by Bella Ward
© Copyright 2019 by (Bella Ward) - All rights reserved. In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved. Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Guardians of the magic realm
Book 2
A New World Order Romance Story
By. Bella Ward
Chapter One
Her parents were being slaughtered in front of her eyes. Odessa writhed under the floorboards of their family’s cabin as she watched the hunter, with the scar on his face, slice through her mother’s neck, as another hunter knocked her father out, stabbing him a few times before all breath left him, as well. The athame fell from her father’s hand and it hit the ground, it’s metal clanking against the wood floor. Her mother’s amulet looked cold around her neck where just minutes earlier, it had been glowing orange as she chanted in the ancient tongue. Odessa felt like she had seen all of it before, either in a dream or in real life.
The darkness fell over the cabin as the men ransacked it, looking for something, she didn’t know what. The men didn’t take the athame, amulet, or any other possessions, they destroyed everything and left, but the darkness remained.
Odessa waited a while before she moved the wood flooring back by putting her hand in the knothole she had been watching through. She climbed out, just inches from her mother’s body. She cried hard for her parents while she sat between them. Her young body quivered, and she shook with tears. She felt her strength falter as she lowered herself to the floor, resting her head on her mother’s chest.
Slowly, Odessa began to gain strength, but with being only five, she didn’t know what she should do. After a while, she took the athame from the floor and amulet from around her mother’s neck and hid them under her mattress on the floor. She tried to clean the house a bit, but with everything she picked up, she thought of her parents and cried.
Odessa stayed in the cabin with her parents for three days, still feeling the darkness seeping through her skin. She tried to stay positive, hoping her parents would wake any minute. On day five, the door began to rattle, and Odessa feared it was the men again. She quickly made her way back to her room where she sat against the door, knowing she did not have time to make it into the spot under the floor again; plus, there was no one to lower the wood back over her.
The door broke free of its hinges as Odessa could hear footsteps coming into the house. Voices carried through the cabin as her name floated on the wind. She cracked her door to see police and a woman with a badge that read CPS “child protective services” on her shirt. The woman with the badge noticed the little girl peeking out of the door.
“Come here little one,” the woman called out. “I’m sorry little one that this has happened.”
“I’m scared,” Odessa called out.
“I know little one,” the lady smiled at her. “We will take you with us to get you some help.”
Odessa slipped out of her room and moved closer to the woman, stepping over her mother’s hand as she went. She walked up to the woman and began to cry as the CPS lady hugged her close.
A backpack was given to Odessa when she made her way back into her room. She slipped the athame, amulet, a family photo, that was torn by the men who killed her parents, and a few items of clothes into the pack.
As CPS drug her out of her house, she looked back one last time to see the police bagging up her parents, who had been gone nearly a week. The darkness followed her while she was being pulled away.
Odessa woke up breathing hard as she sat in the bed. She looked around the room to see what was going on. Hamachi was asleep next to her on the bed while Pypachi was sleeping on the floor beside her.
She ran her hands through her long hair, sweat dripping off her brow. The darkness had been defeated nearly six months before, making Hamachi and Odessa legally married in the eyes of their people, for almost that long.
Odessa toyed with waking Hamachi but instead took to breathing in the earth, trying to pull in her magic. She had not had a nightmare since coming to Camp Sacred Moon and had not felt the darkness anywhere in six months since the great war when Hunundi passed his magic to Hamachi.
She was concerned about her dream, watching her parents die. It was all true, she had already lived the experience once. She didn’t know why it was suddenly happening all over again, in her dream.
After a few minutes of trying to breathe, and not being able to breath overwhelmed by the fear, Odessa got up. She put a tracksuit on, followed by running shoes, and snuck out of the hut. A few steps out, Pypachi emerged, sure to follow her. He had not left her side since the day of the great darkness, and she didn’t expect he would ever, again.
They began to run together as the moon was high in the sky. She hoped to shake off the intense feeling the dream left on her. As she ran, she brought forth some of her magic, which felt a bit erratic.
Since Hunundi had unbound her magic six months earlier, she had not had any trouble using it and had perfected her shifting long before.
With her magic failing her for reasons she didn’t understand, she resulted in speeding up even faster, using her anger to shift into her great pure-black wolf. Pypachi, full grown, kept up with her while she ran through the lines of the protective shields.
The darkness was still defeated, which they hoped would always stay gone, but still, the protective forces were up in case there were hunters still out there. There was that worry even though the camp had been moved, altogether.
Odessa and Pypachi ran and ran, as fast as they could, until both the wolves were exhausted. Slowly, they made their way back to their hut where Odessa shifted back before entering their home.
She took a quick shower before laying down. After hours, she was still awake, with thoughts of the darkness and seeing her parents killed again, right before her eyes.
Chapter Two
After several hours of trying to sleep, Odessa slipped out of bed once again. Her stomach was not feeling well, and her head was spinning with thoughts from her dreams. She sat at their table, then she pulled five bowls out of a cabinet.
Odessa placed the five bowls around the table. Since she was an elder, even at such a young age, one of the up sides was being able to produce deep magic. She had planned on finding out what her dream was all about.
She placed the bowls in a circle around the table, pulling a cloth out from a basket under it. Odessa sat the cloth on the table, opening it to reveal her father’s athame. She took the athame off the cloth and laid it in the center of the table, making sure the five bowels were in a perfect circle around the blade.
Hunundi had gifted Hamachi with his magic, but after he had sacrificed himself, The Council went into his hut and found that all his books, were meant for Odessa. He knew somehow that he was going to sacrifice himself and had planned on what gifts he was going to bestow on his people. Odessa had gotten all his books and she had been studying each of them diligently. The five bowls deep magic was one of the first things she had become familiar with because that was the first magic, she had witnessed Hunundi do.
Odessa put a bit of earth in the first bowl, healing water in the second, a flame in the third, and a tiny twister in the fourth. She flipped the fourth bowl over to encase the small storm, so it would stay put. Her first time trying that form of deep magic on her own, Odessa forgot to catch the twister, and let it loose in their home. Hamachi had to catch it before it got bigger.
She cut her palm with the athame, letting her blood d
rip into the bowl. The feeling of her blood falling was freeing as it dripped crimson into the fifth dish. She was bound and determined to figure out what her dream meant.
Something was wrong, and she wanted to find out what. The world around her began to swirl as she realized she was more nauseous than she thought she was. Hoping to hold off her sick stomach, she ran a drip of healing water over her cut, and the slit in her palm closed.
“Pypachi,” she whistled for her wolf to come.
He got up off the floor beside her, then came up to her, resting on her right foot. He stood stoically, making himself of use to Odessa. She proceeded to use him as her item for the deep magic.
She concentrated hard and began to chant in the ancient tongue. She could feel her magic strengthen just a bit, but she felt something was blocking her. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
She tried harder to access her magic in order to spin the athame, but it would not budge. From behind, she felt arms wrap around her as a soft blue aura glowed.
“Good morning dear,” she spoke. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he smiled against her ear. “I had a dream.”
“A good one, or a bad one?” she asked.
“All good,” he whispered, as he tightened his grip on her arms from behind.
“Tell me about it,” Odessa said.
“I will in time…if it comes true,” he laughed. “Now, concentrate.”
She centered her body in order to join her magic with Hamachi’s. She could feel the heat of his magic flow around her with the cool light that flickered through the room. Odessa and Pypachi began to glow red, which joined with Hamachi’s blue, casting purple on the walls and ceiling.
She began to chant the words of her ancestors, as a feeling she had never experienced came rushing forth. Quickly, she broke forth from the chant, pushing Pypachi and Hamachi away from her. She ran fast to the bathroom, where she expelled stomach acid into the toilet.
She had not eaten since the day before, but still, she threw up everything in her system, until, she heaved dry air. She continued to heave dry air when Hamachi came up behind her, rubbing her back, and tying her hair up and out of the way.
After finishing, Hamachi wiped her face with a rag while she sat on the floor, exhausted from the event. After a while, she let Hamachi help her up. On the way back to the table, she told him about her nightmare.
Worry creased his face as they sat together, across from each other, at the table. Hamachi took Hunundi’s beads out form the basket under the table and put them around his neck.
He slit his palm with the athame, letting his blood mix with hers in the fifth bowl. He didn’t worry about healing his palm as one quick word that came with Hunundi’s magic caused his palm to heal. They both joined hands as their magic flowed together purple all around them once again. Pypachi came over and sat on her right foot.
Together they began to chant the ancient words as they lifted bowl one with their minds. They did the ceremony up until they released the twister on the bowl of boiling blood.
The ceremony was used for different reasons. The night it released the bound magic of the amulet and athame was one of them. The ceremony was also known to cure certain illnesses and was part of the process of asking for knowledge from the deep magic, which is what they were doing.
The twister rose from the glass bowl, rising to the middle of the table, it hovered over them both as it enlarged itself, growing larger and larger. Images of the darkness flashed through the tornado. As it showed it trapped that darkness a box of metal and wood. The darkness beat at the box, trying to get loose from the binds that confined it.
A beautiful woman with raven hair walked up to the box and began chanting dark magic over it…releasing it from its confinement. When the darkness spread around in the image, Odessa and Hamachi watched with wide eyes, at what was happening. The darkness seeped in and out of the woman as it encircled her; around and around it grew bigger. The woman turned and looked at them through the wind as if seeing them.
“I’m in control now,” the woman screamed.
The woman lifted her hands as the tornado broke, sending Odessa, Hamachi, and Pypachi flying back. The tornado broke apart as the wind whipped through their hut until it subsided.
They laid side by side in minimal pain and they looked into each other’s eyes, with fear, at what they had just seen.
Chapter Three
They got dressed for the day before greeting their people. Since Hunundi had sacrificed himself, the people had relied on Hamachi for solutions to their problems, and even more so the couple, because they were stronger together than separate. Hamachi was an elder because of the beads he was given, and the magic that came with them. Pypachi had made Odessa an elder when he allowed himself to become her deep magic item when she had healed Hamachi from a near-fatal accident.
They walked out of their hut finding a woman, a fellow shifter who lived at Camp Sacred Moon, waiting for them, in front of their fire pit.
“Rainnah,” Odessa smiled as she hugged the woman. “What do you need today?”
“My brother has gone missing,” the woman called Rainnah cried.
“When was Jarneth last seen?” Hamachi asked.
“Last night,” she wiped a tear. “He had a bad dream and went for a run; he likes to run in the outskirts, on the other side of the shield. I went looking this morning when he didn’t return home and couldn’t find him.”
“We will go look for him,” Hamachi assured her as he and Odessa took off running, along with Pypachi, who was following, not that far behind.
Together, they ran towards the woods in the section where Jarneth liked to run. It was beyond the side where the protective barrier was, but Jarneth and other young shifters liked to run into the desert a bit in order to get a small taste of freedom, not that any of them were trapped there.
Odessa and Hamachi shifted into their wolf forms, as they ran with Pypachi beside them. They made their way towards the outskirts of the safety bounds. They hesitated before crossing the line of safety. For six months, they had been able to cross the line without feeling the oily seeping darkness of the shadow, but the swirling twister of doom made them see things they could not un-see and it made them fear what they might feel or find, once reaching the outskirts of the boundary.
Sure enough, as soon as they crossed the protective spell, a deep seeping darkness fell over them, causing them to stop in their tracks.
Pypachi stopped since he could sense the deep evil that was all around them. Together they fought the feeling as they ran through the desert. The people of the camp knew they weren’t supposed to be more than a mile away from camp, so in order to find Jarneth they knew they shouldn’t have to look far.
They ran together until the darkness fell as a thick black mist on the earth. Not as dark as the day they defeated it, but as a nearly transparent black cloud that had fallen on the ground.
The wind swirled around and around as the black mist whipped around with it until an odd green aura mixed with it; until the aura went out altogether. They knew Jarneth’s aura read green, causing them to worry about what was transpiring in the cloud.
The two shifters ran in circles around the darkness, nipping at the thick strands of evil along with Pypachi, until it vanished completely, leaving the wolf of Jarneth lying dead on the ground.
Odessa shifted back to human form while Hamachi stayed alert, as the shifted black and grey wolf. She leaned in and felt at the neck of the large russet beast laying on the ground. She confirmed that he, in fact, was dead. It was confusing to them, though, because there was not one single opened wound, on the beast.
The whirl of black reminded Odessa of the vortex that tried to drain the very breath out of the shifters, wolves, and hunters alike the day of the great battle.
Pypachi instinctively went over and sat on Odessa’s right food. She sucked in a breath, but had trouble dividing her magic from the deep fear th
at held thick in the air. She sucked in once more before calling to the deep magic. It took everything she had to change Jarneth back to human form. Once he was back into human form, Odessa loaded him onto Hamachi’s back.
Before shifting back, Odessa leaned over and heaved dry air onto the ground as a trickle of blood flooded down her nose. She wiped her mouth and nose with a torn piece of her shirt before shifting back into wolf form and running alongside Pypachi and Hamachi back into the safety of the shield.
Once they got back to their camp, Odessa shifted, lifting the dead shifter off Hamachi. Minutes later, with his sister crying beside them, Hamachi and Odessa began the descent ritual to release the spirit of their fallen comrade, as well as to pray for a sign as to what killed Jarneth. Also, on their mind was a desire to find what might be lurking in the shadows, awaiting any shifter who might be caught outside the protective boundaries.
Chapter Four
Despite the descent ceremony, the spirit of Jeaneth would not leave his body. Odessa hoisted his body higher over the flames of the fire as she quoted the ancient ceremony. She had remembered word for word, what she was supposed to say, to complete the process and was certain that should have worked, but was curious why it didn’t.
Using magic, Odessa lowered Jarneth’s body to the ground. She knew his spirit needed to be at rest. Until it was, his spirit would lay in his dormant body, without release, causing his present and future lineage’s magic to rest in the unreleased spirit.
After hours more of trying to figure out what had happened, The Council intervened, adding their magic to the mix. None of them could break the seal the darkness had put on his body. Rainnah began to panic as she tried to throw her own magic in, with no success. Rainnah and Jarneth were the only living members of their family, that they knew of, meaning Rainnah would have been the only one affected by her brother’s spirit being locked in his body. That meant that if what happened to him, happened to others, their people might be doomed as well.
