[Eroka – Pteragrand Village]
Drake and his best friend, Guy, sat at Drake’s desk while Drake scribbled the last words of a research document the two of them were working on. “Are you sure you don’t want us to make this one available?” Drake said, removing the eight fingertip writing nibs from his hands.
“Positive.” Answered Guy, a large, extremely muscular young man wearing a martial arts uniform. Drake closed their newly minted research thesis titled: The Physiological and Anatomical Analysis of the Draconic and Humanic Forms with Emphasis on the Internal Cellular Composition that Enables Absorption and Utilization of Planetary Energies
“This isn’t exactly something that someone from my clan is expected to write. Most of my relatives never learned to read or write, including my father.” Guy said as he touched the crystal orb that lit the room, causing it to blaze forth again, pushing away the night’s darkness. “We light dragons aren’t renowned for our intellect.”
“That’s crazy and you know it,” Drake countered, pointing at the shelf laden with thick stacks of works with titles like Using Concave and Convex Glass Designs to Manipulate Light into a Useful Tool for Cutting, Burning, and Viewing Objects Smaller than Perception, The Cell: The Unseen World that Defines Us, and The Night Sky: Those Aren’t Dead Ancestors, They’re Other Worlds that bore the names of the two young men. “Everything we’ve written is beyond anything currently known on this planet,” he said, running his fingers through his dark brown bangs to push them out of his green eyes.
“Even more reason to let it be,” Guy said, “Besides, isn’t your time here about up?”
“Likely any time now,” Drake said, “The hatching times for all of us in this age group in the village happen sometime in the next several days. It’s a shame that the village stopped that ceremony. It’s more fun having everyone with the same hatchday.”
“Having a demon eviscerate half your village and having to relocate tends to disrupt things like that. I think that survival was more important than ceremony. I mean, look, all of the sea dragons were killed except for your brother. All of the fire dragons are gone. Wind dragons – poof! -- and only a few land dragons survived. They couldn’t wait for the hatchlings to reach the age of majority anymore. Hell, Drakey-boy, only those of us from hyper-traditional families aren’t parents by now. Other than a handful of us, every one of our peers has two or more children, despite the law. Almost everyone who’s a parent is younger than us now. We’re positively spinsters!” Guy laughed.
“Not me,” Drake said, playfully punching Guy in the shoulder. “My perfect mate is over there.”
“You know, that’s not fair, knowing that you’re one of the Chosen. It’s just not right. No one is supposed to know,” Guy said, getting up from his chair and flopping on Drake’s bed.
“It isn’t like I was born knowing or something. One day, when we were little, while Kai and I were bathing in the creek, I saw her in a reflection in the water, watching us. Then every 12 moons after that I caught her doing the same thing. I made sure to be near something reflective every time after that. One time, just for spite, I gave her a full show. She blushed as red as a fire dragon. I tell you, she’s one pretty girl.”
“Sure! Rub it in,” Guy said.
“Hey!” Drake said, “You’re already betrothed to Persephone, right?”
“Yeah, but she really doesn’t want me and she’s been out with the troupe for how many cycles now?”
“Two, I think,” Drake shrugged.
“I mean, she’s pretty, don’t get me wrong,” Guy said, “I’m sure she’ll be a great wife and mother. But she’s extremely smart and she thinks I’m a dullard.”
“Whose fault is that?” Drake said, pointedly gesturing at their manuscripts. “You may be interested to know that I overheard my father say that the troupe is due back tomorrow.”
“Really?” Guy bolted upright.
“I knew you were interested in her!” Drake handed Guy their newly completed manuscript. “Show her this. It’ll prove you’re at least her equal. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky tomorrow and start your own fam--”
Drake stared at the wall where his window used to be. Now there was a growing swirl of blue energy. As it grew, an image appeared of a dark haired girl asleep in bed, her naked body partially visible to the boys viewing her from across her room. Drake was relieved that the crumpled material of the bedding obscured the vast majority of her body.
“It’s time, it seems,” Drake said flatly.
“That’s her?” asked Guy.
“It is,” Drake said.
“Built well, isn’t she?” Guy said admiringly.
“Hey, now. That’s my wife you’re ogling.”
“Not yet she isn’t,” laughed Guy. “Maybe I’ll beat you into the gate there!”
“I don’t think that’ll work,” Drake laughed along with his buddy.
“There she is...” said Guy. “Paradise.”
“I think I’m gonna play a trick on her as payback for peeping on me all these years,” Drake said.
“Good luck with that,” Guy warned.
“You too,” Drake said, patting the manuscript in his friend’s lap. “If I make it back, I guess I’ll see your progeny with Persey. Persey’s Progeny. Catchy,” he laughed.
“She’d kill you if she heard you call her that.”
“I’ll be far out of her reach, my friend. Take care.” He hopped into the vortex and was gone.
“You too,” Guy said with a tear in his eye. “You too.”
[Tuesday 9:00 AM – Brazil]
The weather was extremely humid, and since it was only January in Brazil, there was still a lot of summer left. The sky was mostly cloudy, but when the sun peeked through, it felt like a blowtorch. Any rain that had managed to wet the ground instantly evaporated when the sunlight hit, adding to the already oppressive humidity.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The semester had started and Maria Jackson walked across the campus of the university on her way to her next class. She was deep in thought and not paying attention to where she was going.
All the evidence she had found confirmed what she had been told, and the timing seemed about right. She just knew that she was one of the "Chosen," as she had been instructed to call them. She had known it since she was little, since the day when she was five and had discovered that room.
Maria's father, William, was an important man. First and foremost, he was her father, making him the most important man in her eyes. Additionally, he was a General in the US Air Force attached to the United States Strategic Command. Lastly, and a fact she shouldn't know but did, he was highly placed in the TEMPLAR organization. This last facet allowed her to understand who she was, a fact both her father and grandmother, two prominent intelligence officers, did not know.
TEMPLAR, Terra Eroka Majesties Protection, Location And Retrieval, was a secretive organization of groups dating back to before the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs and Roman Empire. They chose a name easily hidden by legends and could be spoken aloud but easily disavowed as being nothing more than fantasy if questions were asked. They hijacked the name of the Knights Templar. Some contend that it was this action that prompted Pope Clement V to disband the order.
The modern TEMPLAR organization operates from several super-secret locations scattered around the world. It was at one of these locations where the path of life took a different turn, but not its destiny. She was five years old at the time, but very precocious. A crisis caused her father to be called to the North American TEMPLAR facility. Due to the circumstances, he was ordered to come immediately, and the presence of a five-year-old child was deemed to not be an issue.
When she arrived at the facility, she was taken from her father and brought to an area for the care of other TEMPLAR personnel's children. She quickly realized that the children there were not interested in her presence. Waiting for the inevitable scuffle to draw the attention of the attending adults, she slipped away. Once out of the room, Maria quickly darted randomly into a hallway where she waited to see if someone was going to come looking for her.
Her parents had amassed a large collection of reference and literature books during their college years, which were kept in bookcases in their house. They became the early victims of Maria's reading appetite. Once she had read all of the books in her sight, she went looking for more. After she finished reading all the books she could see, she went in search of more. She quickly discovered that the really good books were the ones that were hidden, and the more hidden they were, the better the information they contained.
Walking down the hallways, young Maria examined each room as she came to them. There seemed to be no end to them. Initially, she had encountered rooms filled with people noisily going about whatever duties they had been assigned. But those had been left behind some time ago. She had eventually come to hallways where the lights were not on. She smirked. If there were things hidden, and they were hidden in the dark, they must be especially good.
She had walked quite a ways and was thinking about turning around when the hairs on the back of her neck started to tingle.
Only the really exciting books did that. She pulled her last chocolate covered granola bar from her jacket pocket and ate it, dropping the empty wrapper on the floor. Then, in the pitch black, she followed her senses and the wall on her left. She had learned to do that from a book on solving labyrinths.
The young girl descended several flights of stairs and finally came to a hallway where it seemed that construction had stopped. She stood looking at a rough rock wall blocking her progress. She knew that she wasn't finished because her neck hairs were electrified, and her heart was pounding.
On a whim, she walked forward and put her whole body against the cold stone, hugging it. She heard a grating noise as stone rubbed against stone. In the darkness, she saw a glow coming from a wall a bit further down the newly discovered hallway. Excitedly, she ran to the glowing wall and squeaked, "Open Sesame!" When nothing happened, she pushed on the wall and fell through as the wall pivoted easily on a center axis. The wall then stopped, and the glow subsided.
She yelped and whined, rubbing her now-skinned knees. She sat where she was for some time, nursing her burning knees. In the first few moments after the fall, she began to cry, but quickly realized that there was no adult around to help her. Maria was not accustomed to rough play, so she was unfamiliar with the pain that scraped knees, caused by rough stone surfaces, brought.
Young Maria stared down the natural cave tunnel. The floor and walls were irregular, and the walls were cold and slimy. A pale blue light shimmered from a point far below that she could not see. After the stinging pain she had just encountered, Maria was leaning toward calling off this ‘adventure’ and heading back to more civilized areas. However, images of a genie in a lamp and piles of treasure flowed through her mind. Her young mind conveniently left out the stories containing scary monsters or dangerous situations. If there was a light below while there was none above, that meant that there was something meant to be seen ahead.
With the pain in her knees forgotten and her mind’s eye filled with wonderment, Maria followed the tunnel downward until she stood at the mouth of a brightly lit chamber.
Maria was initially disappointed to not find mounds of gold nor a magic lamp on a pedestal. However, once past her impulsive dismay, what she did see spurred her curiosity even more.
At the entryway of the chamber, she stood at the edge of a huge lake. The water of the lake lapped at the stone walls all around. At the back of the chamber, slightly to her right, a waterfall fell from high above and splashed onto the rocky wall, flowing down into a large lake. The droplets from the splashing water spread a prismatic light throughout the area around the waterfall. Despite the bright light of the chamber, the far end of the lake beyond the waterfall was not visible.
A stone bridge spanned the lake in front of Maria until it reached a stone formation in the middle of the main part of the chamber. The formation was mostly circular in shape with a diameter of roughly fifty feet. Unlike an island, the edges of the formation fell sheer to the water some distance below as if the stone was a giant pillar rising from the lake. At the center of the formation stood an upright giant stone ring. It was held upright by two stone pillars on either edge. To a young girl the ring appeared enormous, but in actuality it only stood about twenty feet high.
Far above the ring, providing the light for the chamber was a giant floating crystal. Maria could see that there was something inside the crystal that was providing the light, but she could not make out what it was, due to how intensely bright it was.
Although the floating crystal intrigued her, Maria’s attention was drawn to the ring. Even from where she stood on the shore, she could see that there was a glow and wavering quality to the ring. The ring itself seemed to exude a glow that shifted from yellow to orange in random patterns, yet the glow provided no illumination to the surrounding stone.
Maria stepped out onto the bridge. In her estimation, it was easily wide enough for her family’s truck to drive upon. Despite having plenty of safe walking area in the middle and not having any sort of protective railing, Maria gravitated to the left side of the bridge as she walked. Looking over the edge, she saw that the fall to the water was high enough that it was uncomfortable but not high enough to cause vertigo.
She also saw that in the depths of the clear water, there were lots of pieces of rings similar to the one she was walking toward. Though they were quite deep, she could clearly see the glow from the many pieces. There were almost complete rings that were missing portions, and there were small pieces scattered in the water that didn’t seem to match any of the rings that she could see. She walked to the other side of the bridge to see that it too contained debris of the same material.
Before she was aware of it, Maria stood on the island looking up at the main ring. This one was complete, with no defects that she could determine. She examined the ring up close. While it looked sort of like metal, Maria could see that there were sparkles of light that traveled around in the material. Sometimes they would move in a coordinated way making rivers of flowing sparkles, while also moving off into various directions or disappearing without any reason. Sparkles would suddenly appear out of the ring and then dive deep into the material, or rise toward her as if to jump out of the surface only to blink out of existence.
Maria stuck out her finger and gingerly touched the ring’s side.
Suddenly the center of the ring filled with energies. Maria jumped back as a rainbow of colors swirled in a silver background. They spun and contorted for a few moments, then as suddenly as they appeared, the swirling energies cleared and Maria could see what looked like a room on the other side.
There was a large banner hanging from the far stone wall with a dragon emblazoned on it. To either side on the banner were benches and beside the bench on the left stood a stone sentry.
Maria glanced around the side of the ring to see if the room was there only to see the same image in the center of the ring. She walked back to the front of the ring and stood looking at the vista for a moment then raised her arm to touch it.
“Do not do that!” rang out a woman’s voice.