Soul Shard Read online

  Soul Shard

  K F Williams

  TEXT COPYRIGHT 2014 © KAY FRANCES WILLIAMS

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Prologue

  In the spring of 2263 the League of the Waking Night lost its strict control of the Nexus, reuniting the two worlds of Earth and Favlas along a barrier of magic and energy; a moment recorded in history as The Pause.

  The resulting political struggle and the threat of war was eventually replaced with the Fusion Drive. A machine of renewable magical fuel that allowed the technologically dependant Earthlings to resume the kind of life they had lost when the Nexus Flares tore through buildings on an untold scale of destruction.

  Over sixty years after the Pause, with Fusion Drive technology now running computers, cars and almost every kind of hardware, sixteen-year-old Texan Amelia Solstice should have had a bright future ahead of her; instead she found herself preparing for an arranged marriage. Unable to face the day, a window provided a quick means of escape, but the relief was short-lived when she was abducted from the church gardens by a Ranger of Favlas and conducted through a dungeon only to stumble helplessly out on the other side, changed forever.

  Trapped in the remote mountain town of Elgin, abandoned as the unwitting casualty of a political project, Solstice was saved by the arrival of the Ranger Parelias. A Centaur called upon to train and teach her in the ways she had never chosen for herself.

  Nine months of his expert guidance has been enough for Solstice to come to terms with her new path, but now winter has come to Elgin and the mountain has a new season of dangers for the young Ranger.

  Elgin, Favlas 2328

  Sixty-Five years after Pause

  Snow fell in steady silent flakes and I was going to have to go out in it, Parelias was making breakfast and he had a gift for me, but I had enough time to finish oiling my bow and armour.

  Gone were the days when I would go to school and breeze my way through standard government expectations and test statistics without straining my impressive intellect, but unable to work my way out of the arranged marriage that was oppressively overshadowing my future. Until I had tried to change my fate and run away; I smiled at that thought. I hadn't realised I would end up kidnapped and transported a whole world way from my old life.

  Magically turned into an Eternal Hero with only one way to die, my life had become governed by magic. With my life force, pain threshold and magic interpreted into three vital Statistics: Health, Endurance and Essence.

  Everything I did, earning me slivers of living and dead energy in the form of Wisps which I had to learn to use and manage with Skills, Talents and Spells.

  Thankfully I had plenty of help in adapting to my new life in the form of four

  other training Heroes. Tayfurian who ran the local Ranger inn, the citizens of Elgin and most important in Parelias. My mentor had been everything I needed during the panic and frenzy that had followed my abduction from Earth and in the months since our time together had only solidified our initial meeting into a deep friendship. I didn’t know if any of the others spent time with their mentors outside of training but over the last nine months I had come to truly love the peaceful moments alone with Parelias.

  Sometimes I would read aloud from a book borrowed from the library inside the city Temple he had directed me to. He would answer the questions I would pose on laws and ethics of Favlas. Sometimes we spoke and he would tell me the lore of ancient peoples and magic, of Kingdoms, politics, lost cities and the Old Races and their architecture. Sometimes we didn’t even talk; we just shared a simple meal and time that wasn’t dedicated to study or training.

  Storing my weapons and armour I left my house, a comfortable ranch style lodge set amongst the trees in a large orchard along with three others of a similar style and Tayfurian's larger inn.

  Parelias's lodge had been remodelled during the summer to account for his race, as a Centaur he needed more space and shallower steps, and to accommodate him a conservatory had been added as an extension. Instead of stone slabs or wooden floorboards Parelias had allowed grass and little flowers to grow there. Now, in the middle of winter, his conservatory was an oasis of green.

  Parelias was settled on the grass with a low table set with a breakfast of pancakes, tea and steaming milk. After smiles, good mornings and plenty to eat, Parelias set his plate aside and produced a small wooden box from behind his horse-shaped back with a flourish.

  “For you. Don’t shake it.”

  “What did I do?” I smiled but I felt bemused as I took the box.

  “Nothing,” he chuckled. “Ascares came across it and sent it to me, but I think it would be good for you to have it.”

  I missed Ascares, the Ranger had been one of the few I had first met but had since moved on from Elgin, but I remembered his tall tales and the animated waving of his arms as he described his adventures.

  I ran my fingers over the simple wooden device, it had a deep bottom half and a flip-up lid that was domed like a chest, there was no lock but the two halves were held together by a clasp that popped open when it was depressed. Opening the lid I saw that the whole of the box was padded and lined with velvet, sat in the middle of this was an egg. It looked no bigger than a quail's egg, was a pale brown and darkly speckled.

  “What is it?”

  “It is the egg of a javrawl,” Parelias answered. “They are extraordinary little animals.”

  “How so?”

  “They are the worst parents of any animal on the Favlas. Like the Earthling bird the cuckoo, it lays its eggs in the nest of other animals. Unlike the cuckoo though, the javrawl hatches with its five senses, but with no defined form. The javrawl is a creature that adapts as its senses tell it to.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If it is born in the nest of a bird it will grow into a bird, but once it is fledged and away from its ‘parents’ it continues to learn, adapt and adopt aspects of other creatures depending on its surroundings.”

  “Like?”

  “Perhaps in winter when nuts and seeds are scarce the javrawl that was raised by birds sees a fox eating a rabbit, hunger might drive it to lose its beak and adopt sharper teeth and scavenge at what the fox leaves behind. Or maybe during a flood its meadow of bugs is swallowed and it adopts the fins of the fish to hunt for aquatic lava.”

  “They never keep one form their whole lives?”

  “Never. Javrawl are constantly learning and evolving. But they do have some flaws.”

  “In what way?”

  “Say they give up the beak for the fox's teeth. The javrawl wouldn’t remember how to grow the beak again, so they would have to watch the birds process the movement and then adapt all over again. Sometimes these adaptations occur very quickly especially during times of stress or if its life is threatened, but more often than not it takes hours of watching and learning in order to change. They are also very intelligent even from a very young age.”

  “They would have to be to understand the mechanics of adaptation I guess,” I replied turning the little box over in my hands, trying to get a better look at the egg.

  “Exactly,” Parelias agreed. “Which means keeping them entertained after they have matured to a point of self-sufficiency is very difficult. Even for Rangers who are able to talk to their javrawl.”

  “They get bored with us?” I grinned. “I like them already. How long did you manage before yours became bored with you?”

  “The longest I have ever kept a javrawl from hatching is sixteen months.” Parelias replied. To a Hero who could live an Eternal life, sixteen months was nothing and it caused me to laugh. “I managed to convince her to stay a full year in order to show her the best of what was available during each season; after a year had passed she said thanks and then just
walked away without looking back.”

  “Dumped,” I sniggered.

  “Precisely,” Parelias smiled. “Ascares has an extraordinary gift for finding them when Rangers could search for years without ever getting the chance to hatch one, and a real flare with raising them. Which is probably due to a mix of his gift for story-telling whilst pandering to their intelligence and their ego by flattering them. His longest is just shy of seventy-two months.”

  “Six years. Wow.”

  “Give or take a few months. The javrawl in the end left when she reached sexual maturity and the natural instinct to claim her own a territory with suitable foster parents and the need to breed moved her away from him.”

  “So he is throwing down the gauntlet as it were?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are taking the coward's way out by giving it to me?”

  “Absolutely,” Parelias chuckled again. “I have no talent for them at all. But it will serve a very practical purpose for you once hatched. During the last nine months your own natural adaptation towards understanding and tuning in to the animal language has come along at a very steady pace but you seem stuck at the last hurdle, which is going from correct interpretation of empathic suggestion and sympathy into words and sentences. Once hatched, the javrawl with communicate with you constantly.”

  “Hopefully giving me the extra shove I need.”

  “And if not, they are certainly an experience during the time it takes for them to reach maturity.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “In the wild a javrawl will hatch when it feels their ‘siblings’ doing the same. If not they hatch when they have used up the food in the egg and then grow hungry. Best thing you can do is keep it with you and always have a ready supply of food and water. After that you are on your own.”

  “On my own?”

  “The whole idea is to encourage communication between you and the javrawl; if I interpret for you I’ll be raising it, not you.”

  “If it takes six years for them to sexually mature how long do they live?”

  “No one knows for sure. It could be that they are actually one of the few Eternal animals but because they adapt and change their appearance and because of the depth of their intelligence they are very hard to track and monitor. What little is known about them is from Rangers like Ascares who have been able to watch the development from hatchling into self-sufficiency and then on to maturity.”

  “But then they leave and progress into adulthood, which is never recorded. Anything else I need to know?”

  “When first hatched and without an adapted form the javrawl is basically a bundle of highly sensitive nerves and they are very delicate, the box is to act as a nest while you build up trust and it begins to adapt to the lifestyle you present it with. Do not try to actually touch it until it is ready.”

  # # #

  It was dark when I opened my eyes, the general shape of my bedroom furniture barely visible in the moonlight drifting through the window, it was unusual for me to wake but there was an uneasy atmosphere in the room and a sense of discomfort and confinement. Sitting up I squinted at the room but I couldn't tell if there was anything out of the ordinary, rubbing my eyes to wake myself up I lit a candle with a simple Skill to get a better look around the room. On the bedside table was the javrawl nest box left open with the egg still in its velvet cushion and in the new light I noticed a fine crack across the shell, a crack that got larger as I watched whatever was inside trying to break free.

  I picked up the box and headed for the kitchen, putting it still unhatched on the table and lighting a few more candles before digging through the supplies I had received from Tayfurian to feed the creature if it hatched when the inn was shut. I found a winter pear that I cut up into little chunks and waited for the beast to break out of its shell.

  It took several minutes for the cracks to turn into flakes that fell off of what I could only describe as jell-o. A soft looking cube the same colour as the egg but pale and slightly see-through, it was about an inch square with tiny beady black eyes without pupils or lids. It possessed a wide mouth without teeth, it could hear but had no ears and as Parelias had commented, it was just a bundle of nerves that I didn't have the courage to reach out and touch.

  It sat in the remains of its shell visibly quivering. Unable to talk to it I opened myself up to it emotionally but I sensed only an over-whelming sense of hunger and fear radiating from it. When I moved closer I managed to pick up a slightly masculine tingle to its emotional impressions.

  Remembering what Parelias had said about the animal mimicking, I leant forward and opened my mouth sucking the small piece of fruit off my own finger, he watched me do it several times before I offered him a piece again, this time he leant forward and opened his mouth taking the offering and closing his mouth.

  He had no throat or stomach so didn’t swallow but the pear was visible inside. Like acid dissolved whatever it touched, so the fruit was broken down fizzing at the edges until it was gone.

  Instantly he opened his mouth again as fear and disorientation were replaced with hunger, he ate through half the pear before a tired kind of contentment washed through him. He had no eyelids but his eyes dimmed when he finally began to sleep, I was very careful removing the shards of the shell, not wanting the sharp edges to hurt the delicate creature. I yawned as I carried the box back up to my bedroom and put him on the vanity unit before tucking myself back up into bed.

  I woke to dim grey winter light through my window signalling the arrival of another day in the mountains, it wouldn’t actually get bright unless the clouds broke or until the sun managed to creep its way above the tree line for a few short hours in the early afternoon.

  I was aware of the new empathic impression of the javrawl; it was awake and it was hungry again. Dragging myself out of bed I was almost knocked back by his instant recognition of me from his midnight snack from the night before. I was the bringer of food and he was happy to see me.

  Scrubbing sleep from my eyes, I changed clothes quickly. He wasn’t nearly as intimidated by me as he was before and I could only guess at how disorientating the process of hatching actually was.

  I carried the box down into the kitchen, amazed at how interested he was in everything. Putting him down on the table and with more light to see by I easily found something to offer my new responsibility in the form of several strips of the jerky I usually packed for travelling with.

  I fished out the last three stripes and tore off a chunk to offer the jell-o cube. He sucked it off my fingertip confidently but it was still accompanied by a little quake of hesitation from my proximity. I smiled and sent it warm responses of encouragement and confidence hoping that he would pick up on my positive emotions and learn to trust in them, with plenty of food to bribe him with I didn’t think it would be a problem.

  Smoke was rising from the chimney of the inn and Tayfurian's pencil-thin shadow was already moving about inside. Once I had struggled into my boots made stiff by the cold and managed to open my back door against the foot or so of new snow, we would be on our way to a proper breakfast.

  As a Hero, the cold didn’t slow me down, I couldn’t get ill, and my body remained at a constant temperature, however, that didn’t stop me from being able to feel the cold air or stop my warm breaths from misting in front of me. Though unnecessary and pointless, I found myself throwing on extra layers that wouldn’t give me more warmth and complaining about the cold and snow as much as any of the other citizens of Elgin.

  I struggled with the door and the fresh blast of cold air caused the hatchling let out a mental wail of despair. I slammed it shut straight away and apologised profusely I was forgiven and he trembled in his box, the cold shivers rippling across his surface like disturbed water.

  Apologising again I tried to give him the impression that if I closed the box he would have hot food but was met with a firm refusal he wasn’t going back into the dark again he had had enough of that, which was wh
y he had hatched in the first place.

  I could have forced the issue, it wasn’t as if the creature had any way of stopping me dropping the lid shut, but it wouldn’t do anything for his confidence in me or in our relationship.

  A knock on my door turned my attention off the hatchling for a moment.

  Parelias had come up to my porch door; he often knocked on his way to Orchard Inn if it looked like I hadn’t managed to make it to breakfast before him. I shielded the javrawl while Parelias stepped inside and he came to investigate my new charge.

  “That was fast.” Parelias frowned slightly and I picked up on a sense of frustration from the javrawl.

  “You aren’t replying to him, are you?”

  “No. I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “It’s too cold outside for him.”

  “The box converts.”

  With the hatchling's curiosity as permission, I checked the box and found that the lid detached. The padding inside it could be removed and added to the hatching basket snugly tucking the vulnerable creature inside. Delighted, he snuggled down perfectly happy.

  “Now we can have breakfast.” I smiled and received a hungry response from the javrawl.

  We left my house for the short walk to Orchard Inn with the javrawl’s eyes poking above the padding greedily drinking in everything he was presented with, the snow, the trees, the houses, and the sky. His intelligence was staggering, he had an immediate understanding of what everything was called, as if he was hard-wired to know what everything was and only had to see it for the first time to pair an image to the word.

  Tayfurian was waiting when we entered his inn, even without a watch and the stringent sense of time that Earthlings lived with every day, somehow Favlians managed to schedule their days out of habit and routine. Our innkeeper was at his ledger when we entered. With Elgin’s failing economy balancing one's books was a daily essential, if mind numbingly difficult task of coin, trading, borrowing and just doing without.