Lost Scrolls

Ancient: Eden will be out soon so here is a teaser for you. But if you have not read Book 2, be warned: there are major spoilers! And it is not for the squeamish.

                      P r o L o G u e                                                                     

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sun had long since hid its face of warm light behind the horizon’s jagged veil. And all in the land slept but one. The lone man hunched over a tool-cluttered table with a black ironwood mallet in one hand and a small steel rod in the other.

Tap. Tap.

Carefully, he struck the mallet against the rod he held between his fingers, driving a tiny steel pin into the precise place with just the right amount of force. The pin slid into the end of a peculiar, chrome cylinder. About the size of his forearm, the cylinder was covered with small raised markings that glinted in the flickering light of the two candles on either end of his table.

Lying the mallet and rod down on the table, he picked up the cylinder and held it up closer to the candlelight, slowly spinning it around, examining his work. Flaming reflections danced about the chromed steel’s tiny raised marks as he tuned it.

“Are you finished?” The man whispered, questioning the inanimate object. “Let’s see shall we?”

He pushed on the end of the cylinder and carefully twisted left, then right and then he gave one last push, immediately pulling back. A smaller cylinder slid out of the inside of the larger. He then repeated the same as before, releasing yet another even smaller cylinder from the inside of the middle one. Three separate cylinders then stood upright on the candle-lit table as he rolled out a scroll.

Then reaching over, he slid into the light a wide and shallow box and lifted the hinged lid revealing the inky black inside.

Taking the large cylinder first, he slowly rolled it in the box bottom; and when he brought it back out, the raised steel marks were blackened with ink.

Starting at the raised line that stretched along the cylinder’s length, he rolled the cylinder vertically across the scroll. It left a printed copy of the raised markings that covered the cylinder. After reloading it with ink and making sure it lined up squarely with line atop the parchment, he rolled the cylinder across the scroll again, but this time, horizontally at a perfect ninety degree angle from the first roll. When the marks that were rolled horizontally melded with the marks that had been rolled vertically, they formed characters – beautiful words in the Tongue of Angels.

He repeated the process with the two other cylinders directly below the last line. 

Then the man carefully raised the scroll up to examine it.

He smiled at the flawless characters that covered the parchment.

“Yes,” he whispered with a smile. “Finished.”

With no hesitation he held the parchment over the flame of a candle and watched it burn to ashes.

                                               Part 7 

And now to the Watchers, who have sent you to pray for them, who in the beginning were in heaven, Say, In heaven have you been; secret things, however, have not been manifested to you; yet have you known a reprobated mystery. And this you have related to women in the hardness of your heart, and by that mystery have women and mankind multiplied evils upon the earth. Say to them, never therefore shall you obtain peace. Enoch 16:2-5, Apocrypha

     1

The night was darker, more sinister than usual, even for the reputable Verus Island. 

The windy night mocked the isle’s deplorable state as its shroud of darkness covered land and water. Stars hid shyly behind the haze of light-devouring clouds and the last thin lunar sliver of the month speared up from the top of a sliver-lined cloud like a raptor’s talon striking its prey.

            A young man stared out into the sardonic night through a metal-barred window that was barely larger than his head. A scruffy, patchy beard littered his pallid face. Long and tangled dirty blond hair hung over his bare shoulders and down his soiled and scarred back. Tattered, torn, and stained pants covered his anemic legs. His pale green eyes gazed longingly and painfully through the bars, watching the only thing he could see in the darkness: that thin lunar sliver hovering over the choppy waters of the Black Sea.

            Filling his ears was the crashing sound of waves splitting against the jagged rocks of the shoreline clashing with the shifting howls and whistles of the squall that attacked the palace, occasionally accompanied by a scream or moan from another prisoner. It was the same dismal melody every day … every week … every month…  

            He looked down away from the moon that taunted him with its freedom, to several inches below the window sill. Even though the prisoner could not see in the lightless room, he ran his dirty, calloused fingers along the area he knew so well. He felt the several long rows of marks that he had scratched into the stone wall with a bone shard. There were two hundred and forty-three of them and in a few hours, he would scratch in another.

He wondered if someday, another unfortunate soul would be scratching marks into the stone with a shard from one of his bones.  

            Not only was he imprisoned in a tiny cell in the dreaded Verus Palace, he was imprisoned in his own mind with regret as his jailor. The reason he was here in the first place played over and over in his mind, ceaselessly reminding him – torturing him. The mental anguish was almost as unbearable as the excruciating physical torture that demon, Drakon, would gleefully inflict upon his nervous system every few days. Almost.

            The reason? He trusted the bridge of family loyalty that spanned over the raging river of the powerful Watcher Empire. The bridge collapsed … with him on it.

After the battle in Ararat months earlier, he had gone back into the City of Cain to make one last plea with his sister to leave that evil place and come back home with him. He knew it would be dangerous; he knew he would be taking a chance, but he also clung to the hope that the bond he once had with his sister would be a security net in case he got caught.

It was not. That tie had been severed … cleanly severed. And hope had blinded him to it.

Lydia was lost.  

He should have known…

Tidas, you fool, you should have known.        

_________________________________________

            In the second to highest room of the ominous palace tower on the small Island of Verus, the Black Sea gales moaned and howled as they pushed violently against the complaining window shutters.

Bouncing flame light from three torches revealed a cross-shaped wooden beam table that stood in the middle of the round room like an altar. A long haired, middle-aged man was tied to it facing up. Red-stained ropes synched down his arms and legs. His countenance quaked with dread as he looked up at the two figures towering above his helpless, hurting body.

            One older man dabbed the prisoner’s sweating face with a dirty rag but the prisoner was not looking at him. He was looking to his right at the taller one – the demon with long, black dreadlocks – the one with skin as dark as night and extended black pointed fingernails holding a red clay bowl, stirring its contents with a stained bone. The demon-man’s bloodshot eyes with mirrored irises emitted evil darker than any night, more violence than any war. His blood-stained teeth were sharp and jagged like a serrated blade craving flesh to tear. His very presence seemed to make anything that could possibly be good flee. Even light seemed dimmer when he was in the room.

            The older man with a pale complexion laid the dirty rag down on the cross-shaped table and looked coldly into the prisoner’s fearful eyes. He leaned forward and said while examining the man’s face. “Will it work this time, Lord Drakon?”

            Drakon pulled out the bone he was using to stir the dark thick liquid from the bowl and sat it down on the table next to the prisoner’s tightly bound right arm. He then glared coldly into the prisoner’s eyes. “Let us see.”  

            Closing his eyes tightly, the prisoner turned his head away from his own reflection in Drakon’s piercing eyes. “No … please … not again. I’ll do anything…” A tear squeezed from the corner of his eye as he closed them even tighter. “Elohim help me.” His whisper quaked with panic.

            “Elohim?” Drakon hissed mordantly as he brought the red bowl close to the man’s lips. “He hides his face from this place.”

            The prisoner shook his head. “Please … no…”

            “Don’t you want to see the world in all its spiritual reality?”

            The prisoner shook his head and clenched his lips tightly together. A bead of sweat ran from his forehead into his ear.

            “Zeror, open his mouth,” Drakon growled.

            Zeror grabbed his cheeks and squeezed tightly until the prisoner’s lips puckered open.

            Drakon then poured the contents of the bowl into the mouth of the protesting prisoner. A thick greenish-brown liquid poured out, some spilling onto his face.

            “Swallow,” Drakon demanded with his airy, serpent-like voice as he gently stroked the prisoner’s neck. “Swallow … and your eyes will be opened.” He kept stroking the skin of the neck with his long black claws, gazing hungrily as if his neck was the choicest cut of arenysaurus loin.

            The prisoner resisted but eventually was forced to swallow when Drakon clamped two claws over his nostrils, blocking his air intake. Coughing, he spewed some of the grotesque liquid into the air just for it to fall back onto his face.

            “Good…” Drakon hissed as he stood back to watch the effects of his potion.

            Zeror stepped back as well, eyes wide with anticipation.

            “Come, my fellow spirits. Come,” Drakon growled as he looked around the room at beings he could not see. “Enter him.”

            The prisoner’s crazed eyes began shifting around the room as if he were watching bats dart about. “No … no…”

            “It’s working,” Zeror said with hissing glee. “He sees.”

            Suddenly, the prisoner’s paranoid gaze ceased as his eyes rolled back in his head and his whole body began to violently shake.

            Drakon silently watched, expressionless.

            “Oh no…” Zeror shook his head as he watched the prisoner thrash about wildly. “Not again…”

            Abruptly, the man fell limp.

            Zeror felt his pulse. “He’s dead. The mixture is not quite right.”         Drakon glared at the corpse, evil radiating from his mirrored eyes. “Well then, we will try again with another.”

With the wind still whipping around the tower creating an array of eerie sounds, Drakon burst his long black bat-like wings straight out.

Not expecting the quick movement, Zeror jumped.

“No use fresh blood going to waste,” Drakon said as he stepped toward the twitching body. Then he slowly bent down, opened his mouth, exposing his vicious jagged teeth, and bit down into the corpse’s neck.

Zeror looked away. He hated it when Drakon would do that sort of thing in his presence.

Blood dripped from Drakon’s lips and chin as he stood upright, his intimidating wings protruding outward, a bloody evil grin spread across his face.

Without another word, Drakon picked up the empty bowl and stained bone, spun around, and with a powerful thrust of massive wings, launched into the air and vanished through a round hole in the high mosaic ceiling.

________________________________________

Tidas held his ear to the door.

            For the last couple of minutes he had heard commotion somewhere on the other side of the door. The door was too thick to hear exactly what was happening, just that something was. But now, all was silent once again.

            His mind reverted back to the predominate issue on his mind ever since his capture. Escape. One way or another, he would.

“Lord Drakon…?”

Standing in the dark, shirtless and cold, Tidas clearly heard the familiar guard’s voice just outside his cell door in the hall. He held his ear tighter to the door.

“My lord?”

There was a creak of an opening door. Footsteps.

“My lord…? Wait. What are…?”

Thud.

Abrupt silence.

Tidas continued to listen. He could not tell what that thud sound was.

After a short moment there were more footsteps and several muffled voices. Then a shadow appeared in the crack under the rustic cell door from the flickering torchlight in the hallway.

Tidas stepped back. Someone was standing right there. Drakon.

What in Hades happening?

In the several months he had been here, he had never heard this sound. This was unorthodox at best. Then again, Lord Drakon was not known for predictability.

Suddenly, like a dream … a dream he had actually dreamed in this very cell, Tidas heard the lock on his cell door slide out of place. Then as quickly as it appeared, the shadow under the door disappeared to the right as the door slightly cracked open with a quiet creak.

__________________________________________

Drakon gracefully alighted on the edge of the round opening in the floor of the upper most room of the tower – the only entrance into the private hidden sanctum. Eerie ghost-like shadows danced about the room generated by the light from a single torch on the curved wall. The shadows danced to the sound of the howling wind rushing past the open window.

He folded his wings into the back of his long, weathered black robe as he sauntered over to a table against the wall opposite from the open window to place the bowl and bone down. As soon as he did, he spun around. His mirrored eyes tensely darted around the room before focusing on the howling darkness through the open window.

Something was not right. He did not hear it, the wind was too loud, nor did he see anything; he felt it – a sense that something was suddenly out of the ordinary.

Drakon walked over to the window and looked out. The wind blew his dreadlocks to the side as he scanned the night.

Darkness. Nothing but wind blowing the cloudy darkness – nothing unusual.

Drakon liked the darkness. He felt safely at home in it.

“Lord Drakon!” Zeror’s called up with urgency.

He spun around and faced the hole in the floor which was the only entrance into his sanctum.

“What is it?” Drakon called down as he took a step away from the window.

“Some prisoners are trying to escape!” His voice was desperate.

Drakon took another step toward the hole in the floor. “Fools…” He hissed.

The sound of wind briefly muffled. 

“What is your command, my lord?”

Suddenly, shocking pain pierced his back and chest – a pain that he had never before felt and would never feel again. It was so instant, so precise, so powerful, that it took Drakon a moment to realize what had happened. There had not been time to react. Shock immediately set in, even before his senses did.

“Lord Drakon?” Zeror called up again. “Did you hear what I said?”

Dazed with acute shock, Drakon glared straight ahead debilitated with pain and dread.

A blood-coated spear shaft protruded from the right side of his chest. It had entered from Drakon’s back and impaled clean through. In paralyzing shock, he followed with his eyes, the long, crimson-dripping shaft, from the gaping hole in his chest to the end of the spear.

His eyes widened with an amalgam of horror and demented intrigue when his gaze reached the spearhead. No man or angel had ever seen what was displayed before his very eyes.

The distinctive spearhead consisted of four long and narrow, folded steel blades that curved forward from the end of the shaft, creating a fist-sized orifice in-between the four blades. In that cup-shaped orifice was Drakon’s own heart. It had been swiftly, effortlessly thrust from his chest by the spear specifically designed for such an assassination.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Blood dripped and spurted from the multitude of severed and shredded veins that hung down from the still beating, dark-red organ.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Drakon watched his very blood drain from his own dying heart. His mind was too shocked and spirit too traumatized to think any coherent thought other than the obvious. Who did this?

Still standing with blood gushing like a spring from the hole in his chest, Drakon tried to turn around but could not. Somebody still had a firm grip on the butt of the spear. Feeling more and more light-headed with every eternal second, he tried to speak but only frothy blood spilled from his mouth. Harrowingly, he managed to slightly turn his unsteady head to look over his shoulder.

A long black wing appeared first; then the rest of Drakon’s assassin stepped into view.

Drakon could not believe his blurring, dizzy eyes. He looked away, but only to see his own heart again suspended over the blood-painted floor.

Thump, thump.

            His slightly beating heart drained.

            The tall dark Watcher stepped to the end of the spear.

            Slowly, Drakon wrapped his long claws around the bloody spear shaft to steady his swaying body as he tried to breathe in vain.

            Drakon knew the unexpected Watcher standing in front of him, and his surprised blood-shot eyes let him know it.        

With Drakon’s vision a blur and rapidly fading, he watched his assassin reach over and pull his heart from the spear’s quad-blade head. He then held it in the open palm of his right hand as his cold, steady mirrored eyes glared into Drakon’s.

            Thump.

            The assassin never said a word. None were necessary. Drakon knew why he had been killed by him and it was his last thought before he dropped to his knees. His vision faded into a swirling storm of tiny black and white dots. The white ones faded, leaving nothing but black.

The same happened to his soul a long time ago.

            Thump.

            The last thing Drakon saw in the mortal realm was his own heart beat its last while held in front of him by his enemy of old, who was once presumed dead.

            His body slumped, resting on the shaft.

            “Lord Drakon?!” Zeror shouted from the room below. “What shall we do? I need to know.”

            No answer.

            “My lord?”

            The assassin yanked the spear the rest of the way through Drakon’s chest then moved his arm over the round opening in the floor and dropped the heart.

            Plop.

            Backing up, Zeror looked on in horror at the heart that had just landed on the stone floor next to his feet with a splat of blood.

            He then spun around and quickly headed out the door to the stairwell and slammed it behind him.

_________________________________________

Happy Valentine Day to Seth Ivory and Summerlann Valentine, the lead character duo in my upcoming novel REALMS. 

Book 2 is now available at Barnes and Noble and on Nook. Here’s the link:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ancient-k-t-kimbrough/1025400321?ean=9781462034604&itm=1&usri=9781462034604 

Ancient: Eden is completed.

Just sold a couple copies to the director of the Bastrop library.

Death is not exactly conducive to immortality.  - Da’an

Good morning friends. 

This is a proverbial nudge in the direction of your computer for you to go onto Amazon and/or Barnes and Noble to write a review of Ancient: Deception. It cannot be overstated that reviews, even if a few words, are a extraordinary way of gaining more readers and raising the chances of an agent or publisher picking me up.

Go.

Now.

And thrive!