SWNOVELS Chapter Prologue : THEN AND ALMOST NOW
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One thousand seventy-eight years after the battle for the Great City ended the last war, High Lord Karstien stood in King Arturo’s tomb. There had been a thousand years of peace and Arturo had been 1082 years old when he went into the Light. Karstien felt grieved and fatigued, more so than he had ever before.
‘My son had been a great ruler, much better than I. During his reign, there was no war,’ he thought and then sighed, ‘I am so tired of being immortal.’
Together, he and Arturo had watched many humans pass into the light. Arturo had lived 10 times longer than most humans, his children lived to be almost 200, his grandchildren had normal human lifespans. He had watched generations be born, live and die while he had barely aged. Karstien wondered how long he would live because knew his grandfather Adamos had been over 12,000 years old when he went into the light.
There would no longer be one high king, each kingdom would govern itself. His great, great-grandchildren would rule the united kingdoms and Karstien would rest at last. Everything was ready. Soon he would wake up and see his old friends, only he would be a new friend to them. He had a long nap ahead of him, and he felt like he needed it.
Fiona, the last Mazoni, a descendant of Milady and Mendera entered. “All is prepared, High Lord Karstien ,” she reported bravely but he could see the tears she would not let fall. She was an excellent swordswoman and baker. The mother warriors had become so few because there was no need for them. He had only begun training them again when Damien’s sarcophagus had vanished. War was a distant memory during his son’s reign, but Karstien knew it would come again when his brother woke.
“Very well... You have the swords?” High Lord Karstien questioned.
She held out his father’s ancient sword captured by the Mazoni Milady from Damien, and the ruby scarab sword that once belonged to the Mazoni Marimon.
He nodded, adding, “Keep them safe, I may need them someday.”
Fiona bowed, “As my Lord commands.” The tears in her hazel eyes began to leak out.
Lord Karstien had trained her from the time she was five years old to carry on the traditions of the Azonis. She was closer to him than anyone in her family. He gave her a quick hug goodbye; he had watched generations of her family live and die. It was not easy to say goodbye. His silver eyes were tired, but they also held a mixture of sadness and relief. When he woke, it would only be a few short years until he met Davin and Ezra for their first time. They would help him defeat Damien and return to him in the future.
Karstien wiped her cheeks with his thumbs. He pressed a kiss to her forehead in a fatherly gesture. “I will be alright, Fiona. Thank you for your loyalty.”
“My sword and my spirit serve the Light.” Fiona vowed. “My children shall as well.”
Karstien entered the Room of Eternal Peace. Myken, the great-grandson of his old mentor Mykel, sealed him in. He drank the potion Myken gave him, laid down as the machine turned on. Green light filled the room accompanied by a strange discordant sound, then the reign of High Lord Karstien , ruler of the Western Kingdom, ended in an emerald flash.
Almost modern times...
Duncan Garrett, the last knight of the Mazoni clan, looked down at the newborn baby. He almost couldn’t believe she was real as she slept like a tiny angel in the bald healer’s arms.
“We have hidden the last oracle for thousands of years since her birth. No one, not even Lord Karstien knows she exists. Lord Adamos himself blessed her, and Lord Odini hid her for this time,” Mathys mentally spoke of the ancient oracles with reverence as was the way of his sect. “Even now my brother keeps watch with our allies. In a decade or so, Lord Karstien will awake at last, but his evil brother Damien will be waiting. It is time for her to grow up so she may aid the Lord of Light as she was born to.”
“My mother and daughters will protect her and take good care of her. She will never lack for love.” Duncan took the bundle from the Presbyt Mathys and bowed.
“She is our hope; she is special; the last oracle born in the age before the ice came.”
“She will be...” He turned and dived behind the heavy desk as gunfire sprayed the room.
“Go!” was the last word his old friend’s mind said in Duncan’s thoughts.
A glance in the mirror by the rectory door showed him the fire he felt at his back. Red mage fire streamed from the old Presbyt’s hands as his robes turned scarlet with blood while three men screamed in death. Unable to aid him, Duncan scrambled to get out of the burning building with the child. Running out into the fog, he decapitated the enemy waiting at the gate. Lord Damien’s followers would not get this child. He knew they thought he came to retrieve an ancient weapon; they had no idea how right they were.
Duncan managed to evade capture for nearly six hours, but he was wounded almost unto death, and the Dark One’s minions sought after him relentlessly. Dawn would make hiding much more difficult. Slipping quietly into the hospital nursery, he put the baby in a crib. Lavender eyes regarded him like newly polished gems. He hated to leave her here, but he could not risk her. Taking the ID card and bracelet from another baby, he put them with the tiny girl. She would be safe, and he would find her if he survived this night.
“Stay safe, little Oracle.” Looking at the card, Duncan read the name. “Daisy is a good name for such a tiny flower. My girls are going to love you.” He smiled thinking about how happy Fianna would be to have two baby sisters.
Duncan slipped away unseen and made it onto a train, luring Damien’s followers far from the child before he managed to evade them completely.
Two weeks later, Duncan went back for Daisy’s records, but there was no trace of her and no record of who adopted her. To his horror, Duncan discovered an administrator at the hospital was illegally selling unwanted infants to desperate couples, and not going through proper channels. The man killed himself amid the scandal and Duncan never found out who was raising the missing oracle before Lord Damien found him and killed him. The last Mazoni knight took the secret of the infant oracle with him, leaving only one other Presbyt and his protector who knew of her existence to try to find her.
The great-grandson of Lord Stein von Franks, Lord Damien Neimad doubled, then quadrupled the fortune left to him by his ancestors. Of course, it was all a lie, but what the public records showed, and people were led to believe was necessary. After all, it was the modern age, and immortals were the stuff of fiction and nonsense. He provided money for books and movies to be made to increase the myth, sowing the seeds of disbelief.
His hair was beige brown with early gray from his use of dark magic, but his eyes were still an intense ruby red. His ears once held a strange shape, a birth defect common in his family he claimed. He had them surgically corrected. Though he appeared to be in his mid-40s, Damien was now nearly three thousand waking years old, he had been awake on and off for the last two thousand years plus the nearly a thousand years old he was before he awoke in the Roman era. In truth, he wasn’t human, and almost no one living knew the truth.
He learned then war was a lucrative business and recently two world wars in fifty years made him wealthy. His aggressive business practices and questionable research programs created a legitimate business to cloak his illegal activities. He still missed some of his old activities, there was something god-like in taking a life personally, but now he had people for that. His new kingdom was called a corporate empire and his army were the orphans he raised to be completely loyal to him and those whose loyalty he could buy with his great wealth.
His school was in an old manor house once owned by a late royal family member. His teachers were completely loyal to him, he paid them enough to teach his students whatever he wanted them taught. Only the brightest orphans with certain personality traits were brought to him. He would mold them into his servants, his children as it were.
For a centuries, war orphaned children every generation, but the most recent generation of orphans was created by a much more sinister cause, selfishness. People who wanted their own lives more than their children, people who didn’t want to give up their careers, or lifestyles, or addictions, or insert choice here.
Damien smiled as his limo pulled up to the front of the manor. The headmaster was waiting for him. He walked through the halls, looking into the classrooms at his exceptional children. There were fifty-two students separated into the six grades of his school. There were four new students to meet personally today, along with his usual monthly student assembly. Damien enjoyed spending time with his students and reinforcing his relationship with them.
One of his older former students had just become vice president. Another was married to the elected president. He held leaders in most political movements and lobbyist groups, and in technology, entertainment, and media outlets under his sway. Slowly he was shaping the world into his kingdom. A kingdom where he could make the decisions for people, and they wouldn’t even realize it. In twenty years or less, he would rule this world behind a group of his loyal children, he was almost doing it now. It wasn’t a very long time to wait, after all, what was time to an immortal.
Several thousands of years after Karstien went to sleep, a lab tech entered the general’s office, “General sir, he’s awake again, but he doesn’t remember anything except his name.”
The General nodded and waved the tech away, “I’ll be right down.”
The tech closed the door as a Presbyt entered from a side door. He was tall and bald and wearing the white coat of his training. As was the way of his people, he did not speak aloud to those who knew what he really was.
“I hope you’re right about this, Mike,” the General scowled as he said it.
Mike sighed in a resigned way. ‘It must begin again for it to end at last. Are you sure the one you found was the shadowed one?’
The general had known the Presbyt for his whole life but had never gotten used to hearing Mike’s voice in his own mind.
“Oh, I am sure. From everything you have ever told my family about Lord Damien, it is him. He is old now, but he has the same blood red eyes, and is as evil as anyone I ever met. He is getting research contracts and billions in funding. I just need proof. But if you say we need this young man to defeat him, then I will do everything I can to prepare him.”
The Presbyt only nodded.
Downstairs, a blond-haired, silver eyed young man with ancient features, sat on a hospital bed.
“Hello Karstien, my name is General Ty Taylor,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Hello General. I am sorry, I don’t remember more than my name,” Karstien began, shaking the offered hand.
“It’s okay son, you have been in a coma of sorts. Don’t worry, I am here to help you with anything you need. I would like to be your friend,” the general promised kindly.
Karstien nodded, he remembered he like having friends even if he didn’t remember who they were.
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