by Otto Schafer
The God Stones Series
Books 1 to 3
Otto Schafer
Sound Eye Press
Copyright © 2021 by Otto Schafer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The Secret Journal published in 2019
The Keepers of the Light published in 2020
The Days of Myth published in 2021
Cover designs by Damonza
The Days of Myth map design by Fantasy Map Ink
Editing by The Blue Garret
Sound Eye Press
www.ottoschafer.com
Contents
The Secret Journal
Prologue
1. Run
2. Discoveries Ruined
3. The King’s Throne
4. Old Friend, New Plan
5. Subdue the Enemy
6. One Hundred Seventy-Eight Ghosts
7. The Book
8. Money Pit
9. Pete
10. Clearing Stones
11. The Date
12. The Cross
13. Lincoln’s Secret
14. Hardheaded
15. Pete’s Office
16. The Find
17. Eavesdropper
18. The Find
19. The Plan
20. Chardonnay, Scotch, and Nightmares
21. Keeper
22. You Must Search, Doctor
23. Wrong Number
24. Fourteen Seconds to Adventure
25. Dagrun
26. Down and Up
27. The Culvert
28. Tentacles
29. Abraham’s Secret
30. This Must Be What It Feels Like to Die
31. Prime Focus
32. The Birthplace of Fire
33. That’s Going to Leave a Mark
34. The Corner of Her Eye
35. Do You Accept?
36. The Flood
37. Focus
38. Trust and Protect
39. Feathers
40. Petersburg
41. Answers
42. The Past
Epilogue: Jack
Acknowledgments
The Keepers of the Light
1. Destroy the Instructions
2. Perfect Circle
3. Fracturing
4. Settling Old Scores
5. When the Time Is Right
6. Overlooked
7. Home
8. Meet the Neighbors
9. Giants
10. The Samurai
11. Sentheye
12. The Grooves Are the Key
13. In the Distance
14. Just Cut Off Its Head
15. Brushwork and Magic?
16. A Hard Rain
17. Rise
18. A Bad Idea
19. Not Alone
20. Lincoln’s Gauntlet
21. Red Rubies
22. Below the Pyramid
23. Rusty Bite
24. Temples and Tombs
25. Lever
26. Stoneclad and Thunderbird
27. The Real Apep
28. The Underneath
29. Judas
30. Farewell, Brother!
31. Bound by Blood
32. Sounds in the Dark
33. Love Inferno
34. Don’t Look Back
35. Click
36. End Game
37. ¡Eres el Amor de Mi Vida!
38. Not Today
39. Move
40. I Won’t Let You Down
41. Into the River
42. Breathe
43. Serpent
44. Pressing On
45. Reborn of Dragon Fire and Blood
46. The Giant King
47. I Thought This Was the End
48. A Friend and Ally
49. Cooperate or Die!
50. Guests
51. Feast and Grow!
52. Old Guilt
53. Farewell, Prince
54. Forgive
55. Family Reunion
56. Band of Holes
57. Follow Your Heart
Epilogue: Jack
Glossary
Acknowledgments
The Days of Myth
I. THE EXPEDITION
1. Setting Off
2. I Will Show Them Something Truly Special
3. Not a Spoke Card
4. In the Beginning
5. Rats in a Maze
6. Her Grandmother’s Eyes
7. Shrub Woman
8. Mind Speak
9. The Burning World
10. Yaya’s Quest
11. Meatloaf Special
12. You Did What You Had To
13. Governess
14. Fleeting Laughter
15. Catfish and Honey Buns
16. God Stone Storm
17. Sitting Ducks
18. A Breakfast Vision
19. Here We Go, Danny!
20. The Devil Has Come to Chiapas
21. Your Mom Says Hi
22. Jurupa
23. Better Off Without You
II. ARMIES OF THE WORLD
24. We Are Nephilbock
25. It’s Just a Ride
26. One Hundred Years
27. The Wicker Basket
28. Let Them See
29. Bulldozing for Answers
30. The Eyra of Tunga
31. Cerberus
32. The White Forest of Gold
33. Cloners Are Shifters
34. Return of the King
35. Reunited
36. The Devil’s Garden
37. Pando the Trembling Giant
38. Leadership 101
39. Call Your God
40. Nightshade the Taker
41. Angel’s Surprise
42. The Dragons Fight with Us
43. Condemned to Death
44. The Place in Between
45. A Prince Among Them
46. Clash of the Titans
47. A Shared Memory
Epilogue: Jack
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Sign Up to Read More
About the Author
For my mom.
I wish you could have read this –
I think you would have enjoyed it.
Prologue
1050 ad
Egypt, deep under the sand
Light entering through a small fracture in the wall cast a single beam upon the stone slab where his head had rested through time. Tiny particles moved densely within the beam, swirling through it, weightless as if the laws of gravity held no command inside the shaft of light.
Apep gasped, coughed violently, and then gagged on the heavy air thick with dust. The blanket of sediment put into motion by the sudden lurching of his shaky hands trembled around him. Yanked from a violent nightmare, he blinked in confusion, squinting hard to see through the surrounding cloud of dirt. He tried wiggling his toes. He could feel them, and they seemed to respond, a good indication that he was alive and functioning. How long have I slept? he wondered, realizing it must have been a long time… too long, in fact, but there was no way he could have known that he had slept through millennia.
How did I get here?
He carefully rolled himself onto his side and pulled himself into a sitting position. The stone slab felt cold and hard against his bare blue-grey
skin. He surveyed the small chamber as he stretched his neck from one side to the other. Could this light be the catalyst that woke me?
Slowly, memories began to spark in his mind like the brief flashes of two flint stones striking in the dark. He was imprisoned on this world, cast into this eternal sleep by the six sages at the order of the pharaoh. How much time had been snatched away as he slept? Oh… their audacity! “Humans,” he croaked, tasting the word on his dust-covered tongue. They called themselves sages! Sages only by a power he brought to this world. Sages only by the power of the Sentheye. They dared use it against him!
The memories came in a prodigious flood; anger exploded inside him like a sick virus, wrong and unholy, deep in his chest. The feeling materialized into something physical, twisting his guts and blinding his mind. Oh, how he had been wronged. Bile surged up his throat, stinging the back of his tongue as he fought the urge to vomit.
He eased himself off the slab and collapsed to his knees, his legs unable to hold his weight. He turned his wrath inward, allowing it to pool and consume every drop of his being. Using his hate as fuel, he willed his legs upward until he stood, legs quavering. This would never happen again. Never would he allow himself to be brought to his knees again.
Apep rolled his bony fingers inwards, clenching them into tight fists. My own father. My own flesh and blood stealing the crown from underneath me. Robbing me of my future. And why? Why? To give it to my undeserving brother. His stomach lurched. Syldan, my own brother, if only I’d been successful when I tried to kill you in your sleep.
But he had not been successful in killing his brother, and his failure had cost him greatly. Not only had he been publicly denounced from his family, but the attempt on his brother’s life had cost him banishment from the kingdom. So they thought!
His plan had been brilliant… simple. Come to this world, create an army, return to Karelia, and overthrow his father. Take back what is his! But it had gone so terribly wrong. Humans! Humans had ruined his plans. He spat thick into the sand at his feet. This was of no matter now. These were simple mistakes of a time long past. He was awake, and no amount of time had softened his hunger for his birthright, his hate for his family, or his desire for revenge. This world once made the perfect place to build an army outside the watchful eye of his father, and it would do so again.
No matter how long it takes, I will find a way. As sure as the silt-laden air I breathe, the day will come when all inhabitants of Karelia will fall to their knees and worship me not only as their king, but as their god!
Despite the protesting cracks and pops of dormant cartilage and bone, Apep stretched his arms wide and smiled. This is what it must be like when a sleeping god wakes. To be resurrected. He felt close to the gods now, knowing they must share his vision. The gods must have wanted for him what he wanted for himself. In time, he would reap their reward and take his place among them, but first he had worlds to conquer. He looked again to the single ray of light. The gods had pulled him from darkness and set loose a creature of fury. A being of anger. The time had come for all to bow down before him and pay the debt owed.
Apep stepped forward. His legs trembled, but his words spilled forth, ringing with his absolute conviction. “I am the wrath of the gods. If my enemies had not committed great sins against me, the gods would not have set a wrath like me upon them!”
Apep strode toward the shaft of light. Muffled voices beyond the fractured wall penetrated the sandstone. The voices became louder as their excitement peaked. Stone chipped as the sound of swinging picks bit deeper into the wall with each swing. Scraping stone, shovels sliding through sand, the last stone fell away, and a broader shaft of light poured into the room.
Apep smiled. It was time to begin.
1
Run
Present day
Petersburg, Illinois
Garrett begged time to just please let the sun hold fast to the sky a little while longer, but he knew it was a wasted wish. Time seemed the enemy of every boy, wicked in its dammed doggedness to just tick steadily away. Unwilling, time, to ever speed up when you needed it to, when you wanted the bell to ring, chores to be over, or your father’s grueling bug-out training to just end. Time was cruel the other way too. Begrudging to share more, to give extra, to break the steadfast tick tock and cut a kid a break. No, time never seemed a friend to a boy.
His only hope now was to beat time, and so he ran as fast as he could. Images of blurred trees raced by as he recklessly descended a narrow trail. Roots and small boulders jutted out of the soil, threatening to grasp ahold of his foot and slam him to the ground. Unconsciously, he let his feet fall in rapid succession as he bombed down the hill. Risk was no matter now, as no risk outweighed the doom that awaited him if he couldn’t somehow beat back time.
It was still only March, but Garrett’s odd-job work-history references had earned him a spot on the early cleanup crew at New Salem State Park. If he performed well, he would easily have a job on the park-maintenance crew for the entire summer. That would be sweet since the alternative was detasseling corn and walking beans. Both were hot, itchy work and so, so boring; walking back and forth across fields all day, pulling tassels off corn stalks or pulling weeds out of beans – no thanks. Not if he could help it. He had been there, done that, and in fact had become the crew leader the last two years in a row while working for the detasseling outfit out of Springfield. That experience helped him land this job, and for that, he was grateful.
New Salem was famously known as the place where Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States of America, spent his early adulthood. The park sat nestled into the bluffs along the Sangamon River Valley right in the middle of central nowhere Illinois. Stepping into the village was like stepping back to a time one hundred and fifty years earlier. The village was full of beautiful cabins complete with all the furnishings of the era, a rail-splitter, and a fully equipped blacksmith’s shop. During the summer months, actors were hired to play the roles of the 1830s villagers. Even old Abe himself could be found wandering the park – well, an actor playing him, anyway.
After an easy day of clearing an area of cigarette butts with a trash poker and hosing out the park garbage cans, Garrett had hastily stripped off his work clothes along with his steel-toed boots and stuffed them into his backpack, stashing it behind a small pile of brush near the trailhead. He had time then. He had the moments and the sun, and it was all fine.
Now, on the balls of his feet with arms pumping an urgent cadence, he wore a pair of school-issued cross-country shorts and an old tee shirt he had torn to be sleeveless. Even though his worn sneakers were in desperate need of replacement, as evidenced by the occasional rock biting sharply through his thinning soles, somehow they still managed to keep his toes contained.
Garrett had just wanted to go for a trail run after work. On the face it seemed a simple thing. He loved to run, but what boy didn’t love to run? After all, he was on the cross-country team at Porta High. On the surface that was good and well for everyone who saw. But he knew his love for the run went deeper. Sure, track running, street running, and even that little trail behind the school was all okay, but trails – true trails – were what he wanted, what he needed, and New Salem had them. Besides, when was he closer to the trails than after work? Never. New Salem was near three miles from home. He was never closer, and so he thought, plenty of time for a loop through the upper section even going easy, two if I fly.
He questioned it now, as he ran, panicked. What have I done? But the trails had pulled at him, hadn’t they? Calling to him to come run, never mind the setting sun, they beckoned… You have time. Never mind the rules, you have a watch… plenty of time. No, it wasn’t his fault. He’d had plenty of time to beat the streetlights. But he knew it was a lie. Time or no, the watch had held fast to his wrist, still did now, ticking off the seconds until the streetlights would come on. Yet never once had he spared it a glance. Not once did he weigh the sun in the sky as it sank d
angerously close to dusk. He knew a truth. Time hides from him on the trail and he loses it… loses himself. And everything else? Everything else falls away. It was his fault. It was all his fault. Why? he pled with himself. How? Dammed fool! You’re itching to be whipped!
