by Franc Ingram
His first steps into the corridor were shaky, but he was determined to keep going. The corridor took a sharp turn that made Leith think it must have followed the curve of the exterior of the tower. The further he moved into the hall the darkness thickened, and the stronger his sense of dread became. So intent was he on looking out for danger, he nearly missed the markings on the wall.
Four dash marks stood out on the wall. The more he looked at them the more they looked like claw marks. Were the marks just a numbering system for the corridors? If so, where were one and two? Leith just filed the marks in the back of his mind for future reference.
A fork in the road came up. Two choices. Leith tried to narrow down where the feeling of danger came from. It bounced around from everywhere and nowhere all at once, then flickered out with as much randomness as everything else.
Right. His dominant side, so he chose the right fork because he had no other criteria to go on. This corridor was marked eight. The big jump in numbers angered Leith but he pressed on. Time ticked away and he had others counting on him. Leith came across another side corridor, but he didn’t know whether to keep going, or take the turn.
A deep throated howl came from deep within the side corridor and Leith backed away from it, holding his dagger up, ready for the attack. He stood there for a good three minutes but nothing happened. He felt foolish standing there staring into nothing.
He didn’t understand. Using his powers had come so naturally to him before, but now when he needed them he couldn’t detect an animal that couldn’t have been more than a dozen feet in front of him. If Oleana were with him she would have said something clever that explained everything and fixed it all up.
Instead, all he had was the cold echo coming off the high, thick walls, and a vague sense in the back of his mind that Oleana was still alive even though he knew her time had to be limited. And worse yet he knew, because of their brief mind meld, that she had no life in reserve to call on when Cornelius ended her.
Her energy flowed through him, a sacrifice Leith would never have asked of her. No wonder Lorn couldn’t even look at him. Because of Leith his mother would never come back to him. Leith couldn’t waste that life on some stupid maze. He ran away from the noise and straight into a wall.
The placed was cursed, Leith thought. The last time he looked he had clear space, but now a solid wall stood where there was none seconds ago.
“Your mind playing tricks,” he insisted.
Leith went back, passing the corridor with the howl and back toward the fork. Apparently right was not the way to go. Leith walked and walked. The corridor circled around in a way he didn’t think it had before. He felt like he was going in a circle. Finally, he came upon an exit but his eyes caught the number on the wall. Twelve.
That couldn’t be. All he did was turn around and go back the way he’d come. He made sure he didn’t miss a side corridor. How could he have come back out on a mystery corridor? Where did twelve come from?
Leith searched for the other corridor that made up the fork, but it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, what he got was a splitting headache, as if some invisible drill was being tapped into his temples. Leith looked around terrified that a herd of ranta were going to descend on him with teeth and claws. Grabbing his head, Leith balled up, doing what he could to protect his face and neck.
Again, nothing came. Leith waited in agony, tasting the bitterness of his fear on his tongue. When Leith couldn’t take the wait anymore, he stood. Around him were four chambers. Two, five, seven, and nine. The impossibility of it scared Leith as much as the possibility of attack.
“How am I ‘posed to navigate a maze that changes shape when my eyes close?” Leith asked himself.
The pain in his head ebbed to a dull throbbing. It came from one distinct place. Corridor number two. Leith couldn’t be sure of how much time had passed. Couldn’t be sure of his own instincts. Couldn’t even be sure of what his eyes were telling him. What he did know was that he’d run away from that signal before, only to run into more trouble. He may have been simple, but he wasn’t stupid.
Leith chewed on his lower lip trying to summon up what courage he could muster. He ignored what his instincts told him and walked straight into danger, straight down corridor two. When he got more than a dozen steps into the corridor with no attack, Leith started to relax. For the first time since entering the maze he felt like he might actually be on the right track.
Corridor one came to a dead end with two choices in front of him. Corridor three veered off at a 45-degree angle to the right, and number four 45 degrees to the left. He’d tried four to no use, so he picked corridor three.
The sense of unease stayed with Leith. There was no real direction to it, as if he were in the middle of a nest of predators. Leith left Solon with what little he could carry and three certainties; Oleana would be there to guide him through whatever happened, his power would only increase, the road ahead would be dangerous. Now all he was left with was the danger. How he let himself be convinced anything was certain, he didn’t know.
Leith almost ran into the wall, his mind focused as it was on his internal conflict. He was presented with two choices again. He didn’t know how he had looped back around to corridor four, but it was staring him in the face, along with its cousin corridor five.
Leith first thought that maybe it was time to try four again, follow the linear path he was on, but something at the back of his mind said that wasn’t right. Some half-understood piece of knowledge, left over from the mind joining he’d experienced with the other Heirs of Eternity, told him there was another pattern he had to follow.
Leith followed five. Then seven, eleven, and finally he stood in front of thirteen. Thirteen was special. Thirteen had a door.
When Leith felt the familiar warning bell dancing across his skin, he thought nothing of it since his power had proved to be unreliable from the beginning of the trial. The door to thirteen opened into a shadowy room. Leith walked in before his eyes fully adjusted.
He got a face full of angry animal for his trouble. Back out in the light of the hallway, Leith got a look at his attacker. The animal looked like a cross between a muscular pig and a porcupine, with the only quills along its spine. Leith grabbed it around its neck, feeling an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
The creature’s jaw snapped close with a click as it tried to bite Leith’s face off. Trying to keep it away from his face, Leith’s hands slipped down to its shoulder and over an engraved symbol on its leathery skin.
As soon as Leith’s thumb brushed it a warm yellow glow shimmered along the creature's skin and its attack was temporarily halted. Leith crawled out from the frozen creature noticing that it was the number thirteen that Leith had touched. A dozen other numbers were etched into the creature’s skin.
The porcupig shook free of its fit. Leith was ready, delivering a boot to its face. He racked his brain for the secret behind the numbers that brought him this far. It was something Lysander had studied in his many years of schooling. Prime numbers. The sequence got him this far he just had to continue it.
Leith twisted out of the creature’s reach trying to get a better look at the numbers. Playing a game of dodge, Leith kept on the move, staying out of the creature’s reach and looking for his opportunity.
Quick reflexes helped Leith tap the seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-three. Twenty-nine was the highest number he saw, but Leith couldn’t reach it on the underside of the creature at the apex of its ribcage.
After several failed attempts, Leith knew the only way to get it was to let the creature at him. Staring into the porcupig’s beady black eyes Leith braced himself for the pain that was coming his way. The creature charged. Leith took the brunt of its weight without fighting it, landing hard against the crystal floor. Before gleaming white teeth could come down on his face, his fingers found twenty-nine.
The porcupig froze, leaving Leith to pant on the floor under it. At the center of the room a door opened up. W
hen his breathing was under control and Leith was sure the porcupig was done, he pushed it over and stood, finding his way to the trap door.
At the bottom of a set of stairs stood the guardian, the halted hourglass in her hand. She looked up at him with a blank look on her face.
“Two seconds to spare,” she said calmly. “You have passed the final test.”
Leith wanted to jump and scream. Instead he just nodded. He wondered if he should explain to her that it wasn’t his knowledge that had gotten him through. He’d borrowed the learning of another.
There were things more important than his honesty. He completed the trial. He would be king. Oleana’s sacrifice would be worth something.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: KINGS
A loud crash startled Oleana who’d been passing the hours alone thinking about the good times with her son. She opened her eyes in time to see Cornelius rip the doors of her cage off its hinges in his haste to get to her. The look in his impossibly pale blue eyes was pure madness. Oleana smiled at the sight of it because she knew it meant he’d tasted his defeat and it scared him.
A noise so loud and animalistic escaped his thin-lipped mouth it rattled Oleana’s teeth. “You think you have won,” Cornelius shouted, “but I’ll crush those kinglings.”
He reached for Oleana and she pushed back instinctively. Cornelius snatched her by the arm, claws ripping into her flesh, lifting her off the ground. Cornelius flung Oleana across the room, her back slamming into the hard rock wall before she slid to the floor.
“Without you they’ll wither and die, and you’ll once again have to die knowing you failed them.”
Cornelius grabbed her around the neck and cold spread from his hand all over her skin. Oleana strained against the ropes keeping her hands tied behind her back. “Enjoy your sleep, Guardian because you’ll awake to a world ruled by me.”
Oleana struggled to breath. Her chest felt like a brick wall had fallen on it. The cold that invaded her body was so intense her fingers curled into a vice-like fist. She could feel her nails digging into her palms. Her eyes were frozen, starring up at the smug smile on the ice god’s lips. Her jaw was stuck open in an impotent gasp as the ice overtook her.
100101
All the people in Evermore that weren’t on patrol were gathered in the throne room for the coronation. Lorn pulled nervously at the blue vest he borrowed from Lysander. He cinched the golden threaded belt tighter along his waist to get the proper fit. He smoothed out his black pants and ran his hands through his curls.
“You look fine,” Daycia said standing behind him. Her hand fell on his shoulder, stilling his jittery hands.
Lorn turned to give her a smile. “This isn’t how I pictured this going,” he said, swallowing hard against the lump of grief in his throat. He glanced over at his brothers standing on either side of him. They exchanged looks that said more than words could ever express.
They passed the trials and they should have all been very proud of that. Lorn was proud of it. But with every step he took forward he couldn’t help but think about who should have been there with him.
He’d said his goodbyes to his mother. She told him to be better. He would try, for her, but he couldn’t fill the big space she left. He wanted to be excited about finally being crowned, but in the back of his mind he held out this hope that he would be able to save her. Lorn wanted to run into the night searching for her.
The music started, the dulcet tones of the harp blending in with the deep vibrato of drums, giving Lorn the cue to start his march. Tycho and Nadir were in front of them, clad head to toe in polished red armor. Daycia and Zyair were behind them, decked out in their finest gear.
Moving to the steady tempo of the music, Lorn march down the center of the diamond-shaped room. Its ten-foot-high ceilings made it look open and wide, even with more than a hundred people crowded in it. Pastel purple silk drapes wrapped around wooden pillars marking off the boundaries of the room.
The center aisle was large enough for the three of them to walk abreast with room to spare. It ended at a raised stage with two steps in front of it. Three high back chairs carved out of crystal was spaced evenly on the stage. Each one marked for each king.
Lorn let his left-hand play over the raised mark on his arm, He remembered as a child sitting cross-legged on his bed gazing at his mother’s face as she regaled him with tales of the Master of Skies. To hear her tell it he was and always would be a brave man, untethered from the bonds of the earth, a free spirit with great power tempered by a kind heart.
For the first time Lorn felt trapped by the ground beneath him. The sky and the world it looked down on was too wide, too dark, and too cruel a place. It took a mother away from a boy that already knew the pain of being orphaned. Lorn thought the second time around would be easier to handle. Instead he couldn’t come to grips with a life that could be so savage.
Tears welled up at the corner of his eyes. Lorn felt the weight of all those looking at him. He sucked in a deep breath through his teeth and shut out the tumultuous thoughts racing through his mind. He had to focus on the moment at hand.
They stopped at the foot of the steps with the beautiful Kameke looking down on them with an attendant at her side. The music died and with it Lorn’s heart slowed to a more natural rhythm. Nadir climbed the steps, followed by Daycia, and Jonathan of Darten.
Nadir presented himself to the Keeper. He bowed before speaking, his slicked back black hair catching the afternoon light coming in from the crystal walls. “I, Nadir Starson, representative of Caledon stand in observance of this coronation.” Nadir removed the crest of Caledon pendant that was clipped to the right shoulder of his armor and passed it to the Keeper, Kameke.
She took it, looking over it carefully. Then nodded. “Nadir Starson you are accepted.”
Jonathan went next, handing over the seal of his realm and the Keeper accepted. When it was Daycia’s turn to step forward the Keeper looked wary. Maybe she didn’t approve of Daycia representing one particular realm or maybe she just simply didn’t approve of Daycia at all. Lorn couldn’t guess, but Daycia handed over the crest of Arismas as she had been authorized to do. Lorn looked away, afraid that the tower keeper wouldn’t accept it.
“Daycia you are accepted,” Kameke said. Lorn could breathe again. The Keeper turned to look down at them. “Present yourselves.”
Lorn, Leith, and Lysander climbed the stairs together. They spun around facing the crowd. Lorn tried in vain to take in all the different faces, to the point that they just became a wiggling blur in front of him. His stomach was in knots and he almost forgot what he was supposed to do.
Lysander, no stranger to facing large crowds, stepped forward first. He pushed up his sleeve and raised his arm. “I, Lysander Starson present myself as Master of Earth to be crowned as King of Euphoria. I have passed the trials. I have proved myself. Do you accept me?” The crowd erupted in generous applause. Many banged their weapons against their shields. A few yelled out Lysander’s name in a chant of solidarity.
Kameke held up her hand and the noise died like someone sucked out all the air. Lysander turned to the representatives of three of the five realms. They each gave their acceptance.
Leith stepped forward next. He gave his bare arm to the air. “I, Leith Underwood, present myself as Master of Animals to be crowned as King of Euphoria. I -,” Leith hesitated.
Lorn looked over at his brother. Leith looked back, there was something in his eyes, a secret he was holding onto. There was a moment of panic that shot between them. The moment passed and Leith turned back to the crowd.
“I have passed the trials. I have proven myself. Do you accept me?” Again, the crowd erupted. Again, the representatives gave their acceptance.
“I, Lorn Paysan present myself as Master of Skies. I have passed the trials. I have proven myself worthy. Do you accept me?”
Lorn didn’t really pay attention until it was Daycia’s turn. His gaze found hers. She smiled at him in a way that
made him think, for just a second, that things would be okay. “Arismas accepts you,” she said, and Lorn felt it like warm tea sliding down his parched throat, its soothing warmth spreading through his body.
Kameke stepped forward, facing the three Heirs of Eternity. “Lysander, you have been accepted,” she placed a crown upon his head. “Lorn, you have been accepted.” Lorn bent down so she could place the ring of onyx around his head. It rested lightly just above his ears, but Lorn found himself standing straighter because of it. “Leith, you are accepted,” she finished, her voice holding a hint of excitement.
Turning to the crowd a hush fell over the room as thick as fog. Everyone took a collective breath. The weight of a legend being fulfilled descended on them. “Ladies and gentlemen, the esteemed of Euphoria,” Kameke’s voice filled the grand room, like a songbird starting the day. “I present to you… the Kings of Euphoria!”
The crowd erupted, shaking the very walls in their triumph. Some rushed forward, held back by the guards around the stage. Leith and Lysander came in closer, each wrapping an arm around Lorn as they stood together, newly minted kings.
Part of Lorn wanted to smile, to let relief and joy wash over him. They were kings, after such a long journey, after lifetimes of trying, they finally made it. They were kings, yes, and now the real work would begin.
Sneak Peak: Kings of Euphoria
Tentative Release Date: December 15, 2017
Gaeth.
Cornelius never liked stepping foot on the hot and humid island. He hated even more the way the people treated him, like some outsider encroaching on their territory. Speaking with Emmaray was important enough to endure it. The second he stepped off the borrowed Failsea ship, Cornelius felt the heat hit him in waves. He secured his frozen face mask over his mouth to prevent breathing in too much of the hot air. The feel of it against his exposed fleshed gave him a sharp reminder of the flames Daycia had threw in his face not long enough ago. He caressed the scared side of his face, feeling the gentle ridges there where his burns had healed just a little off, marring the once clean lines of his face.
