Rise of the Death Walkers (The Circle of Heritage Saga)

by Lawrence Nason Jr.

  I was walking with Katie in the forest outside my room one cold November weekend when Katie spoke up about it the first time. "Jason, what is wrong with you lately?

  I was startled by such a direct approach. "Me? Nothing love why would you ask that?"

  She stepped closer to me and said, "I know you better than that Jason, something is bothering you so out with it."

  She did know me to well so all I could do was deflect the question by a change of subject.

  "I am wondering just how much more of my grandmothers and your mothers planning I can take. It seem to me that they are planning a celebration bigger than the two hundred year celebration of the country."

  "It does seem like that doesn't it?" she said safely steered off topic. "I didn't know there were so many kinds of invitations to choose from it took me three days to look through them all."

  I was distracted by a scent and didn't quite catch the last bit of what she said. I stepped near her and in the direction the scent was coming and made a motion with my hand she should be quiet. A dark shape flirted at the edge of my vision but every time I tried to focus on it there would be a swift shimmering and it would dart out of my field of vision quickly. I reached out with my mind and shifted the wind so the scent was always moving in my direction. I pushed Katie behind me.

  I had seen these signs before slightly before the men of the patrols closed in for the kill but something was different. We were patrolling our lands with regular patrols since the activity of the Soul Extractors had increased. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted my cousins Jared and Saul moving silently into position. I called out in the ancient tongue for them to hold. "Katie, stay behind me." I said in a tone I had never used to her before.

  "What's wrong Jason?" She was clearly frightened by my tone and was shaking.

  I didn't answer because the shadowy form of a black wolf stepped into the clearing in front of us. It was the largest black wolf I had ever seen before. I could see by the eyes that it was clearly not just a wolf. The ancient tongue oozed from its mouth like dripping acid. "So you are the one the legends have talked about."

  I responded in the same language, "I am he. What is it you want from us." I whipped up the wind around us and called for the water in the air to begin to solidify. Before long the wind was driving the snow in a shielding barrier between us.

  "I was curious." The thing replied. "You don't seem to be much of a form. You look so weak."

  "You dare to use the form of the most sacred symbol our people have to deliver whatever message you have to deliver?" I shot back.

  "It was convenient at the time. This world has not many of the intelligent primitive forms. The land you choose to dwell in have beings we can’t insert ourselves in." It replied.

  “We are protected by our abilities from your invasive habits.”

  "Jason what is going on?" Katie screeched from behind me. I spotted more from the tribe showing up and motioned for them to stand ready.

  "Katie please be still. You are in great danger now. Go with Jared he will keep you safe." I returned to the ancient speech. "These primitive forms as you so choose to call them have the ability to show compassion. Something your kind is unable to do."

  Katie stood steady behind me. "If I am in danger you are also and I will not leave your side." I knew she was going to be stubborn she always was.

  I shoved her back and ordered. "Jared and Saul Get her to the house with Mimi." I saw them hesitate. "Do it now!" they closed in and there was little Katie could do to stop them. The patrol closed rank and came to my side.

  "Compassion is an emotion of the weak. This proves to me you are easily defeated." The wolf moved forward and I could see other forms taking shape around him. There were fluid and dark constantly shifting in and out of vision.

  "So you say, but you have been trying for many generations to defeat us here and on the ancient world and have been unable to do so." I spotted my grandfather arriving and motioned him to the spot beside me.

  The black wolf shifted its gaze from mine to my grandfather, "Ahh old one you I know we have battled before."

  I growled and shifted the Earth in front of the wolf so its view was blocked. It nimbly jumped onto the mound. "The old one is not the one you should be worried about now. You deal with me."

  "Strong words for a pup who is still wet behind the ears." It purred to me but relocked its gaze on mine.

  The darting forms began closing on us as the wolf and I stood locked in a contest of wills. The patrol took care of any who got too close to us. I could feel the mental force being applied in the area. Nature itself rose to meet the enemy. I moved in quicker than the eye and grasped the throat of the wolf. Before I could get there, the soul within withdrew. I was left with the dying animal in my grasp. I signaled for everyone to attack, and end the battle. Soon more dying forms of the attacking force lay on the ground. I gently lay the black wolf on the ground and kneeled over it the full horror in my own spirit at what I had been forced to do.

  I then turned and caused the wind to spear out in multiple directions catching each of the enemy and driving them back from the patrol. The wind screamed around me in a vengeance.

  I felt the need to avenge the loss of a kindred spirit of nature. Reaching out I grabbed one of the waifs circling around us and crushed it with the wind.

  All around me the battle raged with each member of the patrol using his or her abilities in the way they were taught. I whipped the blizzard to a fury and the snow became shards of ice that tore through the forms, shredding them beyond recognition.

  My mind was expanded in a way I never believed I could as I shielded each member of the patrol from attacks. With the demise of the last attacker I changed the ice to snow and dropped to my knees to gather up the wolf I had killed. The senseless loss of a friend of nature tormented me. The storm built in harmony of my torment.

  The patrol began taking defensive positions around me and many drifted back to the village. I sat there rocking over the prone body of a prince of nature who had been called to sacrifice its own life in this deed of evil. With my sorrow the storm raged on around me unchecked until my grandfather gently grasped my shoulder. "Jason you need to calm yourself.”

  I looked up and noticed that darkness had closed around me. I reached out for the storm. To calm the fury I had unleashed. It must have taken me several hours to regain control and when I finally did there was close to a foot of snow around me. I walked back with my grandfather to the house and entered the kitchen. Once inside I spotted Mimi but no sign of Katie. "Where is Katie? Mimi?"

  "That was one angry girl at being dragged back the way she was Jason. What were you thinking?" My grandmother asked me.

  "I was thinking of her safety Mimi." I replied. "You still haven't told me where she is."

  "She insisted on driving home and I sent Jared with her to make sure she would get there safely." Mimi sighed at me.

  I glanced at the clock on the wall and noticed for the first time it was close to two am. "I better go out there in the morning and apologize. I sank down on a chair near the table and asked. "Is there anything warm to drink Mimi?"

  The phone on the wall rang and interrupted Mimi’s reply. She answered it. She listened for a bit. "No she left from here several hours ago." There was a pause and she continued "What do you mean she isn't there yet?"

  I looked up alarmed. "What?" My grandmother interrupted me with a stern look cutting off my question.

  "We will head out from our direction now. You start from there." She hung up the phone and told me. "Katie never arrived home." I was out the door before she finished.

  "Jason take a coat with you." I dimly heard her say but I was too wrapped up in my own concerns to pay any notice.

  I ran straight from the house to the main road ignoring the fact, in my state, that a car may have been better. The roads were not well maintained on the reservation and there was about five inches of snow on the surface. I ran with no concern on my
mind but the safety of the girl I loved. After twenty minutes I slowed and scanned the road ahead on both sides. I found Jared first. He lay on the side of the road. It looked as if some giant animal had torn his chest out. I stopped long enough the ascertain that he was dead before moving forward. Terror seized me as I searched further up the road. I wandered for hours up and down, searching for her, but did not find her. My mind was as if it was frozen in solid ice. I had lost her I had lost the half of my life that meant so much to me. One side of my mind was tormenting in it thoughts the other was grasping for hope.

  I continued on into the night and my agitation at not finding the woman I loved grew and influenced the environment around me. Snow began falling again and whipping my with a savage frenzy seldom seen in this part of the world. The wind carried the light snow into drifts higher than a man and I was constantly struggling to break through them to continue the search. The temperature dropped like a stone from the side of a high mountain and soon I had ice forming on my chin from the warmth of my exhaled breath. My own body was showing the signs of hyperthermia but my raging mind force me to go well beyond the limited of my body. I struggled in my efforts to find Katie.

  Finally several hours later I sank to my knees at the side of the road completely unaware of where I was. The feeling of total and complete loss filled my heart to the breaking point and the last thought I had before darkness over took me was a sense of failure in losing the woman I loved.

  It was somewhere in the middle of the morning they found me kneeling on the side of the road looking up to the skies. My heart lay in broken pieces within my chest. I had failed to do what I had promised my family and the spirits. I had not protected my Katie and now she was gone.

  Tears had frozen to my face and where I had brushed them away there were great gashes. My own condition did not worry me for without Katie I had no desire to live. I was calmly waiting for my own death.

  They transported me back to the hospital where I had lay so long before. I was dimly aware of ice water bathes and waves of the most intense pain I had ever experienced before. Nothing phased me, my mind was locked in eternal agony because I had lost my Katie. When they has finally unfrozen me enough where I could close my eyes I did so and prayed to the ancient spirits to take me to the final home. I dimly heard Katie's voice in the distance and turned in that direction. I was going to the final resting place to be with my Katie.

  Chapter 13 - The Mind-slip

  I opened my eyes and I was lost. I had lost all orientation that I once had. The familiar pull of the very magnetic field of the Earth was misplaced for me. It seemed I was off center completely. There was a surreal emanation of light that came from every direction. I reached out with my mind and nothing I felt was real to me. Was this what it was like to be dead? Is this the afterlife?

  "No Pasche you are not dead. You are quite alive indeed. You are now experiencing your disorientation because you have reached a time in your development where no one in your people, your tribe as you call it, can help you." The voice seemed to be within my mind.

  I sat up in alarm and a wave of dizziness swept over me like a giant waterfall lunging from a great distance above. "Katie." I whispered.

  The voice in my mind continued. "Your Katie is fine. During the time you were looking for her she was actually at her cousins house to ride out the storm you had created."

  Relief swept through me. "Who are you and where am I?"

  Now that I knew my Katie was safe, I had to determine just what my own present situation was.

  An opening appeared in the walls a distance away and a unfamiliar figure glided toward me.

  "You are currently on Denastis or what your people call The Origan. You are the first of your kind with the ability to travel in the way that you have. My name is Moevin and I am your Mind Mentor." The figure came to a stop in front of me and waved it’s hand. What appeared to be a chair like object lifted up from the seemingly solid floor next to Moevin and it placed itself in it."

  "How am I able to do this? That last thing I remembered I was freezing to death on the side of the road." I sat up on the side of the platform and faced the creature. While I waited for a response I observed the creature taking in all that was displayed before me. What I saw could only be described as pure beauty. Its skin was pale pink but had some sort of crystalline appearance to it and the eyes were violet and spaced at a similar distance to a normal human. It had a snow white mane of hair that cascaded down what would pass for its back. The form was slender with what I would have called a very female appearance. When it held up its hands it had six digits on one hand and seven on the other.

  "This is a method of travel we call a mind-slip. Your people have been unable to use this method of travel because their minds are not as developed as ours.”

  “Currently you need to be in a coma like state to achieve the concentration needed to travel like this but with the continuing development of your mind you will be able achieve this state at any time of your choosing." The figure casually flipped a strand of hair out of its eye and looked at me.

  "I hear you in my mind and not with my ears. And are you male or female because I think its rude to continue thinking of you as it." I asked. I was very calm. Not as panicked as I would have expected to be when encountering something as alien as this being obviously was.

  A sound that sounded like the finger snapping on the rim of a fine crystal glass was emitted from what appeared to be its mouth.

  "I am what you would consider the female of my species. I would be a mother but my calling is that of Mind Mentor. The first of my kind with the honor of training ‘The Chosen One’. I have trained for five hundred of your Earth years for this day." She looked at me with a peering gaze. "You are quite capable to mind-speak as I am. My race lacks the necessary organs to communicated the way you do."

  I tried it out by thinking what I wanted to say. "You say you are a Mind Mentor. Have you done this with any other of my people?" I framed the question in what I hoped would be a polite mental tone."

  "No, you are the first of your kind to achieve a state where this training I will be giving you is possible." She lifted her hands in an apologetic gesture. "I wish to say I am sorry at the loss of your Jerad. We agonized how to manipulate events so you would continue the search for your Katie for the time needed to force your body into the state needed to make this first trip."

  I felt a stab of great sorrow cut through me but it was stopped by something I remembered that my grandfather had told me weeks before.

  "Pasche," he had said. "In the war we are currently in you will face times of great sacrifice in the future and you cannot let yourself be immobilized by sorrow or grief."

  "Your grandfather is a very wise man. You should feel honored that he is a part of your life," She projected to me.

  "I am. Every minute I am with him I feel I am truly blessed by the spirits." I was captivated by the beauty of this strange creature. "How long will this training you speak of take and is my grandfather aware of what is going on?"

  "The time of the training will pass very quickly here in this time frame but in your own, about three years will pass." I was shocked and wondered if Katie would wait that long for me. "Your grandfather knows the legends and will be able to convince your mate that what is happening is necessary. We foresee she will wait for you." She must have caught the concern that flashed in my mind about my school. "By the time you are finished here your learning will well exceed any knowledge you would have acquired in what you call 'High School'. Your mind will be developed in such a manner that the acquisition of knowledge will be very easy for you."

  I suddenly remembered another thing my grandfather had told me. “Wait a minute. My Grandfather told me we were here twelve hundred years ago and we were a product of cross breeding between races. How is it that you look so different from us?”

  “Our races are biologically compatible however all of the genes responsible for outward appearance are the domi
nant genes provided by your race, thus the interbreeding your tribe has been doing the past twelve hundred years has not resulted in one form who has our outward appearance.” Moevin informed me. “Shall we begin with the basic exercises needed for you to tap into your potential Pasche?”

  I let relief show in my mind. "Then we should start on this training." I projected while rubbing my hands together.

  The past three years had dragged by for me very slowly. After Jason's grandfather had convinced me that Jason was not gone completely but was going through something that was necessary for his development I was somewhat at ease. I visited Jason daily and took active part in the therapy required to keep his muscles developed the way they should be. In my mind I flashed back to the moment Jason had been brought to the hospital. They absolutely refused to let me be there for the initial emergency procedures. When they finally let me in to see him, I was horrified at the condition he was in. I was at his side without leaving for the first two weeks and then my father practically dragged me out of the hospital.

  The conversation that followed between my parents and myself had been the most explosive argument I had ever had with them. That was when Grandfather Sam had finally managed to intervene and explain what was happening. At first I refused to believe and then something Jason's grandfather said convinced me beyond a doubt that what he said was true. I had personally experienced what typically happened to Jason's birthmark during the times he worked with his mind.

  For the past three years I had been unable to even touch Jason's left hand. It was like grabbing a hold of a slab of metal that had been resting in a forge until it was white hot.

  Jason was transferred to a clinic on the reservation and my father resigned his position at the hospital in Massena to take over the direction of the clinic. There was an entire special department whose only job was to care for Jason while he was away.