Legacy First Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 of the Legacy Series

by Ryan Attard

  Instinct however, told me to just cut loose. I had power, so much power. And I felt invincible. So fuck whoever was on the other side of the telepathic messages. I could destroy everything, cut a swathe until I reached whoever was responsible and carved answers out of them.

  It was a battle on two fronts and it was getting harder and harder not to just say 'fuck it' and fight my way out. Envy was responsible for this. A freaking Sin. And as I was carried to wherever the trees were taking me, my senses began picking up strange spikes of energy at every corner. Their home base, whatever that was, was bathed in power—exactly the type of power that I felt when connected with Envy.

  Finally I gave in and began struggling to free myself. The branches of the tree gave way and snapped as my shadows wrenched them apart and created a way out for me. I tumbled in a clearing, surrounded by living trees and Wild, and to my surprise none of them were lifting a finger against me. That passiveness was enough to snap me out of my state and regain control. I took a deep breath, remaining still on guard but not actively violent.

  "Who are you? Where am I?" I shouted. My voiced echoed into the darkness. None of the monsters answered and for a long minute, the only sound permeating the moonlit gloom was the rustling of leaves.

  Then finally, the woman spoke.

  "They are called Jurai. In the old language it meant 'tree amongst the living'."

  She emerged from the darkness and into the clearing, moonlight bathing her like a spotlight on a stage. For a while it was just me and her, both of us staring at each other. There was a moment of disbelief but my eyes did not deceive me.

  She was human. And an attractive one at that.

  Now, I know that when trapped in a different dimension, with a crapload of monsters around you, sex should be the last thing on your mind. But I'm a guy, and we never really give much care about whether the situation is appropriate or not.

  This woman was hot. And I don't mean the supermodel just-stepped-out-of-a-magazine hot. I mean the primal kind of hot. The kind where you look at someone, and they look at you, and a furnace goes off inside you and the only thing that matters in life at that very moment is banging each other's brains out.

  I'm not saying it's healthy, or right, or any of that. All I'm saying is at that very moment, I really, really, wanted to rip her clothes off and have my way with her until I turned myself into a husk due to fluid loss.

  And therein lay the problem. Most of these cases are too good to be true. In my world, instincts like that meant that whoever you're dealing with isn't exactly a resident of this dimension. When I faced Lilith over a year ago, she was the hottest woman I'd ever laid eyes on. Of course, she was the Sin of Lust, so one would expect nothing less. All I'm saying is, when I met someone this attractive, it usually meant blood would be drawn, lives would be put at stake, and I was going to get hurt in ways even the Spanish Inquisition would think is too graphic.

  I tried to remember all that, while I took in all her perfect body details: from the long mass of hair that may have been reddish or a light shade of brown (either way, it was sexy under the moonlight), her smooth, pale skin unblemished by the harsh life of nature, her skimpy, ragged dress that left way too little to the imagination and exposed an amount of leg that made me blush. And finally the coup de grace—she took a step closer and looked at me with a pair of big brown eyes that made my heart weep and my pants suddenly very tight.

  "A Warlock with the power over Nature," she said in the same soft, sweet voice that had echoed in my head a few minutes ago. "What a wonderful creature."

  There are only so many responses to something like that. None of them smart. "Umm, thanks. I suppose."

  She offered me a heart-breaking smile. "A voice. It's been so long since I last heard one other than mine."

  I dropped my act and went straight to business. No, not that sort of business—the scary business.

  "Who are you?" I asked. "Actually, scratch that. What are you? And what exactly did you mean when you said you have the key to get out of here?"

  She got a little closer, offering me a more detailed look of her smoldering body. "Which one of those questions do you wish answered first?"

  I struggled to form the next few words and stuttered until my brain remembered how to form a completely sentence.

  "What are you?"

  She cocked her head to one side, disappointed. "I've already answered that."

  "Oh, come on," I replied exasperatedly. "I've been here over two weeks and there's no way a human could have made it here unless..." I trailed off my sentence when I realized I was terribly mistaken.

  There had been humans here before: Warlocks, the type of magic practitioner she kept calling me.

  "You were here back then?" I asked. It seemed stupid as I blurted it out but it just didn't seem possible. The woman in front of me looked thirty at best, and I knew for sure that the Grigori—a secret magic council that made sure we all stayed in line—had outlawed dimensional exploration a few centuries ago.

  "It seems you already know the answer to that," she replied. Her eyes wandered off, looking at the moon. "Yes, I was part of the expedition team a long time ago. And when they all tried to leave I told them not to. I told them the island wouldn't let us." She stopped and smiled sadly in my direction. "I apologize. Such things will not interest a Warlock of the present."

  "I'm not a Warlock," I said.

  "And yet, here you are, in a different world than your own. Only Warlocks have that kind of power."

  "This was more of an accident," I replied.

  "Accidents such as this do not happen," she insisted. "You are here because you have to be here. Otherwise you simply wouldn't be here."

  Great. The one hot chick I meet after two weeks of survival is a freaking hippie.

  "Either way, I'm no Warlock—just a very confused wizard," I said. "So how come you didn't bail with the rest of the team? You must have been stuck here, what, two, three hundred years? And given your appearance I'd say you either found the fountain of youth or must be really good at glamors."

  She let out a giggle. "Thank you. Oh, how I have missed the attentions of men. Walk with me for a little, will you?" She glanced at the moon again and grinned. "It's about to get very active around here."

  Without waiting for an answer she slipped her arm into mine and slowly dragged me away. I could hear gruff sounds from all around us, but judging from the casual way she walked, nothing was going to jump out and tear our heads off.

  "What's your name?" I heard myself ask. My voice was rather husky, so I quickly cleared my throat. "I meant, uh, what do I call you?"

  She giggled some more. "It's been a while since I heard anyone utter my name but I believe I was called Locklania."

  "Locklania," I repeated. I decided it was a beautiful, unique name, although I have no idea what makes a name beautiful. It may have something to do with the bombshell that owned it.

  "So how long have you been here?" I asked.

  "I do not remember. I stopped counting once the days turned to months, and months into years," she replied. I felt her surprisingly strong grip tug me to the side. A branch stomped where I had been a few seconds ago and I looked up. Three individual Jurai tree monsters were intertwined in some weird way. All around us, entire clusters of them were twisting around each other. The Wild were doing something in between bashing each other and caressing their opponents.

  "The hell is going on?" I asked.

  "It's the effect of the Moon," she replied. "Come Wizard, we have much to discuss."

  "Call me Erik."

  "Very well, Erik." She led me to another clearing, this time closer to a river. "Many, many years ago, when we first came here, I was hired to accompany a Warlock expedition. It was not my first time on such a trip. My skills as a Nature Witch were in much demand, as was my talent in Greenspeak. This trip was supposed to be routine, going to a plane we had been to before."

  She paused.

  "But something w
ent wrong," she went on. "We learnt the hard way that Chaos is not to be trifled with. We ended up here on this island instead. It was a much different land back then. The Citadel had not been built yet. There was simply no need for it."

  We stopped walking and she turned. I was suddenly very aware of how close she was pressing herself to me.

  "We did all this," she said. "We meddled with this island and made its inhabitants angry. We made them into savage beasts and sent the Vensir running to their Citadel. Worse of all, we angered the island itself."

  My heartbeat accelerated, but for a different reason other than the woman inches away from me. "Central," I whispered.

  "They call it the God King. It's the Spirit of the Island," Locklania replied. "The Warlocks called it the plane's Core. They would go on and on about their theories as to why the island was the only thing occupying this plane or why this plane was so small or why magic is so scarce here." She shook her head. "Their arrogance was what ultimately killed them. They built the giant obelisk, Central, to extract magic from the Core and open a portal. But I could feel the island's rage. I could feel it just as I can feel the grass between my toes now, and I warned them—oh, how I warned them. They told me I was a coward and that I was crazy. They told me I was addled with illusion and that the island's nature was corrupting my brain."

  A single tear glimmered on her cheek, like a minute star descending from her eye.

  "I escaped just as they began preparations to leave. They did open the portal—of course they would. They were the mighty Warlocks and they had power like few had. But the island chose that moment to exact its vengeance. The moon became as it was tonight, the first of the Verdurous Moons, and all of nature became uncontrollable."

  Her eyes widened in horror, and when she looked at me I felt as if she was looking past me and transported back to that horrible day.

  "I saw it, Wizard," she said, her voice in a deep rasp. "I saw as the island's Spirit took a terrible form and destroyed the entire party of Warlocks. It was the quickest, most brutal thing I had ever witnessed in all my days, and I remained hidden amongst the Jurai, not daring to interfere. And I have been hiding ever since. The funny thing is, this island is my home now. I love it more than I love myself. I am just as part of it as the Wild and Jurai and the Vensir are. And I have no desire to leave. Yet I also know this island is sick. Something has infected this island's Core and this world, my world, is coming to an end."

  Her hand wrapped around mine and gave it a squeeze. "I do not know what your role is in all this," she whispered. "It is not my place to ask. But you are the first human here since the Warlock expedition and you do have a role to play. Be it to save the island or destroy it, only time will tell."

  I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak again. "So what do I do?" I asked.

  "The Verdurous Moon releases an exorbitant amount of energy," she explained. "You must wait for the right time—daybreak. In the morning, I will lead you to a place, the place you need to be."

  "Morning, huh?" I said.

  All around me the creatures were busy... getting busy. Worse yet, my shadows seemed to react to this sort of thing, whipping around like bats. Not to mention my libido was getting more insane by the minute. I didn't care that Locklania was over three hundred years old. My eyes saw a beautiful young woman.

  "Any ideas what we might do until then?" I asked, slyly.

  Locklania giggled again and stepped away from me. Slowly—painfully slow—she reached up to her shoulder, pulled one strap down, than the other, until her dress fell to the ground. Stark naked, with every enticing curve highlighted by the moon, she turned to face me, offering me a view I hope to whatever is holy that I'll never forget.

  "I may have one or two ideas,” she replied.

  I tried doing some sort of pro-con list of banging the sexy ancient witch and my sex drive just slapped me silly. I knew very well what I was going to do and there was no point in arguing. Besides, I had been here for two weeks. Can you imagine being stuck on a deserted island for two centuries? It's a wonder she didn't jump my bones the second she saw me. The way I saw it, she was in pain—sweet, sex-deprived pain—and it was my duty to alleviate her from that.

  I'm very altruistic like that.

  It took less than five seconds before the both of us were naked and rolling around savagely. There was no foreplay or gentleness. This was pure, instinctual, animalistic sex. We were a mess of limbs and flesh, writhing on the grass, surrounded by mating monsters, fucking like animals.

  And I mean that literally.

  Chapter 30

  The next morning was blissful. I woke up at dawn and was greeted by the first rays of the rising sun.

  "Beautiful, isn't it?" Locklania was lying next to me, propped up on one elbow. We were both naked on a bed of grass and her luscious dark hair trailed softly around her chest and shoulders.

  "I can't remember the last time I watched the sun come up," I said. "Although I'm pretty sure there were no beautiful naked women at the time."

  Locklania let out a laugh and suddenly the morning got a lot brighter. "Glad to provide such a memory now," she said coyly. "At least you'll have one good memory about this island."

  I snickered. "There were a couple good moments last night too," I replied with a wide grin.

  She smacked my arm lightly. "Men. Always a one-track mind.”

  "Just goes to show you haven't been around my plane for a while," I said. "I know a couple of women who would put any man to shame with their choice of vocabulary and wild libido.”

  "That, I would love to see." She got up, fished for her dress and proceeded to put it on. Very slowly, I might add, giving me an enticing show.

  See? This is why humans don't need seasons and moons to mate. One striptease—or reverse striptease in this case—and we're good to go.

  She saw me eyeing her and failed to suppress a smile. Hey, after two centuries of being alone, you'd be happy too if a guy keeps ogling you.

  "I forgot how famished certain… activities make you," she said, now fully clothed.

  I fumbled with my pants. Yeah, my stomach rumbled too, but I knew from experience it was rude to interrupt sexy small talk with demands for food. Clearly Locklania had no such qualms. Over here, social conventions meant jack. Life was as primal as can be: eat, sleep, fuck, magic. Repeat. Not necessarily in that order but there wasn't much deviation from the system. Over here there was no concept of 'late' or 'early'; no one rushed for a mind-numbing office job that slowly sucked the life out of them. No one gave a rat's ass about your moral, religious or political philosophy, or what your status was, or what color your skin happened to be, or any of that bullshit.

  Except maybe the Sahugin—but, they’re fish, so what d’you expect?

  Eat, sleep, fuck, magic—perhaps humanity's downfall is our own self-inflicted complications.

  Breakfast was a quiet affair. I still felt uneasy when the first couple of Wild passed by. They completely ignored us, instead chasing some poor animal that didn't stand a chance against them. The Jurai were nowhere to be seen, but like all of nature's most formidable weapons, you never see them coming. But I knew that as Locklania and I sat to a meal of berries and a few strips of smoked mystery meat, we were being watched. Or maybe it was all in my head. It's just hard to tune out the fact that a tree can come to life.

  We sat and ate in silence. I once read a philosopher that said the mind, in its truest state, is calm and neutral, a place where neither emotion nor logic exist. It's just peace, devoid of mundane notions like society and conversation. That's what I felt like. I'm no playboy: I'm simply being honest. Whatever happened last night was just a surge of the animal nature of man and nothing resembling love ever made it to that equation. And judging by the way she went on about her routine, I'd say the Witch sitting opposite me felt the same.

  Still, we both enjoyed the fact that another one of our kind was around to talk to.

  "So what happens now?
" I asked. My question made her look up from the basket of berries she was plowing through.

  I motioned around me to emphasize my point. "After the Verdurous Moon. You mentioned something about energy needing to stabilize last night. What happens now?"

  She smiled. "You weren't paying attention then?"

  "With you stripping in front of me, no. Out of all the body parts that were active my mind did not make the list."

  That earned me a laugh. "Yes. The green moon does have that effect on us," she replied pointing at me. "I see that your power has receded."

  For a moment there I thought she was making a penis joke. Then I remembered something about last night. The shadows never left me. From the moment I mentally linked with Envy, up until the moment I fell blissfully tired and exhausted on the grass next to Locklania, the shadows were present, clinging around every inch of my body.

  And I never noticed.

  Before, I could feel them. I could hear the voice of darkness in my head, pushing me towards the edge. It was the id, the instinct, the tiny voice in your head that tells you to jump from a high building even if you know that you cannot fly.

  This could be one of two things. Either the voices gave up, which, given that this is a curse passed down through hundreds of generations in my family, made that possibility highly unlikely. Stuff like that doesn't go away with time, it just gets stronger.

  Which led me to theory number two: I was losing my grip on my own powers. I've been feeling the need to use this power, even forcing it out, because it felt good. The addictive kind of good.

  And what if this was the price to pay? Every time this power comes out, I lose a little bit of myself to it. The reins loosen up and it gets to be in the pilot seat. Which begs the question—how far deep was the damage? How long until I run out of cord and this power completely takes over?