The Legacy (The Darkness Within Saga Book 1)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
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The Darkness Within Saga:
The Legacy
by JD Franx
The Darkness Within Saga:
The Legacy
Author: JD Franx
Copyright (c) JD Franx
Registered Copyright 2016
Cover Illustration and Design (c) 2016 Joel Lagerwall
Editing by Casa Cielo
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9953363-0-8
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means with out the expressed written permission from the author. This novel is a work of fiction: names, places, characters, and all events are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
The dedication for this book can go to only one person. My wife. As the one to pay the price for every hour I put into this book(and there were a lot), for every valuable minute I missed at her side that I wish I could have back, this book is for her, for you. As the main inspiration for Ember's character, I have watched my wife grow and change from the quiet, shy girl I met all those years ago, to the beautiful, amazing, and powerful woman she is now. I couldn't help but honour my wife's sacrifices over the years to our family, but more importantly to me, by modelling Ember's character after her. Ember is the never-surrender, sacrifice all for those important to her, just like my wife—though I doubt she will ever forgive me for making Ember's eyes green instead of brown for plot purposes. To you, my Queen, and to what ever the future may hold for us and for our family. This book would have never happened without you. I would have never happened without you. I really do hope you enjoy the final story, because it is for you.
Chapter One
The gods have not looked our way in a long time. It has been up to Man and Elvehn-kind to defend our world. The approach of the ominous Black Sun will once again produce a magic user Talohna has rarely seen in five thousand years: a DeathWizard. As the Blood Kingdoms’ only ArchWizard, dealing with corrupted magic users is my responsibility.
The last one to reach maturity lived well before my time and it took the combined forces of many kingdoms to defeat her. Tens of thousands died as she released every fiend imaginable from the bowels of Perdition. Her death spell tore the land apart, killing many more.
There have been three born since that time. We have managed to keep their births and deaths hidden from public knowledge, but they were not newborn children. Just shy of their teen years, they nevertheless caused the deaths of many—including their own families—before we stopped them.
This time, however, myself, Kasik, and Brother Donis hope to be present at its birth. Our laws state that the child must die within minutes of the Black Sun’s end. But how can I allow such a thing to happen to a babe who has just drawn its first breath? Wizards are supposed to protect, teach, and guide the young. I fear that no matter what we do, this will be the start of the end. My sworn duty to protect the innocent wars with my sworn duty to protect the realm. Under normal circumstances, they are one and the same but no longer. This time, there is no right answer.
ARCHWIZARD GIDDEON ZIRAKUS’
PERSONAL JOURNAL, 5005 PC
THE FORSAKEN LANDS
NORTHERN BLOOD KINGDOMS
Surrounded by a world of darkness, Talohna’s only ArchWizard, Giddeon Zirakus, was at a complete and utter loss. Caught in a void of sightless, senseless black, confusion quickly set in. Unable to remember how he got there and not able to move, he began to wonder if he was dead, but then colours, smells and sounds came rushing back. As if blasted through the ether, the world slid into place under and around him with a nauseating tug at his senses.
It was a world he failed to recognize.
He found himself standing in the middle of a monstrous battle, being fought in what looked like the darkest corner of the deepest level of Perdition. Wondering if he was losing his mind, Giddeon stared as men and women fought with a wild-eyed frenzy that could only come from desperation. It was a feeling he knew well from his own days on the front lines.
He tried desperately to make sense of what he was seeing. A dark tower loomed in the distance as lightning pounded the cone-shaped roof. The battle raged with the ringing clash of metal, the sizzle and sharp, nose-tingling stench of magic, and the ever-constant, primal screams of the dying. Siege weapons thumped with the release of their loads; balls of burning pitch howled, and heavily-enchanted steel ballista bolts trailed cones of whispering frost as they whistled overhead.
From the tower’s front gate to where Giddeon stood, a distance of almost a mile, the pitched fighting encompassed tens of thousands of terrified warriors, wizards, and archers. He watched, horrified, as a small group of Salzaran fighters fell beneath the claws of dozens of Lower Brethren turned loose from the blackened halls of Perdition’s Nine Hells. The Brethren were creatures that hadn’t walked Talohna’s soil since the DemonKind Wars some thirteen thousand years in the past. Giddeon’s mind nearly buckled under the stress of what he was seeing. Any normal man’s mind would have.
Forcing the mental pressure aside, he winced as magical explosions rocked his body. To his left, Elvehn mages and elemental sorcerers cast magic unlike anything he’d ever seen, spells whose words were lost to the pages of ancient history. Long, snakelike whips of flame snapped out, snaring demons and burning them to ash. Giddeon stared in awe as yet another wave of Hell’s denizens renewed the attack.
A troop of KiPara, the most powerful of the Lower Brethren’s demonic races, rushed the Elvehn mystics. Leather and flesh were no match for horns and Hell-forged weaponry. Giddeon cringed as a lone KiPara bonecaster followed the assault, tossing ornately-carved bones to the dirt where wild energies and long, blood-red chains covered in barbed spikes burst from the earth. The dark magic leapt forward, twisting and spinning as it snared the Elvehn so
rcerers, tearing them apart, while the rest of the Brethren chased down those who fled.
Arrows whistled through the air above Giddeon’s head, drawing his attention to the right. For the first time, he noticed the Elloryan Royal Archers as they loosed volleys of their legendary arrows. Each four-bladed arrowhead tore through several fiends at a time. Demons across the blood-soaked plain fell, dead and wounded. Hooded warlocks from DormaSai’s storied White Cabal spelled Elloryan arrows, which leapt from their bows faster than Giddeon’s eyes could follow. Demons melted from the inside out after every strike. The Cabal’s magical poison ate through flesh and armour as easily as hot steel moved through ice. The two countries’ infamous hatred of each other fell to the wayside as they fought a common evil.
This, too, seemed doomed to failure. Winged Brethren from Perdition’s sixth dimension dropped from the skies, banking into the archers’ ranks. Sharpened nails and jagged, bony wings sliced through archer and warlock alike as blood sprayed and limbs cartwheeled away through the air.
Giddeon had to swallow hard to stop his gorge from rising as he watched the massacre of men and women from so many different countries. Eyes wide with terror, the ground beneath him began to shake. Frantic, he looked in every direction for the source of the attack, or at least for a safe place to run, but a violent shift in the earth tossed him to the ground like a child’s discarded toy. Unable to move, he cursed as the ground cracked, tearing open ahead.
The rent widened rapidly, cutting a path straight towards him. With every ounce of strength he had, he forced himself to stand, but it was too late. The earth opened beneath him. He screamed as he plummeted. Above him, the earth closed.
Giddeon finally understood what he’d experienced. It was a dream, a vision of possible events. But whether past or future, he wasn’t sure.
CASCADE WIZARD’S TOWER
CORYNTH, CETHOS
Saleece Zirakus was doing her best to tidy her father’s tower as he took the opportunity to catch up on sleep. Giddeon had slept little in recent weeks, so the few hours he could get before going to the university would be a gift from the gods. Cataloguing and labelling the new alchemy supplies, the fourteen-year-old apprentice hadn’t heard a sound in the tower for nearly two hours. She dipped her feather in the inkwell, wrote the words Swamp Newt Claws on a label, and stuck it to the side of a small glass jar.
Giddeon’s sudden scream of terror surprised her and she dropped the jar, running from the alchemy lab before it shattered on the stone floor. She raced to her father’s bedchamber several floors up.
“Father!” she cried. “Are you all right?” Pushing the cloth partition aside, she raced to his bedside. Giddeon sat straight up in his large four-post bed, the canopy screens tied back. He panted, covered in sweat. Saleece’s hand shot to her mouth. It looked like her father had aged a hundred years. “What happened?” she asked, approaching slowly. “Was it the dream again?”
He pulled the covers back and slid his feet to the floor. Looking up at his only child, the little girl he had found abandoned so long ago, he smiled to reassure her. “Yes, Saleece. I think… I just saw the Cataclysm.”
“Father?”
“I saw it. The end of it, anyway. You can’t imagine what she did. We can’t let it happen again. By the gods, we can’t let it happen again.”
“We won’t. It’s why we’re gathering everyone. We’ll find a way. Now, come. You must get ready to go see Uncle Oripar.”
Shaking his head, Giddeon seemed to finally dispel the last remnants of what he’d seen. “Thank you, Saleece. I’ll go now. Perhaps he’ll be willing to help us.”
“I know he will, Father. You two are like brothers, and family helps family.”
“Of course. Don’t forget, you have to go speak with Brother Donis while I’m at the Eye.”
They soon left the study, each going their separate ways.
UNIVERSITY OF MAGIC
CORYNTH
Dressed for the day and having regained the colour and composure of which the morning’s dream had robbed him, Giddeon Zirakus walked the halls of Inara’s University of Magic. At six feet tall, he towered over the few students not in class as they scurried by him bringing a smile to his weary heart. Though he was strong for a wizard, Giddeon hadn’t been blessed with a warrior’s muscled body; instead his fit frame matched everything else about him, from the long, grey hair on his head, pulled straight back into a tight ponytail, to his proud and proper wizard’s beard. Plaited into a number of braids similar to the Northman kreeda, his beard, hung to just below his waist. Dressed in heavily enchanted, but modest purple and white-lined robes, he seldom wore the heavy hood attached to the soft leather outfit.
On his way to see his lifelong friend, Giddeon couldn’t help but daydream about the years he’d spent at the university as a young wizard, for it had been his home since he was eight years old. The university was named after the goddess of magic, Lady Inara. Most students, however, affectionately referred to the school as The Eye. When looking down from atop the two hundred-foot-tall circular tower, the complex oval buildings that made up the bulk of the University formed the perfect representation of an eye. The memories of sneaking to the tower’s top floor with Oripar for the first time just to see the ‘eye’ drifted through his mind. He smiled at the foolish endeavour that earned them both kitchen duty for a month.
Thousands of years old, the Eye had seen wizards of all stripes pass through its gates. The three-story main building was divided into classrooms, laboratories, and other areas where students were schooled in the language of magic, elemental training, healing, defence, battle magic, and even weapon training—magic wasn’t all powerful. The first three floors of the twenty-story tower housed a dormitory for children as young as three, and those adults who had yet to reach the status of master wizard. In its middle levels, master wizards had their living quarters and workrooms, while the tower’s sub-levels served as the alchemy department’s laboratory, and featured Talohna’s most impressive alchemical garden. Off limits to most of the university, the top two floors of the tower were occupied by the Cethosian Wizards’ Council.
The Eye stood as a symbol of Lady Inara’s magic, her mystical eye of wisdom. It was the foremost symbol of magical training in Talohna. Only the Ageless Library of the Arcane, located in the Southern Kingdom country of DormaSai, was more impressive.
Giddeon knew magic well, having studied it for almost two centuries. Oripar Lightfoot had been with him every step of the way, right up until Giddeon had become ArchWizard. At that time Oripar had decided to stay on and teach the next generation of mystics at the university. When he wasn’t at the Eye, Oripar could often be found in WhiteVale Cove, in the Elvehn country of Ta’Ceryss. His family owned a fleet of merchant-protection ships that sailed from there on a regular basis. His wife and eldest son, Kiirein, ran the business in his absence.
Giddeon knew that Oripar would be with the youngest students who were just beginning their training. Arriving at the classroom, he entered and leaned against the wall to watch. Each of the large room’s twenty desks were occupied by an eager young student. Social standing meant nothing here, at least not officially. The power of magic was considered a gift granted by Inara, and she didn’t care if you were a street beggar’s daughter or the son of a king; you were gifted with whatever she gave you. The strength of every magic user depended on how much power that person could draw from his or her bond without becoming exhausted. It was called a mystic’s
. The more affinity for magic one had, the more power he or she could handle before tiring. Hard work and study could enhance these abilities to a certain point, but other than years of experience there was no other way to increase one’s power. Wizards grew in strength the longer they lived; any other way was considered immoral and usually illegal.
It took only a moment for Oripar to notice Giddeon at the back of the room. “Well, class,” he said, “it seems we have a very special visitor today. The ArchWizard, Giddeo
n Zirakus, has stopped by.” Oripar stood just short of average in stature, with long black hair that he usually wore braided tightly down his back. Closing in on his second century of life, he was Talohna’s most respected Elvehn scholar and Giddeon’s closest friend. “ArchWizard, perhaps you would like to answer some questions?”
Giddeon had known this would happen. Every friend he came to see here would jump at the chance for the realm’s only ArchWizard to give a talk. Walking to the front of the room, he smiled at the eager young faces. “It would be my pleasure, Master Lightfoot. Who would like to go first?”
Every child’s hand darted into the air—every child but one.
For this reason, Giddeon chose him first. “How about you, young man? Is there anything you would like to know?” Walking over to his desk, he saw the boy shake his head. “How about you just tell me your name instead?” Giddeon asked, crouching beside him.
“My name is Zaddyk, ArchWizard sir, and I don’t want to know about magic.”
“Hello, Zaddyk. You can call me Giddeon. Fair enough?”
“Yes, Master Giddeon, sir,” the boy said, clearly quite shy or scared.
Giddeon put a hand on his shoulder. “Zaddyk, if you don’t mind me asking, why do you not want to learn magic?”
“Magic killed my ma and pa. I don’t want to kill anybody, Master Giddeon. I don’t want to be here.” He whispered the last few words so only Giddeon could hear: “I know what will happen.”
The ArchWizard frowned.
“Oripar, come here for a minute.” Giddeon gently lifted the boy’s chin with his fingers. “Look me in the eyes, Zaddyk, until I tell you I’m done. I promise that I won’t hurt you, all right?”
When the boy nodded, Giddeon glanced at the professor, who now stood over his shoulder. “Watch his eyes,” Giddeon said, and spoke the words of an old reveal spell. “Sja Megin.”
Almost instantly, black wisps curled and swam across the surfaces of Zaddyk’s eyes. They faded as Giddeon’s spell dissipated.