The Sword of Ixchel- Chapter 1: The Offer

(NOTE: This is an excerpt from my newly released debut novel, The Sword of Ixchel, which is now available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon)

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Chapter 1: The Offer

The day his wife was stolen would haunt Molan Apraxas until the moment of his death. It happened beneath a flawless sky, rare during the jungle rainy season. Six days of unbroken storms abruptly ceased, and the clouds peeled apart to reveal perfect blue, horizon to horizon. Molan took a break from tilling to knead his aching neck as the sun poured over his maize field. 
    Yields are down, the village lord said the day before. If things don't pick up, Molan, we may need a sacrifice. Get back in the gods’ favor.

    Molan mopped his brow with the frayed end of his pati and exhaled slowly.
   "Xuna," he called to his daughter. She glanced up from the hewn dirt and leaned on her mattock. Her lanky shadow spread across the ground between them. "Not too close to the others."
   "I understood you the last time," she huffed.
   "You're doing very well," he added, feebly. She grunted something inaudible and turned back to the work.

Molan prayed in silence. Give life to these seeds, he pleaded the gods. Let them resurrect the holy maize. He listened as Xuna’s mattock chopped moodily through the soil. And let my daughter’s roots sink deep. Help her grow tall and strong, not bent and broken like me.
    It was this precise moment when a distant scream pierced the perfect day and jolted him from his fieldwork. Seren, his wife and greatest love, was in trouble.
    “To me Xuna!” he cried, casting aside his tools. “Hurry!”
   Molan seized his daughter's hand and together they dashed for home as fast as Xuna's young legs allowed. Every terrible scenario swam through Molan’s head as they ran. There were many demons, gods and wicked men in the jungle whose attention they might draw. At last, they crested the final hill and skidded to a halt with dust eddying around them.

       Below, two enormous men surrounded their cottage door, armor and spears gleaming in that flawless sun.

          "Who are they?" said Xuna, unable to hide the tremble in her voice.

    The two warriors were tall and broad-chested. They packed the space beneath the cottage’s thatched awning. Plates of brine-soaked leather armor hung across their broad chests. They had identical, dark-teak skin knotted with muscle and long, sleek hair as black as a grackle. Each held a jade spear in one hand and a shield painted with a coiled snake in the other.

    The emblem was well known. The Kaan Dynasty.

    "Royal guards. Of Calakmul," he answered. Royal guards were only found with royalty. He squeezed his daughter's hand. "The gods will grant us courage."

    Molan eyed the twin warriors as he and Xuna approached. Up close they were huge. Wider than Molan by half and a full head taller. Their faces were identically grim and emotionless. Molan placed his hand on Xuna’s lower back and guided her between them into the cottage.

    A handsome, majestic woman occupied their family table with a cloud of warriors—twins of the two outside—hovering around her. Servant girls immediately attended to her every comfort. Molan had never imagined so many people in their tiny space.

    “Where is Seren?” he demanded. “What have you done with her?”

    "Molan Tak'aan," the woman said as she swept to her feet. The richness of her attire juxtaposed harshly against the cottage background. A jaguar-fur quechquemitl spilled from her shoulders, hems and straps embossed with jades, opals, and silver. Gold rings decorated each knuckle. Molan recognized her at once. She was Tunial Kin Mai, famed sorceress and high priestess of Calakmul, one of the two greatest cities in the realm. Molan had despised and feared her from the moment they'd met all those years before. “Do not worry about your wife. She is quite safe.”   

    "I insist to see her!"
          "Or what?" said Tunial. Her dark eyes thinned to poisonous slits. Molan couldn’t stand to look at them. She thrummed with power and he was no match for it.

    "Nothing, my lady," he growled, slumping into a defeated bow and gesturing for Xuna to do the same.

    “As I expected, Molan Tak’aan.”

  "It is just Molan, kin mai.” His back cracked painfully as he straightened upright. “I vacated those titles long ago."

    The sorceress smiled hollowly. "No need to be coy, Molan Tak'aan. We both know all about your past."

    Xuna's head tilted in his direction and Molan attempted to catch her eye. Tunial must have noticed, for she appraised his daughter for the first time and grinned, exposing a full row of gem-studded teeth.

    "The kalomte heard rumors of your offspring." She brushed the back of her hand and its many rings over Xuna's cheek.

    "Kalomte now, is it?" said Molan, steering the conversation away from Xuna. "Ka'b Hix has finally grown a spine! I wonder what the King of Tikal thinks of his rival’s self-applied title?"

    "Insulting the High King of Calakmul in front of his priestess? Your famous runaway mouth continues to sow trouble for you!” said Tunial. She restored her too-cunning smile. In a flash, she seized Xuna's chin and turned her face from side to side.

    "Has your father ever told you that he was once the prized pupil of Naranjo?" Xuna glanced again at her father from the corner of her eye. "Speak, girl!"

    "No, mother," Xuna said meekly.

    A servant gasped. "Mother" was a formal address to an older woman but inappropriate for the high priestess. A commoner could lose a head for such a blunder.

    "Your father has no honor, no courage. So afraid of the gods' judgement that he renounced his own lord, his own people, all to retire to... this?" She gestured at the dusty shack.

    “Perhaps you could get on with whatever purpose you came for,” interjected Molan. “The village lord is threatening sacrifice if we don’t meet crop quotas. I quite value my head. I need Xuna and Seren’s help if I plan to keep it attached to my spine.”

    Tunial glowered at him for a moment then nodded to one of her servants, who extended a folded swatch of red material. Molan accepted it tentatively.

    "The kalomte's oldest son has been stolen. This token was left at the scene.” After a pause she added, “Only someone very powerful could have managed the crime.”

    Molan unfolded the material and stared blankly at the woven symbol of a hawk encircled with gold runes.

    "The emblem of your dead king in Naranjo,” said Tunial. “A sigil that has been banned for what? Fifteen years?"

    "I am sure Ka'b Hix has others much smarter than me to figure out his little mystery," Molan responded. He re-folded the material and offered it back.

    "You misunderstand things, Molan Tak'aan. Ka'b Hix has passed into the Underworld. Ka'an Paktik is kalomte now."

    "Sky Witness," Molan muttered, rendering the name into the commoner dialect. Sky Witness was just a young prince when his father and the lords of Calakmul sacked Molan's home city. Young but already shrouded in infamy.

    "Kalomte Sky Witness believes you are most suited to answer this riddle. You are the only one left of the old, dead Naranjo order, after all."

    "Sky Witness is even more of a fool than people in the taverns whisper if he thinks I had something to do with this."

    "I am tired of your words, Molan Tak’aan,” she said with a bored flick of her hand. “Your choice is to follow his orders or watch pain fall on everyone around you." She stepped closer until their noses were almost touching. She smelled sweet, like spices and cacao. "Produce the kalomte's heir or your wife will suffer. That is Sky Witness’s offer."

    Molan swallowed. For a long moment, silence hung heavy in the air. He wanted to resist but couldn’t risk harm coming to Seren or Xuna. Or himself.

    "Tell the boy king I will do what I can," he growled in defeat.

    Tunial grinned. “I knew King Sky Witness could count on you.” She nodded to her guards, and the troupe filed neatly from the room leaving only her sweet lingering scent as evidence they’d been there at all.

(Buy me a coffee: view this novel on Amazon, available as an e-book for only $3.99)

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Work in Progress Live on Wattpad

You can now read a serialized portion of one of my novels-in-progress on Wattpad. Wattpad users can also vote and comment. The more views and votes I receive, the more exposure and the more I'm able to build a reader base.

Synopsis:

1,692 years after "The Great Death" nearly forced humanity into extinction, culture and society has returned to North America. A tenuous union of four semi-autonomous kingdoms is celebrating its 300th anniversary but a surprise victory by the least likely (and least desired) candidate for supreme chancellor threatens to break the realm apart into war.

Fans of Game of Thrones or The First Law series will enjoy many familiar elements in this broad, multiple point-of-view epic, but don't expect a copy cat. The distinctly North American setting coupled with several other unique features makes The Razed Ruins a fresh and original twist on a familiar genre.

Click here or on the image below to start reading!

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My Book Idea Hits #2 on the SOOP Hot List for the Week!

My synopsis for Denouement hit #2 for the week on Something or Other Publishing, LLC! Great start! Hope it keeps getting votes. Would be a great opportunity to get some exposure, build my author platform and perhaps get a publishing contract!

If you haven't had chance, please check out the website, the synopsis, (and if it strikes you as interesting) vote!

View and vote here:

SOOPLLC.com- Denouement

You can check out my page for this book here including the prologue and some excerpts. 

Too Long for a Breakout Novel

Well no one ever thought getting a novel published was easy. Or at least, anyone who did think that had never actually tried.

After a few months trying to seek representation for my fantasy epic, I have learned one important lesson: word count matters! Yes, my manuscript is long (275,000 words) partially because that is what I thought was required of the genre. Compared to most of the installments of the Wheel of Time and all of the weighty volumes of A Song of Fire and Ice, 275K words seemed right in the ballpark.

Apparently, however, almost no publisher, and therefore literary agent, is willing to take on a manuscript of such length for a breakout writer. Everything I have read on agents' blogs and discussion forums suggests that a first time novelist should aim for around 100,000 words. Fantasy manuscripts, however, can be allotted a bit more, perhaps as many as 150,000 words. Still a far cry from the brick that I have created.

What now? After so much work I had begun to feel as if the end was in sight. But as I summited what I thought was the final hill, I discovered only many more miles of rock-strewn, treacherous terrain still in front of me.

So I am faced with two possibilities: edit it down nearly in half, or start all over with a new project and save that for once I have established myself.

Cutting my manuscript in half seemed like the most viable option, for after almost three years of work I couldn't fathom starting over from the beginning, but when I sat down at the cutting board, I just couldn't part with any of it. Which appendage would I most like to lose?

So now I have opted for option two: start over. But with what? The idea mill must churn once again.

Prologue of The Razed Ruins

A tunnel of black, leafless trees closed around the rider. This is no night to die, he thought. But some malice was drawing near, he felt it. Like cold eyes leering through crooked gorse. He glanced over his shoulder. The road was empty. The only sound was the cadenced clop of his horse's hooves on the rime-dusted highway. The only sight the crescent moon darting through the naked branches like some phantom bird. He fixed his gaze ahead where the Great Highway tapered to an inky void.

His horse was exhausted, close to collapse. He'd coaxed the poor beast between trot and canter ever since the letter had landed in his care. His fingers slipped into his lapel pocket and closed around the folded parchment. His mind turned to it more and more.

As a rider in the Order of the Post, ferrying messages all across the realm was his life. But this mission had been unprecedented: he'd been tasked to carry a single letter.

Post riders, "featherfoots" as they were called, never made such a long journey for a solitary parcel. It was simple economics. This detail of the commission alone had raised his guard. Even more unnerving, however, was the seal melted over the folded corner: the double eagles of the Supreme Chancellor.

It was reprehensible for a letter's seal to break, especially if the seal in question was of the royal palace. Even worse, though, it had been under his care when the parchment worked free. 

The letter arrived at his station in the hand of a featherfoot he'd never before seen. A sum of three gold pikes was offered for the effort, more than double the usual rate. He'd been thrilled by his lucky chance. But now, this deep into the hated North, he'd give the coins back and more to return and refuse.

He'd pulled out the letter subconsciously. Again. He knew the addressee by heart:

Commander-in-Charge, The Shield

The Shield. He shivered. He didn't envy the featherfoot on the next leg of the journey who'd have to traverse through there.

Yes, reading the letter was forbidden. And yes, he eventually failed the test. It inscribed by a hasty hand:

Lock down the dragon. 83-32-7279. Nobody in or out. Await further instructions.

-SG

He knew it all now by heart. Lock down the dragon. For the thousandth time he guessed what it meant. Probably it was code to shield the true meaning from prying eyes. Like his. But the initials, S.G., combined with the seal of the Chancellor, made it hard not to assume that the hurried-but-still-tidy handwriting could belong to none other than the Supreme Chancellor herself.

And there was the Shield. Every man, woman and child in all four kingdoms knew the tales about it. The rider's bowels stirred with excitement and dread. Maybe it's not code at all. Maybe the old legends are true.

As night lengthened, so did its merciless teeth. The rider snugged his wool cloak. I hate the North. He was a man of Rocklands and felt like an intruder when ordered to make deliveries in Dehn. It was a strange land, with evil, barren landscapes and grim, dark-haired people who spoke in coarse tongues. At times, he rode through Pent or even Seldor for weeks, and though the culture there was quite different than back home, he never felt nearly as out-of-place as he did in Dehn for even the briefest visit.

 At times, he rode through Pent or even Seldor for weeks, and though the culture there was quite different than back home, he never felt nearly as out-of-place as he did in Dehn for even the briefest visit.

The glowing stationhouse windows blinked through a break in the trees, blazing like beacons in the colorless wilderness. It should have been comforting—something familiar in an alien sea—but instead, it only re-kindled his dread.

A letter from the Supreme Chancellor delivered to me by an unknown featherfoot. Destination: the Shield. Seal broken. Me responsible. The whole thing was ludicrous. How could he have been so foolish?

He eased his horse to a stop and dismounted gracefully. With a deep breath, he flattened his gray tunic, which bore only the winged foot that was the emblem of the Order. He didn't bother lashing his horse to the tethering pole. As soon as the letter was delivered he planned to commence the return south immediately, even if that meant riding through the night.

With the closed door in front of him, he straightened his back and sucked down a slow inhale. Forging his face into a look of confidence, the rider rapped the wood three times.

"Enter!" 

Inside, a ribald man lounged with his feet propped on a low table. His oily, shoulder-length hair formed a messy curtain over his eyes. Deeply stained fingers clutched a smoldering pipe, smoke billowing like flowing runes . He wore the same insignia on his brown tunic: the winged foot.

"You're late." His voice was throaty and baritone. A pale keloid clove his right eyebrow.

"Where's the stationmaster?"

"Off duty." Tobacco haze blurred his face. The rider frowned. It wasn't just unusual, it was counter to codified featherfoot principles. "You're here for the delivery?"

The rider mined the letter from his pocket. The scarred man rolled his broad figure upright and extended a long arm corded with muscle, hand open expectantly. The rider hesitated then deposited his charge. It should have felt good to be rid of it.

"You broke the seal." An accusation, not a question. The rider retreated a step.

"It came open on its own!" He tapped the hilt of his rapier.

The scarred man stepped forward again, brushing his cloak to the side to reveal a black scabbard and the hilt of his own glistening sword. 

"But the seal is broken. And from your watch. You know the oaths. And this bears the royal seal!"

"I read nothing!"

He laughed. "You're lying. I can see it in your eyes."

The rider gauged his odds against the much larger man. He'd been selected to the prestigious featherfoot order for being light and fast in the saddle. But after crossing the wide realm too many times to recount he'd learned a thing or two about defense. Still... 

"I would swear to it. Hand on the Holy Book!"

"What man, alone on the Great Highway, could resist such temptation?"

"I did not read the letter!" He tried to sound confident, certain he failed.

The scarred man took another stride forward and the rider, a step back. The dance continued until his back met the door's iron handle. The scarred man stopped, flaring nostrils only feet away.

The scarred man smiled. "I believe you." 

He wheeled away with a laugh. The rider exhaled. 

"I take my vows seriously." The sooner I start back for home the better. He aimed to be as far from this place as possible by daybreak. "Tell you the truth, I'm glad to be rid of it. I want to get back south into Rocklands. It's so—"

He didn't see the knife coming. Only a fleeting glimmer as the cold steel reflected the room's only lamp. His world flipped over in blinding, searing pain. Shocked and speechless, he grasped at the hilt of the blade protruding from his chest. A scarlet rose of blood blossomed down his tunic.

The rider made a feeble attempt to draw his sword, but his strength failed too fast. The scarred man puffed his pipe casually.

As the rider dropped to his knees, then to his side, the world eddied slowly away to black. The last thing he saw was the scarred man neatly placing a hat atop his head and stepping over his body for the door.

READ Next Part: Chapter 1: To The White City

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THE SILENT STONES

It has been 3,394 days since Paxton Raleigh has seen anyone alive.

After a terrible plague nearly decimates humanity from the face of the world, Paxton has been left alone to deal with the vast emptiness, not too mention the crushing survivor's guilt, alone. But when a strange visitation shatters everything he thought he knew about the post-plague world, Paxton is drawn from the safety of his ranch on an increasingly complicated adventure where his own mind, and even his dreams, might prove to be the biggest threat of all.

Part 1- An Unexpected Visitor
Paxton has a surprise visitation while working on his family's remote ranch that makes him re-think everything he thought he knew about the post-apocalyptic world.

Part 2- Gathering His Life
Paxton gathers everything he needs for a journey to the empty town of Glenwood Springs, a place he hasn't visited in years. But is it as empty as he thought?

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DENOUEMENT

Crossing the Rhine River in Germany 1945

The story of Albert Aldrich: writer, stoner, caretaker of his broken family, and part-time peeping tom. When Albert discovers a long-forgotten cache of his grandfather's journals, he embarks on a quest to tell his grandfather's story. He might create a better ending for them both.

In this sprawling epic novel, readers get both the story of Albert Aldrich, a broken and troubled young writer, and of Micky McKeever, his war-ravaged grandfather. While Albert attempts to bring meaning to his disappointing and downwardly spiraling existence, he encounters an outspoken city-girl who might strike the perfect balance to his rural Alaskan life. Mick, on the other hand, is a wildly popular musician and a GI in the 89th Infantry. Mick meets a gorgeous and independent nurse named Cassie and the two strike a thrilling romance with the worst possible timing.

The two narratives of Albert and Mick come together with fantastic complexity as Albert struggles to fashion a better denouement for them both.

Novel excerpts:

Prologue- The Storm
A crabbing boat is in trouble in a Bering Sea storm and the Captain grapples with life and the state of his soul.

Part 1- Albert in Alaska
Albert Aldrich struggles to balance his life as a writer, caretaker of his family and full-time enthusiast of marijuana.

Opinions are like, hmm... well, you know the rest. Everybody has one. Want to share yours? Visit my Speculative Worlds Forum

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions

The Silent Stones: Gathering His Life

Map of the post apocalyptic Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Back at the house that night, Paxton was trying to play the guitar. Just four days earlier, while working in the south garden, he’d felt the unexpected inspiration to pick up the instrument back up, something he hadn’t done in over a year. He’d stopped working that afternoon, instead spending the next eight hours playing almost continuously, running his fingers through every song he could remember, and even some he couldn’t.

But now his stomach felt heavy. He tried to sing a song he’d sung a thousand times before, but his mouth was too dry. After fifteen minutes of half-cocked effort, he placed the guitar back in its case and snapped the latches closed.

He threw down the last gulp of a whiskey bottle from the back of the dusty cabinet.

Paxton resumed his earlier pacing. Darkness had fallen. Culligan stood outside, his silhouette just visible through the window in the faint light of a waxing gibbous. He was staring in, watching Paxton. A pewter kettle swayed lazily above a low-burning fire on the western side of the room. On the wall above it hung various tools for carpentry, horse-shooing, and leather work. Some were antiques, not that that mattered.

Though Paxton had been home over an hour, his boots were still on. Each step dropped with a double-tap on the hardwood floor. He did not pace simply back and forth but in an erratic swirl, visiting nearly every corner of the one-floor, four-bedroom house. Several other lanterns were lit, the house alive with light. This, too, disturbed Culligan, who’d grown accustomed to Paxton’s self-imposed darkness.

A plate of boiled beans was growing cold on a table near the fire. Paxton stumbled upon them occasionally as he pace, pausing each time for a small bite with a wooden fork.

He was talking out loud. Or perhaps to Culligan, who he believed could understand him whether he heard the words or not.

“We shouldn’t go, Culligan. I hate that place. I swore we’d never go back.” He stopped pacing, his eyes blank in thought. “But maybe we need this. It has been four years….” He resumed walking. “I know, Cull! You don’t have to tell me about last time! Why do you think I haven’t gone back?” He returned to the hearth, ladling water into a ceramic mug for tea. “No, it won’t do any good. There is nothing for me there. We can manage, Cull. We got everything we need.”

Paxton sat at his dining room table, looking directly out the window at Culligan who stared back through the glass. He didn’t speak while he ate. He kept picturing the helicopter, combing his mind through the details. His hand trembled as he hoisted his spoon for a bite.

“Yeah,” he said out loud in a tone of reluctant concession. “We have to go.”

Finding some resolution, his hand steadied and he finished his meal.

*

It started raining half an hour later. Culligan swooshed his tail happily when Paxton stepped outside to organize their gear for the following morning. He slid a rocking chair against the wall, dropped his saddle onto a wooden chest, and straightened a rusting horseshoe upright against the porch column. Running his hand on Culligan’s side, he circled to the horse’s front.

“Summer solstice tomorrow.” He walked to the north side of the house to his toolbox where he snatched several items and stuffed them into a canvas satchel. Though town was only 15 miles, he hadn’t made the journey in almost a half-decade. His father had ingrained it into him over and over: it’s always best to be over-prepared. He added a hammer, wrench, multi-tool, three types of knives, measuring tape and several boxes of nails.

He loaded a smattering of tools into the saddle bags: saw, hatchet, matches, knives, can opener, nails, screws, shaving razor, screwdrivers, wrenches, ammo. The plan was to be back that same night, but things did not always go according to plan. “Always be over-prepared, Paxton,” he said out loud, mimicking the sound of his father’s drawl.

Once the usual accoutrements had been assembled, Paxton stepped out from under the eaves to glimpse the stars emerging behind the curtain of rain. The clouds split lengthwise across the sky, undraping a brilliant moon. The rain fell so lightly it was dry as soon as it touched his bare skin. He removed his hat—something he rarely did—and let the fine mist fall on his balding head.

There is one more place I have to go. He stepped out into the night.

*

It wasn’t far, just far enough to be safe had anyone come looking. And there was a time when they had. Of course, Paxton wasn’t in the mood to think about that now.

A half mile up the creek, the entrance was concealed in an insignificant copse of trees away from the trail and prying eyes. Paxton had to crawl to get in. There was an iron gate fitted precisely into a concrete bunker, locked tightly with a bolt-cutter resistant system. People had called his dad crazy for building it.

Eight steps led into the bunker, whose walls, Paxton knew, were two-foot-thick rebar-reinforced concrete. This was where his father kept his finest treasures. Paxton walked underneath row after row of canned gods, some five years beyond their expiration, to the middle segment of the 800 square foot structure. Paxton did not need to search; he went immediately for two ammo cans high on the top-right shelf. The sound of the rusty latches echoed like a firecracker when he flipped them open. Paxton gathered a dozen sets of primary-lithium batteries, testing each on a sleek silver flashlight before dropping them into his satchel.

“Just like new. It pays to buy the best of the best. Now more than ever, eh Cull?” He remembered the horse was back at the house. The rain was intensifying; he could hear it roar down above him. He grabbed a full 1-gallon gas can. Just in case. In the next room, he filled an army-green satchel with rice, jerky, dried fruit and beans and searched through the canned goods, selecting any less than three years past its expiration.

Paxton opened a gun safe in the very back. It was important, even on a short journey, to always have options. “Survival is largely who has the most efficient tool,” his father used to say. “And the better brain to use it.” Paxton grabbed a .50 caliber sniper rifle and his father’s sawed-off shotgun. Those paired with his grandfather’s Colt—which he kept always in hands reach—and a knife or two for the dirty, in-close work and he figured he had the edge in almost any scenario.

Back at the house, Paxton calmed an agitated Culligan and began organizing everything into taxonomized piles on the living room floor. His bedroom closet was lined with rows of nearly indistinguishable white, black or light-blue button-up shirts paired with a handful of vests. He grabbed one of each.

Paxton halted in front of the oval mirror on his mother’s antique apothecary table. Increasingly in recent years his own reflection had become hard to see, like his face had been smudged by a clumsy eraser. There was no logic to it. No reason his eyes—which saw everything else in near-perfect clarity—weren’t up for the task. But the longer he stared the more the details of his face dissolved away into nothing. But tonight every square inch was visible in full verisimilitude. His beard was coarse and uneven. He spotted a gray hair on the left side of his chin. Leaning in closer, he was alarmed to discover it wasn’t alone.

The rain continued and Culligan wandered to a grove of willows away from the house as he sometimes did when he was agitated. Inside, Paxton finally laid down for a few hours’ sleep in the comfort of his own bed. First light we’ll hit the road.

Almost immediately, he was fast asleep.

(Read previous section: An Unexpected Visitor)

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. 

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The Silent Stones: An Unexpected Visitor

His father was the last person he’d seen alive and that was 3,394 days ago.

There was no reason to think about that now, standing alone in a Colorado meadow with a mattock in his hand and a hot wind exhaling against his face. He hoisted the iron high above his head and brought it down with a shoop in the soil.

High above, a lone cloud drifted between him and the sun. He closed his eyes, relishing the temporary reprieve. But as soon as it was there it was gone, and the full-strength of the June heat resumed.

Beads of sweat rolled from his forehead like tiny glass balls as he brought the iron mattock down again.

Paxton Raleigh had towed, with some struggle, a red wheelbarrow overloaded with seedlings, clones and tubers up the decaying trail. The rainy season was on him, and he would need better food stores if he wanted to survive another winter like the last.

Paxton and Culligan face the 

post-apocalytic world alone

By the angle of the shadows, Paxton could tell high noon had passed. He propped the mattock handle-up against an aspen tree. “Lunch time, Culligan,” he said to his light-brown horse who stood nearby flicking his ears from the flies. Paxton rummaged through a leather satchel attached to Culligan’s saddle and extracted a slab of dried meat the size of his palm and a loaf of bread wrapped in a red handkerchief. He dropped his weight into the flickering shadows of the aspen leaves and drank deeply.

The horse snorted. “Don’t get too comfortable now. You know damn well we got ditch duty. And we have to check the traps.” The animal twisted his long neck Paxton’s direction. “There’s no putting that off any longer.” Culligan swished his tail half-heartedly. “And no back talking, Cull. I said I’d wait and see if it rained and it ain’t.”

The two had nothing else to say. Paxton worked on his lunch, chewing ravenously and washing it down with cold water from the creek. When the food was gone, he pushed himself stagnantly to his feet and stretched, his back crackling like a fire.

After mounting Culligan with a protracted effort, Paxton guided him slowly along a faint trail, switchbacking up a long slope until the valley floor was several hundred feet below. Paxton reined Culligan to a stop, and drank thirstily from his canteen.

“The next two months are going to be like this, Cull,” he said. “The heat takes the work right out of you.” He looked down on the ranch far below. The aluminum roof gleamed in the sunlight at the west end of the meadow. Behind it, wider and longer but not as tall, was the barn.

Paxton and Culligan stayed motionless for some time. A light breeze did little to oppress the vicious sun and the heat radiated back from the ground. Don’t forget last winter, he reminded himself. One more season like that I won’t be around for the next.

From this higher vantage, he could see a few scattered clouds building to the west: a welcome sign. Steering Culligan away, they continued up the trail, slogging upward for another ten minutes until they crested the long hill at last. Unseen waterfalls grumbled in the deep canyon below.

With easier traveling, the tandem made better time, and in just a few minutes, the trail returned to the water at a wide, motionless marshland. Paxton dismounted, loosened the mattock and a shovel from the saddle, and stuffed a small pinch of Copenhagen between his teeth and lower lip.

Culligan puffed.

“I’m quitting! Down to one log anyway and it’s all dry.” Culligan turned away.

A strange wave of déjà vu flooded over him: the warm tickle of nicotine on the back of his throat bringing back the past in near-perfect fidelity. The sensation was so lucid and powerful, for a moment he felt as if he toed the border with one foot in both past and present.

Shaking off the sensation with a laugh, he turned away from Culligan and hauled his tools to the creekside.

His father had dug the old ditch when they’d first bought the ranch many years before, but disuse and time had steered the water back to its natural path. This spring, however, Paxton had laid out a plan for the fall he hoped would yield more food for winter than ever before.

But before he could start on the ditch, he had to check his traps. He laid his tools in the dirt and followed a faint trail upstream through head-high willows. His boots squished in the gluey marshland. At the head of the valley, the creek spilled from the scree of the high basin above. A small lake formed at the base of a tumbling cataract at the head of the valley. Paxton worked through the brush to the northwest corner where he’d set his trap on a well-beaten game trail.

“Nothing, Cull,” he said when he got there, forgetting that the horse had stayed behind. He inspected his handmade trap, tightening the knots, the noose, and replacing the bait. Farther along the trail, each of the six traps he’d set was the same.

He returned to the creek where Culligan was swooshing his tail lazily. Paxton swatted a mosquito from his ear and retrieved leather gloves from his pocket. He fired Culligan a glance from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he warned. “It’s all random, whether you catch something or not.”

Paxton took up the mattock, aimed an angry stroke and sunk it halfway into the mud. The earth here was tough: full of embedded stones, stubborn roots and dense clay. “This is gonna take a while, Cull.” He took another swing, striking something hard three or four inches down. “But a while is all we have, I guess.”

Paxton aimed another stroke but paused. A strange thumping noise suddenly surrounded him. At first he thought he was imagining it: the return of the déjà vu. It seemed to be coming from the very earth itself.

 “Culligan!” he yelled. Dropping the mattock, he dove behind a thick tangle of scrub oak just as a helicopter exploded over the ridgeline with frightening intensity. Paxton surged with adrenaline. Somewhere from his periphery he saw Culligan bolt down the hill.

Even from his low vantage, he could see the helicopter was white with a navy-blue tail, bearing no other markings other than a serial #:  N7-1482Z. The helicopter hovered not 200 yards north, its rotor wash jerking around the brambles where Paxton hid. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the strange machine drifted his direction until it was directly overhead. The sound was deafening, filling his ears and sucking the air from his lungs. He had never heard such a terrible noise, like the beating wings of a grotesque prehistoric hornet. Not for almost ten years had he felt such fear.

Culligan whinnied in the distance, a horrible sound unlike any he’d heard before from the animal. All Paxton could see through the branches was blowing dust and twigs. The helicopter was facing and drifting away.

Paxton’s fear was ebbing. The pilot! There has to be a pilot! But just when the thought crossed his mind, the helicopter spun west and rumbled down the valley and away. The wind and noise quickly subsided. Paxton forced himself to swallow a few deep breaths and sat up straight. The helicopter was hovering over the ranch. He watched it, still in utter disbelief.

“Culligan!” he yelled, yanking his gun from its holster. No longer afraid, Paxton jumped to his feet and sprinted down the trail, waving frantically at the tail rotor of the aircraft.

“Wait! Stop!” he yelled. His lungs burned. His feet tangled on something in the grass sending him plummeting forward. His pants ripped as his left knee absorbed his full weight. Paxton ignored the pain and bounced back to his feet. “No!” he yelled again. “I’m right here!” The helicopter hovered directly over the ranch for a moment. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it lifted over Storm King Mountain and vanished.

Paxton ran impotently, gasping and bleeding for another 200 yards before collapsing on the hard ground under a thicket of willows.

“Culligan!” he yelled again, breaking the new silence. A soft breeze whispered through the willow branches. On his stomach, he recovered his breath slowly.

So there are more.

But at the appearance of something so unexpected—something from another life long ago—his mind had been consumed by the possibility of danger. He hadn’t thought about the contact that could have occurred until it was too late.

I’d convinced myself that the new world was not only okay but actually better. But the prospect of more represented by that helicopter had provoked such a feeling that he knew now—lying face down in the cool grass in a world just as quiet and empty as it had been an hour earlier—he’d been wrong.

He became aware of the quiet shuffling of feet and felt a wet nudge on his back. When he rolled onto his back, he was looking down the twin-barrels of Culligan’s snout at shockingly close range. The horse snorted.

“So we ain’t alone.”

(Read next section: Gathering His Life)

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RAZED RUINS: Chapter 1: To the White City

"And he sayeth to me, 'My sweet Queen Tala, I took all of my most prized relics, the greatest heirlooms of the greatest house that ever was, and buried them in a chamber so unfathomable it will be forbidden to all but the most worthy suitors. And God help them should they solve its mystery. May their hearts be true, for the power they discover within will awe all the world.' "

It is these words, laid out in Omar: the True Story from Those Who Knew Him Dearest that kindled the legend of the Forbidden Chamber, the mythical cache for the treasures of Omar Roberts I, the Hero King. The account is purportedly written by Tala Roberts, Omar I's fourth and final wife. Many scholars, however, posit numerous explanations for why the account and reality might be divergent, from heavy-handed embellishments by a so-called "ghost writer" to intentional deviations from the truth by Tala herself. One popular theory suggests that the book was actually fictionalized much later, perhaps has late as 1350 NE, three and a half centuries after the Hero King's death.

Although the legend of Omar's Forbidden Chamber—usually thought to be located in his luxury fortress of Shamala—is perhaps the most broadly-syndicated myth in the modern canon and has drawn the interest of countless historians and tomb raiders for many centuries, no indication of any secret treasure has ever been discovered. So little evidence has been found, in fact, that recent decades has seen a steep decline of interest in the pursuit of the Forbidden Chamber. Chamber Hunters, as they were once called, are now all but extinct.

*          *          *

"What are you reading?"

The fiery gaze of the sun filtered down through the gossiping leaves of a cottonwood onto Vallario Roberts where he sat beside the crystal-cool water of a murmuring brook.

"Legend of Omar," he replied to his twin sister, Galia, as she wrung soap from a beige tunic. Vallario thumbed the book closed and dropped it into his leather rucksack.

Galia leveled her eyes on him. "You're not thinking about that again, are you?"

"I know you don't believe in it." Her stare was heavier than gravity as he tossed pebbles in silence. "At least it takes my mind off..." He trailed away pathetically. The embarrassment was still too fresh to say the rest. Even to his twin.

Galia scooted closer. "Don't think about it. I'm sure she just—"

"Just what?"

Galia crushed her lips together. "It doesn't matter what she thinks! You're too good for her anyway!"

Val tossed another pebble, more firmly than the last. No one in the family ever faced such an insult.

"Are you excited to see the capital, Val?"

Val was happy to entertain a new subject. "After three weeks in that miserable carriage, I don't care where we stop."

"You never had the stomach for traveling," she laughed, flipping her curly, golden-brown hair over her shoulder.

"It's not that I don't have the stomach for traveling," said Val. "I just...I just have a hard time sleeping on the road."

"We've stayed in inns more than half the nights. And besides, how many times have you left Tahala in your entire life? Honestly?"

"I've left the city!"

"How many times?" She inclined an eyebrow.

"I don't know," he responded evasively. "A few."

"Father is always asking you to come along when we travel. Mother too. But all you do is barricade yourself in the library and pore over books about the Forbidden Chamber."

"I like where we live! Why would I need to leave?" His face was getting hotter.

"Don't get angry!" Galia giggled. "As for myself, as a woman grown, I understand the need to respect and experience culture. I know you are still just a boy...."

Union law defined that a girl came of age at 16 but boys had to wait a full year longer.

"We're the same age!"

"We are not!" Galia added. "I am ten minutes older."

Val was saved from having to concede by a terrific splash. Crystals of water ejected from the pool, soaking both twins. Val jumped up in alarm, tripped over his bag and toppling to the ground.

"Pall!" cried Galia. "I told you not to throw rocks!"

For a moment there was no response. Then, piece-by-piece, their two-years-older brother emerged from a scruff of oak brush, grinning victoriously.

"How could I resist?" Pall boasted. "When you make such easy targets?"

Val dusted himself off. "What have you been doing?"

"Just stretching my legs," Pall responded, but Val noticed his hands fidgeting with something in his pocket. "Tomorrow we'll finally be in the White City. Couldn't come soon enough, if you ask me."

"Oh, please," Galia complained as she inspected her clothes for mud. "You both can be such...cowards."

"I'm just anxious to get to the party," their older brother said with a dismissive wave. "I don't know why father is making us stop. We could be in the capital now if it wasn't for—."

"There you three are!" interrupted a booming voice. A lord in a dazzling violet robe loomed at the top of a small rise, his fists pressed into each hip. "Your father commands your return. The caravan is ready. We have to make it withing range of the city by tonight!" After a pause he added, "It does not do for princes and a princess to be late. The Five Year's Fair will go on with or without you." He spun away and vanished.

"I see Master Sallano is in a wonderful mood," said Pall.

Christofer Sallano was master of counsel to the throne of Shamala. Other than being the top advisor to Val's father and mother, he'd also been a mentor, instructor and friend of Val's since he  was a young boy.

The Five Year's Fair will go on with or without you. Val didn't need to be reminded of their destination; his anxiety had been growing like a thundercloud with each passing league. He'd begged to stay behind. There was nothing Val disliked more than crowds and chaos, and this Five Year's Fair was expected to be the largest in decades, perhaps ever. Besides, since he was not yet of age he wouldn't be allowed a vote when the lords and ladies sat down to select the next supreme chancellor.

But of course his father had insisted. This year's fair, he'd informed him, was important for two reasons: first, it marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Union, and second, Lady Sandra of House Gonsales—perhaps the most broadly respected supreme chancellor the realm had seen in a century—had reached the end of her 15-year term limit.

"The royal family will all be present," his father had said. And since he was Sean Roberts II, King of Tahala, his word was final.

The three siblings gathered their things and scrambled back to the carriages. To their surprise, the King sat in the driver's seat, grinning merrily.

"Your mother wanted to sleep. I took the excuse to relieve Kiwen of the reins." He smiled down on the siblings. "Entertain the desires of an old man and allow him to enjoy the last of the Lonely Highway with his children!"

Galia giggled and jumped up beside him. Val quietly followed. Pall, however, stayed firmly planted.

"Pallar," the King bellowed. "I want my oldest son at my side."

After a show of reluctance, Pall filled the seat to his right. The King grinned as he coaxed the horses forward and the caravan began to roll. "It's still a long ride to the capital."

READ PREVIOUS SECTION: Prologue- The Letter

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All writing is the original work of Brian Wright and may not be copied, distributed, re-printed or used any form without express written consent of the author. Find out here how to CONTACT me with publishing and/or use questions