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Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: Lulu
ISBN-10: B07663M37K
Type: Fiction
Pages: 439
Copyright: Sep 13 2017
ISBN-13: 9780244932534
Price: $2.45 (eBook)
Magika: Mirror Worlds Book 2 continues the adventures of Thomas Hargreaves (the failed university graduate and strip-club barman) as he is plunged into the world of Myria following the legacy of a grandfather that he never knew.
Now, following a nomadic nicotine addicted Scotsman with bad dress-sense and a small number of newly discovered friends, Tom must come to terms and use his Magika gifts to save Myria from the clutches of a man from his very own.
. . . But at least he now knows that he wasn't imagining the little blue men spying on him, and that the blows to the head have finally stopped! . . . Well, for now, anyway . . .
Magika: Mirror Worlds Book 2 is the second concluding book in an all new fictional fantasy series.
Please Note: Ebook price varies depending on location and format purchased from.
Excerpt
They raced through the empty passageways, weaving left and right and running as quickly as Becky could possibly go in the unforgiving boots.
Tom was starting to worry however, and beginning to ask dangerous questions. Were they going in the right direction? What if he was wrong and they were running in circles? Maybe they would even run into the soldiers around the next bend.
No, he told himself. He’d made a mental note to remember the route when Crank had taken him to the top of the tower.
‘Do you know where you’re going?!’ Becky said desperately, having managed to discard the crown, belt and sceptre during the mad dash.
‘To the tower, that’s where the shards are,’ Tom said over his shoulder. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine. Look, we can’t go up there, they could be waiting for us when we come back down. It’s suicide!’
‘We won’t be coming down the same way. Besides, they will be waiting for us at the top.’
‘What do you mean, they’ll be waiting for us at the top?’
‘Don’t worry about it. Everything is under control,’ he assured her, before pulling her sharply back down another passageway and causing her to nearly loose balance and fall on her face.
Tom’s memory had served him well, and in no time they were standing at the bottom of the winding staircase leading to the top of the citadel tower. Becky shook her hand free from Tom’s, trying to rub some colour back into the white grip marks his fingers had caused, and double-backed into the passageway, listening.
There was no sound of approaching footsteps or shouting from the soldiers, and she let out a sigh of relief before running back to Tom and throwing her arms around his neck. She kissed him hard, causing him to nearly fall backwards under the force of her passion.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered in his ear.
Tom looked into her eyes, and brushed the stray hairs away from her face with a smile. ‘Okay, now I don’t want you to worry about anything, do you understand?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
Tom sighed and took her by the arm, leading her to the centre of the floor. He looked up, and began to think of the spell to take them to the top, much like how Crank had done before.
He took hold of Becky’s hand once again, much softer this time, and looked down at the floor.
The magika tingled in the soles of his feet, and they both watched as the conjuration spilled outwards like white water, lifting him up and forming into a thin layer, almost like ice on top of a pond.
‘Step up, I’ll explain everything later,’ he said as Becky began to back away from it in fear, her hand slipping away from his own. ‘Trust me?’ he added.
She looked at him and saw the sincerity on his face, and with a quick nod joined him on the thin skin that was forming into a disk, the spell crackling beneath their combined weight.
Tom was the first to hear the voices, echoing from the direction they had come down the passageway. There was no time to complete the spell as he had wanted, and commanded the disk to rise, less they were to be captured or killed.
It did as he commanded, slowly at first owing to his own apprehension, before it began to gain momentum. Becky threw her arms around him tightly, scared that she would fall to her death if she didn’t do so.
Tom ran a hand through her hair and kissed her forehead, before whispering in her ear: ‘We’ll be fine. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’
The soldiers came into view below the disk, and Tom could see them raising their rifles up through the magika haze towards them. They didn’t wait for an order, and fired rapidly, the sound reverberating around the circular walls.
Becky began to stomp around on the platform, screaming as the bullets impacted harmlessly beneath them, unable to breach the spell that Tom had created. He didn’t know that it would work but was grateful that it had, but Becky’s panicking was rocking the steady assent of the spell and was threatening to flip them over.
‘Calm down!’ he shouted above the noise of the weapons discharging.
Either Becky couldn’t hear or didn’t believe him, for her frantic stomping continued to the point where he didn’t know if he could calm her enough before they plunged downwards. She jumped around, dodging the yellow flashes beneath them, and began to pull Tom around as she maintained her hold on him. It was then that he realised that if words couldn’t calm, her then maybe actions could.
He raised his hand up and bought the palm swiftly around the side of her face with a ringing slap. Her hysteria ceased, and she looked at Tom in confused horror, tears filling her eyes and black mascara running down her cheeks. She hadn’t expected it, never from Tom, but now she could see how serious he was.
‘CALM DOWN!’ he shouted at her above the noise.
Becky took a quick look beneath them, and realised what Tom already knew: the bullets could not harm them.
The platform began to rise once again, and knowing that their marksmanship was having no effect whatsoever, the mercenaries began to climb the stairway, bounding two or three steps at a time as they tried to catch up with their quarry.
Wendle could hear the noise bouncing up through the tower, and knew that the men before him could hear it as well. One of them spoke hurriedly into his radio, and was returned with a quick rattle of garbled speech that the fubble couldn’t make out above the noise. Either way, he understood what the intention of the men was going to be as all but one of them left the room.
“Now!” said the voice inside his head. “Help them!”
Wendle didn’t need to be told twice, and leapt over the ledge.
The lone soldier turned as he saw the flash of blue, and struggled with the side-arm on his belt as he saw the fubble bearing down on him.
‘Afternoon!’ Wendle said cheerfully with a smile. He leapt up so that his eyes were level with the soldiers and, spinning around in the air so that the soles of his feet were pointed towards his opponent, hit the man hard in the middle of his forehead.
The soldier fell backwards to the floor, not expecting such a force to come from something so small, and lay there dazed for only a moment before coming to his senses and reaching for his gun once again.
He looked around urgently for his attacker, the muzzle of the weapon flailing around in the air as it searched for its target.
Wendle tried to suppress a mischievous laugh, forgetting the seriousness of the situation as he looked down from the wooden beams that supported the roof of the tower. He reached out towards the gun with a small hand, and using a simple spell snatched at the air, forcing the weapon from the soldier’s grip and causing it to hover a few feet in front of him.
The soldier held up his hands in submission as it turned on its former owner, and followed it with his eyes as it rose up higher into the air. He caught sight of the little blue man standing on top of the wooden beam, but before he could say anything, Wendle had given him a quick casual wave and bought the flat of the grip around the side of his head, knocking the soldier out cold.
The fubble jumped down from the beam and landed heavily on the table next to the stolen shards sitting in the device. He rubbed his hands together, but before he could reach out and remove them the voice was back inside his head, scolding him: “Stop! What about your friends?”
Wendle snapped his fingers together and swore: that’s right, he’d forgotten about Tom.
The mercenaries on the stairs were quick, very quick, and gaining on Tom and Becky with what appeared to be very little physical effort. It wouldn’t be long before they would be level with them both and would have a clear shot. The rhythmic pounding of their heavy boots against the wooden stairs was almost as loud as the gunfire, and their calls and curses were aimed at throwing Tom’s concentration off from the spell. He was able to maintain it well enough, but knew that to slow them down he would have to cast another charm whilst keeping his mind on the present one also.
He took a chance, and remembering their entry into the town through the gap in the wall, imagined the steps beneath the soldier’s feet transforming - turning to sand and mud.
The back of his hands began to sting in a way that he had yet to experience, and as he looked down on them he noticed that the lines of power that crossed over his skin were there once more, this time thicker and flowing with a darker, greener energy.
Tom could see that the spell was working as he’d planned, and as he watched the chasing men, circling the stairway below, he could see that they were slowing down and stopping to look at the soles of their boots as the wood became unstable and turned into a thick viscose substance. The burning in his hands was becoming intense, but it was nothing that he couldn’t handle in the short-term.
The soldiers on the stairs were no longer making the headway that they had, and a couple were even struggling to remove their feet from the mud now slipping and flowing down to the steps below. The calls from them had changed also, and now their cries were those of anger as they struggled to break free from the spell.
The disk continued to rise, but at a slower pace than it once had, undoubtedly owing to the secondary spell. However, before Tom could notice this, the soldiers filed out from the side room at the top of the tower and had their rifles pointed directly down at them. It left little time for him to think, and with few options available he had to cast a third spell for protection.
He raised up his hand, his palm facing the soldiers above, and cast the charm.
A burst of blinding white light spilled out from his skin, and the pain across his body increased tenfold, forcing him to fall to his knees and cry out as the burning sensation became almost too much to bare. The platform that they stood upon no longer continued to rise, and instead began to sink as the outer edge of the disk began to shrink in size.
The intense light caused the soldiers above to stumble around blindly, groping for a hand hold and bumping into one another. The multicoloured dots flashed in front of their vision, and now they too called out in confusion as their stinging eyes began to water.
The light began to fade as Tom’s strength failed him, so much so that his concentration faltered for a moment, and the spell on the stairway wavered also. Many of the soldiers found they were able to break free from their trappings, and began to continue their climb after the escapees.
‘Are you alright?! What’s the matter?!’ Becky said urgently as Tom’s head fell forward.
‘The pain . . . it’s too much! I don’t think . . . I can’t hold it much longer!’ he replied in a raspy tone, the burning sensation spreading across the top of his chest and the lines of energy beneath his skin so dark they were almost black.
He dropped his hand and the light completely disappeared, giving the soldiers above time to recover. The pain also began to ease, and it allowed him to regain some of his own composure, just enough to strengthen the two spells that he already cast.
Once more the platform began to rise, and the footing on the stairway returned to a mudslide.
Tom stood, breathing heavily as he took in the air that had been forced from his lungs through effort. It didn’t matter however, as he became aware that the soldiers at the top of the stairs would once more turn their weapons on them both, and there was no hope that he could incapacitate them further, not without the time to rest and recharge his batteries.
Wendle ran down the steps and onto the landing, just as the mercenaries' weapons were turned onto Tom and Becky. He pointed a small finger at them all one by one, and sent a wave of energy from his digit, the effect of which felt like an electric shock and forced the soldiers to shake and convulse and fire their weapons as they lost control of their bodies. The fubble realised that he’d made a mistake as the bullets from the rifles flew out in all directions, some even heading downwards.
The firing didn’t last long, thankfully, and in no time all the aggressors had fallen onto the floor, alive, but shaking and twitching as sparks of magika danced over them.
The platform finally reached the top of the landing, and the fubble could see that Tom was in a great amount of pain.
‘Couldn’t you think of a better spell?’ he said, chastising the fubble before checking Becky over for any injuries once they managed to force themselves over the banister.
‘It was the first thing that sprang to mind,’ Wendle replied, a little hurt that his involvement hadn’t been appreciated.
‘Well, we’re here now, and without any long term damage it would seem. Becky, this is Wendle. And Wendle, this is Becky,’ Tom said, making the introductions.
Becky had seen the little blue man before, briefly, when Tom had been held prisoner in the dungeon, but at the time her focus had been on her boyfriend alone.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said nervously.
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