Antimagic

Stephen Hayes

Description

After having been on the back-foot for some time, John and his circle of friends now have an opportunity to end the war once and for all.

But the new ruler of the world has other ideas entirely as he works tirelessly to consolidate his power at every possible point of infiltration.

With the stakes rising ever higher, our heroes must consider the unthinkable: that magic itself must be destroyed in order to save humanity from it.

Only when the world itself is on the brink of destruction is the darkest hour upon them, and yet there remains one last possibility for salvation.

But can our heroes harness a power so great that it can literally bend fate itself to their will? Or will such an attempt doom them once and for all?

Sujets

• Contemporary
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780645309300
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Magic Crystals
Antimagic
 
 
by
 
Stephen Hayes
Antimagic
Book 7 in the Magic Crystals series
 
Written by Stephen Hayes
 
Published 2022 by Stephen Hayes, Australia
 
www.StephenHayesOnline.com
 
Copyright © Stephen Hayes 2022
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon, Facebook or similar organisations) in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
 
Disclaimer: All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-6453-0930-0
Contents
Prologue
Part 1: The Beginning of Forever
Chapter 1: The Situation, as It Stands
Chapter 2: Succumbing to Evil
Chapter 3: The Value of Life
Chapter 4: The Moon Base
Chapter 5: Topping Up
Chapter 6: Bedroom Ambush
Chapter 7: Retaliation
First Interlude: The Place
Part 2: The Last Sorcerer
Chapter 8: Second Chance
Chapter 9: Deterioration
Chapter 10: The Descent of Our Mr. Lucien
Chapter 11: Hope and Hopelessness
Chapter 12: Mission Confirmed
Chapter 13: All Out Attack
Chapter 14: Dilemma
Chapter 15: The Welcoming Arms of Danger
Chapter 16: The Little Garden
Second Interlude: Magic Theory
Part 3: Antimagic
Chapter 17: Checkmark
Chapter 18: The Thesis
Chapter 19: Experimentation
Chapter 20: Radius of Destruction
Chapter 21: The Planner
Chapter 22: Mental Assault
Chapter 23: Let Sleeping Morans Lie
Third Interlude: Unholy Mary
Part 4: Things Fall Apart
Chapter 24: Establishing the Beam
Chapter 25: Maintaining the Beam
Chapter 26: Four Points of the Compass
Chapter 27: Disaster
Chapter 28: Covering Tracks
Chapter 29: Bring It
Chapter 30: Battle Stations
Chapter 31: When the War is Over…
Chapter 32: Darkness
Chapter 33: Villain and Light
Chapter 34: Hero
Final Interlude: Closing the Loop
Part 5: The New Normal
Chapter 35: Glimmer
Chapter 36: The True Sacrifice
Chapter 37: Last Days
Chapter 38: Looking to the Future
Chapter 39: Trial of the Sorcerers
Chapter 40: 2020
Epilogue
The Magic Crystals Series
 
Prologue
It has been said to me that the War of the Crystals was short. Vast, certainly, but it all happened in such an incredibly condensed period of time. I don’t know—it all felt quite long to me, but perhaps that’s something to do with my age. I was only fourteen throughout the whole thing, and for teenagers, time tends to stretch out more than it does for adults. Or maybe it has nothing to do with that, and it only seemed short because most wars of such magnitude happen over several years. Either way, it wasn’t short for those of us who had to fight it. Perhaps the best way to figure out which it was would be to summarise the year as it has been for me, John Playman of 16 Lopher Lane, Chopville.
Highlights for January: the summer holidays ended and I, along with my brother Peter, my sister Nicole, and our friends the Thomases (James, Felicity and Jessica), the Maivises (Harry and Simon), Natalie Fletcher and Lisa Pont, had to return to school at Chopville High. I met several people who would become close friends including Marc Moran, Lucien Moran, Tommy Blue, Serena Forgrey and Erica Tyanon. I would start to become closer friends with a few people I had known from previous years such as Katie Knight (Harry’s new girlfriend), Sophie Crow (Simon’s new girlfriend), and Kylie Cunkourd (James’s crush). Most importantly, though, I would have my first ever conversation with Stella Hammerson, one of the Sorcerers (from the bad family, but not bad herself, as it turned out). Oh, and I found out that my English teacher was none other than Mr. Hall, a man who despised many of us for no good reason.
Highlights for February: well, that was when things kicked up. In the first week, Marc and Lucien’s father went nuts, stole the magic from the six Sorcerers and called on Fewul, the Beast of Magic, so that he could take over the world. We were only able to stop him with the help of Marc, the Seventh Sorcerer, and Tommy, who could play a magical musical instrument called the Maahoo. The knowledge of how to do this came to me in a dream which I would later learn was actually magical in nature (from something called the Enlightener, an external source I sometimes connected to when I slept). It was also hinted at in a prophecy written more than two thousand years earlier by the first two Sorcerers, Sien and Leoard. Moran did a fair bit of damage while he had magic; not through his own doing, but because the global climate froze over twice during the week. After it was over, the Woodwards (the good Sorcerers), along with Stella, had to go all over the world, fixing everything that had been damaged. Moran was thrown in jail, but was quickly broken out (during an incident in which Tommy was shot and almost killed).
In the second week we went on a school camp to Rock Haulter, only to be followed by Moran, who was commanded by the evil Hammerson Sorcerers to take possession of the Sien-Leoard Crystal—the most powerful of all the Magic Crystals. We beat him to it with the help of Fewul, who Marc was able to call on using the Hero Crystal; and to top it off, we also stole from Moran the Light Crystal, giving us three out of the five Magic Crystals. During the struggle, one of us was required to sacrifice our lives, a sacrifice which Lisa willingly made; but we were then able to resurrect her with magic after we had claimed the crystal. We also resurrected William Playman (my paternal grandfather) and Carl Thomas (James’s paternal grandfather), both of whom were killed during the great Sorcerous War.
In the third week, I was given a strange mental test called the Returnamy, which was designed to test my powers of resistance to temptation. What I didn’t know until later was that it was recording all my thoughts as they happened, which were then handed over to none other than Arnold Hammerson for examination. While all that was going on, Stella was to turn sixteen, and she requested that we all attend her birthday party. Measures were taken to protect us, but that wasn’t enough to prevent Daniel Dasher—a Sorcerous Seer who had fallen in with our group during the Rock Haulter camp—from being killed later in the night, and all because he looked like Marc, who was the real target. It was also at the party that Dorothy Hammerson, Arnold’s mother, and more commonly known as Tankom, put an influential charm on Lucien to turn him against us.
In the last week of the month, Lucien implemented a plan to have us all captured by the Hammersons and all the crystals brought into their possession. It mostly failed thanks to the quick magic of Marc and Stella, but Amelia, Peter and I were still captured and taken into captivity in the Hammersons’ Basement—a terrible place of pitch-black cells which were magically enchanted to torture their inhabitants at random moments with things like showers of freezing water. That was when Mr. Hall revealed his true colours as a Hammerheart (soldier of the Hammersons) and used his position to capture several more of our friends at school. We were able to escape thanks to Stella, though it did take her a couple of days to find a way to do it without her family being aware of it. During that time, Arnold Hammerson tried (and curiously failed) to kill me, tried (and unfortunately succeeded) to torture me with an agonator (a handheld device capable of thrusting magical and unbearable agony upon a person), and I was able to steal from him the Darkness Crystal, giving us possession of four of the five Magic Crystals. The others were all tortured as well, and in Amelia’s case, raped by Ather Hignat and Ugine Wilwog—two school rivals turned bitter enemies—who we now knew they were mixed up with the Hammersons.
Oh, and the week continued, as all that only happened in the first two days. The following day, the Woodwards executed a plan to strip the Hammersons of their magic, giving it to the Fletchers (Natalie, her father Brian, and his mother Alice). I was sent into the Hammersons’ lair under cover to watch for when they lost their magic, and the moment it happened, I used the Sien-Leoard Crystal (which would remain in my possession from then until it was eventually lost to Arnold Hammerson) to take the three Hammersons into captivity. I also captured Lucien, Hank Cornish (Arnold’s right-hand man) and a female Hammerheart coded 3K17, who I knew little about, but who seemed to be trusted by the Hammersons. I did this last after overhearing them plotting to attack the high school the following day, and although I’d hoped to head it off, I was unsuccessful.
The attack happened the following day, even without the Hammersons there to lead it. Plenty of Chopville High staff were killed in the attack, and many students were captured (although we were able to free them two days later). Sebastian, another who had fallen in with us during the Rock Haulter camp, was able to lead numerous teachers to safety, though doing so enraged Hall; I only just managed to teleport Sebastian to safety before he would have been attacked from behind. We ultimately succeeded in stopping the attack, but at the very end, Lisa was killed for a second time, as were William and Carl, and we found out from Frederic Woodward (Sorcerer and titular head of the Woodward family) that people could only be expected to live for two weeks after being resurrected.
Following that, Arnold and Dorothy, followed by the other prisoners, somehow escaped from the Woodwards’ hold. I was sent back into their lair to recapture them if possible, though I was ordered to go without magic of my own (so that it couldn’t be stolen if I go