Soulfire

By Daniel “Z” Hastings

A patient walks through the dark halls of the psychiatric ward, no memory
of his past, but suddenly unbelievable visions and dreams start to torment
him. The doctor urges him to write them down as they both believe that
the dreams could be related to his memories somehow trying to resurface.

Once the dream world starts to become linear and a story begins to take shape, the
patient begins to believe that they are more than just illusions. Unsure of this, he
starts to take to heart the story of his dreams . . . and ask questions.

At night, while sleeping, he returns as Zack to Teuran. All the dreams, so far,
take place in this Silver City. Working together in a secure community, there is
little room for dishonor for the son of a rumored drunken old veteran. After a day
of school like any other, he is forced to confront the world outside the walls and
encounters people with mysterious powers.

As the dreams become clearer and clearer, so too do they become more and more
unbelievable. The patient constantly thinks he is losing his mind until he finally
begins to suspect that the good doctor may know more than he lets on . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491801208

Daniel “Z” Hastings

Daniel “Z” Hastings lives the life of a dreamer. A student of science and inquisitive to the spiritual, he seeks out the truth behind the truth. This first book: Soulfire, is an introduction to his life’s work The Forgotten Age (TFA), presenting a fresh combination of Psychological Thriller and Epic Fantasy.

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© 2013 by Daniel Z Hastings. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/09/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0119-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0120-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in WWWWthis book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Days Seven and Eight

Day Nine

Day Ten

Day Eleven

Day Twelve

Day Thirteen

Day Fourteen

Epilogue

The Eight Classes of Soulfire Magic and Their Attributes

Life Magic

Kinetics

Mind Intrusion

Elemental Magic

Soul Transmigration

Summoning

True Destruction

True Creation

A big thank you goes out to my family and friends, you know who you are! Even so, I dedicate this book to each inspiring personality I have met in my life. Never give up, never surrender!

Day One

Doctor Peters has given me this book to write down my thoughts. He said that it was an old technique to cure amnesia, keeping a record of any memories that seem to surface. Even though his expression slowly seemed to change to fear when I had told him that I had been having odd dreams, his patience has allowed me to trust his judgment and wisdom in the field of psychology.

Since the day I arrived in this hospital, which has come to feel like home, he has promised to help me remember. His dedication to my condition has been motivating, to say the least. Waking up amongst strangers was quite a struggle, but I was quite well received by smiles and open minds. I was apparently found on a street corner, at least that is all anyone here knew, at first. My identity is a mystery to those around me and to myself, yet the physicians here have been kind enough to listen.

The bed they had provided in my room had become a place of curiosity and fear. However, when I laid back, week after week, and told my psychiatrist what I could remember of my recent visions and dreams, I was at ease. His pencil always races across his page, trying to make some sense of the jumbled messages I try to relay. I know that his mind is working as hard as mine to unravel the past since the first day, when they found out I had been seen, days before I was found, just walking in a park nearby, then suddenly fainting. Even though the time between the stories is a mystery, Doctor Peters has been my friend and confidant ever since.

The details of the reoccurring dreams had been shocking to us both. I dreamt of wizards, magic, and wild beasts only portrayed in fantasy. That world curved and weaved its path around not one, but two suns. Even though the books in our general library say nothing of such a world, my belief leans towards it just being part of the imagination of my subconscious.

The faith my physician and I have come to have in the dreams themselves, however, has grown over time. It was also Doctor Peters that had told me in the first place, that if they had been so vivid, it may have been my old memories trying to resurface through a kind of imaginative storytelling.

It was only a few days ago that these dreams had started to bleed into my waking hours. I went to my psychiatrist this morning for my weekly evaluation and explained to him everything that I had seen. At the end of the session, he and I had come to the conclusion that the dreams and hallucinations I have been experiencing must have been related to my amnesia, and he gave me this book.

Dr. Peters has informed me that only by treating them as memories will I be able to describe every detail. Preconceptions that we have about where we live and a daily routine are sometimes easily exchanged when a dream presents us with a past where things could have been different, especially with amnesia. Some thoughts even seem to come automatically in all of the dreams and visions. Even when the dreams appear before open eyes, they seem to take me to that other world, the man I am there sometimes feeling more real than the reality I wake up to. It is not difficult to make my mind believe that these things actually happened.

As recently described, the planet rotates in a figure eight around two suns. One of the suns was cooler than the other, and so seasons are created by the alternating temperatures of this irregular orbit. As I have read, most planets experience seasons with a tilted axis, such as Earth. These two stars, in a harmonious, impossible melody, supported the planet with the variable temperatures needed to sustain life. As my memories hopefully return, perhaps the specifics of this miraculous phenomenon will come to light.

Because one of the suns burned a hotter blue, the skies were sometimes a hue of sea green. This was because of a special type of radiation coming from a young star. The orbit lead the planet to have one half of the year with a day and night. The other half, it was in constant alternating day, when the planet would find itself in between the two suns and a type of green and blue skied summer was created. The times with day and night were the spring and winter, respective to the planet’s position.

I can also remember, but only vaguely and in no specific pattern, that there were different civilizations inhabiting the planet that were vastly different from each other. It remains unclear to me now whether the humans of the planet were capable of using the flashy, elemental magic I had envisioned, or if the wizards were a different race altogether. I can remember, vaguely, one specific dream where a wizard in a grey robe had protected a human, somehow, from an attack. The people of that world were as compassionate, and so the dealings between the two groups remain puzzling to me.

The only city that I have been experiencing has dazzled my mind in far more ways than one. A terrible maze of streets paved with the same materials as the buildings, the entire main structure of the city seemingly created from a mold that made it look like a model city. New housing projects had lines, slight creases which revealed that their conception had only come after the main city was built.

The buildings glistened with the colors of the sky, all being slightly angled to reflect those beautiful blue and sea green colors to the eyes. This created the illusion that the low standing houses were one with the sky. Perhaps it was this wondrous effect that made the people go about their daily business not in a rush, but in a very social and talkative manner. Along all the paths in the labyrinth, children could be seen playing with toys, ladies sharing the latest gossip, men laughing and everyone working together to sustain their peaceful city. During the day, the bustling streets drowned out the sea of silence that everyone could enjoy in the evenings.

The name that accompanies the city each time, is Teuran. The capitol of the humans’ world, it was called the ‘Silver City’ by those who called it home. Every dream seems to start in this glistening town, each time more or less intense. I had visited a small port, called the ‘Gates of Truth’, a tavern called ‘The Philosopher’s Cradle’, and a few homes of people I felt I knew, but did not recognize. There were few whose names remained in my mind, among those, my best friend, Kera, whose house I had seen frequently.

Accompanied with these dreams is still a yearning: the feeling that someone, somewhere, was waiting for me and I missed their company. A few of these times, when grievance had taken hold, I had been experiencing my home life in Teuran with my father, Zeratok. There have been many conversations where I had to lecture him about his ambition, and not to give up on life because he had lost his wife, my mother, Lilith, or Lilly as she liked to be called. She had died from an unknown illness when I was very young, and I had never known her. My mother’s passing is perhaps something to be taken literally from my dreams, only because that emptiness of losing my only mother still haunts me during the day.

That lack of affection on my part, however, was not for my deceased parent. Even though my dreams were full of wonders and the monotonous but pleasant life of the city, the ‘Silver City’ was made even brighter by a beauty that any man can understand. Her name was engraved in my heart since the first dream: Neiko.

She was also a reoccurring factor in my dreams that could not be ignored. Many of the more pleasant ones start with her and I walking the streets of Teuran aimlessly, no goal except to tell stories and laugh together. I wish I could be as sure that she also exists, that we could take those walks in the real world. If there was a sure chance to see her in real life, then this ignorant hell I am in would seem less painful.

Her beauty radiated through the mess of momentary scenes, imprinting the effect of the wind through her dark brown hair in my memory with ease. When I had the pleasure of gazing into her light blue eyes, I would awaken from this dream world, and be disappointed each time.

Even if only for the chance to see her again, I must put down my pen and sleep. When the dreams come, I will inscribe them best I can. Hopefully I will be able to search for my real home, even if the sea green skies and all the other wondrous fantasies are too farfetched to be real.

Day Two

The explanation of yesterday seems to have had an immediate effect on my dreams! My sleep has revealed to me more than just flashes and moments in the city of Teuran, but almost an entire day to be experienced! Confusing or painful, I will do what is necessary and fight the cold sweat of fear I get when I think back on its effect on my morning.

The dream came to me quickly, starting with the last class of the day. The university study was the focus of my attention, as it oddly explained why I had never seen a city outside of Teuran in previous experiences. The humans of this world were far more advanced than now, I was proud that I could have imagined it. Their civilization ran on machines that disassembled plant cells and molded them into any type of food. The basis of any society is to keep its citizens well fed, but this plan had been driven to the extreme.

Once the idea had been verified by the previous rulers, called the Old Kings, a project was set into motion to build a bigger version of the machine. It was to be the final solution, something to keep the great city alive forever. Tanks were constructed to house the broken down genetic material, so large that they could contain the cataclysm that the humans brought upon themselves. When the machine was turned on, it instantly absorbed all plant life around Teuran, leaving a desert so large that nearly the entire country suffered for it. Only the Silver City remained prosperous, feeding its people with carefully processed food.

In this age, other townspeople in the country had to travel through a desert with limited resources, just to attain food for their families. It was a crisis for our times. Now ruled by a council of women, the government funded inventors from towns all around the country tried to solve the mistake once made by their predecessors.

Even though the memory intrigues me, in the dream, I felt apathetic towards the whole ordeal. It was the silent contentment of a person who never understood what others have lost, born into the world where he would never go hungry, and was protected by the grim prosperity of his people.

With a scorn, I exited the university and continued home on the narrow road next to a temple, where a small group had gathered.

The temple was dedicated to the worship of the goddess Lorelei, whom was said to have visited this country ages ago. On the flags around the temple was this symbol:

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The only thought in my mind, however, was the road itself. I could feel the oppressive heat of the season, as one step after the other pressed my boots to the hot surface. Because it was the middle of summer, and because the light never faded, all the built up heat made it the hottest time of year. This constant daylight mocked my will for sleep, so the steps were turned into more of a trudge.

Around me, the people were settling into their homes for the evening. Shops closed after a day of business, and the children were called in for their evening supper. The sky started to change from blue to the calming green, and I looked up, remembering their names: the intense setting sun Pitre, and the one that soothed the heat, Thion. The light always remained.

I walked on, past house after house, seeing no plants, only the sea colored glow of the city at twilight. The buildings blending with the sky soothed my heart, preventing it from becoming too cold and restless. The entire atmosphere of the city changed when that type of nightfall came. There was a great drive for people who could not sleep to take walks and witness the beauty that others were missing. In regards to crime, most of the political world itself had been only neutral for its people. They funded transport systems and made sure that people were open to free education and a food rationing system. This was their way of making sure that nobody would have to endure the same pain as the years just after the ‘accident’, where the food had been horded by the Old Kings’ regime.

Because of the temperature, and other reasons, I had to hurry home. My father was preparing a surprise for me, exactly what I did not know. In the past, he had invited Neiko to have dinner with us, and I was very cynical about it. The last time it had happened, we had had an argument and she had left, slamming the door behind her. However, the possibility of her being there was a bright future in itself, only because I felt that constant desire just to be with her. Her absence on that day was a feeling I ignored, yet one that still lingered in the back of my head.

After the argument we had previously had at my home, Neiko had gone to one of the poorer, small towns on an assignment for her medical studies. She was studying medicine and genetics in an attempt to eradicate illness, the last problem that humans had with longevity. Even a society with such advanced gene technology could sometimes not keep up with infections, mutated viruses, and unknown diseases. Our common interest in genetics had sparked our first conversation, and was the topic in many of the walks we would often take, in the late night beauty of ‘our city’.

Zack, wait for me! Z-e-e!

I heard a female voice behind me, and it was the first time