There was faint musical laughter behind the girl in the lavender field and the lopsided beat of stumbling footsteps. The painting swung upward as two figures emerged from the secret tunnel. Suddenly, in the middle of the sunlit study spun a beaming Ansel and Amber Chesterfield, laughing till she was bent over and very much alive. Absorbed in a world—a time—of their own, they were oblivious to Dawn standing just a few feet away. Present-day Ansel turned from the party, but a hypnotized Dawn kept her eyes glued to the blissful couple.
Though similar in appearance, the Ansel from this time was much livelier and animated. Instead of the usual all black attire, he wore faded jeans and a modest, forest-green t-shirt. His eyes blazed with a passion missing in the Ansel Dawn had come to know. Next to him, Amber Chesterfield radiated joy. She was even more beautiful in person than in the paintings. Her wavy blonde hair glowed in the sunlight, and her smile warmed every beating heart in the room.
“Genius, isn’t it?” younger Ansel said to his wife, fishing for a compliment. “I’m going to cover every inch of this study with portraits of you, one for every year we are together. No Sumrect will ever suspect! They will think I’m absolutely crazy!”
“Brilliant, as usual! Even better than the Vidra360 you made me.” Amber threw her arms over his shoulders.
“And your family can hide in the clearing when needed. The house by the pond is big enough for them all!” He continued to expound on what he thought was a perfect plan, but upon seeing Amber’s expression, he paused. “What am I missing?”
“No, everything is perfectly thought out. But Ansel… none of this would be necessary if you just stayed… here with me, at Chesterfield.”
He let out a sigh. “Amber, you know I would love to be by your side, more than anything in the world! But my father has requested my help in Panatomius… They are under attack… I can’t remain in this reality and watch in good conscience while my homeland gets destroyed…”
“Then take me with you!” Amber implored. “I don’t want to stay here, alone, for God knows how long, waiting on you to visit once in a blue moon.”
He grabbed her hands and squeezed them. “I promise I will be back often. Panatomius is a very dangerous place right now. You are safest here at Chesterfield with Delia, who is more powerful than you can imagine. No other Sumrect can use his powers inside this house for as long as I live, and you now know the secret passageway to our hiding place should my brother bring his lunacy upon this realm. Take a ride in the Vidra360 if you must, but please, for the sake of my sanity, stay here with Delia. I don’t know what I would do if anything were to happen to you. Promise me?”
“I’ll be right outside.” Dawn heard present-day Ansel whisper in her ear as he glided past her and left the study without waiting for Amber’s response. It was evident this was not a moment he wanted to revisit. Then why did he bring me here? she thought.
“What about the humans? What will they do without you?” The smile on Amber’s face evaporated when she finally grasped the seriousness of Ansel’s request.
“They don’t need me,” he said. “They need you!”
Amber shook her head, looking confused. “What do you mean?”
A gloom fell over young Ansel’s face. “My brother is not one to be trusted. I suspect he will use my absence as an opportunity to advance his plans… I can’t risk letting that dog, Vance, crush the immigrants’ dream of building a better world in Fors… I can’t risk letting him harm you in any way…”
“And how can I help you?”
“Allow me to show you something else,” he said in his typical enigmatic fashion, swiftly taking her by the hand. “You must see what’s in the rotunda.”
✽✽✽
The Vidra720 bounced gently over air streams above the New Pacific Ocean. Gail stirred in her seat next to Myles. The digital clock on the control panel read 11:15 AM. Soon, they would arrive at Chesterfield.
Myles glanced over at the unconscious Pathfinder. He had knocked her out when she retaliated against his unexpected entry into her cell, which caused much ruckus and thus complicated an otherwise simple task. When the Sumrect guard let him inside on Vance’s orders, Gail thought he had switched allegiance. For good reason.
Beneath her wild, whimsical curls was a strong face: angular jaw, full lips lying close to her wide nose and, from Myles’s recollection, a set of unusually large and intensely striking green eyes. He did not find it hard to believe that this woman had been organizing a secret resistance for the past few months right under Vances’s nose.
Perhaps she had the luxury to do so. Less to risk. Less to lose.
Myles’s mind wandered to his family, gathered around a shabby but homely dining table, laughing and joking as they often did before the uprising. His father had a way with words. A gifted raconteur and a natural comedian, he filled his stories, both real and imagined, with a humor that always made his audience laugh until their bellies ached and tears came rolling down their cheeks. His mother was the epitome of grace and elegance. Never one to lose her temper, she exuded warmth everywhere she went. And she made the most exquisite apple pies in a hundred-mile radius. He could almost taste the tartness just picturing his mother taking one out of the oven. Then there was Pam. That ball of energy and light, always curious, always witty and way too precocious for her age. Sometimes, knowing too much landed people in trouble. Look at me now.
With a sigh and a sniff, he blinked away the mist in his eyes and opened the black leather box containing the lemon topaz portal Vance had given him. No time to dwell on what you cannot change. There’s work to be done.
A blank piece of paper drifted out of the box and into his open hand. Odd, he thought as he squinted at the fluid cursive which appeared the second his fingers met the note.
To access, tap the portal three times and say the words Acktum Inktus Leus.
Must be Sumrectian magic, Myles thought. If this works, I have really seen everything. He took the lemon topaz in his hand and made sure Gail was still unconscious before he did as the paper instructed. The reality around his hand began to warp, and a shimmering room of books and blues replaced the Vidra720 cockpit. From the paintings on the walls, Myles recognized the location at once. Ansel’s old study.
And I’m not alone. He seemed to have arrived right in the middle of a heated argument between Vance and Regina. They paid no attention to the full-sized human who materialized next to them. They can’t see me, Myles thought.
“Where, Regina? Where are they?” Vance demanded in a panic, grabbing Regina by the arms, shaking her violently.
“I—He—Ansel is gone. Both of them… Amber and Ansel.” Regina fumbled with her words.
“You were supposed to follow them!” Spit flew from Vance’s mouth.
Regina blinked rapidly. “I-I was! And when I got to the study, they were gone—”
“They can’t be gone! Ansel is now all of a sudden capable of invisibility?”
“No, of course not! But the fact is, they are not here anymore.”
“You are lying!” Vance spat, anger spilling from his bulging eyes, electricity crackling along his body.
“Vance, listen to me,” she begged, her dark hair uncharacteristically disheveled. “It’s no use now—”
“It’s no use if you don’t tell me where he has taken the body!”
“Listen, Vance! I saw an Etherian! You are not the only one—Ansel has also made a pact with an Etherian.” Vance breathed heavily, trying to process, his eyes wide with incredulity. He said in a much more controlled manner, “No… No… that’s not possible. Ansel would never get himself involved again. He would never—”
“Well, you are wrong! And you better believe it!”
“He has never even come close to one since…”
“I saw it. With my very own eyes.”
“But the spell… ‘Sovereign of all forces combined… Only One soul shall rule the rest—’”
In a shockingly gentle act, Regina cupped
Vance’s face in her hands. She looked straight into his eyes and chose her words very carefully, “There’s no longer only one… I believe, as of this moment, there are two of you playing this game.”
By the time the Vidra720 reappeared around him, Myles grasped the impossibility of his task. He knew the exact date of the portal Vance needed him to procure. He also knew Ansel would be crazy to reveal to him its contents.
✽✽✽
Dawn followed the young couple out into the hallway where present-day Ansel stood, looking through the window at the grounds below.
“Let’s follow.” He gestured to her.
“Ansel?” Dawn said, trailing behind the couple.
“Hmm?”
“How is it that they, I mean you—I mean the past you and Amber—cannot hear or see us?”
“Good question… When we travel back in time, we enter a realm of existence where we are not bound by time. This realm intersects with the material one in such a way that you may look in but remain invisible and, usually, undetectable to the sentient beings in the material realm. Our current physical bodies don’t come along for the ride if that makes any sense.” He glanced at her with a strange gleam in his eyes.
“Do you mean that our past selves cannot see our future selves because our past selves do not possess physical bodies?”
“Sort of. Two beings within the same dimension can see each other but not two beings in separate dimensions of existence.”
“Like humans and ghosts?”
“Like an Etherian, as I’m sure you have heard”—he grinned—“from Kai.”
Did he overhear our conversation? As they neared the bridge, Dawn increased her pace to keep up with the pair ahead.
“Yes… he did mention something similar about the Etherians.” She gave a hazy response.
“I’m sure, then, that he has told you to stay far away from the Etherians, for they are the vilest of beings. I would even venture to say that you should never make contact with an Etherian. They are not to be trusted under any circumstances. I hope Kai also warned you about time travel…”
Didn’t you make a pact with an Etherian? She glanced sideways at Ansel, who had been checking behind them periodically.
“Beware that in this dimension, while you may be invisible to humans, you are not invisible to Etherians, who calls this realm home.”
Dawn shivered, scanning their surroundings. “You mean Etherians may be anywhere around us when we travel back in time?”
“Yes, and no.” Ansel laughed half-heartedly. “They are not interested in revisiting human history… unless… there’s something they want…”
“What would an Etherian want?”
“Oh… much of that which had been taken away from them… I will explain in time.” He tapped Dawn gently on the arm. “Look, we have arrived.”
Unlike Ansel’s old study, the rotunda looked very much the same back then as it did today, except for one conspicuous feature. The marble basin and oculus overhead sandwiched a column of white, crackling electricity. Upon closer examination, Dawn noticed that, shrouded within a thin sheet of electric field, the basin was filled to the brim with luminescent amber. The Eye of Elektron.
Younger Ansel winked at his wife. “Like you, it’s amber, married with Sumrectian magic!”
Amber covered her mouth when she giggled. “You play too much. What does this do exactly?”
“I present to you, gorgeous lady, the future of multi-realm exploration and settlement!”
Ansel circled the electricity column, bubbling with excitement at his latest creation. “This Eye of Elektron is the Source and anchor of these.” He produced an illuminated orb from his shirt pocket. “Gateways to other realms and realities. They instantly transport a sentient being to another realm by altering its vibratory frequency to match the destination. Humans will be able to travel between their home reality and Fors with ease. Each contains an amber core taken from the same one you see here and will only respond to the essence of its owner. These orbs also make excellent communication tools. In a few days, I will distribute them to the humans before they embark on their venture and before I leave for Panatomius. There should be four thousand—five thousand—I lost count. Anyway, I made each one by hand to ensure no one else has access to our communications… especially not my brother.”
“That’s what you were doing all this time,” said Amber with a hint of displeasure in her tone, which Ansel picked up on.
He took her hand and pressed them to his heart. “I promise, when this is all over, I’ll spend all my time with you. Here on Earth. We’ll build our paradise in the woods and have many, many children. You can count on me to be your biggest supporter, to protect you and everything you hold dear.”
“When this is all over…” She sighed. “Do you really trust Vance to protect the humans in Fors? To govern fairly? I’m afraid you will once again find yourself embroiled in a way of life you tried to escape from.”
“The humans don’t need a Sumrect to govern them!” he insisted emphatically.
“You keep saying that, but I just don’t see how, after everything that has transpired, Sumrects and humans can still live together in harmony as you have envisaged.” She did not seem to share Ansel’s optimism.
“That’s the only way! What they need is a leader and protector who understands what it means to be human.”
“But you could very well be—”
“Not me. I dabble. I’m an enthusiast for all things human, but a human I’m not. You on the other hand—”
“You want me—?”
“For the time being, Earth needs a Gatekeeper… Like how you have been my gatekeeper all this time. And as you very well know… it can’t be me, it must be you…”
“Why will we need a Gatekeeper?”
“When we open this reality to Fors, we are also exposing it to a host of other forces… evil forces that have been trying to access this protected sphere for eons. I need you to shut the gate on evil trying to enter our home.”
Amber stared at Ansel with big, clear eyes. “That’s an enormous responsibility… do you think I’m… capable?”
“Not think, my love. I know,” he said, pulling her into a tight embrace. “My Sumrect training has brought me face to face with more evil than you can imagine… and of all the battles I’ve fought, the hardest has always been the one within… When the temptation is great, and the stakes are high, to still choose good over evil… that’s something you do consistently with ease.”
Ansel brought her hand to the crackling tunnel.
“Here,” he said as he stuck both his and Amber’s hands into the tunnel so that they were touching the amber. “Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing.” Around the basin, the white electricity intensified while wind picked up near the couple’s feet, sending crisp, golden leaves spiraling into the air.
Soon, the wind created a vortex of dancing fall foliage around the participants, cocooning them inside the rotunda. Present-day Ansel straightened his stance and took a few steps forward. Oddly, his focus was not on the young couple in front of him. Instead, he squinted through the crackling electricity as if trying to make out something in the distance.
“As the Gatekeeper on Earth and sole owner of this Eye”—Ansel raised his voice to be heard above the howling of the wind—“you can send messages and warnings to the immigrants when necessary. It will glow to your touch and communicate as you desire.”
Wide-eyed, Amber shouted over the gusts, “How? I don’t know Sumrectian magic!”
“You don’t have to! The power of this stone was made accessible to Sumrects, humans, souls and even those without souls, such as Etherians. But of course, I have restricted its access to you alone!” Pride spilled over Ansel’s features; he was clearly pleased with his own design.
“Now, keep your hands on the resin and do not let go until I tell you to!” younger Ansel bellowed, staring directly into Amber’s apprehensive eyes. “Deia Estuem Latian Munn
. Suahh Sectus Cenrianum.”
The wind howled to a deafening decibel. The light of the electricity column became so bright Dawn could barely keep her eyes open. Meanwhile, to her right, Ansel remained immobile, his eyes fixed upon something in the distance, his brows twisted in concentration. Dawn followed his gaze, and what she saw made her recoil.
Just beyond the electric field tunnel, a third hand had reached in through the crackling tunnel to touch the amber resin. The light was too bright for her to identify the intruder, and the young couple was much too distracted by each other to notice the uninvited guest. Within seconds, the hand disappeared as quickly as it materialized, leaving Dawn to wonder whether she had let her imagination get the best of her. However, when she looked to present-day Ansel, his shocked expression confirmed what she saw.
In his arrogance, young Ansel had overlooked a serious error in his otherwise perfect plan.
At that precise moment, the crackling column flickered unexpectedly before a deafening boom reverberated through the rotunda. Immediately, Dawn was back in the Chesterfield entrance with present-day Ansel beside her.
Only they were not alone.
Chapter 11
“Delia!” Ansel rushed to the old Sumrect standing at the doorway. “What’s the matter?” The amber stone left his open palm and floated back to the ceiling.
Delia’s livid face said it all. “Ansel, we are under attack.”
“Vance’s soldiers? Again?”
“No. This time, he sent the Morvyanns.”
“How long till landfall?”
“Less than five minutes.”
Without wasting a second more, Ansel started toward the front gate and motioned for Dawn and Delia to follow.
“How many?” he asked, not turning his head.
“Three.”
Even though Dawn had never heard of Morvyanns, she gathered from Delia’s troubled tone and Ansel’s somber expression that they must be something terrible.
“What should we do?” Delia looked to Ansel for guidance.
The Eye of Elektron: A Clean Urban Fantasy (The Sumrectian Series Book 1) Page 11