Eyes of the Eternal (Realms of Rebirth Book 1)

by G. E. White

  Surina sighed. “If we can’t find the culprit and the stolen pieces of the star, the Solar magi are going to march on the Temple of Artemis declaring war in order to get it back.”

  “War? I knew Reeves blamed us for it, but I would think he’d have more sense than to attack us. Especially with the charges that are being laid against his own temple. You must know we don’t have it,” she urged.

  “I know,” the younger woman assured.

  Jared steepled his fingers in thought. “By themselves the pieces of the star aren’t of much use.”

  Flashing back to the private conversation he’d had with Sebastien before leaving for the Solar temple, Quinn bit the inside of his cheek determined not to say anything. As far as he knew there was no point in mentioning the other roll of the stars.

  “Only when the three pieces are forged back together can a person make a wish. Now the break-ins between the Temple of Demeter and the Temple of Apollo were a couple months apart, but I don’t think our thief is going to wait that long this time,” Jared said.

  “Why do you think that?” asked Quinn.

  “Because he knows we know about him, or at least know about the burglary. Whoever he is, he’s done a good job of covering his tracks and creating confusion by using various garb from the different temples. But now that we’re aware of the thefts he doesn’t want to give us the time to better the security around the last piece, or worse hide it. He’ll strike soon, probably in the next day or two.”

  The demi-god at the table smiled softly into her napkin, “You think we can catch him in the act.”

  “That’s the idea,” he confirmed. “As long as we have at least one of us on guard for the next few nights we’re bound to see him if not out-right catch him.”

  “Sounds like a half decent plan,” Surina agreed. “And to be honest at this point I don’t know else we can do. I would suggest swapping Polaris for a replica, but we don’t have the time to make one.”

  Quinn was already starting to flag in his chair and as he was still not ready to deal with any part of this situation on his own they decided he would man the second watch alongside Surina.

  They continued with their meal, the calm silence only broken by the odd bit of polite chatter, mostly between Surina and Edelias as the two women caught up. Quinn turned to gaze at Jared who had been oddly quiet since the plan for the night had been formed. He was puzzled to see a sad expression on the older man’s face as he looked intently at the High Priestess. The man looked on as she gestured wildly with her hands describing some prank one of the initiates had pulled during dinner one night.

  Quinn followed his gaze to the elderly woman wondering what it was that he saw that made Jared look so sad.

  As night fell the three of them camped out in front of Polaris; several magi stood guard on the walkways above.

  The three were given bedding to lessen the chill of the stone floor they had to sleep on. Growing up in various cramped houses Quinn had slept on his fair share of hard uncomfortable beds and quickly slipped into an uneasy sleep.

  Quinn once again found himself being dragged through the dark and unrecognizable streets of his dream. Yet as the he felt himself guided through the strange scene everything appeared to him with more clarity than Quinn ever remembered.

  The face and figure of the man who tugged his child-self through the streets of the city was clear as day.

  The fingers that curled around Quinn’s small hand were long and thin, almost skeletal in how tightly the skin encased the digits. He wasn’t a horribly tall man, appearing a couple inches short of six feet. His face, like the rest of his body, was gaunt and pale as if ill or half starved. His mousy blonde hair fell lank against his skull, but the slightly sunken blue eyes behind his rectangular frame glasses were kind, yet determined.

  Quinn felt his heart swell and lurch as the trust that he felt for this man was absolute, but he still had no idea who this man was.

  As always, the sound of dogs chasing them spurred the pair onto the bridge. There they were once again cornered by the pursuer and one of his dogs.

  While many features of the figure in front of him were still murky one thing was painfully clear; this was no adult, but neither was it a child.

  It was a boy, of that he was certain, probably just entering puberty if his size indicated anything.

  But the most striking change in the dream was the presence of another party. While his sickly-looking guardian conversed with the silent boy Quinn’s eyes were drawn to a woman, neither young nor old, who stood just over the boy’s shoulder.

  Quinn took in her features, surprised that he had not noticed her before. Wispy white-blonde hair fell in long curtains about her face. She stood about a foot taller than the young man in front of her. However, it was her eyes that truly captured Quinn’s attention; both sad and empty yet the most vibrant colors of orange and purple – a sunset before the day dies.

  He peered up at her as she stared back, silent and unmoving. He was drawn back to the events of the dream as his guardian knelt down in front of him and placing a loving kiss on his brow.

  Quinn clenched his hands becoming once again aware of the plush stuffed animal held in his other hand. He briefly glanced down at it and though it wasn’t in sharp detail he could tell that it was a bird of some sort – white and yellow – a goose or duck perhaps?

  The child-Quinn was looking up at the man, whose eyes swam with tears of relief and sadness, and a question entered his young mind: had this man been his father?

  He opened his mouth to ask but suddenly found himself lifted over the rails of the bridge and plummeting toward the waters below.

  Quinn’s eyes snapped open as he felt a hand on his shoulder gently shaking him.

  Glancing up he saw the smooth dark lenses of Surina’s glasses staring back at him, so different from the eyes of the woman in his dream.

  Though he had never seen Surina’s eyes he knew that she couldn’t have been the one in his dream; the hair was all wrong… however, Surina did have stripes of light almost silver hair woven into her dark waves.

  Quinn shook his head free from the lingering and forming theories in time to see Jared hunker down into his own bedding for the remainder of the night.

  “Our turn?” the teen yawned.

  “Unfortunately,” the woman replied, completely alert.

  She sat on the edge of the fountain fiddling with her protean watch, transforming it one moment into a sword, the next a mace before finally stopping on a bow. She tested the strength of the weapon; Quinn’s eyes watching intently as an arrow materialized out of thin air as she drew the string back.

  “Obviously, nothing happened,” he surmised.

  “Jared said it was painfully dull.”

  Her comment was punctuated by a soft snore from the Death God.

  “I hate people who can do that,” she grumbled, relaxing the string of the bow causing the arrow to disappear, which earned her a confused look from the teen. “Fall asleep at the drop of a hat,” she elaborated.

  “Did you not sleep well?” he asked.

  Surina lay her bow across her lap, “I slept okay I guess. What about you? You were kind of mumbling in your sleep.”

  Quinn stood and dawdled over to sit a few feet away from Surina at the pool’s edge. “I keep having this dream,” he explained. “It’s always the same and I’m pretty sure that the events in it actually happened…”

  “But?” she prodded.

  “I don’t know anyone there. There’s a sickly-looking man who I think I might be related to, and the two of us are being chased by a teenager and his dogs.”

  Surina pursed her lips in thought. “What do they look like?”

  “I don’t know. The boy’s features are always fuzzy. As for the dogs, I never really see them, but I can hear them. Every time all of us end up on a bridge, but tonight there was someone else there – a woman. Her hair was so blonde it was almost white and her eyes were molten orange and purpl
e. I’ve never seen eyes like that.”

  Surina frowned. “I have.”

  “You have?” Quinn asked in disbelief.

  She nodded. “You’re right, orange and purple are a peculiar color for eyes – only one person has ever been known to have them.”

  “Who?”

  “Mnemosyne. In this incarnation, she goes by the name Seraphina. Human mythology says she’s a titan but she’s actually a lesser god whose realm of dominion is memory.”

  “Memory,” he breathed in dawning horror, “So she’s the reason I have no memories before that time?”

  “Yes and no,” she said reluctantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, first of all, we don’t know for sure if that’s exactly what happened. Mnemosyne doesn’t just take someone’s memory away for shits and giggles. If anyone truly understands the importance of memories, it would be her. She wouldn’t take them unless she had a reason or if someone above her asked her to.”

  Quinn hung his head and absently picked at the non-existent lint on his jeans. “You think someone put her up to it?”

  “Most likely,” she said glumly. “But perhaps she had a good reason.”

  “A good reason?” he hissed. “What reason could possibly give her the right to take away my past?”

  “Some things are better left forgotten,” the young demi-god reasoned, the sorrowful tone of her voice not escaping Quinn’s notice.

  In that moment he felt his theories surrounding Surina’s connection to the temple of Artemis click into place – the way the initiates and magi would stop and stare, her familiarity with the other two temples, coupled with everyone’s reluctance to mention what was painfully obvious.

  While Surina had been a Lunar magi something bad had occurred, something that left Surina an outcast among the other magi. High Priestess Edelias and Sylvia appeared to be the only ones who didn’t whisper behind the young woman’s back.

  Putting aside his own questions about Mnemosyne and who might have ordered for his memories to be erased for the moment, Quinn focused on the woman in front of him; the one who had pulled him into this world in the first place.

  Looking at her face, still partly obscured by her glasses, the teen realized he didn’t really know anything about her, or any of the people he had been spending the past few days with. The life that he had laid out to follow before was a distant memory since the incident at the library three months ago. And any thoughts of trying to lead a quiet life inside the walls of the Cedar Hills Facility were long gone.

  Surina, Jared, Sebastien, Leo, all of these people, they were what his life would be from now on. They would become his friends, perhaps even his family; the least he could do was get to know them.

  “You said that some things are best left forgotten – you’re talking about your time here?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she returned defensively.

  Keeping his voice low so that the guards above wouldn’t hear he pressed on, “You’re a Lunar magi.”

  She fiddled with bow in her hands and shook her head, “Not anymore.”

  “But you were at one time… so what happened?”

  She turned her head toward Polaris which glittered above them and sighed.

  “There was never a time that I didn’t know about the gods and their role in the universe. My father was the Pashtun son of an incarnation of Artemis. He inherited some of her abilities and talents, which in turn were passed on to me. But I never met my grandmother – she died before I was born.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She wasn’t in the picture,” Surina sniffed. “I loved my father so I was really upset when he dropped me off here on my tenth birthday. He said it was time that I learned the teachings of Artemis. I barely saw him after that. He’d come to visit, but it was never long enough for me. So, for the next eight years I lived and trained here. Didn’t have many friends to speak of, so I focused on my studies and training: hunting, tracking, laying traps, lunar magics, archery, swordplay, the languages of animals, the power of the moon, I learned it all. I thought if I became a successful Lunar magi my dad would have to be proud of me.”

  She looked down to the bow in her lap as she recalled what happened next.

  “By the time I was eighteen, I achieved the rank of magi and even luckier for me the Temples of Artemis, Apollo and Demeter needed to fill the roles of the three houses that had just retired. They held a tournament where magi from all three temples competed for a spot in the Houses of Virgo, Leo or Gemini. Over two-hundred magi participated, only nine were chosen – I was one of them.”

  “I was so proud,” she said, but her tone reflected none of that pride. “I was the new Lunar representative for the House of Gemini. I couldn’t wait to tell my father, but I never got the chance.”

  Quinn leaned in listening intently.

  “It turned out he died the week of the tournament,” she revealed.

  “How?”

  “He was murdered in our home.”

  “I’m so sorry…” Quinn replied, shocked by her blunt statement.

  “Why? You had nothing to do with it.”

  “I know,” the teen said helplessly, “It’s just…”

  “It’s what people say,” she filled in.

  Quinn bobbed his head in agreement, “So that’s why you left?”

  “Actually no. If anything, his death made me want to stay. I wanted to find out what had happened, who was responsible. And being a part of the House of Gemini gave me an opportunity to gather information on the case that most people wouldn’t be privy to. I was part of that house for over four years and I had two of the best magi as my teammates. They were probably my best friends.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Well, all of us were human, which some people found a bit odd, but then all of us were descendants of our patron gods. First there was Victor Kurosawa, an Earthen magi from the Temple of Demeter. He’s as smart as they come and always thinks through everything he says and does. Out of the three of us he was the most level-headed. I had some unresolved anger issues at the time, but he always kept me in line. As for our Solar magi, he was something else. I don’t think I’ve met anyone as perpetually happy and pleasant as Lear Reeves.”

  Quinn felt a caterpillar of unease coil in his chest, “Reeves? You can’t mean…”

  “High Priest Reeves’s younger brother,” Surina filled in.

  “Obviously Lear’s pleasant demeanor isn’t a family trait,” the teen sneered.

  The woman chuckled darkly. “While I’ll admit Orion perpetually has a rod up his butt, he wasn’t always that hostile towards me. He never really liked me, but at least he respected me back then.”

  Quinn blinked in confusion but said nothing more, silently urging her to elaborate.

  “During a job in the First Realm Lear got hurt, really badly. We were cut off from any support and Victor didn’t have the ingredients needed to treat him. He couldn’t save him, but I could… too bad I screwed up.”

  “What do you mean?” he pressed.

  “I made a mistake in attempting to heal Lear and I killed him.”

  “You mean you couldn’t save him.”

  Surina shook her head. “He would have died if we did nothing, but what I did killed him quicker.”

  Quinn sat there in stunned silence.

  It had been a mistake; she had said so herself. She hadn’t meant to kill Lear; she was trying to help him. The whole thing had been an accident, the teen told himself. But then why did Surina look so guilty?

  “After that I left the House of Gemini and resigned as a Lunar magi. Victor returned to the Temple of Demeter and became an instructor there. He said he never blamed me for what happened, but in all these years he’s never tried to contact me. Since then the House of Gemini has been unrepresented. Some people think it’s cursed.”

  Quinn tucked a stray strand of blonde hair from his face as he mulled over Surina’s stor
y. He knew the pain and change that could come from a single mistake. The incident at the library had suddenly robbed him of his freedom and the future he had planned for himself. Yet in the end it led him to the life that he lived now; a life where he got to see and experience things that most people could only imagine.

  However, looking back at Surina’s experience he supposed that he didn’t have much of a right to compare his misfortune to her tragedy. His situation had turned out all right in the end. Surina’s had ended with one friend dead, another no longer speaking to her and her own belief that she was responsible for the whole thing.

  The thought brought Quinn’s mind back to the question he had before: What exactly was this mistake that Surina had made that led to Lear’s death?

  He opened his mouth to give voice to the question when Surina suddenly threw her hand up gesturing for silence. “Do you feel that?” she whispered.

  Quinn paused, his eyes drifting down to his arm at the strange tingling sensation that filled him. The fine blonde hairs on his arm pricked as they stood on end.

  ~ Chapter 22 ~

  The arrival of the intruder was neither flashy nor loud. He was just suddenly there. This time the figure dressed in the traditional green cloak of an Earthen magi. The thief clung spiderlike to the side of the etching, a crowbar-like instrument clasped in its hand, which he used to jimmy Polaris out of its fixture.

  His movements were viper quick not allowing Surina much time to react. By the time she was able to conjure, draw and release an arrow the Star was already in the hands of the thief.

  Yet the burglar was not fast enough to dodge the arrow while grabbing the star. A sharp cry exited his mouth as the projectile tore through the edge of his left bicep, the crowbar slipping from his fingers.

  "Drop it!" Surina commanded as the crook leapt down the floor, Polaris now tucked under their injured arm.

  The commotion roused Jared from his slumber. He quickly scrambled to his feet and summoned his scythe.

  The person shrunk back as both adults trained their weapons on him. Though still wielding Surina's old dagger Quinn stood back from the confrontation, not wanting to get in the way.