HEIRESS
~ The Master of Monsters ~
E.E. Blake
“…To find the Child of Destiny,
the Descendents of Five shall come
together and right the wrongs of a
wicked past.”
~ Book of Lodoss, 52:8-10
Heiress: The Master of Monsters
By E.E. Blake
Published by Sterilized Dirt at Smashwords.com
Copyright 2011 E.E. Blake
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Very special thanks go to Annese, John, Nancy, Melanie, Elfie, and Heidi (You guys are the best – thanks so much for helping me with this project, despite all of the other more important things you had going on at the time. I really appreciate it, and the book is a far better story because of every single one of you), Tiger, for being such a great and willing demographical guinea pig – and of course, the talented ladies of CLAMP; without your inspiration in a time when I was down a rocky and dark path, this story would never would have been.
But of course, none of this would have ever happened without the guidance of Mr. Tim Hughes. Without your enthusiasm and patience, I never would have taken up fiction-writing as a serious hobby. Thank you.
1286 – Leola Kingdom, Atrea
The dark, lifeless cathedral that stood adjacent to the long-since ruins of Leola Castle lay before the seven comrades-in-arms. A streak of white lightning cracked through the overcast sky above the gothic-styled cathedral’s decrepit steeple.
It was a derelict, once a place of song and worship among the extinct Royal family of King Learix Axram – now transfigured into a crypt of souls, with halls where demons lurked.
Jarem Sufocus sucked in a sharp breath of air that felt cold and harsh between his gritted teeth. He took a few heavy steps towards the cathedral entrance with his heavy, yellow, hooded cape whipping around him in the harsh wind – but he stopped short before the steps up to the desecrated church, as if he had come to an invisible obstacle.
His infant sister was somewhere inside of that awful place.
Terra Sufocus, the Child of Destiny – chosen as a neutral force and bestowed with the power to either make Atrea a world of peace, or wash the very continent over in an ocean of fire – was now wound in a hellish web that could result in the very destruction of the continent and the lands beyond it.
Jarem squeezed the handle of the heavy, orange-headed war hammer held outward in his left glove.
“Terra’s in there,” his voice quaked.
He turned a slow gaze over his shoulder, to the six companions who stood a short distance behind him.
“It will be all right, Jarem,” said the young priestess Relina Smyth, who offered him a small smile – but Jarem felt the hidden terror behind her gesture.
“We’re with you every step of the way,” rumbled the mercenary archer Obiere Laroche in a gravelly voice from the other end of the group. At his side, Arissa Lockhart, the warrior princess of Demoria Kingdom, offered Jarem a quiet nod.
“Tonight this war ends,” assured former sea-faring pirate, Faran Coyne, as he clutched his three-pronged trident against his chest. “The Dark Lord shall fall to our mighty weapons!”
The sharp gale continued to shriek through the air around the party.
“Prince Jarem, we must make haste,” said Father Eric Lodoss from the right flank of the group. He leaned against a gnarled walking staff as the wind licked at the loose ends of his hooded cloak and the bristles of his thick white beard and moustache.
On the opposite end of Jarem’s group stood a slender pale-skinned Elf, whose long dandelion hair danced in the frenzied gale. She eyed Jarem with a hard, concerned, gaze as she shifted the three Mage Staffs that were bound tight across her caped back.
“I understand,” Jarem nodded.
“What exactly is our plan, Father Lodoss?” Arissa asked him. She pushed strands of short black hair out of her eyes.
“Lakmir and I will sneak around the side entrance, while the five of you barge in head-long,” Father Lodoss answered and exchanged nods with the Elf. “With The Dark Lord distracted from the sudden attack, we will set the Mage Staffs around the cathedral. As soon as I have cued the ready, the five of you must invoke the incantation – in unison – to create the rift, which will banish Viktor Sufocus and his army of Monsters into an alternate dimension.”
“That’s all Monsters, right?” Faran asked.
“That’s correct.”
“Won’t Lakmir get caught up with the rest of them?” Obiere asked. “She’s a Monster of Earth.”
The Elf shifted with discomfort.
“...It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she declared with a strong voice.
“It will be all right, Lakmir,” Relina said, caressing the Elf’s worried shoulder.
Jarem hesitated a moment, and swung around on his heel to face his friends.
“Before we go in there to rescue my sister and end my father’s tyranny, I feel the need to thank you all for risking everything and making this long and harrowed journey with me,” he said. “...A lot has been lost over these past few months. I only hope that tonight we may bring peace back to Atrea. My sister’s soul depends on it.”
He looked back at the sinister face of the cathedral, and another crack of lightning coursed through the brackish and cloudy sky.
“For Terra and Atrea,” Jarem murmured.
“For Terra and Atrea,” his companions repeated.
In the shriek of the night’s air, the seven comrades parted ways and journeyed toward the maw of hell.
~
The orange head of Jarem’s war hammer clashed with a thunderous clang against the spiked gauntlet worn by The Dark Lord, Viktor Sufocus.
“You heartless, selfish bastard!!” Jarem shouted as drops of sweat rolled off his temples. “Terra’s my sister – your daughter, for God’s sake! How can you do this to her?!”
“Terra is the Icon of the World’s ruin, my son!” Sufocus rumbled under the hood of his long, brown cloak that covered his face in a dark shadow. He pushed his burly, chainmail-clad arm forward and nudged the weapon away from him with relative ease.
“You’re a demon! I’ll kill you!!” Jarem promised, and heaved the war hammer back down at his father with both hands.
They exchanged parries in an intense toe-to-toe battle, dancing with passionate hatred for each other around the main area of the cathedral. Arissa, Faran, Relina, and Obiere watched the battle with helplessness from the stone walls they were bound against by an invisible force that crushed their lungs. Sufocus had thrown the spell at them almost as soon as the five knights barrelled through the main entrance.
Father Lodoss and Lakmir the Elf scampered around on opposite sides of the cathedral, each with a Mage Staff – a long, black rod with a red-coloured orb bound on the end – careful not to take the notice of The Dark Lord, who was already too focused on the melee combat with his own son.
“Master Lodoss, let me aid Prince Jarem while you set the final Mage Staff,” Lakmir breathed when she and the old priest met up at the front of the cathedral.
Father Lodoss opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off when the strained voice of Obiere caught their attention.
“The kid...” he rasped as blood spilled past his lips. “...Somebody’s gotta grab the kid...”
Lakmir gave Obiere a quick nod. She withdrew the final Mage Staff from the ropes around her shoulders and passed it off to Father Lodoss. She headed up one side of the cathedral and caught a glimpse of the intense fight between Sufocus and Jarem.
She noticed the previously unheard cries of a baby that came from a blood-spattered basin on the surface of the altar at the top of the set of stairs away from the battle.
Lakmir bounded up the steps. She careened around the rear of the altar, and noted a headless goat’s corpse that lay crumpled in a pool of blood against it.
She stepped over the cadaver and leaned over the altar with her pale, slender hands set on either side of the basin. Lakmir let out a sharp breath.
“Lady Terra!” she gasped.
Inside of the basin squirmed a runty-looking three-month-old baby. Its pale skin and tufts of orange hair were smeared with what Lakmir assumed was the goat’s blood, in what looked like a ritualistic kind of performance.
The baby let out another shrill cry, and as the Elf dipped forward to scoop the infant into her arms, the child’s eyelids fluttered. She stared up at Lakmir.
Deep, blood red eyes.
Lakmir shuddered at the sight, but a loud yell from below the steps caught her attention.
With a heavy blow of his spiked gauntlet, The Dark Lord smacked the war hammer clean out of Jarem’s gloved hands, and grabbed the boy by the top of the head with his mammoth fingers, leaving only his son’s mouth exposed.
“I must end you,” Sufocus rumbled and sank his strong fingers into his son’s skull.
“A – Arissa...” Jarem choked out as thin trails of blood spilled down the sides of his face from under Sufocus’s vice-grip.
“Jarem, no!!” Arissa shrieked. She strained hard against the invisible weight that bound her against the wall, but the struggle only wore the warrior princess down and forced her to cough up more blood-spittle.
With a rumble of laughter, Viktor Sufocus lifted his son up in the air and let him dangle, while the metal fingers of his gauntlet squeezed down harder on Jarem’s skull.
“No!” Lakmir gasped in horror. She scooped the baby Terra into her arms and started to rush down to help Jarem, when a sudden heavy blow struck her in the side of the head.
As the Elf fell back against the cold floor, a shadowy figure that towered over her slid Terra out of her hands by the underarms.
The baby squirmed and cried in the figure’s grasp, and worked her head around to take an eyeful of the violence down in the centre of the cathedral, although she had no real idea of what took place.
“Shh, shh, there, there ... It’s time to go now, dear one...” The figure held the blood-spattered and confused child against his shoulder, and stepped backwards into the shadows of the sacristy.
“Stop it, Sufocus – he’s your son!” Relina cried. Tears flew from her puffy eyes as she strained against her own invisible bonds. “For God’s sake – have you no mercy?!”
Father Lodoss took the Mage Staff in both hands, raised it overhead, and sank the spiked end of it deep into the stone floor as if it were a knife through a slab of warm butter. As soon as he twisted the black shaft into place, all of the Mage Staff orbs activated and filled the cathedral with a dull-throbbing red glow.
“It’s time!” Father Lodoss shouted at the top of his lungs. “Quickly, the incantation!”
“But Jarem...!!” Faran rasped.
Father Lodoss threw down his walking staff and flipped back the cloak over his priest’s smock to reveal the hilt a sword sheathed in a leather scabbard at his portly waist.
“Lord God, forgive me for what I am about to do...” the priest murmured, and then tore the sword from its sheath, and with a slow and hobbled step, dashed at Sufocus with the blade pointed out in both hands like a spear.
The Dark Lord looked up at Father Lodoss, uttered another laugh, and then without a flinch, clenched his claw as tight as he could around his son’s head.
A loud crunch deafened the air, and Jarem’s struggles went limp.
“Jarem!!” Arissa and Relina screamed.
“Good God, no!!” Obiere blared.
“Why...?” Faran croaked. “His own son...”
“Prince Jarem!” Father Lodoss reeled back in horror. “Sufocus you heartless maniac! You’ll pay for what you’ve done!”
With a flick of his wrist, The Dark Lord tossed Jarem’s body off to one side and regarded the priest with a slight tilt of his hooded, shadowy-faced head.
With great effort, Father Lodoss hoisted the sword in his weak arms and made a blind run at Sufocus again – but was batted off to the side like a mere fly with a heavy back-handed swing of the Dark Lord’s metal fist.
Father Lodoss collided hard to the floor and slid against the wall. He struggled up onto one knee and looked over at the four remaining knights, still pinned against the cathedral walls.
“The spell...” Jarem struggled to say as blood flowed free down his fractured face. “We ... we have to invoke the spell...” The words barely escaped his lips as he crawled away to safety.
“What about Jarem?!” Arissa cried out.
“This is the only chance we’ll have!” Father Lodoss spat.
The warrior princess shut her tear-filled eyes and nodded.
“Everyone now!” she yelled out, and together the five warriors recited the spell’s incantation to seal Sufocus and his Monster army away forever.
“Ancient rites of this blessed land! Hear us as we plead to you for help! Conjure the Winds of Balance and encircle those who wish for the destruction of peace and innocence!”
The glow within the orbs of the Mage Staffs throbbed stronger.
“Upon the request of the Holy Elements, banish this force and rain new Life upon us—” the five knights continued.
“...Fire...” Jarem slurred. He then collapsed to one side with a final breath.
Arissa looked to Jarem’s limp body, which now sat slumped against the far wall. The colour drained from her cheeks as dread filled her veins.
“Princess Arissa!” Lodoss snapped at her.
She shook her head and lifted her chin skyward as the tears she fought so hard to keep back spilled down her cheeks.
“Earth!” she sobbed.
“Water!” Faran uttered.
“Air!” Obiere rumbled.
“...Spirit!!” Relina summoned.
A violent gale struck up around Sufocus, and the stained glass window directly above him crashed open as a black abyss the size of the entire continent opened up in the sky.
Lakmir stirred awake just as the strong wind caught hold of her ankles and dragged her across the floor. She let out a yelp of terror and grabbed for the edge of the altar, but her fingertips only brushed against it.
“Master Lodoss!!” she screamed, but it was too late.
“Lakmir!” Father Lodoss cried out as he held his sword out in front of him to ward off the freezing gale that otherwise ignored him and the five warriors.
With wide-eyed horror and her arms stretched out before her, the Elf was gusted up straight through the shattered window of the cathedral’s ceiling, and disappeared into the swirling, black vortex.
Sufocus let out a deep grunt as he dropped to one knee with his cloak flapping wildly around him.
“This is not the end, Star Warriors!” Viktor Sufocus promised. “You may have stopped me now, but my daughter’s clutch on this pathetic world is imminent! You have only wedged a temporary halt to the prophecy!”
The Dark Lord succumbed to the spell’s power. The wind flung him skyward through the cathedral window and into the vortex.
A bright glow then radiated from the Mage Staffs, and before Father Lodoss and his warriors could react, the entire cathedral was filled with a blanket of hot, blinding white light.
There once was a Girl…
She looked ahead as the night’s harsh wind blew past, and noticed him a fair distance away from her with the light of the large full moon over his right shoulder.
The man was clad in a long, brown cloak that fluttered around him in the harsh wind. His head was covered by his cloak’s hood, and the girl could only make out a dark, featureless shadow where his facial features should have been.
“You ... I know you...” The girl stated, but her words barely travelled through the screaming gale around her.
The figure nodded.
“What do you want?” the girl asked, although somehow she already knew the answer in the back of her mind.
A low rumble coursed an octave under the harsh spring conditions.
The girl’s ears strained against the wind. The cloaked man was laughing.
The girl shook her head and lifted a large, orange-headed war hammer close to her body.
“I won’t do it,” she announced over the wind. “You can’t make me!”
It was impossible to read the almost mythical hooded figure’s body language as the black abyss within his hood stared her down with cryptic darkness.
A sharp chill skittered across the girl’s spine, but it wasn’t from the cold on her skin.
“…You can’t make me,” she repeated.
Silver gauntlets flung outward of the man’s cloak, attached to burly arms, clad in purple chainmail. The figure brought his hands together, and when the stiff, metal fingers were only inches away from clasping, a red ball of energy formed between his palms.
The girl swallowed hard and felt her knuckles turn white underneath the lavender elbow-length gloves she wore as she squeezed the war hammer’s handle tight with fear.
“...Y-you don’t s-scare me...” The words came out in a tremble.
The figure’s hooded head tilted to one side with mock curiosity. Without warning, he then hurled the transparent ball of red energy at the girl.
Eri Seruma shot awake with a cold sweat that overpowered her fair skin.
But everything was all right. She was safe and sound in her bedroom with no boogeyman at the foot of her bed. Eri heard the echo of children playing in the street somewhere outside her open and ice-crusted window.
“That dream again…” she murmured.
Eri sighed and pushed strands of orange hair out of her eyes. She glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table.
11:00 a.m.
With a tired groan, Eri leaned over the only exposed side of her bed and picked up a discarded plush toy off the floor.
The stuffed doll was a black-furred fox that wore blue medieval garb and brown boots – Ash Foxglove, from one of Eri’s favourite fantasy books.
A birthday present from her older brother, Noah, a year ago.
She flopped back against the mattress and hoisted the doll above her to make it do a happy little dance in her hands.
Eri and Noah didn’t spend much time together anymore, but the plush toy was sentimental to her. It reminded her of happier times when she and Noah were inseparable.
Eri was thirteen years old. She stood at five-feet, had bright orange hair – cut in a straight, neat, bob with her bangs usually brushed to the left side – and was, in her Nana’s words, “Thinner than a sewing pin.”
Her eyes were a deep blood red, which in combination with her almost ghost-pale complexion, had some kids at school convinced Eri was a vampire.
The Seruma family doctor couldn’t ever explain the phenomenon, but Eri tried hard to ignore what people said about her eyes; there was a far more bothersome thing about her body.
While other eighth grade girls had experimented with training bras by now, Eri’s underwear drawer was haven to dainty white undershirts. As such, Eri had been changing for gym class in the bathroom since the middle of the year when in the locker room, some of her peers started pointing out her failure to conform to puberty.
“You’re up early,” Noah said when she entered the kitchen. He sat at the dining room table with a comic book spread out under his nose, while he chomped away at a ketchup-and-mayonnaise sandwich.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Eri yawned as she wandered bare-foot along the yellow linoleum floor towards the portal that separated both rooms. She patted her mouth politely and plopped down into the nearest chair, diagonal her brother. “Where’re Mom and Dad?”
“Mom’s at sewing class and Dad’s doing groceries.”
Noah was tall, olive-toned, and had short dark hair – just like their dad, except Noah didn’t wear glasses.
“Mackenzie called while you were asleep. She said something about the stock market crashing,” Noah said, not taking his eyes off the exciting panels of his comic book.
“It’s a thing for school,” Eri said, eying her brother’s choice meal with absolute revulsion. “Ms. Youse wants me and Macks to do a really long speech about the stock market crash of 1929.”
“That teacher’s going to work you kids into the ground, you know,” Noah said, still not looking up.
“She says she’s getting us ready for high school,” Eri sighed. She leaned forward on the dining room table and put her cheek against her hand.
“One of these days she’s gonna start keeping you kids in for recess for the exact same bull excuse,” Noah predicted.
Eri glared daggers at him.
~
“Hello, Eri-chan!” Mackenzie Thompson beamed from her townhouse veranda. She dropped the butt of her cigarette next to her black Nikes, and stamped it out against one of the icy steps. The cool wind danced with her waist-long blue-black hair.
Mackenzie tugged her unzipped winter coat tight around her slight but apple-shaped body and stood up as Eri crossed the street.
“Mackenzie,” Eri frowned when she got to the foot of the veranda, “I’ve told you a hundred times … You don’t have to add ‘chan’ to my name just because my name is Japanese.”
Eri’s dad had served in the Canadian Army Reserve before he met and married Helen Ferguson in Gagetown, Nova Scotia, and then moved to Ontario. When stationed in the Orient for a year, Ken had heard the name “Eriya” off the radio, and it stayed stuck in his head until he and Helen eventually gave birth to a girl.
“I know. I just like how it sounds!” Mackenzie grinned.
“Well, I don’t,” Eri said as she stomped up the steps to meet her friend. “You sound like an anime-obsessed freak when you add stuff like that to my name.”
“Shut up, I’m not an otaku,” Mackenzie glared at her.
Eri rolled her eyes and noted the stamped-out cigarette butt that still smoked a bit by her friend’s dirty sneakers. “I thought you quit.”
“I did,” Mackenzie said as she yanked open the screen door. “And lay off, I don’t razz you when you sigh like five frigging times in a row.”
“Yeah, but it’s so bad for you…”
“I said lay off!”
“Mackenzie, who’s there?!” A raspy voice came from inside the townhouse.
Eri wrinkled her nose from the brick wall of repugnance she had walked into as soon as she passed through the front door, which led straight into the kitchen. While loosening the ties of her knitted Hello Kitty winter hat, she glanced around at the messy, filth-ridden room, and noticed dirty dinnerware and cooking tools that lay piled in the dual sinks across the room. They looked like they had been ignored for what could have been months.
Eri leaned over to undo the bows of her low-cut blue converse sneakers, and instinctively grabbed onto the edge of what should have been a kitchen table – but to her looked like a shrine to fast food bags and junk mail flyers, with three ratty-looking wooden chairs that worshipped around it.
“It’s just Eri, Mom,” Mackenzie called into the living room while she closed the door behind her friend.
“She’s not staying for supper,” the voice cracked, followed by a string of phlegmy coughs.
“I know, Mom,” Mackenzie rolled her eyes, and led Eri to the staircase near the back of the kitchen.
Opening the door to Mackenzie’s bedroom revealed an alternate universe that hovered within the confines of the Thompson home. The bedroom was the cleanest place Eri ever seen – even cleaner than her own whole house.
The grey carpet was unstained, the off-white walls lacked dents and scratches – ultimately untainted, except for the two individual Tenchi Muyo! and Cardcaptors posters that hung straight, perfect, and showed no signs of wrinkles or tears. On the white dresser beside Mackenzie’s closet were some makeup supplies, placed neat and in order of type and colour, as well as a teddy bear with a pink ribbon around its neck – a present from her father when she was born.
“Is your mom okay?” Eri asked. She dropped her backpack, plopped down on the bottom mattress of Mackenzie’s black iron-framed bunk bed, and plucked a picture frame off of the white bedside table.
Unlike the Serumas, who lived secure on the shoulders of the local electronics shop that Ken owned and manned, Mackenzie and her mom thrived off of the meagre disability pay the government graciously granted them each month after Mackenzie`s dad landed in jail for selling marijuana, five years before.
Despite her situation, Mackenzie kept a positive disposition for the most part, but Eri knew deep down that her friend hid deep-rooted anguish and resentment.
“She’s fine,” Mackenzie muttered as she dug around in her backpack for the assignment. “She’s been on the couch all week, making a big deal about her stupid leg. I know she’s all right though. Lazy just wants attention, as usu – ah, here they are.”
She pulled out a few stapled papers and stood up to grab a red Bristol board from inside the closet.
“The Dirty Thirties” was written at the top of the board, with information and pictures pasted below with as much elegance and creativity as a desperate-to-impress eighth grader could muster.
“She’s so pretty,” Eri whispered into the picture frame in her hands as Mackenzie plunked down beside her.
The photo that stared back was of a teenaged girl who looked fairly similar to Mackenzie, save for the mole under her chin. In the picture, the girl offered a flirty smirk at the camera, against the backdrop of some lush forest greenery. Her wavy, blue-black hair flowed with clumsy finesse over one shoulder.
“She is,” Mackenzie cooed. “I was always jealous of Amanda. She and I fought a lot, and I knew she was Mom’s favourite … but I didn’t know just how important she was until the car crash ... I miss her so much, Eri.”
Eri placed the picture frame back on the bedside table and gave her best friend a tight hug. “I know…”
Mackenzie put her chin against Eri’s shoulder and closed her eyes.
“It’s been four years, but the shock doesn’t go away, you know? I thought I’d be over it by now, but…” She sat up and wiped a tear from her eye. “Anyway … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you. I hate it when I can’t keep it inside.”
“No,” Eri shook her head. “No, it’s okay, Macks. I don’t mind. You gotta let it out. It’s not good to keep all this junk bottled up.”
“Mm. I guess. Do you got the movie clip?”
Eri hesitated to withdraw from her best friend, but she did so and pulled out a rental copy of The Grapes of Wrath from her backpack.
“I smell an eighty.” Mackenzie forced a weak smile.
Eri slid to the floor and read over the information on the Bristol board to make sure there were no spelling errors. She frowned, and looked up at Mackenzie.
“The Dionne quintuplets aren’t anywhere on here,” she said.
“Yeah, I didn’t think they were important.” Mackenzie blinked. “Why, are they?”
“Yeah ... I think Ms. Youse will like it if we talk about them...”
“Urgh...”Mackenzie flushed and pulled away. “Let’s just go to the library and get this stupid project done. We gotta meet Timoshi and Evan there anyway.” She gathered her things together and headed out the bedroom door, leaving Eri in a confused daze.
~
“…So my choir teacher, Becky, is like, ‘Evan, what the hell are you doing to your nose?’ and I can’t friggin’ say anything, ‘cause I’m in so much pain.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well you know what it’s like when you drink a pop, and when you burp, you get the fizzy feeling in your nose?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And she’s just staring at me like—”
“No, this isn’t going to work. I need more glue.”
“Timoshi! Are you even listening to me?”
Timoshi Izuma blinked a couple of times and glanced up from the red Bristol board and photocopied images of World War II fighter jets and the aftermath of Hiroshima strewn around him. His best friend, Evan Hess, sat across from him at the large rectangular table in a section of the Shorebrooke Public Library, glaring at him from behind large thick-rimmed glasses.
“What did you say?” Timoshi asked.
“Aw, forget it,” Evan grumbled.
Timoshi blinked again. “No, what?”
“It’s really annoying how you keep talking to yourself like that,” Evan spat. “I feel like you’re ignoring me!”
“I’m not,” Timoshi said went back to his work.
Evan picked up one of the stray pictures and leaned his elbows against the table. Staring back at him was a small row of Japanese soldiers who stood with their rifles over-shoulder against a fence that barred off a wheat field of some sort.
“Doesn’t this bug you?” he asked.
“You not doing your share of the work?” Timoshi inquired as he glided a glue stick across the back of a picture. “Sure it does.”
Evan rolled his eyes.
“No, I mean this project,” he elaborated. “Plenty to pick from for this stupid project, and Youse stuck us with Hiroshima.”
“So?”
“I’unno, with you being Japense, and all…”
“Half,” Timoshi corrected. “I’m German, too.”
“You are? Me too!”
“Hence the last name ‘Hess’,” Timoshi said. “...In any case, why should it bother me? This stuff happened like fifty years before I was born.”
“Yeah, I guess. I dunno.”
An awkward minute of silence later, Timoshi looked up from his work and was relieved to see past Evan’s shoulder that the girls had just entered the library’s main foyer from outside.
“They’re here,” he said.
“Mackenzie and Eri?” Evan immediately perked.
“Who else?” Timoshi gave him a look of condescension.
Evan glanced over his shoulder at the two girls. Mackenzie shuffled off small remainders of snow from the bottoms of her shoes, while Eri undid the ties of her knitted Hello Kitty winter hat.
“Oh man,” he croaked and threw a wide-eyed look of worry at Timoshi.
“Relax,” Timoshi murmured. “It’ll be okay.”
“Hey guys!” Mackenzie chirped as she and Eri came up behind Evan. She ruffled up his already messy brown hair.
“Hello, Thompson,” Timoshi nodded over Evan’s whines of Mackenzie’s mop intrusion. “Seruma.”
Eri’s cheeks went a deep shade of red, and she waved at him in silence.
“Hey, Eri! What’s up?” Evan grinned at her when he finally batted Mackenzie away.
“Nothing. How are you?”
“I’m rockin’ out, I guess.”
Eri beamed.
“‘Rocking out’?” Timoshi repeated with cynicism.
“Well, before we start distracting you boys, we’d better go get what we came for,” Mackenzie winked. “C’mon, Eri.”
Eri swallowed hard as her friend led her away to a section of bookcases marked “Canadian History”.
“Whew,” Evan exhaled as he turned back around properly in his chair.
“Don’t get any big ideas,” Timoshi muttered as he went back to work.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s pretty obvious you have a thing for her. Cut it out.”
“Do not,” Evan flushed.
“Don’t be twelve,” Timoshi frowned. “If she were anybody else, I’d say go for it, but because of the circumstances, I need you to chill.”
Evan sighed.
“It isn’t a big deal,” Timoshi assured. “Seruma’s pretty dense. She probably hasn’t caught on.”
“Oh, great. Thanks, man.”
Mackenzie glanced down at Eri, who sat on her knees eying the worn spines of shelved reference text books.
“Say one for me while you’re down there, will ya?” Mackenzie smirked.
“Huh?” Eri blinked and looked up at her.
“Never mind,” Mackenzie said and shook her head. “Hey, your cheeks are still all red.”
Eri blinked again and put two fingers to the side of her warm face.
“It’s so obvious you like him,” Mackenzie went on. “I don’t know why he hasn’t caught on yet.”
Eri’s cheeks reddened deeper.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Oh come on, hon’, I dunno why you try so hard to hide it. I think it’s really cute how you act when he’s around.” Mackenzie leaned against the opposite bookcase and stared out at the distant table where the two boys sat. “It’s just a shame Timoshi is so friggin’ dense. I think you would be really cute together.”
Eri wrinkled her nose and went back to her quest for the right resource tome. It was true though – every time she and Timoshi hung out, a horde of butterflies erupted inside her stomach. She and Timoshi had been good friends since kindergarten, and these feelings for him had only started to develop over the last year.
She didn’t know what it was about him that made her feel so weird. Maybe it was because whenever he came to visit, Timoshi always climbed through her bedroom window – which never had a screen on it for some reason.
Eri tried to suppress a guilty smile.
Her eyes flicked across a worn-down spine that read “CANADA AND THE 1930s”.
“Found it,” she mumbled.
“Hey, did you know that World War One invented trench fighting?” Evan asked when the girls came back to the table.
“Really?” Mackenzie asked as she slyly slid in beside him.
Eri’s eyes fell upon the only empty seat left – next to Timoshi.
Mackenzie… she mentally groaned.
“Oh yeah,” Evan nodded.
“Also that most, if not all, medical advances were made during wartime,” Timoshi muttered as he flattened out a photograph against the Bristol board, where it stayed glued in place. “Ironic, I guess.”
“You’re such an adult,” Mackenzie laughed. “Talk like a kid some time, okay?”
The corner of Timoshi’s mouth ticked.
Evan noticed Eri rubbing at her temples in discomfort as she tried to focus on the open pages that brimmed with text and black-and-white photos.
“Hey, are you all right, dude?” he asked.
Eri nodded. “Yeah … I’m just a little light-headed. I haven’t been sleeping well, and Noah likes to play the drums at night.”
“Here.” Mackenzie dug around in her purse and tossed Eri a bottle of painkillers. “Extra strength.”
“How long has this been going on for?” Timoshi asked. “The not sleeping well part?” His eyes flicked sidelong at Evan, who swallowed hard.
“Thanks, Macks,” Eri sighed and popped the cap and tapped an oval capsule into her hand. “A little over a month now, I guess? I don’t really remember.” She put the pill into her mouth.
“Huh,” Timoshi muttered. “Hey, do you guys mind if I ask you something?”
“The answer’s ‘no’.” Mackenzie frowned.
“Huh?” Timoshi jerked his head back a bit.
“I’m joking – God – What is it?”
“Ignore her,” Eri waved a dismissive hand. “I do.”
“Shut up!” Mackenzie laughed and gave her an accusing stare.
Eri playfully stuck her tongue out.
“What is it?” Mackenzie repeated. She glanced at Eri again, and tried to suppress a giggle-snort.
Evan reclined in his chair and gave Timoshi a helpless look.
Timoshi nodded at him and looked back at the two girls. “Have you noticed anything weird going on lately? Like really weird?”
“Weird like how?” Mackenzie asked.
Timoshi shrugged. “I don’t know. That snowstorm last week? It’s almost spring, but Shorebrooke was dumped on.”
“There’s always a snow storm at the beginning of April,” Eri shrugged. “It’s snowing outside right now, too.”
“That’s how we remember your birthday,” Mackenzie grinned. “You always ruin the weather for us, just when winter’s about to die off, Mr. April 5th.”
Timoshi’s lips formed a tight frown.
“It’s okay, Timoshi,” Mackenzie smiled. “We forgive you.”
Evan folded his arms against the back of his head and reclined further in the chair, lifting it off its two front feet.
Timoshi shot him a look that pled for some dire supportive backup.
Evan rolled his eyes and landed his chair back on all fours with a loud thump.
“How about you, Eri?” he supplied. “You said you can’t sleep. Bad dreams?”
“…Yeah,” Eri nodded. “But … I don’t really want to talk about it. Anyway, that’s not like what you mean though, right, Timoshi? I mean, dreams are just dreams…”
“Some people say dreams parallel truth.” Timoshi shrugged. “They reflect what’s really on our mind – or sometimes, predict the future.”
“That’s dumb,” Mackenzie said. “The seeing in the future thing.”
“Who said?” Timoshi asked.
“Me. That psychic fantasy crap only happens in books.”
“Maybe. Who knows though for sure?” Timoshi shrugged again.
The group went back to their separate projects, and all was quiet except for the odd competitive ribbing and request for tools. After a good ten minutes, Timoshi felt a nudge under the table. He looked up from his notes and met Evan’s anxious eyes. They were large and quivery behind the thick glasses.
“I remember something,” Mackenzie said. She stared down at the heavy reference book on Canadian history, using the palm of her hand to lean her cheek on.
Timoshi, Evan, and Eri looked over at her.
Her eyes flicked up from the page and she said, “When you talked about that stuff ... the weird things that mighta happened ... I remember something.”
“What?” Timoshi asked with a forced casual tone that hid the excitement that brewed inside him.
“When you said that thing about the snowstorm,” Mackenzie said. “I remember I saw this dog-thing. Except … I don’t really know if it was a dog. I mean – it was really snowing out, and so it coulda been anything, but ... the thing was huge! And I mean, like, really big! Like a dump truck, I guess.”
“Yeah?” Evan asked.
Mackenzie nodded at him. “Yeah, and it was like … well … I didn’t really get a good look at it, like I said. I saw it just outside the forest in Grover’s Mill at the beginning of the month, but I think it had this really spiky blue fur. And its eyes were red. Like almost as red as Eri’s. Kinda like rubies, I guess.”
“I see,” was Timoshi’s only response.
“Eri, do you remember that time you and I were walking home from the Multicultural Centre that one night, and you kept getting the feeling like you were being watched?” Mackenzie asked her.
“How could I forget?” Eri grumbled. “It was like … I dunno, how did I describe it, Macks? Like I was being watched from all sides or something. And then I got a bad headache. And when I turned around, I saw this shadow like a hundred feet behind us. I went to show it to Mackenzie, but it was gone so fast – and my head was okay again.”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie nodded. “It was really weird.”
“When was this?” Timoshi raised an eyebrow.
The two girls exchanged looks.
“I don’t know, maybe a couple months ago?” Mackenzie shrugged. “Eri and I went to the Multicultural Centre to see Josh’s band play.”
“Huh.”
Soon, another nudge came from under the table.
Timoshi turned his attention to Evan, who had chewed on his tongue during the conversation. He gave a jerk of his head past a couple of bookcases on his left.
Timoshi gave a short nod.
“Excuse us. Evan and I will be right back,” he said.
Eri and Mackenzie blinked.
“Where are you going?” Mackenzie asked.
“Bathroom,” Evan said.
“Research,” Timoshi assured.
Eri and Mackenzie stared at them.
“…In the bathroom,” Evan clarified.
“Shut up and come on,” Timoshi sighed and led his friend around a corner of bookcases.
They headed out into the library’s main foyer, where community artwork and event notices were displayed. They crossed the hall and went into the men’s room.
The small, brown-walled washroom was empty except for a single stall and urinal against one end, and two sinks and three mirrors against the other.
“This is it,” Timoshi said as he flipped the lock on the door.
“Yeah, and now what?” Evan demanded. He swung open the stall to make sure no one was inside. “March right back out and say, ‘Hey Eri, guess what? You’re the key to saving the world!’ Yeah right, Timoshi. Get real.”
“Relax,” Timoshi ordered. He wandered to the sink and bent over to splash some water on his face. “It’s not important that Seruma knows right now. The fact is we’re basically home free now. As long as you and I are around, Seruma is safe. Sufocus can’t touch her. Not only that, but Thompson didn’t just see ‘some dog’, you know. She saw Shiara before I had the chance to Seal her. She remembered seeing her.”
Evan thumped the back of his head against the stall wall. “Yeah, but … her eyes are amber or something, right?”
“Facts before reason,” Timoshi said and reached for the paper towel dispenser. “Anyway, don’t worry about what we’ll do with Seruma. I brought along the Fire Pendant for her.”
“The Fire Pendant?” Evan raised an eyebrow. “Hey, wait a sec, Timoshi, that’s not ri—”
Before he could finish the sentence, a sudden tremor threw the boys to the tile floor.
Mackenzie sat up with a deep cringe. She rubbed the part of her head that smacked into the carpet.
“Nng ... Eri-chan, are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine … What about you?” Eri pushed herself into a sitting position against the fallen table, with their supplies scattered all over the place.
“I’m okay…” Mackenzie murmured. She looked around to see the library in complete disarray. Heavy bookcases had been tossed around with their contents strewn across the floor and overturned tables. The few other people present in the library when the earthquake hit were unconscious or struggled with their injuries.
“We have to go see if Timoshi and Evan are all right,” Eri said as she helped Mackenzie to her feet – but before they could embark to the washroom, there was a second explosion from the foyer.
Eri heard a loud rumble and she froze in shock when she spotted a large snake-like creature pushing through the archway from the foyer, into the huge room. Its massive head resembled a lizard’s skull and the rest of its body looked like jagged rocks all linked together with a long, curved claw for a tail.
“W – what is that thing?” Mackenzie cried amongst the chaos and screams of terror around them.
The snake slithered further inside the room, barely fitting through the archway. Its head rose a little bit to sniff at the air for something.
All we have to do is keep still and stay quiet, Eri thought. If we don’t move, maybe that … thing won’t even find us…
The creature went rigid and bent forward as a whiff of the urine that trailed down Mackenzie’s thigh was all it needed. The giant rock snake let out a loud screech, but a large, orange ball of energy struck the creature in the side of the head before it could do anything else.
“Hey, you pile of rocks, over here!” Evan cried out. Held tight in his grasp was a blue-handled, three-pronged trident that had a faint orange glow in its long, sharp tips.
Timoshi stepped out from behind him with a green-handled sword that had a braided red tail tied to the end of the hilt.
The large creature instantly forgot about Eri and Mackenzie, and swung its head around to face where the energy-based attack came from.
Eri caught Timoshi’s eye from behind the toppled-over table where she and Mackenzie hid.
“Keep Snake-Stone busy,” Timoshi said, and made a run towards the girls.
“All right,” Evan said behind gritted teeth. “Bring it on!” He got out of the way just as the giant creature’s rock-like tail smashed into the reference desk and some book cases.
“Timoshi, what’s going on? What is that thing?!” Eri demanded when they met up.
“No time to explain!” he said and guided them to safety behind a pile of bookcases that had slammed into each other in a kind of domino effect. “I need you two to stay here where it’s safe.”
“Right, like we’d willingly wander out into ground zero!” Mackenzie shot. “Where’d you and Evan get the weapons from?” She glanced over her shoulder and watched Evan evade another attack, only to unleash more orange orbs of energy unto the creature from the tips of his trident.
“I’ll explain later!” Timoshi promised.
“Timoshi—” Eri started, just as the giant rock snake-thing smashed through a row of shelves close by them.
“Sorry!” Evan called out in the distance.
Timoshi growled and led the two girls farther away from the fierce battle.
“This is just a dream,” Mackenzie trembled. “Just a really bad dream…”
“It’s not, Thompson, trust me,” Timoshi frowned. “Seruma, are you okay?”
Eri held her head and closed her eyes. “No … my head hurts so much…”
“Did you hit it on anything?”
Eri shook her head. “No, it’s just my headache from before; it’s worse now.”
“Nice timing,” Timoshi grunted. “Thompson, keep her safe. I’m going to go help Evan.”
He made his way over to the far side of the library and saw his friend nearly overpowered by the creature.
“Evan, don’t use a Mon-Orb!” Timoshi shouted. “Your trident is the element of Water!”
“You know, instead of lecturing me on how to Seal a Monster, you could help me out a bit!” Evan ranted.
He ran between a row of bookcases and muttered an incantation. His weapon’s glow vanished and an orange liquid poured out from the tips of the trident and onto the floor to form a small, tennis ball-sized orb of the same colour. Engraved on it was a hand with a circle in the palm.
Timoshi zipped up against the bookcases opposite his friend.
“So what now?” Evan asked him across the open space between aisles.
“Now you go in and just stab at it,” Timoshi instructed.
“I … just stab at it,” Evan repeated. “I’ll get killed! That’s suicide!”
“Trust me,” Timoshi growled.
“I mean, seriously. Look how tall that thing is compared to me—”
“Trust me! Water defeats rock, Evan!”
“Oh, great – advice from Pokémon...”
“Damn it, Evan!” Timoshi snapped. “Fine, I’ll do it myself!”
Timoshi shot across the open aisle, snatched the trident from Evan, and dashed out into the open path before the giant rock snake.
“If you die, I get your TV, okay?” Evan yelled out to him from around the corner of the shelf.
The rock snake took a great whiff of the air and let out another piercing shriek when it realized Timoshi’s presence. The creature arched up enough to graze the top of its spiky head against the high library ceiling.
“Quick, Evan! Call out your element!” Timoshi commanded and made a narrow dive out of the way as the stone snake crashed hard into the floor and sent clouds of debris everywhere.
Evan peeked out from behind the bookcase and gulped with the glassy orange orb held against his chest in both hands. “Okay … Element, Water!”
Suddenly a heavy blast of pure aqua shot from the trident and ploughed into the stone snake’s face. With some effort, Timoshi shifted the heavy weapon in his arms.
“Snake-Stone, Monster of Rock,” he yelled, “I order you to surrender your power to me!”
A harsh wind exploded from the creature’s body, and a blinding white glow consumed it. The rock-like snake arched up with a final howl of defeat, and then started to melt like hot liquid glass. The white light soon snuffed out, and all that was left of the creature was was a gleaming, grey orb the size of a tennis ball.
Timoshi let out a deep sigh. “It’s Sealed!”
He tossed Evan’s Water Trident to the floor and picked up the strange orb that the stone snake had turned into.
A sudden flash of light filled the room, and the damage that had been done started to reverse, like someone rewinding a film. Tables flipped upright, interior damage reassembled without a single hint of the battle, and finally, people who had been knocked unconscious or cowered in fear climbed to their feet with blank looks on their faces.
Timoshi ducked a pile of floating books and crossed the area to find Mackenzie on her knees with Eri limp in her arms.
“What happened?” he demanded.
Evan appeared behind Timoshi, tucking a blue-coloured pendant in the shape of a water drop down his shirt collar.
Mackenzie looked up at the two boys with huge eyes.
“Eri just … she fainted!” she cried out.
Warriors of the Star
Her eyes opened to the familiar sound of birds outside the window.
With a tired groan, Eri stretched out her stiff limbs and pushed up on her arms to sit against the headboard. She squinted ahead at nothing in particular while her hazy, sleep-addled mind sobered. After a while, she noticed her Hello Kitty bed sheets had been replaced with a faded denim duvet cover.
Eri blinked and looked around what was a mostly-bare wood-panelled bedroom with a giant square window beside her. It was cranked open a bit, and the smell of the fresh winter air tickled her nostrils.
She climbed out of the bed and pressed her forehead against the window pane. The street below, separated from Eri by the decorative plastic bars in the window, seemed so far away.
Eri raked some fingers through her hair and wandered over to a large, over-stuffed book case built right into the wall on her left. Her eyes scrolled the various titles. Eri didn’t know who David Eddings was, but whoever occupied the bedroom she woke up in seemed to own the guy’s entire library.
“The Seeress of Kell,” Eri yawned out the title on one of the books’ hardcover spines.
She withdrew Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” from a lower shelf, and read the summary on the back. It was one she’d always wanted to read, but her mom forbade Eri from anything that could “warp” or “influence” the girl negatively, despite the fact that she was thirteen years old and could make basic objective decisions on her own.
It was a miracle Eri got away with the Garbage poster that hung over her desk at home – the albums were stashed safe and hidden in a drawer of the vanity in her bedroom – but she didn’t think her mother actually knew the context of the overblown, glossy image of Shirley Manson and her band mates making goofy faces in the middle of the street – taken from their first album – since the band’s name wasn’t actually present anywhere on the poster.
Eri put the book back and made her way out of the attic bedroom, down a short set of stairs that led into a dark second-floor hallway that peered over the main foyer. Eri descended down the second set of stairs to the first floor.
The room to her left was closed off by glass doors. From the darkness within, Eri could tell it wasn’t used very much at all.
“So what you’re saying…”
“…right, Thompson. We think that…”
Eri heard voices from the room to her right. She trudged over and peered into the living room to see her friends on black leather couches around a coffee table. Clutched in their hands were steam-wafted mugs of some sort of hot drink. On the couch with its back to the entrance sat Timoshi. Mackenzie and Evan were on the other couch against the living room window.
“…Where are we?” Eri clutched onto the door frame.
“Eri!” Mackenzie shot up out of her seat and nearly knocked Evan’s mug out of his hands as she scrambled around the coffee table to meet her friend.
“You’re up,” Timoshi noted.
“Where are we?” Eri asked again.
“Timoshi’s house,” Mackenzie said. “Isn’t it huge?” She took her friend by the hands and led her over to the couches. Evan replaced himself beside Timoshi so the two girls could sit with each other.
“Cocoa?” Timoshi leaned over and put a full mug between Eri’s hands before she could respond. “You passed out at the library. What do you remember?”
Eri had to pause for a moment to think back on it. She took a long sip from the steaming mug.
“I … I remember us working on our projects,” she said, “and then that you and Evan went to the bathroom … and then that rock snake thing attacked. I don’t remember a lot except for just … being so scared. And the headache I got was so intense, that…”
“That you fainted,” Timoshi finished.
“I guess so.” Eri clenched her eyes tight until she saw stars. “Timoshi … what happened?”
“Let me just confirm the fact that what happened today was not a dream,” he assured. “Every single part of it was real. It’s completely understandable if you want to go home and sleep for a bit, but the fact remains that you and Thompson have entered a new kind of reality, and there’s no going back.”
“Stop, Timoshi,” Eri waved an irritable hand at him, eyes still clenched tight. “Stop with the Spock-speak for just, like, two minutes and talk to me like a kid. I just wanna know what happened.”
“Of course. Evan and I have already answered some of Thompson’s questions, but we’re willing to answer them again for you. Ask away.”
“What was that thing in the library and why did it attack us?”
Timoshi shifted in his seat. “That was Snake-Stone; a Monster of the Rock element. It attacked the library because it was looking for someone very important.”
“Who?”
“Her name is Terra. She is the daughter of a man named Viktor Sufocus. At one point he was a king’s Lord in Atrea, around the year 1286.”
Eri scratched at her hair. “Lovely, but what’s that gotta do with us being attacked today in the year 2000?”
“Well,” Timoshi continued, “there was this prophecy about the coming of the ‘End of Days’ – the end of the world – by the hand of what the religious scholars at the time called ‘The Child of Destiny’. Sufocus’s daughter – Terra – was the child the prophecy warned about.
“At the time, Sufocus dabbled in the dark arts. When he became ruler of the country of Leola when the king died in a war, Sufocus used his black magic to control Monsters that were originally worshipped as deities. Sufocus used their power to wipe out the country Leola was fighting with.
“When he found out about the prophecy, and that his own daughter was connected to it, Sufocus ... became obsessed with seeing that the End of Days came true – I think in the back of his mind, he thought he could become ruler of the world with the help of his daughter’s destructive power.”
“Cryptic,” Mackenzie shivered.
“In the prophecy letters, the child was supposed to be a neutral power,” Timoshi went on. “...As in, she could either fulfil the prophecy and go forward with the End of Days, or she could make the world a living paradise – Heaven on Earth, in a sense. It all depended on which way she was swayed – and the fact that Atrea was basically known as a holy land, because of Monsters like Snake-Stone that inhabited it, it only made sense for Terra to be born there.”
“Okay?” Eri blinked. “But again, what does that have to do with what happened today?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Timoshi went on, “Sufocus was defeated by five holy knights who each represented a point on the pentacle of the pagan Goddess, Kore – one of which being his own son, Jarem.
“Before Sufocus was defeated by these knights, he sent Terra into the future so that the prophecy could continue without interruption. The four of us are descendents of those knights.
“The bloodline has been going on since 1286 in preparation for the arrival of Terra Sufocus, and the possible return of her father if he found a way to escape the alternate dimension he was banished to. Either way, it’s our job to find Terra Sufocus and protect her from negative influence until she herself decides what the fate of the world should be.”
“I don’t believe this,” Eri sighed. “I didn’t even catch like half of that – Mackenzie, you get any of this?”
“Well you’re going to have to believe it,” Timoshi snapped. “Evan and I didn’t want to either when we found out, but it’s just something we had to deal with.”
“Dude, relax,” Evan winced. “Jeez.”
Eri wrinkled her nose and glanced over at Mackenzie, who had been trailing a finger over a golden, wing-shaped pendant that hung around her neck.
“Here,” Timoshi said. He slid a small, plain-looking wooden box in front of Eri. Inside of it was a beautifully-crafted flame-shaped pendant. “This is for you.”
Eri blinked and picked the open box up off the coffee table.
“A necklace?” she asked, and let her eyes take in the intricate design and crimson colour of the piece of jewellery.
“We Seal Monsters by using a sort of elemental magic manifested inside those pendants,” Timoshi said and reclined against the couch. “After Sufocus was defeated, a magic spell was cast to turn the five warriors’ weapons into pendants to be used by future generations if needed.” He paused to take a sip from his mug.