Magical After: Dark World Book 1 Part 1

by David Gunter

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  Kids to School11

  CHAPTER II

  The Long Talk30

  CHAPTER III

  Going Under38

  CHAPTER IV

  Agents of The Third48

  CHAPTER V

  End of the Road, Start of the Journey59

  CHAPTER VI

  An Eye for an Eye64

  CHAPTER VII

  Walking on the Green Grass95

  CHAPTER VIII

  Soldier of Light131

  CHAPTER IX

  A Coin for a Boat Ride175

  CHAPTER X

  Busted Pipes218

  CHAPTER XI

  Goddess on Fire256

  Appendix

  Words From David Gunter

  299

  Preview

  (Darkness Stabs)

  Challenger301

  Preface

  Hello dear reader, I know you’re ready to dig into the story that is coming up, but I wanted to take a quick moment to outline a few things about the writing of this story, which I believe will help you get the most out of the tale.

  The first thing about this story worth saying is that it will be released as a series of parts. It will also be released more frequently than a traditional story that may take a year or more to write. By dividing it this way, I hope to shorten the wait between releases and give you more story per book.

  The second thing worth saying about this story is that, because the entire story came to me at once and not over time, I can tell you now that it will be comprised of eight parts, two parts per book. These four books, separately released as eight parts, will tell the story of how things came about in the main world, Atsia Major, and the smaller world, Atsia Minor. However, this tale is not meant to end in the last book but rather represent a setting much like one would prepare a dinner table for a large group of people.

  The larger setting, I am calling ‘Dark World’, and after this four-book series, will embark upon that project, which will include a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and another set of books detailing the lives of some of the denizens, which appear within this series.

  I hope that knowing these things on the onset will enhance the story for you and prepare you, to some extent, for the things to come.

  So let’s begin...

  CHAPTER I

  Kids to School

  “Hey, Dad!” Peter almost yelled. “I’m going to be late for school!”

  “Ya ya,” David answered. ‘Late for school?’ David didn’t remember coming downstairs, getting dressed, or waking up with the alarm. Still, things must have happened somewhere along those lines. He had spaced out once again, he realized.

  David knew that he wasn’t in school, but it felt like he was late for school for a few brief moments when one of his kids was going to be late. It was odd how that sensation made him feel. He would have to think about that feeling later, though. He would have to think about a lot of things with whatever time was still left, later. He pushed the thought out of his mind and told himself to focus on the kids and get them to school.

  He got to the car and found his oldest and the two younger ones, Jimmy and London, in the back seat. He went through the routine checklist in his head, but something didn’t feel right. It always felt like that, though.

  “Everybody has their seat belts on?”

  A choir of yeses came from everybody with a small hint of desperation from Peter.

  ‘How was he going to tell Peter?’ He quickly pushed the thought out of his mind again.

  “So how about we take the scenic route today?”

  “DAAaaD!” Peter yelled, clearly about to lose it.

  “OK, OK. Just checking to see who really wanted to go to school today. But since you’re dead set on it, I guess I’ll oblige,” said David.

  “I don’t wanna go school!” said London, from the back seat, with a hint of teary desperation.

  “Hush, London! Don’t encourage him. It’s bad enough Dad’s in one of his hangover kind of days,” said Peter, as David reversed the little red minivan out of the driveway and switched the car into first gear to start yet another fun day of traffic lights, yelling kids, avoiding speeding tickets, and all the other wonderful things about driving in a busy suburban city on a Tuesday.

  “Hey, wait! for the record, I’m not hungover. Just have a lot on my mind,” David said. He left the subject like that, not wanting to prove or disprove it any further. Nobody appeared to be buying it, though.

  Driving through the busy streets was not the best part of the day. So much time was spent on the road. David wondered how many years of his life he’d spent fighting traffic. If he put it all together, he wondered if he’d spent ten or perhaps as much as fifteen years on the road. How he wished he could take those years back now.

  David sat at a stoplight, and the car was very quiet now. He must have dropped the kids off at school because he realized the car was now empty. He would have to try to take control of his life again, he knew.

  It was almost a week since he’d gone in to see Dr. Tammy’ something or other’ who had given him some bad news.

  “It looks like you’ve got a brain tumor, and it looks like you’ve got five or six months tops before it becomes incurable. We’ve got to remove it soon before it becomes impossible to deal with,” Said Dr. Tammy’ something or other’. David couldn’t remember her last name, but it didn’t really matter anyway. He had a tumor in his brain, and nothing else mattered. Well, perhaps everything mattered, but there just wasn’t any time to make a big difference in his life.

  He’d managed to save a little money from Hellen’s death a few years before, and that was helping things work out. She had been the love of his life and the one thing in this world that had made everything else make sense. Part of him couldn’t stand that it was her life policy that was keeping the family afloat now when her passing had ripped him in half. And now, the policy was going to help him get through whatever chaos his brain tumor was about to unleash.

  Nothing ever made sense anymore, but he had managed to keep the family routine going. Well, sort of. The kids were still getting out of bed OK and doing all right in school, as far as he could tell. The teachers somehow knew better than to complain too much about him not being involved enough, and even though the kids were completely running his life now, his sister-in-law, Jammie, would come by every few days and make sure the kids were behaving.

  Jammie and her husband Mark had moved nearby a few years before Hellen passed away and would often come by and bring their kids to play with David and Hellen’s kids, so it had been one of the many things David was glad to see continue through these first few years of adjustment.

  It had been so hard that first year Hellen died, but a kind of numbness had entered his life and quite a bit of heavy drinking too. At least that first year and part of the second had come and gone, and he was able to fall asleep and function like an adult and father should, mostly.

  But the kids had taken over his life.

  “Daddy, I want to go to NASA Camp.”

  “OK”

  “Daddy, I want a peanut butter, vanilla, chocolate, gummy bear triple scoop sundae.”

  “OK”

  “Daddy, I want to buy a crossbow. Can I have your wallet?”

  “OK”

  Daddy always said, ‘OK. Even though he couldn’t remember half the things, he agreed to and probably followed through on even fewer of the
things he said ‘OK to. He thought that being a ‘yes man’ might make up for everything else that wasn’t right. He’d tried being the ‘No means No!’-kind-of-guy before, and there wasn’t a day that he didn’t regret that now. Hellen was gone, and he wished he had said yes more often.

  “But Dad, you said I could use London and Jimmy for target practice in the house,” Peter said one day. “LIKE HELL I DID!” said David. “You just wait till I tell your Aunt Jammie what you’ve been doing!” And just like that, David realized one day that Aunt Jammie had become the law of the land, and most importantly, he was OK with that, though he knew it wasn’t right.

  Of course, when Jammie heard the whole story, she’d had a lot of strong words for David. Words like, “Why the hell did you buy a fourteen-year-old boy a crossbow” and “Jimmy said you’d take him to NASA Camp, so I sure do hope you’ve started saving up for that trip?” and “I don’t know what the hell you fed London the other day, but she was jumping off the walls and I found gummy bears in her hair and just how many days had those gummy bears been there!”. He should’ve known better than to trust a teenager with a crossbow, and he should’ve checked on the smaller ones to be sure they were washing their hair and brushing their teeth, but that had always been Hellen’s area of expertise.

  ‘Hells, nothing was right anymore.’

  David chuckled alone in the car, thinking about all the ironically funny things happening in his life now. As he thought about these things, he noticed he was now behind a bunch of cars in a very congested traffic jam. He had so little time, and here he was stuck in traffic. He had to find the humor in that too.

  There was a semi-truck just a few cars ahead blocking all the view and making his commute even more interesting as its driver was determined to cross through this congested traffic in order to exit on the nearest exit ramp. David wondered how people could care so little about others around them. ‘Why do truck drivers think it’s OK to use the fast lane anyway. They’re never the fastest cars on the road’, he thought.

  He had told the kids, as he dropped them off at school this morning, that they would need to have a sit-down talk that evening after school. He would tell them about the tumor and hope that they could handle it. ‘The best way to remove a band-aid is to start a count to three and rip it off on one,’ he was prone to say. He was going to see a lawyer this morning and get a will drawn up in case the surgery didn’t go well. Perhaps in the course of the day, he would figure out how to explain to the children that he might not make it through the surgery. There had to be an angle where this wouldn’t be so bad. Nevertheless, he knew that they were still not right from their mother’s death.

  Fortunately, Jammie and Mark had already agreed that, in the case of death or emergency, they would be OK with taking the kids, so he was hoping that he wouldn’t have to deal with any take-backs or issues from them. He expected that he’d have it all worked out before he went under the knife, or whatever did the work these days.

  ❧

  David arrived at the lawyers’ offices. He was half cursing under his breath as he walked into the tall office building due to the last couple of cars that had almost prevented him from exiting the highway. But as he walked into this building, the overall appearance of the place helped him regain his composure. This place was no simple or rundown place to rent a space from. He wondered how his wife’s company had been able to afford to keep these lawyers on retainers for each of their employees.

  He walked towards the elevators across the hall and fell behind a couple of ladies and a man who were all looking very business-like. David was wearing a pair of blue jeans and sneakers that seemed to complement his choice of T-shirt. He didn’t dress up anymore. There was a black suit back at home, but the last time he wore that, he decided never to touch that thing again, at least while he was living.

  He stayed at the back of the elevator and casually observed the trio, and wondered if they were headed to the tenth floor. He also noticed how tense and uncomfortable they all looked in their jackets and tight skirts. He wondered if his wife always looked like this when she went into the office. If he hadn’t been so busy at his job back, then he probably wouldn’t have liked his wife dressing up so to go into the office. David realized that he was staring a little bit too much at the ladies and quickly corrected this by staring off into the far corners of the elevator. ‘Don’t want to send the wrong message,’ he thought.

  David turned to look at the ceiling and heard one of the ladies whisper, “Is he the one?” and the other lady quickly shush her and reply, “yes, shhh!”.

  The elevator stopped on the tenth floor, and David made his way out of the now cramped and awkward space to the front desk. He watched the trio enter through a side door and disappear to their respective vocations. He filed away, in his thoughts, the odd exchange he’d overheard in the elevator and decided to focus on the meeting about to take place.

  After having him sign a short entry in the guest book to indicate his time of arrival, the receptionist asked David to wait for a few minutes while she checked on his appointment. He had started sitting down in the waiting area when the same side doors the elevator trio had disappeared through opened, and a man in another fine jacket walked out and greeted him.

  “Hi David, glad you could make it today, my name is Willy Michaels, and I’m the executing attorney for your estate and your late wife’s. I’ve got our meeting all set up and ready, and if you like, we can head in and start looking at the particulars. There’s someone from your wife’s company that really wants to share some interesting possibilities with you, and I think you’re really going to want to hear him out.”

  David figured the vagueness in the man’s words was a matter of practice, so he simply nodded and followed the man through the double doors. He noticed the receptionist pick up the phone while eyeing him and say, “The appointment is headed into the meeting room now, Ma’am.” ‘First the elevator trio and now the receptionist?’, He felt that a number of questions or curiosities were beginning to form. This entire meeting was starting to make him feel uncomfortable. After all, he was still certain he had initiated the request for this meeting, but he wasn’t sure he was still in control of the agenda.

  As he walked into the meeting room, he saw that there were two other people dressed in that same formal dress he was now associating with the legal type seated in the room with a tall older man that looked more like a wealthy billionaire than an employee of the legal firm. This man stood up and came right for David and gave him a very enthusiastic handshake and a grin that David found annoyingly familiar in nature for such an occasion. The man wore a white outfit with a comfortable sports jacket and also wore obnoxious gold-tipped boots that looked to be made of white crocodile skin. They could have been some kind of white snake boots as well. David was sure he liked this man the least, and he started to wonder if perhaps this was the one hijacking his meeting. He started hating the tall older man even more as the towering man was looking down at him with the most plastic grin he had ever seen. David decided he’d have to find a way to put things back in order and was about to do this when the man seemed to instantly realize this and started talking.

  “Hello David, I’m sure you are wondering what this is all about so first let me start by saying that we are very happy to meet you and have so much to discuss that we hope you won’t mind that we took the liberty of clearing our schedules and taking care of your kids after school pickup and even ordering lunch. “

  David was still processing what this guy was saying and was about to say something, but the older man continued before he could say more than the word ‘but.’ Getting things back on track would be a little hard if this guy wasn’t going to breath long enough to insert a word or two. This had to be part of the strategy, he realized.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” the man continued, “we’ve contacted that great aunt of theirs, your late wife’s sister, who gladly accept
ed the task on the account you would be meeting with us. But where are my manners? My name is Carl Matthews the 3rd, and I am the CEO of Neural Pathways and Beyond. We’re the technologies company your lovely wife worked for all those years.”

  The man continued.

  “Please have a seat, and I’ll be happy to tell you about this whole thing in even greater detail.” Carl, the 3rd, led David to the chair at the head of the large conference table and pulled out the chair for David, and waited for David to sit before taking the chair closest to his. This left the other two people seated on the other side of the table, far from the action, but Carl the 3rd didn’t seem to notice the obvious looks of discomfort from them.

  He continued.

  “Neural Pathways and Beyond, N’Pab’ for short, isn’t your average corporation, and we never forget the people that made us who we are. Your wife Hellen was one of the most brilliant inventors and at the source of our most forward-thinking and most lucrative ventures. Beyond this, she set the standards for employee and family welfare by ensuring that all employees and their families would be well taken care of during their employment and long after.”

  “One of the things that makes N’Pab so great at adapting to the market’s needs and the needs of our employees is that we think ahead and plan for the possibilities, whatever they may be. We’ve heard about this business with the brain tumor because we are very much involved in your health care plan and that of all our present and past employee families, and because of this, we have something to offer you that you might be surprised we can offer.”

  David didn’t know what to say as he was certain he had only called his wife’s lawyers to confirm that the operation would be funded and that his family would be taken care of in case of a mishap. This man, from his late wife’s company, seemed to be far too aware of his situation, and he felt all kinds of frustration and anger coming on quickly. The man continued, seemingly unaware of David’s now shifting eyes and fidgeting hands and feet.