He shrugged, pulled the life out of the water, and then drank it down. He felt… better. Not even really hungry anymore at all with the water sloshing in his stomach. He sat down, and then noticed the rat again, it had followed him around the apartment, some part of him had felt it happening but his conscious mind hadn’t acknowledged it until now.
What had he become? Did the aliens do something new? What was this?
He felt another life force then, a large one, it was human and seemed a beacon to him. Life. He was tempted for a minute, if a rat made him feel this good, what would a human’s life do for him? He felt a surge of self-disgust go through him, he was no murderer. It came closer, and then he heard a knock on the door.
It wasn’t a sound he was used to, and it startled him. He could feel the life on the other side of the door, who would be knocking this time of night? The knock came again a little louder, and he heard a frantic female voice.
“Please, help me. There are men and they,” the voice cut off sounding half panicked.
He felt conflicted. The desperate nature of the plea tugged at his manly instincts to help. There was a distressed female at the door. He knew it was instinct, and it was a feeling he’d never had before. He was not accustomed to women coming to him for help. The reason for his conflict though, was that her life force was the only one he felt, whoever the men are, or were, they weren’t close. His ability, whatever it was, reached a good distance.
He stood up and walked over to the door and tried the peephole. Of course, he couldn’t see a damned thing, the power was out. He only had light in here from all the candles, which is probably what tipped off the woman someone was in his apartment, the light from under his door was probably visible in the hallway.
She said in a whimper, “Please help me.”
Something in the scared voice tugged at him, men were just built that way. He opened the door which flooded the hallway with soft candle light. He froze for a moment, she was gorgeous. So much so that he was tongue tied and just stared, she was the kind of woman who had never given him a second glance in his lifetime. Out of his league just didn’t come close to covering it.
She had long dark curly brown hair, doe eyes, full pink lips, and lightly tanned skin. Her face was stunningly beautiful. She looked to be in her early twenties, and she was wearing a tight skirt and a clingy shirt that had been torn in a few very interesting places. Her body was on the voluptuous side and the clothes left very little to the imagination.
She sobbed and jumped forward into his arms.
He didn’t entirely know what to do, so he put his arms around her and made a soothing noise. He was also getting hard, she felt really good in his arms. Not that he would ever act on that, but he couldn’t help his body’s natural reaction to such a beautiful female form.
His voice wasn’t confident, but neither did he stammer, “You’re safe, what’s your name?”
She said in a cold hard voice, completely devoid of fear or upset, “Cynthia,” and then he felt a sharp sting in his side.
He fell back on the floor, and looked up. He saw a knife in her hand, and a feral grin on her beautiful face. What the fuck? He should have known better, but between his protective instincts and thinking with his dick he never questioned the hug. Damn he was an idiot.
She stalked past him and started trashing his kitchen.
“Where’s the food!”
The bitch had stabbed him for his food? Led right to his apartment because of the candles, he should have put the throw rug across to block the light. He knew most of the apartments around him were abandoned now. He could feel his life force draining out with the blood, and he felt a surge of anger. She stabbed him, and was letting him bleed out, fuck that. He wished he could hit her.
Then he heard a rat’s squeak and the woman screamed. He could taste her blood on his tongue, no… that was the rat, his life force connected them somehow. Apparently it had automatically acted on his wishes. Good rat zombie he thought at it, and he laughed a little hysterically. He was feeling a little queasy, running out of life force. He needed more, and while he wasn’t a murderer, surely this would be self-defense.
“You bitch, you’re the fucking food,” he growled in pain.
He reached out for that bright beacon of life in her chest, and pulled…
Chapter 3 – Kurien
Kurien Oakleaf stood at the window and stared out at the storm. The return was over a thousand years in the coming. He’d been born in the other realm, his mother, Sianne, had been but a child when the elves and dragons left the prime plane to escape humanity, to preserve their race and the world. The decision to leave had been his grandmother’s, Brielle.
But something was wrong, it had been several hours, and Merlin still had not returned to the council chambers to update them on the affairs of the world. He’d never met the man of course, but he’d heard all the stories.
“Anything mother?” he asked deferentially.
Sianne shook her head, “I cannot sense him at all.”
Trielle, Brielle’s successor as the high priestess on the council sighed, “I can feel his power only, I believe the mantel has been passed.”
There was dead silence for a few long moments, the others in the room shocked by the statement.
Lianthenielima, or Lian for short, was the only remaining living council member from that time, his voice rumbled with discontent.
“Something must have gone very wrong. We must send out a mission to determine what happened, and the current status of the world. We should find the old sorcerer’s successor as well, though why hasn’t he come in his stead?”
Trielle answered, “I don’t know, except she is very far to the south east. Merlin was not with her when he cast the spell to rejoin the realms. I can only assume this wasn’t planned, and cost him his life. It is possible his successor doesn’t even understand her fate.”
He shuddered, and wondered what would cause the great sorcerer to give his life, whatever it was must have taken him unawares.
Sianne asked, “Is that all?”
Trielle sighed, “Perhaps I will glean more soon. Without magic in the prime realm, the gods themselves would have been cut off as well. I fear for now even Charites is in the dark, though it won’t take her very long to learn all there is to know. Only a question in how much she will share with her priestesses.”
Sianne nodded and turned to him, “Kurien, I want you to lead a small party, and search for the new bearer of the mantel, also study the world and what changes you see, and report them back. It was Merlin’s intention to inform humanity before we returned, but we can’t depend on that. Most likely, if this wasn’t planned, that wasn’t done. Avoid combat if you can, this is a scouting mission only, am I clear?”
He nodded, annoyed. He was hardly a child, he’d reached his majority over seventy years ago, yet she still acted as if he were a hundred and forty at times. He supposed it was just worry.
“I will do so, and be careful.”
Lian said, “Good, I will send Brianthenia with you.”
He nodded, Bria was a good friend, even if she was a different species. The Elves and Dragons have always been allies. Ironically, that tight bond was mostly thanks to the humans giving them a common enemy. Between their elemental magic, and of course teeth and claws in their other form, and his own nature magic and sharp sword, he thought they’d be ready for anything.
Trielle added in a thoughtful voice, “I will send Arielle.”
He almost groaned, but held his tongue. Arielle was old enough, but just barely past her age of majority, though he had to admit she was a talented priestess. Still, he usually felt… hunted whenever she was in the same room as him, and now that she was of age… and beyond beautiful, it was more than a little temptation to deal with. She would also enable them to keep in touch easier with the council, she could speak directly to her high priestess with magic, while he would only be able to send one way messages through nature, a bird or
other animal.
He said without a trace of his misgivings in his voice, “Very well, I’ll go prepare.”
Trielle said, “The storm should pass in three hours as the magic equalizes and the realm steadies from our return, I’d advise you wait until then to leave.”
He just nodded, and then looked out the window. Their return was to have been one of peace, with the hope of finally living with the humans in harmony. Relative harmony anyway, some conflict was always expected. He wondered just what they would face out there. He also worried about the bearer of the mantle, what would she be like, and would she follow in Merlin’s footsteps and work for peace, or take a different path altogether.
He would find out soon.
Chapter 4 – Tarrock
Tarrock growled as he floated up off of the captain’s chair, in the dark.
“Report!”
The science officer said, “We’ve lost power captain.”
He growled, “Idiot! Of course we lost power, tell me why.”
He heard his first officer, and lifelong friend Garrock snicker lightly under his breath.
He grabbed his chair with his lower limbs to secure him, and put a hand on his knife. He was big for his race, the Mateera. Almost eight feet tall, greenish blue skin, and four arms. His black eyes narrowed at the science officer and promised death if he didn’t get information and now.
The science officer replied, “Yes captain. There was an energy wave, of a type unknown to our science. It originated in the Northern hemisphere of the planet, in a mountainous region. It spread across the planet. Captain, I know this is going to sound crazy, but there were many life forms, both animal and plant, added to our scans as the wave passed.
“I can’t tell you what the energy was, but we were the lucky ones’ sir.”
“Explain,” Tarrock demanded.
He’d really like to know why being powerless and caught in Earth’s gravity field was lucky. They’d been at a fairly low orbit to burn out the life in the cities, and it required constant anti-gravity drive support to maintain their altitude.
“The wave, when it hit us, our reactor power output dropped like a stone and cut off. The energy that hit us made the reactor… unstable. Before we lost power, I saw our other two ships explode sir. Their reactors, for some reason, did the opposite and energy increased, causing an overload.”
He frowned. He supposed about to die was luckier than dead, but not by much.
“Options?”
The officer shook his head, “The large wave of energy has passed, but there is still a field of it present around the planet from the surface to up into the higher orbitals. It’s disrupting all of our electrical systems.”
He grunted, “All of them? Why did the humans wait if they could destroy us?”
The science officer responded, “It disrupted their technology as well, when the wave exploded outward, all the artificial lights went out across the planet. Communications stopped as well, and all their satellites went offline.”
Shit.
He ordered, “We need to abandon ship before we crash.”
He could feel gravity start to reestablish, but he knew it wasn’t their systems, it was the planet. Unfortunately, his ship wasn’t exactly oriented right, and it felt like he was tilted about thirty degrees.
Garrock asked, “How? We have no power in the escape craft either.”
He growled, “Jump packs. We won’t have any power to maneuver, or aim, but the parachute should deploy without power, and keep us from reaching terminal velocity.”
The three of them headed off the bridge, and moving as quickly as they could toward the landing bay, they grabbed every crewman they could find on the way, with no other way to pass orders. It seemed to take forever, as they had to pry open every closed hatch. At least the tilt favored them, as they moved toward their destination.
When they arrived at the landing bay they had to pry open the lockers, and he grabbed his drop suit. The drop suit had built in shields, anti-gravity, and propulsion, as well as an emergency parachute should power be lost. The parachute was all they had left, and once they secured their helmets, they would have a limited air supply, probably only two minutes.
They waited for another thirty seconds, the science officer convinced him they weren’t low enough to survive yet, and then he took a look around. His ship was large, and housed thousands of crewmen. There were only a little over two hundred in the space. The rest must be trapped in various sections, and he had no way to give orders.
It pained him to leave most of his crew behind, they were his responsibility, but they simply didn’t have time to search for them, the ship was going down fast.
Still, he would save what he could, establish a base on the planet, and hold out for rescue. His world was years away, even though they could travel six hundred times the speed of light, so it might be a while.
He growled, “Helmets, now.”
He put his own on, and then counted an extra three seconds before he pulled the manual release for the airlock doors. Anyone who was more than three seconds slower than him, didn’t deserve to survive. The doors flew away and he ran after them, hurling himself away from his ship. He freefell for a while, and then pulled his chute. He looked around, he was surrounded by his people, and he was determined to make the people of this world pay for their audacity.
He just needed to figure out how to do it without any technology at all…
Chapter 5 – Katie
Katie stared at the pile of splinters that used to be her house, the light of the morning sun harshly illuminating the wreckage. She held the staff in her right hand, but the buzzing energy that ran through it last night was gone, though she could still feel that energy lightly running through everything around her. It was a constant awareness, like another sense.
She could feel the bird stirring in its nest fifty yards behind her. The energy… magic? The world was alive with it, like a blanket laid over everything. When the twister had died out, and she’d fallen to the ground, protected in a strange bubbled nimbus of light, she’d made her way to the cellar doors. She’d tried that word again, a spell? It had done nothing.
She wasn’t sure why, but she was missing something. She’d examined the staff, there were some glyphs of some kind on it, small and subtle in the scrollwork by the bulbous tip. The house had already been completely gone, along with all of her clothes. She’d frowned down at what she was wearing, a night t-shirt tight enough to make it apparent she was braless, and sweat shorts.
So she’d dug through the storage boxes in the cellar, and found her mother’s clothes. They weren’t a perfect fit, a little too tight around the chest, but it fit. She was dressed in a pair of sandals, and a yellow summer dress that had built in shorts below the flowing skirt, so she could ride. She also had some jeans, loose shirts, and some underclothes in an old backpack. She’d packed some water, and a number of trail bars as well.
She’d even managed to clean herself up in the barn that was left untouched, there was running water. Cold water, but better than nothing.
This all felt a little insane to her, she didn’t know where she was going, but she could look to the North West and feel a pull. The energy… the magic wanted her to go that way. It made very little sense in her own mind. She was also sure the old man was dead, he could neither tell her anything, nor explain anything else. She felt a weight on her shoulders she didn’t quite understand, and absolutely no direction to go along with it.
Still, it had weight to it, the feeling. It was better than staying at the farm and waiting to die.
A few minutes ago, she’d chased the horses out of the barn, she wouldn’t be around to care for them anymore. Now… she just stood there standing nearby where her house had stood, it was gone. A few weeks ago she’d been a relatively carefree woman waiting to go to her third year of college, now… she had no idea.
She felt movement in the magic, and turned and looked up the road, two people were
approaching on horseback. Even with this new sense, she recognized one of them. Her neighbor that lived two miles up the road, John Billings. John had been two years ahead of her in high school. He was a big kid, and now a large man. He played on the football team, linebacker, and she’d had a large crush on him back then, but being two years behind him, nothing had ever come of it.
He was six foot two, all muscle, with black hair and gray eyes.
She didn’t recognize the second person at all. She turned her gaze away and went to her own horse, and mounted up. She’d tried to start the car earlier, but it was dead. The same with the truck, and she’d even tried the tractor which sparked, but didn’t turn over. It took her a while to figure out that it was the magic blanket over the land stopping it from working, when she turned the key she could feel it interact.
When combustion failed, she’d tried the shotgun. The first two times she cocked and pulled the trigger nothing happened. The third time the bullet exploded so violently, that it threw her onto her back, and deformed the chamber. She was lucky the damn thing hadn’t exploded in her face. She’d decided then, magic and technology just didn’t play nice.
She shook her head and rode to meet them. When she got close enough she looked at John’s companion. The woman was someone she’d never met before, looked about her age, maybe even a little younger. She felt a small surge of jealousy, she was an attractive girl and knew it, but the woman riding with John was exquisite. So much so she felt a little attracted to her herself, and her feelings hardly ever went that way with another woman.
The woman had long raven black hair, dark gray eyes, and flawless lightly tanned skin. She also had an aura of power about her, the blanket of magic… clung to her as she moved, almost as if she was a part of it. She was wearing a long flowing white dress, that clung in the right places to reveal her curvy body. The woman was perfect, at least in Katie’s eyes, she had a body that fell somewhere between athletic and voluptuous, in shape, thin waist, but all alluringly womanly curves.
Emergence: Return of Magic book 1 Page 2