood before the bull. It’s steamy breath smelled awful, and its large eyes were filled with rage.

  “Be careful, Brendan!” Lizzie shouted.

  “Like I said before, Lizzie, the man can take care of himself,” Frank said with a laugh of shock and a little awe.

  Brendan looked the bull directly in the eye. “I need you to take us to a Nether portal that will get us to a cave in the American desert.”

  “What’s he doing?” Garnash asked.

  “Let him be,” Dorian ordered. “Not every beast is out to kill us.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right, baby,” Patty said while clinging to her sister and pulling Rohl into the hug.

  “Ha!” laughed the bull. “You think you can command Donn Cuailnge to do anything, Protector? It is laughable!”

  “Donn Cuailnge? Holy cow!” Garnash exclaimed. “Sorry, no pun intended.”

  “I’m not commanding, Donn Cuailnge, I’m asking for your help.” Brendan walked back to stand in front of his group. “We’re all asking because if we can’t get to this one stupid cave in time, then Otherworld, Earth, and even this place will be controlled by Elathan, and I assume you know what that will mean.”

  Donn Cuailnge’s breath was caught for a full six seconds before he exhaled. “I will take you to a portal, but it will be up to you to get yourself to your destination.”

  “Who’s Donn Cuailnge?” Lizzie asked.

  “He was a prized bull, for obvious reasons, and the coolest thing about him was his integrity that shone throughout the whole bull-knapping incident and subsequent war,” Garnash explained.

  “An entire war over a bull?” Frank asked doubtfully.

  “Like I said, he’s a pretty special bull.”

  “Cut the chatter, guys,” Brendan said. “When we get to this portal, we’re going to be in for a fight to get Dad back.”

  “Dad?” Lizzie asked with rapt attention. “You think we can get him back?”

  “I think this is going to be our best shot, so let’s get going.” Brendan used his power and lifted everyone on top of Donn Cuailnge’s back.

  Garnash walked near the giant bull’s ear. “Sorry for this intrusion, Donn Cuailnge. Thank you for your help.”

  “If this helps to stop the end of the world and realms as we know them, then I am happy to assist.”

  “By the way,” Garnash added. “I’m a big fan.”

  …

  Elathan stood near his lake of fire, an ultragod once more—only this time he possessed more power than he or Nuada had ever imagined. The power of the realms coursed through his body as if it were his very own lifeblood. He could sense the creatures in the realms and their aggression and rage was growing to emulate their master’s demeanor. His Watchers and Goblin armies were in place and his Seeker was nearing th
e final piece of the puzzle.

  “Caoranach,” he whispered towards the lake of fire. Suddenly, a massive visage of the mother of demons burst from the inferno, arms crossed and in a state of hibernation. “I am coming to free you. Be prepared to heed my call. Awake!”

  The fiery Caoranach’s eyes shot open, and her body reacted for the first time in centuries. She looked back at Elathan and let out a scream that would make even the bravest souls freeze in fear.

  Caoranach was awake and waiting.

  Chapter 20

  The Mother of Demons

  Hiss! The sound was cold and piercing in Oscar’s ears. It was one of the most morbid and frightening sounds that he had ever heard. Even in his current state, Oscar knew that any sane man would run away as fast as he could, but Oscar could not. The call propelled him onward, leaving him no choice but to obey.

  Hiss!

  He and the shadowman arrived at another area where Oscar had to choose between a half dozen caves, but he had no trouble choosing which one would lead him to his unwanted treasure.

  He was getting closer.

  …

  “Donn,” Garnash said near the massive bull’s ear. “Can you tell me more about your story? I know about a war that was started over you and that you were a prized bull, but most of the tales about you and Finnbhennach have been lost to the ages.”

  “Perhaps another time, young Gnome,” Donn Cuailnge said. “Coming events are more important.”

  Garnash agreed, but his curiosity was still high. “How did you get through the tough times since, from what I hear, you basically lived a hellish existence?”

  “That’s true, but one lady lifted my spirits and stayed loyal to me,” Donn Cuailnge revealed. “The Morrigan befriended me and brought me to the Chamber in my darkest hour. Hundreds of people had already died, and thousands more would have without her involvement.”

  “Really? The Morrigan?” Dorian asked in shock. “I was always told that she was death to any who came in contact with her.”