The smell of smoke was all around her, invading lungs already weakened with the screams she had endured.
The ground, wet after the night's rain, squelching under every one of her harried foot-steps, flew beneath her light frame, sending her green hair flying out behind her as she ran, her small frame easily ducking under branches and leaping over holes as she fled for her life.
How could this have happened to her?!
One moment, she and her family had been discussing the upcoming festival, which celebrated the long-fabled Awakener's legendary battle to seal away the Queen of the Night Terrors.
Then the screaming had started.
Day had turned to night as a black shroud of smoke enveloped the town, including the castle which she had lived in, and before she had time to wonder what had caused it, the door to the throne room had been blown open as if by a hurricane.
She did not see the beasts that had stormed in at that moment.
Her father, with a last shout to get to the shrine in the woods, had tossed her out the nearest window.
Had she not been capable of controlling the air around her, she would have fallen to her death.
And at only 17 years of age, it was hard to proclaim any mastery of it, so as it was, she still landed hard, bruising more than one bone and feeling as if she had been gut-punched.
She remembered looking up for a brief instant, to the high tower, only to see a dark aura enshroud it.
There was no further sign of her father.
She ran.
Almost there, she thought frantically to herself, once I'm there, I'll be safe! Safe and free to think, to plan how to get back to save my family!!
The Night Horrors, lowliest legion soldiers of the Night Terror race, had other ideas.
With a suddenness that stunned her out of her stride, a black wall of darkness blocked her way, merely 50 feet from the shrine's entrance.
She ran head first into it, anyway, unable to stop her momentum, fell backward, and found herself on her back.
Staring straight up into the Night Horror's single, multifaceted, green and red eye, which turned up in a wicked grin such as no eye should be capable of.
With a fright-filled shriek which tore at her already ravaged throat, she scrambled backward, up against the dark wall, and sat shivering, her eyes wide, as the creature approached, raising one large mass of its star-lit black form, coalescing and sharpening it into a blade.
She shut her eyes tightly, trying to blind herself to the death blow.
Instead, she was blinded anew.
By pure, radiant light.
The creature screamed and darted backwards, and as the light faded, the girl, Jinnean, chanced a look upwards.
Radiant wings.
They filled her sight, splayed wide and shining in vivid hues of emerald, gold, silver, ruby and sky blue, all in turn, connected to a semi broad-shouldered young man who straddled her sitting form.
Like a shield. Like a guardian.
Like an Angel.
Slowly, one arm swung up from his side, and a glowing blade, sprouting an energy wing from it's side, formed in his hand.
"You're just like any other bad dream.", he suddenly said, in a slightly lighter tone than she had expected, but still definitely a man's deep resonance, "No matter how bad you are, there's ALWAYS a way to bring you to an end!"
The Night Horror screamed.
It lunged.
And as Jinnean watched, as the blade flared anew, the world was washed white...
..........
The woods, once bathed in star-light and the distant glow of fire from the burning city, faded to absolute black as the blade absorbed any and all light within them.
It lasted but for a moment, before the light consumed by it began to once again come forth, majestic and overwhelming, bathing the Night Terror, stunned out of its forward lunge, in its overwhelming flow.
For the first time, the Night Horror knew fear.
Even in the legends, nothing had come close to describing the flare of such power as this sword held.
The tales did not do such radiance justice.
No words ever could.
Even though the Night Horror shielded its eye, its very essence, with all of the darkness it could muster from within it, it still felt the agonizing "Crack!" as line after line of blazing light lashed through its body, tearing at the darkness, blinding it further, sending cracks snaking across the gem within it.
Then the sword descended.
And the Night Horror, like a nightmare that fades with the waking of the dreamer, was scattered, silently, to the night, its crystalline eye shattered into a thousand, thousand shards, and burned to nothingness.
Gradually, the lights of the moon, the stars, and the city in flames, returned to normal in the silent woods, to bath a lone man in their gentle glow, illuminating his figure against the back-drop of the night and the trees.
Not muscular, yet not frail-looking, his semi-short brown, wavy hair, parted in the middle and swept to the sides, was blown into his eyes, framed by moonlight, as he surveyed the area as a craftsman might inspect his latest work.
"Another one down..." he whispered to the night, unaware, seemingly, that the girl, who could now see the form of her savior, was looking up at him with undisguised awe, "Yet so many, many more to go. And what's more, I didn't get to the city in time."
Gradually, he turned, the wings upon his back losing their glow and folding, gently, to his back, a simple bright white color taking the place of the brilliance from before, and his eyes found hers.
A long moment passed, neither of them seeming able to speak.
"Are you hurt?", the man asked suddenly, and Jinnean jumped a little at the suddenness of his voice.
"N-no," she manage to stammer through shaking lungs and a jumbled assortment of thoughts, "I-I'm fine. J-just a bit....a bit.....", her voice cut off as memories of the moment when her father flung her out the window returned, the helplessness two-fold now that she had seen what it was that had caused him to take such a drastic measure.
The knowledge that she would have been too scared to fight her father's attacker.
The man suddenly put on a gentle smile, and knelt down before her.
His eyes looked a bit watery, but no tears rolled down his cheeks, "overwhelmed?", he supplied, and Jinnean nodded, not wanting to recount the incident to anyone, not with the fear so fresh and painful.
He nodded to her suddenly, and brought up his hands over his head in a slow arc.
As they raised, a slow circle of light traced its way around the two of them, destroying the dark wall behind her, and forming its own small dome-like area of protection.
Seeming satisfied, he stepped out of the dome and looked to the burning city.
"Don't worry," he said without turning, "if there's anyone alive in that castle, or the city around it, I'll make sure they come out that way. Safe and sound."
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The blade, which had ceased to shine moments before, suddenly began regaining its golden glow, which ran to a shining point at the tip and flared gently, pulsing as if it were connected to his heart.
Then he spread his wings, and was off.
Like an arrow fired from a firmly drawn bow, he shot straight forward, his legs scoring the earth with every long stride as he sped his way back through the woods, towards the burning city.
Jinnean lost sight of him soon after, but the glow of his sword, close to his side, marked him as he sped through the trees.
She watched with nervous anticipation as the glow reached the boarders of the city.
For a few moments, nothing changed.
Then, silence.
Pure and absolute, like the hush before a predator's spring.
Even the screams of the townsfolk, terrified and dying, were snuffed.
Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
Nothing seemed to exist, save that long, silent moment.
Suddenly the winds kicked up!
Fierce and howling, they roared over the town, so powerful that all the fires were instantly snuffed, the black smoke blown away in a typhoon of magical wind that should have torn the roof from the castle itself.
From her vantage within the circle, all she could do was gasp in amazement as a blazing ball of emerald light whipped itself to and fro within the maelstrom, and within its wake, she heard the unearthly screams begin.
But these were not the screams of the townsfolk!
Dark and alien, the Night Horrors were tossed screaming into the air, in all directions, and as the emerald ball passed them, one by one, they cried out in preternatural terror, before finally, torn to pieces, gemstones crushed and cracked and scattered in the winds, they died an agonizing death, a slow shattering of their very form and essence into the magical tornado of the mysterious man's fury.
Then it set upon the castle.
Like a lightning bolt, the ball slammed through the outer stone of what Jinnean recognized as the audience chamber where she and her father had been before this had all happened.
The scene from the city repeated itself in stunning fashion, Night Horrors being tossed through the bricks and mortar and magical wards as if there were nothing there at all to even slow them, yet not leaving even so much as a single stone out of place, before being broken and scattered by the pass of the emerald orb.
The scene replayed itself over and over, through each section of the wide city, and wherever the emerald orb passed, Night Horrors went, screaming in pain and terror, to their doom.
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the night was over.
As the sun crested the horizon, the storm enveloping the town died.
Jinnean, weary and frightened, finally noticed that the shield that had surrounded her had finally dissipated, and she took it as a sign to mean that it was safe to return.
For another hour, she trod with heavy step back towards her home, fully expecting the scene of grim sadness that awaited her.
On nearly every doorstep she passed, someone grieved and cried out for those the Night Horrors had taken from them.
But, curiously, they were not as disheartened as she expected them to be.
To her surprise, their eyes burned with hope, and with...satisfaction?
Shaking her head, she wandered back towards the gates of the castle, dreading what she would, or to the point, would not, find.
Instead, her heart lifted at the sight of her father.
The once-magnificent beard upon his face was now ripped partially away, and one eye had been closed forever by a gruesome slash, but somehow, miraculously, he was alive.
She screamed his name as she rushed to him, and the king gently shoved away the nurse who was caring for the bandaging of his wounds as he took her embrace fully.
"Dad, what happened? I thought you had died back there!", she said, crying into his strong shoulder.
He suddenly griped her by her shoulders and moved her back, and her amazement, he was smiling!
" 'Tis a great day in our history, my daughter!", he cried, his own eyes filling with tears, "My tale of survival against the Night Horrors shall come later, when I have rested! But for now, rejoice! We have been blessed, my daughter, by the second coming of a legend!"
He looked back to the tower of his castle, the tower which housed injured soldiers, and unknown to all but the royal family, a secret passage to the Shrine of Life-Dreams.
"The Awakener has returned!"
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Greetings, everyone!
To all of those who grace this humble first novel of mine with their time and attention, you have my most sincere and honest of thanks.
My pen name and forum name, as you may have noticed the MC of my novel shares, is Aeronishun, but you all may refer to me as Aero, for short.^_^
As this is my very first attempt at publishing any of the works I've written, there will be times when I make mistakes in grammar and other areas.
I appreciate and welcome constructive criticism, though I shall not promise to compromise the vision of my story for the sake of pleasing every detractor that comes along.
That aside, I have an important announcement regarding the future of this novel.
As some of you may know, on November 6th of last year, Clearwire, a WiMax unlimited internet network who was recently taken over by Sprint, shut down all their communication towers.
Since that time, I have been relying upon the internet of my house manager to get online and continue following others.
However, despite still being able to get online, I have yet to post a new chapter.
Many of you may be wondering why.
Well...
Imagine if you had 5 chapters fully typed out, and just before you can click save, your old laptop blue-screens.
Now imagine this happening no less than 3 times within that 2 or so month span of time, with no back-ups to restore what was written, and no paper copies to copy the story from, meaning having to re-write it from scratch each time, with differences each time due to not remembering everything that was written down.
*Points to self*.
In short, yes, I still intend to continue this story.
My drive to go back and try to remember everything I typed up, however, has been shot down no less than three times.
I am not going to give up on this.
I WILL continue this saga.
It's just going to take a bit due to my drive to write having taken a heavy blow, and I'm only going to type up one chapter at a time from here on out, to reduce the risk of it being deleted on me.
I hope you will all bless me with your patience and understanding.
Here's to many more adventurous chapters to come, and thank you for your time!^_^