Once Upon… Not Yet

MDR McInnis

Description

In a medieval land embroiled perpetually in war, one boy is chosen for a mission that may stem the tide. But he must focus on the task at hand and not be side-tracked by the people and things standing between him and duty. Asa, the son of Radnar and Abigail, lives in Sharon, a small community in alliance with other towns and shires forming the Union under which the Order of the Rose presides; and he has been elected to journey to a faraway land with the endorsement of the Earth's under-gods, known as the Elder. In his odyssey, Asa will retrieve a unique rose that exists in the desert, along with the mystical Fire of Unknown Origin from the Guardians in High Haven, in the hopes that it will up-end the advantage that the Dark Lord and his army has, and which increases, with each battle in the un-ending conflict between the Rosarians and the Black Horde in the Psychic Wars. But there are many miles between Sharon and High Haven… There are numerous distractions… There will be several people Asa will meet along the way. And SOME of them won't want the boy to return to Sharon…

Sujets

• Dark Fantasy
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 14 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669826248
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ONCE UPON… NOT YET
THE ELDER AND THE FIRE OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN
MDR McInnis

 
Copyright © 2022 by MDR McInnis.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022909913
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-2625-5

Softcover
978-1-6698-2623-1

eBook
978-1-6698-2624-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 06/22/2022
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
836251
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue
I. “I am just a Boy”
Chapter 1 innocence
Chapter 2 stardust and vermin
Chapter 3 pantas and gods
Chapter 4 better angels
II. “Dark Light”
Chapter 5 the shroud
Chapter 6 furious horn. ghost with eyes
III. “A World without Heroes”
Chapter 7 contemplation
Chapter 8 number the heroes with cross-stakes
Chapter 9 fractured shards
IIII. “Only You”
Chapter 10 conviction
V. “Loneliness Will Haunt You”
Chapter 11 to see the vexing
Chapter 12 silent cries
Chapter 13 emberous hues
VI. “You’re Not Well”
Chapter 14 no vincere finis, ne a
Chapter 15 daemons, angels, and kingdoms of scorn
Chapter 16 of girls and sons
VII. “Future Unveiling”
Chapter 17 The Elder and the Fire Of Unknown Origin
Chapter 18 strange magick
Chapter 19 preparations
VIII. “Once Upon . . . Not Yet”
Chapter 20 odyssey
BOOK ONE
DEDICATION
To my brother Jeff Dodson and his devoted wife Kim; to Jacqueline and Pearson; to the memories of my mother and father, Geraldine and Ronald Dodson, and my brother Brian—all whom I miss dearly, whose presence remains in the pages that I write; to the bands and the music and the cinema which inspires the amalgam acting as my muse; to my family and friends—the names too numerous to list.
PROLOGUE
The mountain spire rose high and pierced the circle of the moon as it stood post over the expansive valley below. Littered with flickering campfires here and yon, the flatland looked like the decorations seen at holiday in ages past—from the vantage of the eagles’ nests of Brandiwood or the owls’ roost in the forest of Loudermont—with their red-and-orange embers ornamenting the landscape. The self-gathered bands of men and boys making up the Rosarian Union assembled together around the carefully manicured blazes, ate guarded rations, talked of home and family, praised today and plotted tomorrow, or else tried to find rest. Garlands of smoke rose from the individual companies throughout the field and into the clear nighttime sky, like ropes of cotton pulled from a loom in strings and in handfuls, as the stars above winked behind clouds to mirror the face of the earth below somewhat.
At once, the campfires served to divide the troops into smaller companies. But they also gave warning to the feral wolves, howling in the distance and scavenging, and the mountain cats, tracking and tracing, and both doing so for food or for sport. Additionally, the individual bonfires served to ward against the want of some wandering serpent looking for warm company against the chill of the springtime night. These cold-blooded creatures moved through the tall dewy grasses that overlaid the rutted, ruinous stage floor of the natural theatre existing in the midst of the peering rock walls of the mountains that framed the area at either end. And into unsanctioned territory, these snakes stealthily crossed the tracks caused by horses and carts and carriages—most of which were produced by the other side, being well-armed and fitly appropriated in opposition to the woesome lot forming the army of the Union on this end of the vale. (Many a boy shook a viper from his wadded bundle in the night only to expire later in a sweat-drenched slumber caused from the uninvited companionship of an red asp.)
Wearing tattered clothing and footwear held together by farmer’s twine, with metal clasps found in the field and fashioned for such purposes, the militia, made of villagers and towners, struck an odd contrast to the dark-clad battalions gathered around their own night fires, waiting for sunlight to break when they could commence in their game of war. These other men wore uniforms of black leather with metal the color of oiled steel and were hired and financed by the island king known as Lord Black—the man who insisted on carrying out these wars here, away from his kingdom, and perpetually as if he wished to rid the mainland of Zander of its remaining good men, and for reasons which only he knew.
The night would have appeared still in this intermission for the illegitimate troop trying to recuperate from the long and wearisome day, too, if it wasn’t for the heaviness that hanged in the Vale of Monroe as a shroud—ever hanging—or like the canvas of a trap curtain (the kind of pall that protected the cargo in the ships, land away, coming across the Sea of Gandling and into the harbor of the mainland). These shipments, arriving constantly at the port of Rhats Fjord, and far-off from the battlefield, fed the beast of the Black Knights, the so-dubbed force of the Dark Lord. These allocations were pulled into the arena from the commercial inlet flanked by mountainous wings frequently so that the hired band of Lord Black could be restocked and sufficiently supplied. Pulled from the harbor through the marshes and forests buffering the inland, and away from coastal pirates, these came all the way from Broods Island, across the oceanic moat that surrounded the palace of the island monarch, to the well-fed and conditioned warriors in the field while the Union soldiers, on the other side, were made to wait for homemade things sent to them by missionaries and emissaries—a thing that took a great deal of time—or else they were made to scrounge for whatever provisions they could (which were usually less than ideal). Anticipation. Weariness and exhaustion were usually their allotment, however. Alongside the often emptiness of their bellies, the feeling of anxiety over the never-ending dogged the boys on the lower end till they churned dread in their guts as a substitute for adequate food. And sometimes the only distraction from this aching was the loud, boisterous carousing of the men in black across the field, away from them, as their echoes moved along the valley floor and the noise of their drunken celebrations careened into the mountainous wall in back of the Union and reverberated whilst the boys and men, huddling in fixed, tiny platoons—sipping puddle water filtered through their shirts when necessary, eating wild rodents, locusts, and whatever they could find—prayed to rest.
The Raiders—as the offensive army had been called from of old—were rugged and war-worn. Battle fit them like the hide of their uniforms: comfortable and like a second skin. In contrast, on the other side, the hairless faces of boys outnumbered the rugged, worry-trenched visages of men. And though there were scores in the village militia—made up of males from every direction in Zanderland, from the coast land to the forest thick, from north to south—the assemblage of the youths who constituted the Union beggared the number of grown men four to one. And while aged, weathered skin was not apparent on the boys as it was on their elders, mud and dirt camouflaged their exposed appendages and made them all look the same, uniform, and comparable—at least as to being one army together rather than as individuals in a collection of forced recruits—to the dark horde that opposed them in the vale. And as much as the filth provided impotent armour to the Union’s clothing, it aged the boys’ appearances and secreted their innocence behind it like masks while also hiding their existence in the dark so that only the whites of their eyes made any real presence in the shadows. (Like alien orbs hovering above the ground, the eyes of boys—and of men—danced in the dark while the light of the fire reflected from the glassy eggs. But to the unsuspecting—if a soldier had been roused from his attempt at haggard sleep, alerted by some noise like from a broken twig or a clinking anklet or the worry of a slithering visitor, and turned to see—the floating eyes might appear to be a vision of some approaching ghost or beast or dreaded thing, or else a harbinger to fearful souls that the Grim Reaper was visiting, moving through their camp, looking for names, and thus warning him beware. A boy in such an state might even be caused to draw his sword in defense and shout in curses, waking those around him, till the possessor of the tiny hovering globes came into enough light that the affronted could see that it was only a comrade and not some foe—bestial, human, or extraterrestrial—and then withdraw his blade. “It’s only me,” a familiar voice might say to the relief of the disturbed.)
The army of the Black Knights, though, lingered in t