Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table Contents
Acknowledgments
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
About the Author
Zephyr
The Elemental Pages
K.T. Rombough
Copyright © 2018 K.T. Rombough
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-7752817-0-2
DEDICATION
I love writing and having my creative juices flow, and my fantastic husband and two teen boys make my writing come from places I never thought possible. I do what I do for you, and this book is for you guys, the men in my life.
To Amber Jones, a cousin ripped from me, but believed in my dream of publishing this book.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
i
1
The Dream
3
2
Near Death
20
3
Recovery
28
4
Flurite
39
5
Hospitalization
43
6
Melted Malt
53
7
Rescue
60
8
Zephyr Palace
68
9
Hecate
76
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Palace Etiquette
Awakening
Burning
Quart
Once Dead
Planned
Throne Room
Dead Zone
The Pages
Feeding
The Past
The Book
Return
Earth Realm
Binding
Remembering
Destruction
Family
Lies
So Close
85
96
102
108
115
125
131
135
151
157
163
168
175
182
189
202
212
222
228
236
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my tireless editor, Elizabeth Wright.
My amazing cover artist, Sharon Lipman
Alpha reader Haily Schindler, who read every mixed up word and made it make sense.
And to the true beta readers sticking with me.
Chapter 1
The Dream
The sun, now setting on the horizon, creating an amber-colored sky with a vibrant red aurora circling it. The clouds beautiful, like little puffs of cotton candy with ever-changing designs; swirls, holes, and shapes of animals.
A dazzling field full of blue false indigos by the hundreds sprawled as far as the eye could see. The flowering plants blew in the wind. While Canola, the foul-smelling yellow crop in the next field continued to shine, sweep, and sway.
The field’s familiarity hit me, and a rusted scrap-metal scent wafted around; I knew the area well. I turned to see I am right; I am outside the Price-Jones family farm, Karen’s family home. The surrounding air buzzed with the noise of my friends talking and joking.
My two best friends Karen and Ashley, lay next to me, cuddling their boyfriends. I didn’t recognize the two from mortal school, but I suspected I had known them for years. They were both lovely for magical creatures. The twelve of us resembled humans more than them. Not just the horns gave them away as magical, but their pure frost-blue eyes and the cloven hooves for feet.
Studying the beauty of my surroundings kept me occupied. It was carefree, peaceful, even relaxing; I could sit here forever with the intense brightness and the field’s sunny yellow and blue flowers almost too hard to handle. This realm was not like mine too bright, too colorful. Everything looked familiar, like it was my realm but slightly off.
The flowers waved and swayed, bending and twisting in ways ordinary flowers don’t. The sun felt hot, hotter than any sun should be amplified, almost targeting me.
In my realm, plants are not alive any longer, they didn’t survive after the bee’s died out. My realm was far from bright and colorful; the only color came from the magical creatures able to keep some of the plant life alive. Some flowers survived from other insects taking up the role a bee should have preformed. Very little live in my world, but this amplified the living; almost to much.
A bee larger than I had ever seen, almost the size of a small dog, landed on a blue indigo. Bees went extinct; in 2010 when the world froze most of all the insects had died out. The bee’s wings flapped rapidly as if working vigorously to lift him from flower to flower. I watched in slow motion as it rose from the petals, shaking furiously as large particles of pollen flew through the air.
“You okay Kade?” A deep voice spoke, snapping me out of my daydream. His voice so familiar, so deep, so intoxicating. My body pulsed with excitement.
Vibrations reverberated through my body. My lips twitched as Desmonds met mine. The solid stone strength of his face gave in with passion, an exchange of more than love, more like life itself. As our kiss broke, both of us exhaled, purple and green smoke drifting in the air between our breaths. It was like nothing I had seen. The smoke circling us shone with otherworldly splendor.
Ashley and Cody began talking of planning their wedding. It felt absurd to me, why plan in the middle of our war, what lousy timing when we could plan for something bigger, something more extravagant after. The thought of my best friend wearing a fluffy white gown exaggerated long train, and a veil tiara made me laugh in side. She made fun of people who wore that in the past, now she can’t stop talking about it. The timing felt off, but it was still exciting.
The conversation turned darker yet, as my mind raced with memories of the war, the losses so did everyone else’s. Gabriella cried out before catching herself, the memories flooded everyone.
The war had started, our battles difficult, full of loss. Far more than we expected. Sharing stories of how the great campaign began, and how we didn’t expect to see so much devastation. Recounting Guardian Gallowill’s resurrection, followed by the mass murders at the Academy, ended with a fight between the Elementals, the Deadly Sins and the Four Horsemen.
Cocking my head to the left,
raising my ear slightly in the air.
“Guys, stop talking. Kade hears something,” Desmond spoke, his voice deep, dark and growling almost inaudibly. Standing me up, he clasped hands with me.
Everyone went silent, standing looking around nothing seemed out of the ordinary, I sensed the heavy breath, an animal in the distance.
The trees shook, moving aside, their branches swayed to move out of the way. Their roots uplifting as if using them like feet to show an army of creatures behind them. A small, white wolf caught my eye just in the far west part of the field surrounded by trees. The fur, it was Alexis, my sister a shapeshift, her favorite form a white wolf. The fur was such a brilliant white, with speckles of brown from the surrounding dirt. The face tight, teeth bared, and paws in the crouch of attack. She stalked towards us. Another figure stepped out from the bank of trees. A tall, slender man with shoulder length hair and a black cloak with a broach.
“Scatter, guys! You know the drill!” Solena and Selena said, their voices mirroring each other as if echoing.
“Kade, turn around and run!” Gabriella called out the fear in her voice echoed through the air. The snapping and crunching of her body continued to change as her form did, her natural form a Were-wolf.
Gabriella’s mouth moved again, charismatically announcing, “Good morning listeners. It’s 7:45 a.m. It’s going to be sunny and hot, with not a breeze in the air,” everyone stopped moving, everyone freezing in place, it was odd. Her voice continued to sound like a radio, music now playing out of her mouth.
I was dreaming.
Taking my time getting out of bed, wiping my head with one hand and stretching with the other. Stepping down the floor was freezing, so cold I didn’t want to stand anymore, even more, a reason to stay in bed. I jumped back on the bed with my feet dangling off the edge. I shivered and flicked my fingers as a warm gust of wind blew across the flooring tiles.
“Not a breeze?” I chuckled to myself,
Getting ready for my last week of tenth grade, I would be late if I didn’t leave soon.
The walk began just like every other walk to school. Down the driveway, moms sports truck and dads jacked up super cab truck. His back tires hanging over the sidewalk blocking anyone from walking a straight path on the it. After the sidewalk, the city trees, lined in what they called a row, but everyone could tell they were not even close to being in a straight line. The street full of garbage, old coffee cups, and chip bags blowing in the wind, dust dirt, and rocks kicked up into the air.
I thought the radio said no wind today, thinking to myself. But it was clearly windy right now. I couldn’t get the dream out of my mind, thinking of all those people, my friends. Walking cleared my mind, enjoying the breeze and just walking without care.
The houses were nothing special, most rented by less than amazing mortals. Low-income area, but that never bothered my family or me. Most of the time they were the most helpful people, Halloween they were the most generous, Christmas every house decorated. Easter every family would pitch in and create an Easter egg hunt for the kids in the playground a couple blocks away.
Mr. Sanders house was the worst, he was at the end of the block. His shutters were falling off, the screen door ripped to shreds, and his troughs were so full of leaves they were falling off his roof. Rounding the corner of the street, there was his rusted 1982 Chevrolet Cordoba. Ashley had a theory it was green at one point, but the car was so sunned bleached and rusted we couldn’t tell. Only a couple more blocks and I would be past the train tracks and almost to the downtown shops.
The sound of someone whispering echoed around me.
“Hm?” I asked looking around at the trains parked on the tracks.
The trains had been there longer than I could remember, they never moved. Three rows of train tracks, the two sets of track changers, I knew both had not worked in years. The train cars were grain bins and empty fuel tankers, but there were two engines parked just before where the old grain station was before it burned down in 91. The burned metal from the tracks, silos and machinery was still there. I walked through them everyday.
The whispered echo repeated.
“Hello?” I asked, feeling like a crazy person. Swearing I heard it calling my name. as I looked around nothing was out of place, I looked at one of the engines, something was off.
Reaching into my backpack pocket, gripping the hilt of my wand. Pulling it straight out, tucking it close to my chest.
“Laever,” I whispered to my wand.
“Now, now, you didn’t think it would work, did you?” A dark raspy voice echoed through me, almost hostile in tone.
“Who are you? Where are you?” Almost yelling while I looked around, shifting between cars, stepping between tracks. I continued to call out.
“Kade, you did this to yourself,”
“Who are you? Show yourself,” I demanded.
Not waiting for it to come back. Taking off at my abnormal speed, I wanted to get away as fast as I could. I was not brave by any standards. I moved more swiftly than usual humans could see, running down the alleys to get to school.
Reaching the school, I sat down in the foyer. I needed distractions from what had just happened. Waiting for Karen and Ashley my best friends to show. We always walked to classes together, spending every minute together.
The fear of what happened on the tracks worried me. I needed to relax, I had to loosen somehow. I laid on the bench in the entrance, reflecting. The guy in my dream, he was beautiful. Where was he from? He had amazing features. How did I recognize him? The thoughts kept swirling inside of me, trying to imagine where I would have seen him or met him.
I had gone oblivious to the world.
“Morning Kade,” Ashley said with a little yawn.
She had startled me; too deep in thoughts.
“Good morning Ashley, how was your night?” I asked greeting her with a smile, trying not to show the fear and the terror in my eyes. She always sensed when something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell them about this. If it was a magical thing they didn’t need to know, it didn’t involve them. What the voice said, it was my fault, there was no way I was dragging my best friends into this.
Ashley snapped me out of my contemplation, replying to my question, I had almost forgotten I even asked a question.
“It was interesting, and unproductive for school, but productive for me. When I got home, I made supper and did crafting when I realized that I needed to do my math. I screwed math, and I could complete my questions this morning,” Ashley replied.
“Well, you understand how it works, you get busy doing home stuff and say screw it to homework,” I snickered with a smile.
“Shut up,” whispered Ashley, punching me in the shoulder.
“Let’s see if Karen is here yet,”
We walked towards the far east side doors where all the bus kids got off, both in town and farm.
We passed the office with a wave to our favorite ladies, and the Grinch of a principal; followed by detention rooms and the nurse’s office.
The warning bell rang, it was time for us to head to class. I may have hated English, but if I was late or missing the course, it was much worse for me.
Mr. Newton’s eyes turned to glare as he walked into the class just as I was sitting down at my desk.
He started his lesson with no conversation or introductions as usual. I tried to pay attention to him and his class, but sometimes his monotone voice just made my head hurt, and I need to take a break.
Realizing just how bored I was sitting at the back-right desk of the classroom just in front of his desk. Playing with a plastic bag blowing in the wind outside, watching it fly up and down around with the wind. Not realizing the entire class had noticed this bag doing somersaults and flying back and forth in front of the window.
“In the book, what is the main characters relative thought process about his sister and the badlands? What is the defining plot? Mr. Demean?” M
r. Newton spoke.
I had missed what he’d asked. “Taeper,” I murmured, knowing having him repeat himself would make him mad, but sometimes I got lucky, and he didn’t notice he repeated himself.
“In the book, what is the main characters relative thought process about his sister and the badlands? What is the defining plot? Mr. Kade?” Mr. Newton repeated.
“Ah well, the character of the main book is abnormal, as well his sister. But he senses that his sister is at more of a risk and danger of being sent to the badlands. The badlands represent an evil area of the world they live in. A presence in which people in his realm believe all abnormal people belong to, no matter what their abnormalities are. It’s a plotline about a young boy and his sister with a physical defect and a mental abnormality, like him. This book brings up plotlines about racism, fascism, cultural difference, and prejudice towards differences. That is as far as we have gotten in the book, sir,” I replied self-consciously.
“Great Kade, but detention for not paying attention during class and making me repeat the question,” Mr. Newton said with a smirk.
“Yes, sir,” I said point-blank.
I tuned out his voice and daydreamed again. As I watched the clock for the 10:05 a.m. bell to ring, something caught my eye in the window again. I twisted my head towards the words “Remember me” drawn in frost on the somehow frosted window.
The bell rang, and the frost vanished just as it had appeared. I grabbed my books and took the detentions slip from Mr. Newton. Making my way out of class; I saw Karen heading into our math B30 class, the second tier of our three-part advanced math classes. She, like myself, was intelligent in math and science.
Karen, one of my best friends, was always willing to accept any strange and weird idea I had. We had been friends for years. She had long ginger hair with a beautiful curl wave from root to tips. Smaller in stature, less than average height of about 5 foot 3 inches and had unique colored eyes, silver blue color with flecks of red mixed around the pupil. It always puzzled me how she could resemble me so much. She had pointed ears, her face looked as my mother would say “deadly attractive”. Her lips pouted, her dimples in her cheeks made her resemble a china doll with all her beauty. Everything about her body and face screamed Immortal creature. I often wondered how she could live in the mortal world like that, and if she wasn’t magical like myself. I could remember kids picked on her ears and her baby face. She was a caring, sweet person, always willing to listen and talk.
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