Rift Realm

By Bethany Challenger

If I am to believe the words that I am reading, this is a journal from my daughter, I must accept what she writes, where she has been, what she has been doing, to think otherwise would be to accept that this book is the writings of a deranged person, lost to reality and who has most likely done harm to herself and her friend and that is not my daughter.
Since the discovery of this first book, two more have appeared, so I know Jade is alive and for the most part safe, for now these books are my only tie with her and I will not give up on her so I have published her journals in the hope that someone may read them and know more, that one day she will return.
What follows are the writings of Jade Avanasy my daughter from a world beyond ours, if I am correct outside our Universe, a place and time not of here called the Realmscape, a place she and her friend Dax were pulled into the night she went missing, one filled with fairy folk, old lore, magic, dragons, gods and demons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483625287

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Bethany Challenger.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 05/31/2013

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CONTENTS

1. Fall

2. Wake

3. Two Moons

4. Mind and Blood

5. Rescue

6. Talon

7. Carridian

8. Heart

9. Fallen Angel

10. Mage Council

11. Osirion Falfax

12. Might and Magic

13. The Spell

14. Time

15. Fire

16. Angel Blades

17. Sorcerer

18. Dragon Home

19. Training

20. Dragon Egg

21. Stolen

22. Dragon Link

23. Starfall

24. Gods and Demons

25. Memories

26. Birth and Death

27. Prisoner

CHAPTER 1

Fall

I woke to the insistent buzz of my alarm and rolled over trying to find my mobile amongst the blankets to shut the stupid thing up. My name is Jade Avanasy and that day was probably the last normal day in my life; every simple detail of it is scorched right into my mind. After a fruitless search, the alarm went to snooze, and with a groan, I pulled myself out of bed.

I was waking up early that day, a rarity in my life. I had a ton of work to complete in my home-schooled animal sciences course, and predictably, I’d left the entire term’s work to the very last day. I glared at my reflection in the mirror as I thought about the pros and cons of a shower. How my red hair always managed to get so tangled after a simple night’s sleep was still a mystery to me; normally my hair reached down to the small of my back. At that moment, it better resembled an afro.

At the age of nineteen, it was probably the most appealing thing about me. My lily white skin could burn in three minutes flat on a lightly clouded day, and even what could possibly be considered a ‘vampire’ kind of look was then further marred by a face full of freckles, blue-green eyes that made everyone uncomfortable if I looked at them for too long, a long nose, and a slightly fat bottom lip due to a childhood accident where I’d attempted in all my childish cleverness to try and take on a tree with my mouth.

After an excessively long shower, I went in search of food. On the kitchen bench was a note from Dax saying she had headed off to work and would be back at around five. I grabbed a bowl of Milo cereal, managed to locate my phone to put an end to ‘Jingle Bells’ being repeated even one more blasted time, and then put some good calming music on as I set myself up in the lounge room surrounded by my laptop and work booklets and settled in for the long daylight hours that I most usually and happily slept through.

Sometime later, I tore myself away from canine behavioural issues to the sound of my own dogs barking outside. Glancing up at the clock, I was shocked to see it was quarter past five. I was clearly out of time and still had four whole assignments to finish before midnight.

I heard the front door open, ignored all the dogs as they stampeded around the house obviously happy to be inside again, and waved vaguely to Dax as she dumped her bag on the bench. Her uniform was creased and the black marks under her eyes spoke of an incredibly long shift and most likely a bad one, at that. After a cursory glance at my work, Dax grinned and went to her room shaking her head; she knew me too well. The ‘I told you sos’ would start soon.

At seven, I finally emailed my work to my trainer and collapsed on the couch with a relieved sigh. Dax, who had been playing her old PlayStation 2, pulled her headset off and gave me a congratulatory high five.

‘You know, you could’ve avoided all that if you had just started on it when you got it,’ Dax remarked, grinning wickedly. I could almost see the ‘I told you so’ hovering just behind her eyes.

‘Say it, and I will hit you,’ I warned, pulling myself up and trying to think of something to eat for dinner.

‘Well, at least it’s done,’ Dax sighed, rubbing her eyes. ‘I don’t get how you can manage an entire term’s work in one day. Just think, if you got your P plates, you could drive to Bendigo every week and go to Latrobe University there, and you could get around all of it.’

Just the thought of driving made me feel sick. Another problem I had was that I always thought about everything far too much, like how a kid crossing the road would look like after I had hit it at 80 kph.

‘Dax, you know that’s not an option,’ I muttered, staring at her as she sighed dramatically and half turned back to her game.

Dax had shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, was incredibly slim, thankfully shorter than I; thankfully, because I doubted I could take much more of a hit to my ego otherwise, and she was as much a tomboy as a body has room for. Just the mention of a dress or make-up would be call enough for her to start a punch-up.

‘It is. You just won’t accept it. You’ve got to get past it, Jade. Otherwise, you’re never going to get anywhere in life,’ Dax argued, frowning at the TV as she manoeuvred a basic-looking race car along a track. I thought of everything I had done so far in life and disagreed but knew in Dax’s tired state that nothing good would come from an argument. After spaghetti Bolognese for dinner, I said my goodnights and headed for bed. Dax didn’t question my early night; she knew I didn’t stay awake during the day much and that day had stuffed my body clock up wonderfully.

‘Don’t forget, you agreed to go with me to Kate’s early tomorrow night! It’s her nineteenth. She needs help setting up,’ Dax called from the lounge. I groaned as I set my alarm again and then curled myself into bed, shoving the dogs over. Dax obviously took it for an answer, and soon after, I drifted off into blissful oblivion.

I wonder now, had I known what was to come, would I have done anything differently? Would I have called friends and family organising to see them? Say one last goodbye? Or would I have run away from it all? I still don’t know, but I honestly never expected, not even in my wildest dreams, that my life was about to take such a world-bending change in direction.

Jingle Bells again! God, I had to change that stupid song. Shoving the dogs off me blindly, I searched for the mobile and cut it off mid-chorus. It was five the following afternoon! Jeez, I knew how to sleep. Out in the lounge room, I could hear Dax and her game and wondered briefly if she had slept at all; if not for the time, I would have thought that I had only been out of it for a few minutes. I located some clothes in mildly good condition and stumbled to the bathroom, blearily returning Dax’s greeting before falling gratefully under the revitalising hot water.

‘Not long, Jade! Need to go in half an hour, OK?’ Dax called.

I resolutely ignored her but still compliantly removed myself from the shower only twenty minutes later, which was for me an absolute record. I pulled on my old blue jeans and, after a brief search, realised I’d left my shirt in the room. Wrapping a towel around myself, I gathered the rest of my stuff up, opened the bathroom door, and froze.

Standing in front of me was a male about my own age; he was dressed in a military uniform of some sort and had two weird weapons in hip holsters that resembled pistols too closely for my comfort. He had black roughed-up hair, green eyes, and looked cute, in an uncomfortable, dangerous, will-kill-you sort of way. The one thing that stopped me from screaming, though, was the fact that the edges of his body seemed to blur. Looking at him was like looking at someone through a slightly fog-misted window. He turned to me and a strangled gasp managed to force itself past my lips as I realised that no matter how unreal he looked, he could see me; my imagination was good but not that good.

With a quick, well-practised movement, one of the pistols was freed from its holster and came to a halt not three centimetres from my head. The shock on his face had been replaced by anger, suspicion, confusion, and what almost looked like fear. His lips moved, but there was no sound, not even a whisper of air as he breathed. He gestured to me, either asking who I was or threatening my life. I chose to believe the earlier of the two options.

‘I don’t mean you a… any harm. P… please don’t shoot me. M… my name is Jade Avanasy,’ I croaked, opening my hands, hoping that it would show him I was unarmed and not a threat.

His frown deepened, but before he could do anything, something seemed to distract him. He spun into a crouch, beckoned to someone I couldn’t see, and then with a glance back at me, simply disappeared into the kitchen wall. I stood there for a moment, my heart beating so fast I thought I might collapse.

‘Jade?’ I jumped and dropped half my clothes.

‘Whoa! You OK?’ Dax asked from the lounge room doorway.

Stress, lack of sleep, and food equals illusions. Isn’t that what everyone says? With a deep breath, I gathered myself. Dax was all right. She hadn’t seen anything. Even now she was looking up at the roof resolutely, obviously mortified by there only being a towel around me. In her books, I was as good as naked.

‘Yeah, just had a shock, cold air and… all… you know?’ I mumbled lamely as I picked up my stuff.

‘Well, eh… if you’re sure, um, we have to get going. Leslie’s coming by to pick us up soon. I can’t drive because I’ll probably be drinking,’ Dax said, still staring fixedly at the roof.

I grinned despite myself; I was almost able to discount what had happened as just some weird turn, most likely due to my fanatic reading of fantasy books and my hobby writing… almost. I nodded and went to my room to complete getting dressed, checking the empty kitchen as I passed. I was suddenly feeling far more enthusiastic about the party than I had before.

The afternoon was going fine. We had helped set up Kate’s place and shown people where to stash their drinks as they turned up. So far, twenty or so people stood around the small fire we had outside or gathered in small groups indoors. Good music thumped through the air. Various parts of the house were almost an obstacle course as one would drunkenly try to navigate a room full of objects that didn’t show up under purple or blue lighting, only to then be temporarily blinded when opening a door into a bright red kitchen packed with other drunken navigators embarking on one adventure or another.

Oh god, Kyle’s here! No one told me he was coming. It was eleven and the night had been great fun so far, and then he showed up. I had had a crush on Kyle since the second year of high school. He was one of those gorgeous popular people that possessed half a brain and actually travelled in some of the circles I did. Blond, perfectly styled hair, bright blue eyes, amazing body that very rarely had a shirt on it, much to my delight, and he was already in a university in Melbourne; that was one of the reasons why I hadn’t been prepared to see him that night.

I watched him wade through the party-goers from my chair on the porch and frowned as Kate threw herself into his arms, kissing him in a way I thought was far more for the crowd than them. Well, that was new. Last I had heard, he had been with some girl in Melbourne. Kate wasn’t the first girlfriend Kyle had had that I had in turn been jealous as all hell of, no way; he seemed to go swimming through girls like he did life. Easily. On one hand, that sent part of my brain off on a tangent of how much a guy like that would take my heart and screw it up, leaving me broken in his brilliant wake and how he could never make me happy; but then, the bigger part of my brain would turn to it waving a skillet threateningly and tell it that being with a body like that would make it worth the pain, and anyway, maybe if he got to know me, he’d see what a great person I am and I would be the one he stayed with… maybe. I sighed and downed the rest of my drink; I may see imaginary cute guys in my house that disappear into walls, but I wasn’t that delusional, not yet.

I watched with a sadistic type of fascination as Kate led Kyle around like a new show pony. I wondered briefly if it may not be the other way around. Kate was kind of good looking, after all. I shook my head, glaring at my empty bottle accusingly; nothing good would come from anything to do with Kyle. It was best to just get on with my night and try to ignore him. First order, of course, a new drink.

I was feeling pleasantly detached about two hours later after finishing the last bottle I had bought. I had not meant to drink much but had bought enough to see me drunk twice over, just in case I needed the extra help to relax, and it was having a wondrous effect. I lay in the backyard stretched out on the grass, feeling, for all the world, happier than I had been in months. Beside me, Dax was in much the same state, and my head was propped up against Kate’s shoulder. Together, we were examining the stars far above, while around us, music pumped and people laughed, an island of quiet amongst a sea of revellers.

‘Did you know tomorrow night is when Mars will be the closest to earth it ever has been?’ Kate asked, slurring her words slightly. ‘It’ll be as big as the moon and won’t come this close again for thousands and thousands of years,’ she added when Dax and I said nothing.

‘Is that it there?’ Dax asked, pointing unsteadily at a huge red star that had up till then been hidden behind the sparse cloud cover.

I heard a noise and rolled over to see Kyle and Kate doing their face suckerfish impersonation, and surprise, surprise, Kyle had his shirt off. With a sigh, I got up and stumbled into the house, Dax following close behind. She was starting to look sick already; she never had been able to hold much alcohol.

‘Hey, you want to call Leslie? I think it’s time to head home,’ I suggested, feeling like my happy bubble had been busted by a rather fine-looking pin. Half an hour later, we were at the end of our driveway waving goodbye to Leslie as she drove off.

‘Better grab the bins,’ Dax said before hurrying over to the side of the road and beginning to throw up noisily. Collecting both the bins in an attempt to distract my already queasy stomach, I rejoined Dax at the gates, and together, we began to stumble down our painfully long driveway, alternately blessing and cursing the bins; good support but a pain to have to drag through potholes we could only just see because of the blessedly bright moon and the odd red tint of Mars.

‘Hey, who’s that?’ Dax whispered, instantly stopping and grabbing my arm. I looked up from the ground and saw movement under one of the trees.

‘A rabbit?’ I guessed, staring at the point, trying to separate the shadows.

‘There isn’t a hole or something under that tree, is there?’ Dax asked, sounding almost sober. The night had a chill in it, which was odd since we were in the middle of summer and the nights, at best, were usually muggy.

Clouds slowly shifted across the sky, when suddenly, a face appeared above a trench that shouldn’t have existed under the tree in our front yard. Noise exploded from the trench a second later as strangely glowing guns appeared over the lip and began to fire. There were five or so men firing towards our home.

‘Two!’ one of them yelled above the noise, pointing directly at us. The guns turned in unison as a high-pitched whistle began somewhere far above us. One of the men looked up and cried something that was drowned out by the whistle, which was now significantly louder, it was almost painful in pitch.

The men in the trench ducked out of sight, and then with a resounding crack, something slammed into the ground near the road, lighting the surrounding land around us in a brilliant white flash, before both Dax and I were thrown to the ground by a massive gust of wind that roared like a group of V8s at top speed as it travelled over us.

Picking ourselves up, Dax and I ran for our lives, stopping only when we hit the front door a minute later and scrabbled desperately for our keys. Once the door was locked firmly behind us, we stood panting in the entrance room, very sober, both breathing hard, panic evident on our faces.

It looked like Dax was trying to say something, but my ears still rang from the explosion and all I could see was that she was shaking violently as she struggled to catch her breath.

I ran to the window and pulled the blinds aside so I could look out. In hindsight, I don’t know what I was thinking. How would a house keep us any safer from a bomb than an open road? Looking outside, hidden half behind a blind, like the glass would stop someone shooting me, I couldn’t see anything, and this only marginally calmed me down. I noticed that the dogs were milling around my legs, wagging their tails happily, seemingly undisturbed by anything that had just occurred.

‘Maybe it was the alcohol. Could someone have spiked our drinks?’ Dax asked moments later, once our hearing had thankfully recovered.

‘I really don’t think so. I’m going to call the police,’ I decided, grabbing my mobile and dialling triple zero.

An hour later, I was just about to ring the police again, when a cruiser drove slowly down the driveway before pulling up at our front door. Dax and I hurried outside, and immediately, I felt my hopes plummet; the cops had a look about them as they studied our bags that they must have picked up in the driveway. One was holding Dax’s half-empty bottle and shaking his head.

Great, what a waste of time!

‘Been drinking, girls?’ the one with the bottle asked, smiling in what I believed was a condescending manner.

‘Yes, and yes, the possibility that our drinks were spiked has occurred to us. Was there any damage out on the road?’ I asked, having a hard time not letting my temper get the better of me.

‘Nothing at all, and there was no trench under the tree that you described or any men. If you want, we can run a drug test for you,’ the other suggested far more kindly.

I glanced at Dax, who nodded nervously. After having our tongues scraped, it turned out there weren’t any drugs in our system; big surprise there. With no obvious drug or alcohol problems apparent, the cops left shortly after, and Dax and I went to bed feeling only slightly better knowing it was in our heads, not reality.

I woke up early the next morning, still feeling off-centred about the previous night; Dax was up, so we had breakfast in silence and then decided on what we would do. We agreed neither of us had been spiked; nearly everyone at the party had been our friends and we couldn’t remember having left our drinks unguarded even once.

‘Maybe we should go to your mum’s for a bit,’ Dax suggested while we stared at the TV, which was on for the noise only; there had been nothing on the news about anything local which left us dumbfounded. The flash alone should’ve been seen by everyone in town. I rang Mum and was surprised when she didn’t pick up her home phone and even more so when she answered her mobile.

I explained the situation, and Mum immediately agreed that we should come and stay for a bit, as if she wouldn’t. Both Mum and Dad had always hated the fact that I had moved out and took every opportunity they could to see me; we were one of the rare families that hadn’t been messed up by teenage-hood. There was excessive barking in the background and the distressed bleat of sheep.

‘Mum, you aren’t at home, are you?’ I said, smiling slightly. Knowing her, she was probably seventeen hours away at some event to do with the dogs.

‘Well, no. We’re at Binalong. There are sheep trials on this week, remember? I did invite you. We will be back tomorrow night, though, so I want you to go tonight, please? I don’t care if the police said there was nothing. If you and Dax saw it, then I don’t want you staying another night, OK?’ Mum asked in her own special, demanding way.

‘I’ll see what I can do. Have fun in Binalong and don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. Love you, Mum. Make sure you give my love to Dad too,’ I laughed, nineteen hours away.

‘Be careful. It’s probably just some sort of echo from the past, but they can be dangerous. Love you, Jade,’ she said before hanging up.

Mum and I had always held a strong belief in a sort of natural magic. One such type I had experienced as a little girl at one of Mum’s dog trials. I had lay down in the grass behind this old crumbled barn and felt incredibly happy for no reason. Then I closed my eyes and heard little kids playing games, laughing, crying, just like a kindergarten at playtime. Mum had described it as an echo, memories of past events caught in the natural fabric of time. Later, when I did a bit of research, I found out that a couple of decades ago, a huge family had owned the property for years and years and that they had been well off and were known for their kindness in adopting little children. Equally, it could have been blamed on an overactive imagination, but this was no echo. I’d never seen anything and never heard of anything that ever affected the living, outside of poltergeists and such, and if that was what was happening, then I didn’t want to be within a twenty-kilometre radius of my place.

That day, Dax and I moved all of the dogs, clothes, and anything else we thought would help stave off boredom to my parents’ place. It took a good few trips, and we were going back for the last lot around eight that night; both of us were nervous to be driving in the dark, half-expecting some sort of explosion to blow the car off the road at any moment, but despite our fears, when we got home, everything looked peaceful, with nothing out of the ordinary showing itself. I went to the sound system and put on the loudest music I could find, then set up the fire until everything felt warm and welcoming. We packed the last of our stuff into the car and then grabbed our last two backpacks, dumping them on the couch as we started shutting everything down.

‘Hey, shouldn’t we stay here for dinner? I don’t want to use much of your mum’s food if I can help it. I hate owing people stuff,’ Dax said, gesturing towards our cupboards. I knew what she meant, and we did still have a few perishables that needed to be finished. I nodded and started making dinner. After all, with the fire and the music, I was in a good mood; the scares from the day before seemed to be nearly unbelievable, and I wanted to delay going to Mum’s for as long as possible. Staying at my parents’ place when it was empty was always creepy, for some reason. Dinner was eaten while we played the 360, and soon, we were well and truly absorbed in the multiplayer shooter. Something banged against the outside of the house, making both Dax and I freeze.

‘It’s midnight,’ Dax groaned, glancing at her phone. In unison, we jumped up and grabbed our bags and torches, turning the last of the power off. I dumped a bucket of water over the fire, and Dax turned off the sound system. In the ensuing silence, Dax and I stared at each other apprehensively.

‘Well, I guess if anything was going to happen, it would’ve happened already, right?’ Dax murmured half-heartedly.

‘Hope so. Come on. Let’s go,’ I said, throwing Dax’s keys to her and hurrying outside.

I stared as Dax locked the front door behind us; the landscape around us, for as far as the eye could see, was bathed in a bright red light. Glancing up, I was shocked at the size of Mars; beside the moon, it was actually outshining it, and that alone made me hurry after Dax to the car. I climbed in and slammed the door shut, trying not to look outside for fear of what else I might see.

‘Jade, we’ve got a problem,’ Dax groaned as I became aware of the car clicking over but failing to start.

‘We’ll just ring for a taxi,’ I muttered, grabbing my phone; I could feel the panic starting to rise. It blossomed when I drew out my phone and saw that it was dead. I showed Dax, and when she pulled hers out, hers wouldn’t start either.

‘Let’s go back into the house,’ she said, kicking open the car door and dragging one of the backpacks out with her. I followed suit and jogged inside after her, still trying not to look at anything too closely.

‘Wait. What’s that?’ Dax stopped and swore when I ran into her back. Peeking around her, I saw a boy leaning against the yard fence. In the red light, it looked like he was bleeding from the face, and from the way he was breathing, he was definitely in need of medical assistance.

‘Who’s there?’ the boy asked in a ragged voice.

I pushed past Dax, who made an attempt to grab for my arm and pull me back.

‘Dax, he’s hurt! We can’t just leave him there. He could die.’ I frowned, unsure of what to do myself.

‘Jade… fine, but we both go.’ Dax grinned, showing just how afraid she was. Together, we slowly walked across the yard towards him.

‘No. Stay back. You’ll fall through the rift. Gods, preserve me, do as I say! Stay where you are,’ the boy ordered, holding a hand up as if to ward us off.

‘You’re hurt. We just want to help you,’ I said, slowing up further. I was noticing things now that I was closer. This wasn’t the same guy I had seen outside the bathroom as I had half-suspected; this one was slimmer still. I thought he might have red hair but couldn’t tell in the light; but worse still, at his hip, a sword hung and strapped across his back was what looked like a sniper rifle.

‘No!’ he cried, drawing his sword. In the same instant, it seemed that my steps slowed and the world went still. Around me, things started to blur violently until I couldn’t see the house or even the yard any more; in front of me, the boy was growing clearer and clearer. Then I fell. All at once, I was above a forest of trees and then I was being slammed into the ground with a bone-jarring force. Dizziness washed over me violently, and I rolled over, retching uncontrollably.

‘You idiots! Someone orders you to stay back, and you just keep on coming. You just made a rift wave! You absolute fools! They’ll be sending a squad over to check it out now. This is exactly what I didn’t need!’

I rolled over blearily and looked up at Mars through a light canopy of leaves. The boy was leaning against a tree only a few feet away, with his sword point resting on Dax’s collarbone, where she lay on the ground groaning.

‘Hey… What… what just happened?’ I gasped, struggling to sit up.

‘What realm do you come from? What realm did you just leave? Convince me you’re not an Elesmeran or I’ll kill your friend right now,’ he demanded, all sign of panic gone now to be replaced by a cold, disciplined anger.

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m from Wharparilla, near Echuca,’ I said, raising my hands as he glared at me calmly.

‘I don’t know of this place. How do I know you’re not just making it up?’ he snarled. Dax yelped as the sword dipped slightly and a light trickle of blood slipped down her neck.

‘It’s three hours from Melbourne! You’ve got to know Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria… in Australia… Look, where exactly are we? I can tell you what direction we come from then,’ I pleaded, watching the blade as I stood up unsteadily. A thousand options were going through my head. Maybe I could rush him and knock him over, giving Dax time to get up. Something about his eyes made me decided against this. I knew Dax would be dead well before I’d reached him, even injured as he was.

‘I’ve no idea where you think you’ve come from, but I know no spy would willingly jump through a rift. It’s almost suicide. I’m amazed that you both even survived. Get in front of me and keep quiet. Make a noise and I won’t hesitate to kill you,’ he growled, lifting his sword tip away from Dax’s neck so she could get up.

While Dax grabbed her backpack, I glanced around, trying to figure out where we were; it was obvious that the injuries the boy suffered from had affected his mind and that he needed to get to a hospital asap, but nothing around me was helping. It didn’t look like anywhere on our property, and I highly doubted the boy could’ve dragged us far in his condition. Perhaps he had help? There was certainly no one around now. The forest was entirely silent, but in the distance, I was beginning to notice loud thuds and the sound of repeated backfires. Maybe the highway?

‘Get moving,’ the boy snarled, and I felt a sharp prick in the small of my back. I jerked forwards and stumbled into Dax, who nearly fell over a hidden root in turn.

‘You don’t know how to be quiet, do you? Do you want to get us all killed?!’ the boy growled, cursing violently as I stumbled again a few moments later.

‘I’m sorry, OK? I can barely see anything. It’s dark,’ I spat back. My temper was fraying severely by then.

‘Just shut up! Please, just keep your mouths shut and try not to walk into every tree we pass, all right?’ the boy hissed. He sounded almost like he was begging; that frightened me even more. Ahead, there was the sound of a branch snapping and someone probably telling another to be quiet; it was almost an echo. I glanced back and was shocked to see that the boy had disappeared into the short scrub. Dax grabbed my arm in the next second and dragged me down. To our left, there was a sudden burst of sound and then a spurt of unrecognisable speech; it sounded harsh and made me think it might be German. Dax crawled ahead and I followed quickly. Once again, my heart was racing. I was bound to have a heart attack sooner or later at this rate.

The boy had been captured by four other men as he had tried to abandon us and was tied up to one of the trees as his captors lit a few torches; they looked to be mercenaries of a sort, and from the way that some were drawing curved, wicked-looking daggers, they meant far more than to simply capture the boy.

‘They’re going to kill him,’ Dax whispered beside me in the dark.

‘Maybe he did something to deserve it,’ I suggested, eyeing the way the four men kept glancing around nervously.

‘But the cops should handle this, Jade. I think we’ve somehow gotten ourselves into a gang war,’ Dax breathed as one of the men advanced on the boy, who spat something in the same language, obviously an insult, from the growled reactions of the surrounding men.

I studied the look on the boy’s face. He was grinning fixedly and fresh blood ran down the side of his face; he was proud and looked to be almost welcoming the pain that was to come, yet under it all, he was afraid. I was almost sure of this. I searched around on the ground beside me, located a branch, and then, without a thought, threw it as hard as I could straight at what I guessed to be the leader of the group. Dax grabbed my arm and wrenched me back down as over my head whistled small specks of bright light; it took me a second to realise that they were bullets.

‘Jade, we have to get out of here, now!’ Dax gasped, trying to drag my frozen body away as more bullets whistled through the scrub. There was an odd gurgling sound, and the small clearing behind us erupted with men’s shouts of panic, and then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it cut off again.

‘You can come out now. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. We know you’re not enemies. We saw you help Theodore,’ someone called nearby.

Dax stuck her head up above our concealing bush apprehensively. I still couldn’t move; fear had seemingly frozen my every joint.

‘There you are, and where is your friend?’ Whoever was speaking sounded calm and was probably the most unthreatening voice that had spoken all night.

‘They… they’ve killed… Jade they killed them. They killed them all!’ Dax yelped, falling over and pushing herself backwards up against a tree. Her eyes flicked past me and widened further still as a hand grasped my shoulder in what in any other circumstance would be considered a friendly welcome. Right then, though, it had a very different outcome. My body very suddenly unfroze; I was possibly just as surprised as the man who had grasped my shoulder, when my left elbow jerked backwards, ramming into the stranger’s knee. I scuttled forward on all fours to Dax’s side and spun around to face the men as the one I had hit swore, rubbing his injured limb.

The stranger was not alone; behind him, four others stood all concealed in the shadows. A broad-shouldered one carried the boy we had first met as easily as if he weighed nothing. My brain was shrieking incoherent mixed orders: run, fight, beg for my life, anything! All I knew for sure was I really didn’t want to die.

‘Look, I know you’re both scared, but we have to go. There are other bad men like those ones back there who would torture you for information until you considered it a career. Now I know you don’t want that, so come with us, and once we get to the town, we’ll all be safe and can talk more, understand? You do understand me, don’t you?’ the injured stranger asked after he had calmed down, although I did notice he kept a good deal more distance now. They would take us to a town, and that meant other possibly sane people; we could run away from them when we got near or could call for help. I glanced at Dax and saw her nod slightly to my unspoken question; she had had the same idea.

‘We… we will go with you. We don’t have anything to do with this. We just got mixed up in it when we tried to help your friend,’ I explained slowly as I stood up.

The man was nodding. He looked relieved somehow. ‘Good, that’s very kind of you, but as I said, we really do have to go… please,’ he added, indicating the direction we were to travel in.

What felt like hours later, I was thankful to see the sky lighting up slowly as we steadily climbed uphill through the sparse trees. ‘Almost there now, just a little further,’ the man encouraged behind me. I still didn’t know his name, but he had light brown hair tied back from his face and was the only one to have spoken so far. He also seemed to be generally kind, as he helped us over fallen trees and such.

I was totally exhausted by the time we reached the top of the hill and broke out of the trees and into the ‘town’ just as the sun rose over the lip of the horizon. I felt my heart plummet; it was a ruin, a burnt-out village of some sort, and from what I could see, no one had lived there in a long time. It seemed to have been one of the old historical villages, the sort that had no power and still used horse and carts and people from all over the world would visit it to see what it was like to live in the olden days. But what scared me was that I knew of nowhere in Victoria that had a ruin like this that wasn’t a tourist attraction, and worse—I could see the ocean beyond the burnt-out town. We were nowhere near home.

‘Are you OK? You both look as pale as shades,’ the brown-haired man asked from beside me. The others were sitting down, apparently intent on a rest and were passing around a drinking bag of some kind. In the morning light, I saw that they were dressed the same as the boy we had first met and were similarly kitted out with olden-day weapons as well as some unrecognisable ones. I felt sick and sat down in a hurry.

‘Here, drink this. You’ll feel better,’ the brown-haired stranger suggested kindly as he handed me a small black hard-shelled water container.

‘Thank you,’ I said, realising how thirsty I was. I drank heavily; it tasted like weak black tea and settled my stomach amazingly well. I handed it up to Dax and watched the colour slowly creep back into her cheeks as she drank.

We would find a way out of this yet; there was bound to be people around here somewhere. There weren’t that many open fertile lands like this anywhere in the world that didn’t have someone owning it. I began to relax as my stiff, cold limbs warmed and the horrors of the previous night seemed to fade like mist in the sunlight. Dax sat down beside me with a contented sigh and handed the bottle back to the man with a small smile of thanks. ‘What is it? It’s really calming,’ she asked as she leant back on the grass.

‘Oh, nothing. Just a little relaxant,’ the brown-haired boy smiled disarmingly. ‘It’s a tea made from Larysium plants, a strong sedative that I hope you made to the right dosage, Shaun, or they’ll be out for days.’

I yawned expansively and looked over to see that it had been the wounded boy from last night that had spoken. Something about what he had said was worrying me, and from the look of anger on his face, there was plenty to be concerned about. I struggled to remember what he said, then felt my heart seem to squeeze. Sedative, the drink had been a drug; I tried to sit up, not having even realised that I had slumped down to lay stretched out on the grass.

‘Of course I did. They’ll only sleep long enough for us to get them to the extraction point and on board,’ the brown-haired boy replied confidently.

‘See, look, one’s already nodded off. It’ll be kinder on them this way, Theodore. Stop stressing,’ the man huffed.

I managed to drag my head to the side and saw that Dax’s chest was rising and falling peacefully and her eyes were closed; she was obviously asleep. I whimpered, terrified to find that my mouth wouldn’t work and struggled to get up. I only managed to roll myself over, where I could do nothing but twitch in horror as my body steadily shut down.

‘Don’t fight it or it’ll take longer for you to sleep. You’ll be awake, with your body asleep around you,’ the injured boy named Theodore said a moment later; there was no sound of remorse in his voice.

I concentrated for a moment, then relaxed. I couldn’t move and I was just scaring myself stupid. They said I would wake up again; that was some solace, at least. I would conserve my strength for then and figure out a way of escape for both Dax and me. As sleep firmly claimed me, I heard the boy chuckle, ‘So you do listen sometimes.’

CHAPTER 2

Wake

I could hear the sea pounding against the outside of the ship I was travelling on; I heard the creak of timbers, felt the taste of salt on my lips and the cold bite of arctic air all over my body. I’d had this dream before; it was the sort that always felt real, and when I would wake in my bed, I would always regret having left the world in my head. Although in all my dreams I had never felt so sick, my stomach was an ugly knot of dull pain and my head wouldn’t stop nauseatingly swaying, even though my eyes were still closed. Waking up this time would be good, if only because I could escape the feeling.

I reached down to my stomach, that was the main point of discomfort, and was shocked at how sunken it was; my ribs were easy to touch, and as I searched the rest of my body, I realised that the reason I was so sick was because I was starved, again something that never happened in my dreams. As I struggled to wake up, the pain in my stomach increased, as did the cold. The sound of waves, creaking timbers, and the rocking motion was making me feel worse. It was a really persistent dream; I was sure I was awake, but the dream remained stronger than ever, but I was still sure that when I opened my eyes, I would be in my room buried under my blankets and dogs and I would probably have over-heated during the night or slept too long and was craving lunch.

Upon opening my eyes, the happy image evaporated to be replaced by the impossible reality. I was on my back covered in blankets; that was true enough, but instead of my room and my bed, I was lying on a pallet of folded blankets in a wooden room that only had enough space for another pallet, a wash basin empty of water, and a pot that I didn’t want to investigate too closely by the smell. The only light was an odd-looking lantern swinging from the roof.

My body was sluggish as I sat up; everything around me said I was on a ship like those in the colonial books I had read of at school, but my brain refused to accept this. I simply couldn’t be waking up on a ship at sea. I lay back down and waited to wake up. What felt like hours later, the pain in my stomach drove me out of the bed, where I discovered I had no clothes on. I remedied that with a blanket wrapped around me to stave off some of the cold. Standing shakily I walked to the door.

Outside, I could hear men talking in a different language, but some were obviously singing and none sounded particularly vicious. This was my dream anyway, and I had always been taught to never be afraid of my dreams, plus… these men might just be cute too. I tried the door handle, half-expecting it to be locked, but when it opened easily, I pulled the door in and was instantly blinded by amazingly bright sunlight. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the sea. It stretched endlessly in every direction, a shimmering blue carpet of movement.

My attention snapped back to the deck when someone called something, and a wolf whistle followed it. That noise was unmistakeable. There were probably thirteen or so crew on the deck of the double-masted ship, and all were looking at me whistling or laughing as they called out things. I was suddenly very grateful I couldn’t understand.

‘You might want to go back inside, Jade.’

I turned towards the voice and recognised him in a sudden explosion of memory. It was… what had the other boy called him? That was it! . . . Theodore, the boy we had seen at the house fence who had somehow transported us somewhere far from home. I had rescued him from the rough-speaking men, and then his friends had killed them all. Then Shaun, a brown-haired boy, had marched us and the others to a burnt-out village where we had been drugged and fallen asleep. We? Where was Dax?!

I slammed the door in Theodore’s face and immediately grabbed both the pallets and put them up against the door, putting the wash basin on top and the pot in the basin. ‘What have you done with Dax? And where are my clothes?!’ I demanded shakily. There was no reply other than his boots stomping away on the deck.

My question unanswered and only feeling slightly better now that they at least would have a hard time getting to me, I grabbed all the blankets from the pallets and curled up in them in a corner as my brain went into a small meltdown. What had they done to Dax? Was she hurt or just being held somewhere else? The second pallet in the room suggested that she had been kept in the room with me for at least some time, but now she was God knows where, and the way I was feeling, I wouldn’t stand even a slight chance if I tried to find her. I covered my face with my hands, torn with indecision; knowing I could do nothing but wait only made me feel worse.

A short time later, someone knocked at the door. The pain in my stomach was making me dizzy and oddly tired; I considered opening the door just to find some food. ‘Jade, please open the door.’ It was Theodore. Well I could starve a bit longer.

‘I have some clothes for you. After you’re dressed, I want to take you down to the galley and get some food into you. Dax is down there, so I thought you might want to go soon. So will you open the door and let me give you these clothes? They should fit you,’ Theodore said, sounding irritated.

To be warm and have food seemed like the most important things in life at that moment, but so far, every time I had trusted one of these sociopaths, it had ended badly and they had taken Dax away. I wasn’t opening that door for anyone; it could be a trap. There was a sigh and then the entire mound shuddered as Theodore probably kicked at the other side. The door opened slightly; through the small gap, he shoved a bundle of clothes, and then the door was slammed shut again. ‘When you’re hungry enough and want to see your friend, I’ll be at the helm,’ he growled before leaving.

I hesitated for a moment; it was the lack of feeling in my toes that made me eventually grab the clothes and try them on. At first, I thought the light silver-blue tight cloth would hold no warmth at all. The shirt was long-sleeved and had a strange type of fur on the inside. It was the same