The Wonders of Estelia
Aurum’s Shining Dawn
Angel Lee Sorensen
Text Copyright 2020 © Angel Lee Sorensen
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Table Of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Darkness Rises
Chapter 2: A Queen’s Early Days
Chapter 3: Lost Heir
Chapter 4: First Day
Chapter 5: Nevernight Earthen Order
Chapter 7: Top Class Inventor
Chapter 8: A Glitch In The System
Chapter 9: Breathing In
Chapter 10: Breathing Out
Chapter 11: Aurum’s Homecoming
Chapter 12: Price To Pay
Chapter 13: Back To Godsgrave
Chapter 14: The True Prophecy
Conclusion
Introduction
This book contains the story of young Aurum who discovered that the kingdom of Estelia has a dark history and she is part of it.
She meets six young men who change her life forever on a night when the whole of Estelia is thrown into Chaos. Felip is a warrior tribe member who can protect Aurum. Cullen is the seer who can help see both the past and the future. Nase controls the mind of others and teaches her how to protect hers. Stell’Vester is an opera singer who breaks barriers to help Aurum with her plans. Renmar, who has a dark ambition, teaches her about the duality of the human spirit. Lastly, Dios is the prince of Estelia who yields the dragon flame.
They were all taken by a group led by a sinister tribe chieftain, Pina Tuvo. Nevernight Earthen Order is what remains of the descendants of a pioneering tribe in the land now called Estelia. Their fanatical followers believe that Aurum is the key to their victory.
There is an old Earthen legend called the Shinning Dawn prophecy of a child born from the direct descendant of the Earthen tribe of Nevernight, the most powerful and leading tribe of the land. But the direct descendants have long been believed to be lost to the Estelians when the last daughter of the chieftain was killed. The Nevernight Earthen Order has been bidding their time while looking for other traces of the great prophecy that would make them rise and rule the land once again.
Unbeknownst to all of them, Pina Tuvo had found the signs in Aurum. He sought the knowledge of their ancestors and communed with their gods and verified that Aurum was the one who is meant to fulfill the prophecy. She is the great chieftain chosen by the gods to lead Nevernight and their warriors to free the land from the conquering Estelians.
Pina Tuvo gives her a test which she passes with flying colors. Given the task to revive the steam punk intergalactic travel machine made by a master creator, Aurum and her friends find themselves in a win-win situation. They could make the machine for Pina Tuvo and gain their own freedom by duping him.
Loyal to her friends and to the home she has always known, Aurum manages to get five of them out of the training camp they were herded to. But the world as they know it is not what they would return to. Estelia has been forever changed by the night they were all abducted and the scars left behind by NEO would take years to heal.
This story walks into the realm of the Estelians and Nevernight and follows their adventures across Estelia until it reaches Godsgrave. The last frontier for the Nevernight would become the battle ground between the two forces. History can only be written by the winner. The one who loses would have to keep their end of the bargain in order to keep a reluctant peace.
Would Aurum and her friends be able to bring this peace to Estelia or would their hardwork be used against them in the end?
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Chapter 1: Darkness Rises
The end of Estelia did not come with a great loud bang but in the whispers among its people. The morning when those whispers became a battle cry was the last day that Aurum ever lived in peace.
She looked out the window that evening ten years ago and saw that the city of Estelia, the capitol of the kingdom of the same name, was on fire. She tried to wake up her father but there was no one next to her. Her mother was not there either. She wondered what had happened to them.
She walked out of their bedroom and called out to them, “Amma! Inna!” There were no voices that answered with a soft, “Come here, Aurum.”
She was completely alone in a city on fire. She had her shoes near the door and she walked out into the fierce street. People were shouting and trying to put out the fire in the houses nearby. Aurum clutched on the shell pendant her mother had given her. She looked at the street and saw that her parents were trying to put the fire out in the neighbor’s house.
“Amma! Inna!” Aurum shouted at them. They couldn’t hear her. She was calling out even louder when sounds of hoofs came towards her. In one fell swoop, the rider scooped her up and made her ride the horse. She hugged the rider because she was afraid she was going to fall. She’s been on a horse once but it wasn’t running as fast as this one.
The stranger wore an armor that was not familiar to her. The soldiers in the city wore leather clad armor and rode horses very carefully. She has never seen a warrior of this caliber in the past that she was in awe of him. “Brother, where are you talking me?”
“I am taking you to the new world, little one.” His voice was deep and so she believed he was a good man. In their city, all the children looked up at the Queen’s guards. They helped protect the city and most of them were born and raised there. Each one was someone’s son or brother. To the children, the soldiers were their big brothers. She didn’t think it was unusual for a big brother like this to take her to safety
when the city was ablaze.
When they reached a clearing, the rider took her down and let her walk towards the group of children sitting next to each other. She didn’t see them clearly at first. But when she sat next to one of them, she noticed that the boy was quietly crying. “Are you hurt anywhere?” She asked him, wiping the tears running down his cheeks with her edge of her right sleeve. “It’s going to be okay. Our parents and the soldiers will get the fire out and we can come home later when everything is okay.”
“But I am scared.” The young boy was clearly terrified. He was shaking like a leaf so Aurum tried to calm him down.
Aurum hugged him with one arm over his shoulder and made him put his head on her left shoulder. “Just sleep for now. When you wake up in a few hours, our parents would be here fetching us so we can go home.”
The other children who were silently listening to Aurum looked relieved. They had been taken away so quickly that most of them never got a chance to say goodbye to their parents.
“Big sister, are you sure that we are going home later? What if our home burned down?” Another girl was about to burst into tears when Aurum gestured to be quiet. She pointed at the young boy who had fallen asleep almost immediately.
“This is Estelia. Our people can make a house in a day. My father is a master builder so you can trust me on that.” The light and encouraging reminder made the children relax a little bit. “Let’s go to sleep and wait for them when morning comes.”
As if her words were a spell, the children all took their places in the grass and did their best to try to fall asleep.
Morning broke and Aurum was awaked by the ground moving. “Earthquake!” She called out in fear. She realized after a few seconds that she was on a wagon. She looked around to see the young faces in tears.
They were in a caged wagon.
Chapter 2: A Queen’s Early Days
Aurum felt like she betrayed the children in the wagon. She had told them that they were going to be safe. “Where are you taking us?” She had screamed at the soldiers.
She looked their armor more closely as they moved and realized that not a single one had Estelia’s emblem on their armor chest. They weren’t a part of the Queen’s guard! “I want to go home!” She wanted to burst out in tears too. But she knew by the look of the kids around her that she was the oldest at the age of twelve. If she cried the whole wagon of youngins would bawl.
If you are in a bad situation, you must never make it worse.
She remembered that she had to try to check out where they were going in case she was able to go back this way. If she just panicked, none of them would be able to make it back home to tell our parents where to find us.
The wagon trudged for about three hours until they reached a hidden dock. The children were forced out of the wagons and hoarded into the large boat docked there. Aurum was suddenly afraid.
It was hard enough to get back on foot. If they were riding a boat, it would take her a long time to get back the same way they came. She saw a large tree near the path they were on. She took the small sharpened shell on the necklace and used it to mark her name to the tree they were sitting next to. Aurum was written in her mother homeland’s letters. She had learned both of Estelia’s language for speaking and living but her mother taught her the ancient language of Estelia, Wikani. It sounds more primitive and there were not that many words. She was able to learn them all by the time she was eleven.
“Where are they taking us?” The young boy from last night clung to Aurum.
“We are going to go on a boat trip first. I think they are taking us to their camp for now.” Aurum wanted him not to be too scared. “What’s your name, little brother?”
“My name is Dios. What’s your name?” He was very cute when he wasn’t too afraid of everything. His eyes were blue, which was a rare color in Estelia.
The only people with blue eyes are the royal family. The memory of her father telling her about the history of the kingdom came back to her as soon as she saw his eyes. “Don’t look anyone in the eyes. Your eyes will get you in trouble.”
Dios showed her his other eye by covering the blue one. “Then I should show them this one then.” The other one was also just as beautiful but almond colored. Brown and black were common colors in Estelia but almond colored eyes were mostly found in the noble lines.
“Who are you?” Aurum asked the young boy.
“My name is Dios.” She waited for him to say his family name after his given name. But the boy just smiled at her.
“Just Dios?” The young one nodded. “Do you not have a family name?”
“My mother’s family name is Deuna. But I am not supposed to use it. My grandfather says that I shall not have a family name until I get back to my rightful place.”
“And where is that exactly?”
“I don’t really know well. I stop listening when he talks about that.” The young man smiled at her.
“How old are you?” She figured that he was going to be at least two years younger than her.
“I am fifteen as of my last reckoning.” Reckoning is considered the birth date of a young man in Estelia. They do not count the actual day he is born. When they are presented to the queen, they become real people. That is why the day of one’s reckoning is very important.
The queen of Estelia is a beautiful and wise woman who raised the lives of the men and women of the kingdom. After the long lines of kings caused such chaos in the kingdom, the last King had made a fatal flaw. He didn’t assign an heir aside from his next of kin before he died. The last king, unreliable to his very last breath, died while hunting intoxicated. He fell and hit his head on the ground, never to wake up again.
The young princess who had never married was thrust into becoming the queen. Many of the ministers were ready to make take the princess under their thumb. But there was something that they did not know about the last Queen. She raised her daughter in secret to be a strong Amazon like princess. She was decked in nines when people were around but the Queen Ezra had seen what her husband was like and she wanted to protect the then Princess Raina. She was as skilled as a soldier, well-versed and learned as a minister and she was fit for a queen even at a young age of twenty-two.
When the young queen was crowned, the palace court was shocked to find that the queen wanted to be with the people during the celebration. Something that was a breach of royal protocol, she asked the royal shaman to announce her queendom in the grand plaza.
There were not big feast in the palace but instead the food was taken from the palace and into the plaza. There were not seating arrangement which showed who was noble and who wasn’t. Everyone stood in front of the queen, the guards and the royal shaman, “With the light of the goddess Estel and the wisdom of the ancestors of Estelia. The heavens and the earth be thy witness, to this day until the end of Estelia’s many days, I give to you the power to govern all that is Estelia.” The shaman put the golden forehead tiara that indicated that she is the queen.
The wisest of ancient kings of Estelia had decreed that a princess can rule as a queen without marrying if there was no heir appointed by the late king. “Estelia, I give you our Queen Raina. All hail Estelia, All hail Queen Raina!”
The day that the young princess was made queen, Aurum came to the world to her father Matias and her mother Awa.
Aurum and Queen Raina would have never thought that the special day they share would later bring them together.
Chapter 3: Lost Heir
Queen Raina was beside herself. The Queen’s guards were scouring the whole kingdom for her son. He was taken by the fools who tried to kill her the night before. Her city was in ruins but the heart of a mother often disregards all for her child.
“The people are your children too, Your Majesty.” Her faithful alley and husband, King Min was beside her. He was trying to keep everything in order so that the queen could relax. But she was getting more and more anxious as her son was missing.
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��Dios is missing and all you can think about are the walls of the city!” She was losing it and no one around her was able to calm her down.
The king pulled her to him and whispered. “My love, you must cry.”
“A queen does not cry.”
“A mother does.”
Queen Raina fell apart when she heard that and she bawl at the top of her lungs. The king stopped her attendants from coming near her. “Let her cry.” He knew her better than anyone and so he knew she needed this more than any comforting words he could say.
Queen Raina took an hour to take out her tears and she stood slowly from the bed and walked towards King Min. “Have they found out the monsters who would do this to our city?”
“It’s them.” The King’s voice was laced with bitter resentment. “Those so-called forward thinkers who wanted to make weapons to sell to other kingdoms.”
“The Nevernight Earthen Order did this?” The queen had always been fascinated with their ideas. But King Min always turned their requests for royal funding. The queen wondered why they would do something so heinous over a little research money.
“They had been threatening the throne for a year now. It’s their first time to actually cause any physical damages to the city. In the past they would just interfere with trade routes and money flow.”
“The lean year was not a lean one after all?” The king nodded at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me all about this before?” The queen felt hurt that King Min didn’t ask for her counsel.
“You were taking care of the young prince to raise him to be king. I am your husband and as king it was my job to ensure the safety of our family.” The king was distraught when he thought of another bad memory. “If I had just agreed to their wishes, they would at least be obligated to let us know their plans. We have no clear information about them. They operate like ghosts in the kingdom.”
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