The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft

CH WHEN PAST AN FUTURE COLLIDE

Wastelands of light

In the dark

Children of time

Torn apart

So lost and incomplete

A missing puzzle piece

Life of a broken heart

An abstract piece of modern art

Let them go

To the light

They are all

Children of time

Children of Time by IMAscore

The Huntsman and the Protector of Adamos and the Huntsman of Remus bounded over the high wall of the city and ran toward the flashes of Oracle light and lightning. A tall warrior lay in the grass unmoving as a tiny warrior dodged and struck at a monstrous shadow creature. The long-haired swordsman twirled and spun, wielding two vastly different blades; one was a long, glowing obsidian sword that looked almost too big for the small warrior and the other a strange hooked blade that brought lightning with every strike. All three could feel the evil of the creature but they were shocked when the badly wounded warrior called out to them.

“Stay away from the darkness,” The warrior yelled at them in their language. It was a woman.

Two stopped to the right of her and one to the left, all had their weapons out.

“Stay behind me or I can’t protect you.” She called as she threw a glowing oval shield of magic between the shadow tentacle striking and the two on her right, they retreat more behind her as the glyph exploded in a shower of oracle light. They have never seen such magic done by someone who was not a mage.

“My Lady, we are armed,” The Protector of Adamos called out.

“Your weapons are of no use against this creature, Abe,” She responded then twirled suddenly striking and missing but forcing the creature to retreat from them. She nodded her head back to where she could still feel Shadz unconscious. “Get the Mage to the House of Odini, if I fall, he knows why we came.”

Daisy felt the other huntsman kneeling over Shadz and a pulse of healing magic. The creature started building its energy for another strike, drawing from a source of darkness nearby, if it recharged itself they were all doomed. She felt it lash out with its tentacles and threw an enormous glyph between them all. The explosion shattered it and she staggered.

A very concerned feeling Yurieth caught her arms and steadied her, “My lady, how can we aid you?”

“You can’t, Yuri. Listen carefully. Tell Adamos and Mina, the darkness comes early, two shadows are here now, Adamos and the Remnant of Aetheria must flee within the year.”

He didn’t know who she was yet, this was the first time in his life that they have met. Daisy could feel their surprise, either from the fact she knew them or that she was still standing with her wounds. She knew she was seconds from passing out and dying forever because she probably wouldn’t revive from the deathlike state wounded Aetherians fell into while they healed, she was simply too injured this time.

“My lady?”

“Yuri, I can’t see, but I can feel it’s recharging from a source of darkness close by, I must destroy it now. You must tell me exactly where it is, please be my spotter,” She begged in a low voice only he heard.

He turned her body slightly, “It is twelve blocks directly ahead and centered four above the grass, my lady”

“Huntsman, close your eyes so you aren’t blinded. In three... two... one.”

She stepped forward away from his steadying hands turned and slashed, driving all her remaining power into the blast, focusing it through the Sword of Odini sword and Kaleth’s ancient sword with the lightning it summoned. Oracle light and lightning exploded around them, throwing them all to the ground. It lasted for several seconds. The sound crackled and boomed, echoing into the city and to the mountains beyond them. The strange creature of shadows disintegrated into a pile of strange dark dust. The woman warrior laid on the charred grass.

Lord Yurieth, the eldest son of the house of Adamos, knelt over the strange woman and noticed she was wearing two rings, one the symbol of a widow and the other bearing the crest of his house. Around her neck was the white stone amulet of an oracle. Blood and tears wept from her swollen eyes and strange blackened blood leaked from the scrolling dark cuts across her temples and forehead, it looked like lace had been cut into her pale skin. Her dark hair was unnaturally black. Even as injured as she was, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and from the battle he just witnessed, the bravest. Her hand shot up and dragged him closer.

She wheezed out a warning. “Yuri, tell Adamos and Mina, the darkness comes soon...two shadows here now... he must launch in... within one year or less... to save the remnant.”

Her head lolled to one side and Yurieth realized he was feeling her heart failing. Centuries on the battlefields of the last war gave him the experience to know she was too damaged to heal and revive. Yurieth vowed to himself he would not let her die and summoned the healing power only Master Huntsmen possessed. He placed one hand over his heart and the other over hers and willed her heart to beat with his, sealing her life glow to his until she recovered, but suddenly power like he never felt surged through him and her oracle stone flashed. She gasped and convulsed under his touch. His mind filled with her memories of a war he had not fought yet, they flashed through his mind in rapid jumbled confusion, a life in another time and place.

Suddenly they are standing in a room made of light, the woman was there in a lavender dress, shaking her head, her voice horrified, “Oh Yuri, what have you done? You’ve sealed us!”

He stared at her in shock, they were within the Veil of Light.

His brother’s touch brought him back to the present. The woman was unconscious in his arms but he didn’t remember picking her up.

“Brother, we must go, the King’s guard approaches and mother says they must not find them here.” Abrieth reminded, picking up her weapons.

The Huntsman Regis, the only surviving Huntsman of the house of Remus, was standing not far away with the young mage over his shoulder. Yurieth could only nodded. The pain of this warrior oracle was pulsing through him like a drum with his every heartbeat.

As they fled through the forest to the city and then across the rooftops of the City of the Kings, Yuri could feel himself weakening. They waited on a rooftop as the Kingsguard rush through the streets below.

“By the light, Yurieth. What has happened today?” Abrieth asked.

“I do not know, brother. But she knows and came with a message for mother and father. When I used the heart heal magic, I saw...” Yurieth hesitated and the Huntsman of Remus with them pressed him for an explanation

“What did you see?” Regis demanded.

“A war unlike any we faced against an evil even greater than the Xelusians.” Yurieth was shaken by the horror he had seen in the glimpses of her life. “She comes from the future.”

“That explains this,” Abrieth held out the strange sword she carried.

They stared at the inscription, then Yurieth nodded to her hand, “She bears a widow’s token with the same name.”

Abrieth started swearing uncharacteristically, then demanded, “Who is this woman?”

“How am I supposed to know, brother?” Yurieth answered in a growling, angry voice. “Our mother only said to wait for her messenger in the greenway and bring them back, she never said anything about the creature. We know nothing of who they really are.”

“But we do know some,” Regis corrected him, “She is the widow of your unborn brother Kaleth and the high lady of the House of Adamos. She is an Oracle and a warrior. She is too small to be an adult, and yet she is, and she wields more power than any oracle I have ever heard of. If she spoke true then there are two more of those creatures in our world and she is the only one who knows how to kill them. Beyond that she is an enigma that only your mother will know the answers to. As to her companion, she said he is a mage of Odini.”

“Do you always have to point out the obvious, Regis?” Abrieth demanded in a disgruntled voice.

Regis laughed at him, “You are the one who always ask, Abrieth.”

“Enough,” Yurieth snapped, “We must get her to my mother and Serapha before she dies and takes me with her. How is her companion?”

“It seems the Warrior Oracle protected this Mage after the creature nearly took his head off. If they had not been wearing this strange armor, both would undoubtedly be forever dead.” Regis announced. “He will recover much soon than her.”

Two huntsmen and a protector arrived in the courtyard of the city manor of the House of Adamos.

“Mother! Serapha! Oren!” Abrieth shouted as he supported Yurieth who held the dying Oracle. “Hurry, she’s about to die and take my brother with her.”

Yurieth staggered and almost went down to his knees, he had to maintain contact with her or she would be dead in the next moment. He had never felt such a strong connection to one with whom he had shared his life’s light with to heal. Every minute injury felt like it was burning cold. He could only assume his magic had interacted with hers to do this. He was shaking because the pain was so intense. Oren, the second youngest son of Odinus of the House of Odini was a healer, he immediately glowed golden and poured his power into Yurieth’s weakening body and the woman.

As Regus, stood patiently, Abrieth’s beloved Serapha healed the young mage. “He’ll live.”

Yllumina gasped at the sight of the oracle then turned to daughter-in-law, “Hurry, daughter, we must make the healing water of light and immerse the oracle and Yurieth or they shall be lost.”

Inside, servants rushed to fill a large wading tub with pure water, Mina pulled off her oracle stone and dropped it in the water. She and Serapha both placed their hands in the water. Gold and white power blended in the water until it effervesced, and the oracle stone floated to the top.

“Yurieth get in with her and lower her into the water slowly.” He staggered, trying to obey as Oren continued to heal him, and Serapha jumped in to help them. The healer began ladling the glowing water over the wounded woman. The unconscious oracle screamed, then thrashed and convulsed as beads of a black oil rinsed from her wounds, hair, and scars. As the darkness faded skin, her breathing became less shallow. Soon Yurieth was able to release her from his hold but could not stop his magic from flowing to her.

As he sat on the edge of the pool, his father knelt next to him. “My son, withdrawal your healing magic from her.”

Yurieth swallowed and looked up at his father with haunted eyes, “I can’t, Father, her magic did something to mine. It bound us somehow, I can feel her in a way I have never sensed another. Who is she?”

Serapha’s gasp of horror and Oren’s shocked exclamation drew their attention back before Adamos could speculate. The healers had begun to remover her tattered clothes and armor, leaving her only in strange undergarments. The woman’s arms, legs and torso were covered in strange crescent marks that wrapping her body from her neck to her wrist and ankles, like the bruises left by a chain bound too tight. The scroll cuts traveled around them etching her skin even under her armor. Serapha looked like she wants to cry as she poured bowl after bowl of healing water over the floating woman.

“Get the others, mother,” Serapha demanded in a harsh, strangled voice, “They need to see this before it fades. They need to see her scars.”

Soon a half dozen men are surrounding the pool with the two healers and the scarred, battered woman.

“What are those marks?” Regis’ father, Regulus demanded. He was the Queen’s Protector, the Guardian from the house of Remus, the last guardian.

Serapha’s coral eyes shone bright and fierce. “Those irregular crescents are caused by dark magic chains, they burn cold and leave ash in the wounds they make, any exposure to dark magic or its dust will make them visible again. And this here,” she pointed to the long, jagged scar across the woman’s stomach. Oren lifted the oracle out of the water slightly, Serapha ran her finger across damp skin as she spoke, “This is where a sacrificial bound blade was used to cut a child from her body. The jaggedness shows that she was awake, and she struggled when it happened.” Tears ran down her face at the horrors she suspected this woman had faced. The men gasped and Mina covered a sob with her hand.

“This oracle has been a prisoner of the blood mages of Xelusia and survived. She was attacked again by creatures of dark magic for them to become visible again. It will happen every time she fights them. What happened in the greenway?”

None spoke after the proclamation.

Finally, Regis answered her glare, “It was as you say, Lady Serapha. A creature unlike any we have encountered was fighting her. It was made of smoke and evil, and she killed it with oracle light and lightning. It turned to dust.”

They just watch as the healers carefully turned the woman over to reveal even more chain scars and long thin scars that look like they came from a blade drawn repeated across her back.

“What are those?” Lord Odinus, eldest of the house of Odini demanded, even though he knew from the dead bodies he had seen in the war.

Serapha frowned, “She was bound across a blood altar and bled so that the power of her blood could be collected and used by a practitioner of blood magic...” She shuddered then snapped at them, “Now will you believe the evil coming upon my people? This woman’s marks could only come from the blood mages and their rituals.”

“She came from the future,” Yurieth announces weakly from where he sat on the side of the tub. “When I used the heart heal magic, I saw images of a war spanning many planets, of her imprisonment, of the deaths of worlds and her own family members, of creatures and technology we haven’t even imagined.”

Yurieth looked over his shoulder at his twin brother and his brother Huntsman, “Abrieth, Regis, show father and the Elders the swords she carried. Oren, can you give me her widow’s token.” Yurieth held out the ring to his pregnant mother, who inhaled sharply as she read what was left of the inscription.

His tone became hostile and angry, “I would bet my soul that before it was damaged it read ‘Beloved of Kaleth, My beloved in Eternal time’ just as the sword is inscribed ‘Sword of Kaleth, Son of Adamos’. How is it that you knew our unborn brother’s betrothed would come from the future with message for you today, mother?”

“She isn’t his betrothed, my son, she is his widow,” His father Adamos stated quietly, examining the ring before returning it to his wife.

“He isn’t even born yet!” Yurieth snapped. “And how did you know she would show up today?”

“Because I told her where and when to come. ” Lady Yllumina answered calmly, blinking at her son with glistening, magic-filled amber eyes.