OSTRACIZED
by
Olivia Majors
Copyright @ 2020 by Olivia Majors
All rights reserved
ISBN:
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, not known or herinafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to all those who believed in me from the start.
I love you guys.
This book wouldn’t have been possible without you.
Table of Contents
PART ONE - Kelba Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
PART TWO - The Wilds Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
PART THREE - Fate Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
PART FOUR - Ebonia Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Epilogue
Acknowledgements Page
About the Author
Ostracize
To exclude or banish (a person) from a particular group, society, etc.
PART ONE
Kelba
Chapter I
I follow my father down the winding streets of the capitol city of Kelba. We would have taken our carriage, but Father had not expected to be walking home after dusk so he neglected to bring it. Hugging my cape close around my shoulders to guard against the chilly breeze singing through the street I attempt to ignore the blinking eyes of the rats from the gutters and alleyways. My new boots make clip-clopping noises on the stone walk, echoing in the barren silence.
“Papa . . .”
“Hush, Kyla! I’m trying to think!” His outburst shatters the silence and freezes me in place.
Father is a well-tempered man, accustomed to hours of petty argument and rivalry in a court of High Lords like himself, and I rarely ever see him in such a foul mood. Especially at half-past midnight when he’s usually relieved to be returning home. Unless he’s had a strenuous fight. And the only one he’s been in contact with over the last few hours has been Kelba’s ruler, the Celectate.
A shiver tickles my spine. Fighting with the Celectate can be dangerous. Even I, at fourteen, know better than to argue with the man who rules Kelba and has been reported to deal harshly with those who oppose him.
“I’m sorry, Papa.” I hurry to catch up with him. My toes ache badly, but I hesitate to question him about the distance home.
He keeps walking for a moment longer, suddenly turns around, and pulls me close into a comforting hug. Taken aback by his abrupt show of affection I awkwardly return the gesture and he kisses the top of my head fondly.
“No, I’m sorry, Kyla. I didn’t mean to be so gruff with you or stay so late. We should have been home two hours ago.”
Yes, we should have, I want to agree, but dare not say so. I chose to go with him and there was no one to blame for my aching toes but myself. The night had not been such a waste anyway – I’d had enough time to explore the Celectate’s endless library.
I only worry that Mother will fret over our dalliance. She had not been happy at my Father’s suggestion to leave our transport and had seemed especially displeased when I had volunteered to accompany him.
“I’m glad you came with me,” Father continues and drops to his knees in front of me. “I want to tell you a big secret.” He looks up and down the darkening streets before returning his attention to me, a finger on his lips.
I kneel in front of him, taking note of the deep-black alley behind him. Its darkness sends a chill across my shoulders. I struggle to keep my attention fixed solely on Father’s face.
“The Celectate is going to take all criminals from the vast dungeons and place them in the Wilds. He’s already working on ways to get the law passed.”
“The Wilds?” I gasp. Father reaches out to cover my mouth and I stop his hand gently, nodding my head in a silent promise that I won’t recoil so loudly again.
The Wilds are the land that surrounds Kelba, my kingdom. They are full of what have become known as monsters and . . . the mutants. Long ago, the Wilds were once inhabitable by my kind. In fact, they were part of Kelba. Nevertheless, a great destruction of poison and fire came upon them and turned all occupants who did not escape its poisonous fangs into ravenous beasts and sickening cannibals. There are many myths surrounding the aftermath of the devastation – some too simple to believe and others so horrifying that one hopes they do not exist. One such myth surrounding the Wilds is that all its inhabitants have one other defining trait – aside from the cannibalism – and that is deep black rims around their pupils. However, all of it is only speculation. Some say they’ve become demons. Terrible, frightening demons!
And the Celectate is going to send criminals to such a frightening place?
“Does he even have the right to do that?” I ask.
My father hesitates before speaking, which he should not do. The Celectate’s word is the law. To question his choices is to question him personally. An action like that is oftentimes foreseen as treason.
“Yes,” Father answers at last, but drops his voice a small octave. “And no.”
Confusion stirs inside of me. “What kind of answer is that? You are one of the lords of the Community. Why can’t you point out the horrible consequences of such an act?”
Father’s lips pinch together. “That’s the problem, Kyla. We can find very few consequences.”
“What?” I hardly believe what I’m hearing. No consequences? What about death or just the plain barbarity of being banished from humankind?
“Don’t look at me like that, Kyla. Please? If there were anything I could do to stop such an act, I would do so. I would not wish such a punishment on anyone. Death would be kinder. But that’s exactly the point the Celectate is trying to make. He predicts this law will cut down crime, decrease the upkeep costs on prisons, and offer the chance to use the money for strengthening an army.” For the first time in my life, Father looks helpless.
Struggling to pull in a decent breath, I clench my fists atop my knees. The cutting of costs will probably tether more than half the High Lords of the Community on the Celectate’s side and then thei
r influence will gradually sway the others. The ones on the outskirts, like Father, will be left with a simple choice. Openly defy the law to the end – or save their skins and agree.
The Community is a court of High Lords that the Celectate has gathered around him for advice and support. There were once twenty-two High Lords altogether, but two recently passed away without heirs, leaving only twenty occupants. With such numbers, it would be easy for the Celectate to pass the new act.
“How long will it take him?” I ask.
“Sometime within the coming week, when he has laid out his structure of the act in its entirety before the Community, they will vote. The act will pass under proper statistics of the vote and then the proclamation will be sent throughout Kelba that those convicted of a crime will no longer be sentenced to a dungeon.”
But if the Community sends criminals to the Wilds – what is considered a crime?
“Will there be some crimes worthy of forgiveness?” I ask, my chest growing tight with panic. If I do something wrong – if I accidentally screw up – will I receive such punishment? My tongue often runs away with me before I form proper words. What if that becomes a crime?
Once again, Father hesitates before speaking. My pulse quickens at his reluctance.
“Who knows, Kyla. Who knows,” he finally answers, shaking his head. “It didn’t used to be this way. I remember the stories my grandfather would tell of the Wilds before the poison and the fires. It was the the ‘heart’ of Kelba. A land of beauty. He even told me it harbored the kingdom’s deepest lake – twenty-two thousand feet. Can you believe it, Kyla?”
I shiver. I almost drowned once while playing with the Celectate’s son, Aspen, in the monarch’s private forest. I have never approached a pool of water more than five feet deep since. Father’s description of the Wilds before the destruction is not sounding any better to me than it currently does.
My father frowns at my silence and stands. “We should be getting back home, Kyla. Remember . . . not a word, you hear? I don’t want to . . . .”
I stand and draw my cloak around my shoulders again, only half-listening to him. But when I no longer hear his voice, I turn to raise questioning brows at him.
The scream on my lips dies a tragic death as panic blocks my airway. Father hangs suspended in midair, a snaky black curling thing wrapped around his neck. His legs kick furiously as he struggles to loose himself. The alley to his back is alive with swirling darkness that slowly pours from its depths. The shadows leap towards me.
They’re living things!
One of them lashes out with a black tangled wisp that resembles a dying vine and smacks Father across the face. He gasps, the snaky black thing releases him, and he falls to the ground, bone colliding with stone as he lands on his back. He goes still.
“No!” I scream.
One of the shadows grabs me hard around the shoulders and presses its black vine-like wisp to my mouth. A hand! It smells like piss and blood, and it drags me back against a rough body. Terror courses through my veins as I struggle to free myself. To scream. To even cry.
No tears come.
Father doesn’t move.
The shadows settle into a distinct form: shadowy capes and dark hoods. Nothing else.
Gods, what the hell are they?
The voice that speaks is like something from another dimension: raspy and resembling a man drunk on too much alcohol. “Kill him . . . and the girl. Then leave them.”
The shadow that spoke, the tallest one, turns back into the darkness from which it came. When I no longer hear its swirling cape, I know it has gone.
The harsh scraping of a sword on a metal scabbard, a sound I know well from practice with my elder brother, grates on my nerves. The sword that will kill my father. The sword that will crunch into his bones without any resistance. I try to scream, but my throat is too dry.
My cape and hood are tossed aside. I hear them hit the ground. A black leathery hand pulls aside the sheen of hair over my neck. Warm breath skates over the delicate skin. Is it going to bite me?
“He said ‘kill her’ not . . .” one of the shadows rasps irritably.
“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him,” my captor hisses back, its voice sizzling in my ear.
I try to scream again, but find it useless when the creature squeezes the side of my neck. The warm breath on my ear turns an icy cold, and I watch it shift through the air before me.
Father still doesn’t move. Somehow, I am more afraid knowing that he is limp and cannot help me, than I did when he was awake and held captive in midair.
The sharp prick of teeth in the side of my neck rouses my senses, and I try to twist away, but my captor is too strong.
For a moment, I see my body lying cold, pale, and lifeless on the pavement, body twisted at morbid angles, eyes wide and frightened. I hear the screams as we are discovered and the tears glistening in people’s eyes as they grieve the loss of High Lord Bone and his young daughter. Or will they? I imagine my body resting on the flat surface of a priest’s embalming table as they prepare me for a burial befitting a child of nobility.
As the teeth sink deeper into my neck, I close my eyes, ignoring the prickling sensation rippling up my spine.
Is this what it feels like to die?
A harsh cry shatters the silence of the night. It comes from above my head. Something hard lands to my right. Hard enough to make the stones in the street rattle beneath me. The shadowy creature that holds me lets out a piercing shriek that is much different from the raspy voice of its leader. It skates along the nerves in my body and tingles through my ears.
“Duck!” is all I have time to hear before the sound of a sword swishing through the air reaches my ears. I obey, and a blade skims over my head and strikes the shadow. Another shriek fills the air, so loud and so horrible that I have to cover my ears, but the pain rips through the thin layer of protection and echoes inside my head.
The shadow flutters into the night sky, breaking into clumps of black smoke. Chills cling to my insides with prickly fingers as I watch the creatures who had terrorized me moments before drift away in the air like clouds.
Another raspy cry hammers against my eardrums, followed by more foggy clumps appearing and flitting away. I wait for one more. There were three shadows. If my unknown rescuer holds true to his sword there should be one more shriek, one more dissipation, and they will be gone!
But I don’t hear it.
Cautiously, I tear my hands from my ears and stand. Father lies near the edge of the alley, a dark pool forming around his head.
“No!” I rush for the body.
“Come here!” The harsh, albeit human, voice of my savior reaches my ears. A hard arm wraps around my waist and abruptly stops me.
“Let me go! Let me go!” Tears soak my face in grief. “I can help him. Let go! He’s bleeding! Let me go to him!” I try desperately to kick or scratch him.
He pulls me back against him, squeezing the air from my lungs in a crushing hold that forces a gasp between my lips. His voice, as cool and calm as if he were attending a ceremony, answers, “That’s what it wants.”
It?
I notice his stance. He holds me protectively against him while he palms the sword in his left hand. Its blade glints in the moonlight like nothing I have ever seen. Whatever the unearthly glow is, it is unnatural.
“What are you?” I ask him.
I sneak a glance over my shoulder for a decent view of his face, but all I see are dark eyes. Eyes like the shade of night. Eyes that capture mine with the intensity in which he’s looking at me. Eyes with black rings around the pupils!
Holy gods, I am staring at a creature from the Wilds!
Terror seethes into my chest. I scream and try to jump away, but he is strong and keeps me captive beside him, his hand bruising my hip. His voice, now foreign and dark, answers my fear with, “It will kill you if I let you go!”
He releases my waist and grabs my chin before I can run. Nausea
curdles in my stomach when his hand grates along my skin.
He turns my face towards Father’s body. “Look.”
All I see is the body and darkness. But darkness doesn’t move like this deep black does. Around Father’s body, I spot the familiar form of pitch blackness that takes shape in only one thing.
A shadow.
Good gods, it is still there! Waiting for me to come to the body. Waiting so it could . . . kill me.
“Come away from the Kelban, you hell-cursed creature. He won’t do you any good.” The Wild boy’s voice now holds a tone of something dark and twisted. A voice just as evil as the groveling shadow before us.
“Don’t speak that way to me, boy,” the shadow answers. Only it’s voice isn’t raspy anymore. It echoes off the walls in a steamy tone that tortures my hearing and makes every nerve in my body shake.
The shadow rises to a standing position, and I thoroughly detail its massive form. The cape-like body is all I see. Maybe that’s all it is. A cape that lies on nothing but smoky fog.
The Wild boy’s arm tightens around my waist, and his hand slowly squeezes the hilt of his mysterious sword. Other than that small sign of discomfort, he doesn’t shake or turn a hair. I wish I were as calm as this boy from the Wilds.
“The girl. Give her to me. I want the girl.” The shadow’s hooded head turns slightly to glance at me, and shadowy wisps of smoke from underneath its cape flutter in my direction. The boy raises his moonlit sword. The light forces the advancing darkness to stop a few inches from both of us.
Light scares this creature of the dark, but not the Wild boy.
He can’t be half as bad as the shadowy demon, I decide.
“Don’t listen to it. Please, don’t listen. Don’t let it take me,” I plead, grasping his arm tight just in case he releases me.
The boy stiffens beneath my hold, the first real emotion he’s shown all night. “You can understand it?” he asks, his voice layered with something akin to shock.
Ostracized (The Ostracized Saga Book 1) Page 1
