❦ BOOK ONE - A Realm Reborn ❦
❧ CHAPTER TWO - - - - - The Summerford Guard PART EIGHT: the key
... but something had come loose. Something deep in his soul.
If this was a dream, the mists of slumber had outdone themselves building this reality. Lucan stood on an invisible ground, an eternity beneath his feet, sinking down. An eternity in the sky, soaring beyond his mortal sight. He was in the nothingness now, the void, the edge of creation, the ebb of time had outrun him and he stood now lost in it all.
And then the crystal was there. The same one he’d found on the ground after his fight with the gobbue, what seemed like a lifetime ago, but was only mere minutes. It floated there in front of him, glowing with an energy that drew on this place, bursting into a glare that formed footing he could stand on. He froze there, looking down at the glyph that had formed beneath his boots.
Six circles, interconnected with a six-sided star. The glyph was nothing he’d seen before, geometric and laced with magic. Whose creation this was, he couldn’t say. This place was beyond ownership as far as he could tell. Whose magic he now breathed in was a mystery, but he could feel it. Could feel it churning in his lungs, beating with his heart, filling his veins with its strength.
The crystal floated down, as if a will of its own, to one of the circles. It spun there in the middle then burst into a pillar of light that shot on for ages. Lucan knew, then, that a lock had been broken. Five more to go, but something had come loose. Something deep in his soul. The crystal had seen to that.
And then the voice.
Hear.
The dream. He’d never known what he was supposed to hear. Never known whose voice it was and he felt his chest tighten with the thought that he was about to get answers. Answers to the pleas he had issues night after night into his pillow. Answer me. Hear what? Answer me, please damn you.
As if the voice understood those long nights of yearning answers, it spoke again to him, this time a word had not uttered before.
Think.
