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Immortality Awaits
Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1495459918
Type: Fiction
Pages: 329
Copyright: May 4, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781495459917
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
A fast-paced fantasy novel focusing on maintaining your central self through life's trials and tribulations.
IMMORTALITY AWAITS is the opening of a fantasy saga examining the modifications of the human self due to the backfired end of greed and power. The perspectives weave between the antagonist and the protagonist to examine the similarities and differences between good and evil.
Never forget who the enemy is.
After being plagued by dreams sent to him from a mysterious sorceress named Isabelle Hopwood, Donovan Carter discovers he and his closest friends must uncover the legendary Objects of Inwit — powers bearing the elements of the world promising both invincibility and immortality.
However, in the parallel world of Ianaro, the vengeful Lord Matobian leads his own apprentices to find the Objects for themselves in an attempt to gain ultimate domination. Their bond begins to quake at the control of the powers, but the promise of an oncoming war still stains the horizon.
The battle lines have been drawn. The armies have taken up their weapons. The Powers have chosen their victors. Immortality awaits those without mercy.
Excerpt
Something about the way the firelight caught in his eyes entranced her. It danced and sang as he spoke, telling a story of its own in his unblinking stare.
“Isabelle, now is not the opportune time to discuss this,” he said.
She leaned forward and searched the unfamiliar flame for the lost connection between them. “Jonathan, I have waited for months to hear results, please do not choose now to further darken my heart.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair across the table. Faint embers dimly clung to life in the fireplace behind her, but the flames in his eyes still burned as he at last averted them and broke the trance.
“You are not ready, Isabelle.”
She sat back in her own chair and folded her arms across her chest. How could he say she was not ready? Had they not survived the raids in Salem together? Was she not the one who rescued him from having his innocence tested during the trials? Did he find her weak? Men always treated her with such delicacy, but she wasn’t the fragile little girl they envisioned.
A moan from behind the partition reminded her of her vulnerable state. Her heartbeat rose, and she remembered Jonathan was trying to protect her emotions as her father lay dying in the next room.
She slid her hand across the table and interlocked her fingers with his. He smiled faintly, and her heart did a summersault in her chest. She had only known him for a few months, and spent most of them worrying about his return, yet she could never admit her true feelings for him out loud.
The persecution of perceived dark magic in Salem pushed her and her father out of their original colony, and they encountered Jonathan at their most desperate time of survival. The world around them shattered the night the raids brought them together. Flames licked their feet as they dodged attacks and frantically deciphered friend from foe.
Beat up and bruised, Jonathan found Isabelle and her father, William, as they ducked behind the trees in an effort to survive. His brown eyes were hidden behind purple markings from a fight he had barely survived, and his hair hung in straggles that silhouetted the sides of his rugged appearance. He looked anything but approachable, but the energy his presence presented eased her caution.
“Please, Ms. Hopwood, let me accompany you!” he begged. “I have heard of your power, and your father’s! Please, none of us deserve this persecution, I implore you!”
There was no deceit in his eyes as she studied him. It was hard to trust anybody — spies seemed to prop up out of the most inconvenient places.
“Prove yourself,” she said. “Kind words only mean so much in a world of deceit. You must show us you will not harm us before we accept your request.”
Before she was even finished speaking, his hand glowed orange. “I can manipulate fire,” he said. “It is easier to do when I mean to cause harm, but perhaps this will be enough to prove myself, Ms. Hopwood?”
She regarded him with contempt at first, searching his eyes for something that told her he was lying. Her power to differentiate between truth and lies led to her potential death sentence, but her subject had to agree to have her read them. If they refused to connect their gaze with hers, her power failed. Many of her fellow magicians doubted her, merely saying she was intuitive, but she knew her powers were far deeper than anyone could have recognized. Regardless of what her comrades thought, though, she was still considered an abomination like the rest of them.
“Isabelle,” said her father. “We must hurry.”
She continued to study his eyes, but there was no lie hiding behind them. He looked at her with a longing she had never witnessed before, a desperate hope for a love that would never be.
“We can’t leave him,” she whispered, her breath engrossing the sides of her face against the frigid air. The changing leaves were rapidly falling to the ground as winter approached, and the chilled night raised her flesh and caused a shiver. “We can trust him.”
“Then let us not waste any more time.”
With that, her father turned and began their journey.
Four days they walked, sticking to the trees and keeping their ears strained for any sign of the enemy. Her father’s condemnation came from his ability to speak into the minds of his loved ones, no matter the distance, and he was always able to invade their mind with his. If they accepted his intrusion, they could communicate their internal thoughts with him, and he managed to contact their closest companions to locate a sanctuary. He kept in silent contact with their fellow refugees as he led Isabelle and Jonathan into a question-less escape.
They made their way into a dense forest, surrounded by a now-frozen lake and a sea of golden cottontails. Small branches had been hastily thrown together to create shelters, and nearly five of them stood hidden underneath a stream of moonlight on the night of their arrival. A thin line of snow layered the ground, and they were desperate to find protection against the frigid air. A small hut had already been constructed for them, and they immediately fell asleep after they settled into their first shelter in days.
They barely had a chance to get comfortable in their new community when Jonathan’s personality altered, and Isabelle’s worry resurfaced. He tossed and turned so violently in his sleep and woke up so distant and angry, but he negated any questions of disturbing dreams.
She allowed him three nights of torment before she was so afraid of what he dreamed that she could not allow it to continue. When she shook him awake, he shot out of bed and shouted, “I must leave at once!” as he immediately started to dress himself.
She was so stunned at his sudden outburst that he was already dressed by the time she had registered what he said. “Leave?” She followed him to the front door as he put on his cloak. “Now?”
“It’s something I must do,” he insisted. “Not only for me, but for all of us.”
He opened the door, but she stepped in front of him and shut it. “Jonathan,” she said slowly, “what happened? What did you see?”
His eyes grew wide and he shook his head. She didn’t see the same innocence in him that she had seen before, and she found herself unsure if she wanted to hear the honest answer.
“I —” He took in a deep breath as he contemplated his response. She tried to maintain eye contact, to read what he was thinking without him having to tell her, but he had already learned how to avoid her interrogations. What had he seen in his subconscious state that worried him so? “I saw the beginning.”
She pulled her head back and pushed her eyebrows down in confusion. “The beginning?”
He shook his head again and took a step away from her. “I cannot explain it. Not yet. It was — I need to discover the source of magic.”
Isabelle closed her eyes and massaged her temples. Jonathan had become a frantic mess, and she quickly needed to find a way to calm him.
“The source of magic? The beginning? Jonathan, these are merely nightmares caused from the horrors we were forced to endure. Please, go back to sleep and put your weary mind to rest.”
He lunged for her, and she stepped back as rage overtook him. “No!” he shouted. He blinked, breathed deep, and stepped back from her again. “No,” he repeated calmly. “Isabelle, I apologize for my outburst, and I apologize for this confusion. I must leave to discover the meaning of my dreams. I do not know what they mean, but I feel led to follow them. Please, my love, do not worry for me.”
He put his hand on her cheek and leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away. It would take more than a pathetic apology to calm her after his attack. If he wanted to leave, he could leave.
“Will you come back?” she asked after a heavy silence.
He moved to the front door again as he said, “As soon as I find the answers I seek.”
She scoffed as she followed him into the arctic night. “How long will that be? Where will you go? Our rivals are strong, Jonathan, and you’ve already escaped once. You are putting yourself in sight of the enemy and you expect for me to stay back and milk the cows while I wait for news of your death?”
“Isabelle, it is not like that. Please, believe what I have to say. I can tell you no more, but I will return before you know it. Besides, I’ll be keeping in contact with your father the whole time, so you will be one of the first to know if anything is amiss.”
A rustle in the trees announced the coming of the wind, stirring up some of the freshly fallen snow. It swept through Isabelle’s wavy red hair, and she used the breeze to justify the brim of tears that burned her eyelids as she crossed her arms to keep herself warm.
Jonathan leaned in again, but this time he merely embraced her. His hug was warm, and she softened as she fell into his clutch. She allowed herself a brief moment of sadness when he was finally out of her eyesight, but refused to allow anything more.
He had been gone for a month when the plague struck their refuge. It came as a war cry in the night, falling on the youngest of them there, Isaac. He died quickly between sunset and sunrise, and his body had already begun decomposing by the morning. There were nearly twenty-five of them hidden by the time the illness struck, and Isaac became only the first of many to die. After Isaac’s overnight death, the infestation grew slowly within its victims, and forced an agonizing death after at least three days of constant suffering.
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