Ewan Pendle and the White Wraith

By Shaun Hume

Ewan Pendle was weird. Really weird. At least, that's what everyone told him. Then again, being able to see monsters that no one else could wasn't exactly normal.

Thinking he has been moved off to live with his eleventh foster family, Ewan is instead told he is a Lenitnes, one of an ancient race of peoples who can alone see the real Creatures which inhabit the earth. He is taken in by Enola, the mysterious sword carrying Grand Master of Firedrake Lyceum, a labyrinth of halls and rooms in the middle of London where other children, just like Ewan, go to learn the ways of the Creatures.

But Ewan doesn’t have long to settle in to his new surroundings, as he meets Mathilde, an off the wall girl who befriends him, and shows Ewan what it’s like to be a true Lenitnes. They soon team up with Enid too, a sullen but tough pirate girl, who is even more of an outsider than Ewan. Together, the three of them get swept into a plot to assassinate the Queen, Ewan and his new friends following their noses to try and catch a killer. And with the ghastly white wraith becoming more and more prevalent in the night skies, danger seems to lurk around almost every corner ...

MORE PRAISE for Ewan Pendle ...

' ... it WILL BE Harry Potter of the new, younger generations!' - Goodreads review

'I loved this book. I was a huge Harry Potter fan (and my 9-year-old son is a huge fan) and I was a bit disappointed when the series ended. All other books that were written in a similar fashion to Harry Potter, I found boring and unoriginal. That is until ... Ewan Pendle and the White Wraith. I was instantly transported to a world, while similar to Harry Potter in ways, it was also very original.' - Amazon Reviewer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shaun Hume
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301741403

Shaun Hume

Shaun is an internationally popular author of several books containing mystery, intrigue, talking primates, girl spies, time travel, suspense, alternate dimensions, hospitals, mystery, teenage warriors and monsters - including the "Ewan Pendle" fantasy adventure series, which has been widely compared to the HARRY POTTER and PERCY JACKSON books. When not writing, Shaun is a filmmaker and photographer, as well as an amateur chandelier hanger and part-time uphill tobogganing enthusiast.

Book preview

Ewan Pendle

and the

Castle of Nightmares

SHAUN HUME

Popcorn & Rice Publishing 2018

Digital First Edition

Copyright © Shaun Hume 2018

Cover art copyright © Florentyna Nastaj

Shaun Hume has asserted his moral rights to be

identified as the author of this work

ISBN: 9781370981724

For me. And you.

The Wraith That Walks is cruel and cold,

He lives among the skies of old.

In night he dwells, in blackness deep,

Outside your room to slowly creep.

He knows just what you’ve seen and done,

He’ll nibble at your bones for fun.

So watch each move and step you make,

Lest next will be the last you take!

CHAPTER ONE

Lock and Key

Puddles of leaves, small hillocks of them. Thousands of shades of brown.

‘Do you have the payment?’ said the spidery goblin.

‘I do,’ replied Benjamin Moham.

‘Well then?’

The dirtied and decrepit leaves in the neglected alley where Benjamin stood were as bronzed as he, November having swiftly arrived with grim promise of a chilly winter to come. The burly Martial Master kept his distance from his repulsive companion, while also endeavouring to keep his tone low and discreet. The daylight was dying but had not yet passed, a deadened grey tinge falling over all that was out of the sun’s eyes.

‘You will have it,’ spoke the large Benjamin, his words like the rumble of distant thunder, ‘but first I want assurances.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the creepy figure in a sickly lackadaisical tone, ‘you will go along unimpeded.’ Benjamin said nothing, instead electing to grind his eyes like stone on stone, bending them firmly onto the sickly face of the creature before him.

‘Just see you do not forget our little agreement, then all shall be well,’ the goblin breathed with ill intent, the words pouring from his mouth like black syrupy poison.

‘There is little I forget,’ uttered Benjamin.

‘Make sure you don’t,’ pushed the goblin, his eyes suddenly blazing with a darkened fire, ‘or it will not only be the Queen and her wretch of a child who feel the cold kiss of death … My god knows what it is you have done.’ Honied words of pain again fell from the goblin’s mouth, as the grimy figure peered at Benjamin, curling thin lips into a sordid smile.

‘I am well aware of the arrangement,’ said Benjamin with a menace of his own, taking a half step forward, ‘and I needn’t suffer idle threats from a forked tongue such as yours, questioning my honour. But then again, maybe …’ and here was when Benjamin’s demeanour changed from angered to thoughtful, as he now took a full step forwards. ‘If I were to close my fingers around what remains of your pitiful existence, would the problem then be solved in but one more wasted breath?’

Benjamin imposed his physical might further, now less than a foot from the thin creature of the darkness standing before him. Benjamin reached out a tree trunk of an arm and clasped it slowly but surely around the cowering goblin’s neck.

‘Yes,’ said Benjamin, with oddly wild lighted eyes, ‘one squeeze would do the deed for certain – finish the job – be rid of the sore scratch you cast upon all the lives you come into contact with, the thought of your presence only ever able to be scrubbed and scrubbed at, like a foul stain on the memories of those who encounter you. But never to be removed … never …’

The quivering breath of the cornered beast managed to shake a loose word from his mouth in retort.

‘But,’ he stammered, ‘if I was to not return and report good tidings to my god, then all that you hold dear would truly be lost for ever; he is expecting me,’ the goblin added as a whimper.

Benjamin released his grip and the relieved creature stumbled backwards, caressing his filthy gullet as if it were an all but thought lost loved one, now suddenly returned home.

‘Maybe I should tell your god what I know of you – hmm? How would he like that?’ Benjamin relished the effect his words had, as they broke off the now cunningly poised jaw of the one before him.

‘Do as you please,’ the black ghost spoke, as if in mere whisper, ‘but never fail to know where your allegiances lay now … And who now holds your heart and soul …’

The thin alley seemed to breathe its own sigh of relief, as with those last hushed words the wretched figure disappeared, withering into the shadows and out of sight. Benjamin drew in a deep breath of his own, like the sigh of a great valley, and straightened his back to its full height.

He looked out of the alley and towards the passing bustle of the nearby busy London street, beyond the grime of his covert meeting place and up at the unsettled sky. Right now it served as a face for his rising feelings, those he would not allow his physical expressions to display.

Benjamin let his feet fall in front of each other automatically, leading him along the hard worn stone path. He shuffled past building and vehicle and person as they all faded into one, his preoccupation melting everything into a singular kind of white noise, a background sound to his own soundtrack of steps, carrying him closer and closer to where he sought. But as Benjamin’s eventual destination crept closer, his steps slipped their pace and he dawdled. Without thinking about it, the mighty man was slowing down. Where he was going, what he was doing, contained no pleasure for him. In fact it numbed his thoughts, scraped at the back of his mind like taunting vermin. He was going to pay a visit to Evil itself. The god of some, men to few and myth to most … Benjamin Moham was about to pay a visit to The Wraith That Walks – Arlan Fachan.

Fachan had once been a mighty man, respected and revered by millions as the fearless Commander of the Vilmhied, the special force of highly trained Lenitnes who took on tasks which others would not. But this had been over two hundred years ago, and before he had been branded a traitor and a war criminal.

This ill change of fortunes had come about after Fachan had led a small group of Vilmhied deep into far away lands. As the way grew treacherous, the then Commander Fachan began to ignore any other situations but his own, delving deeper and deeper into unknown territory in order to pursue his own desires and needs. Years passed, during which Fachan cast aside the lives of those under his command, the Vilmhied in his corp being either abandoned or killed by his own hand. It was then when the order was finally given by the King to track Fachan down, a handful of Vilmhied sent to bring the Commander back to Britain and to justice. Some say it was much too tardy an action by the Monarchy, a call which came all too late as it did.

Already, as King and country scurried to act, tales of Fachan’s unspeakable atrocities in the land far off had increased in their brutality and ghastliness. In a shorter or longer time, no one was really certain to say, Fachan had finally been captured by the best the Vilmhied had to offer – a man known only as White Lightning. And so the ex-Commander was locked away in a deep and dank cell, its location kept secret, but its intention quite obvious … To hold Fachan for the rest of his days, caged within a darkness befitting to his own nature, and somewhere for him to rot for evermore.

It was only after he had continued to remain a living resident in this bar covered hole in the ground for over a century when the rumours began to spread. A frigid whisper was carried along the sharpest winds of winter, a chill bite which found its way into even the warmest of minds. This whisper spoke of Fachan meeting nefarious entities, and that during the years he had roamed alone in the farthest reaches of this world, he had done so too deeply, delved too greedily. There, it was said, was where Fachan came across a wretched and mysterious power. Gossip told of this vile presence, that which had made him so slippery an adversary to even the most skilled Creature, Lenitnes and Vilmhied alike, being also responsible for gifting him an unnatural long life.

Hushed words began to be passed around, and many started to believe that this long life, this refusal to die in his putrid cell, was more than just an unnatural unwillingness to perish out of a spite for his captors, but was proof of his otherworldly power. A small following took seed in the hearts of the scared and confused, and then grew … Grew like a tangled weed. Some started to believe that Arlan Fachan, the former Commander of the Vilmhied, was actually a god. And his survival for so long in caged conditions so dire was proof of this, a clear revelation of his worthiness to be worshiped. But more importantly, a shining testament to his godliness.

Benjamin had heard the rumours too. He had heard them at first like all other Lenitnes, as a child before bedtime on a darkened winter night. It was always said that the draft, that thin wisp of icy air which somehow manages to make its way under the the bedroom window, was the invisible essence of Fachan. The thin touch of The Wraith That Walks reaching out for its next victim …

Benjamin was only five years of age when his older brothers decided the youngest of their house was ready to be frightened to the core by the centuries old tales of this half-man, half-wraith creature. And as the mammoth Martial Master slowed his walking even more, he could remember that moment as though it were happening right now in front of him … But he was a child then. Little old enough to understand the fables of men. Now he was a man, a man who knew the truth. Or so he told himself …

Just as he was about to shake his mind free of its wanderings, and then quicken back his pace, Benjamin looked ahead of him and saw the very place he had been striking towards.

Standing quite alone, amidst the crowded abundance of redbrick buildings with white painted ledges and window frames, was a grey concentrate structure of peculiar regality. On the whole it was a long and low rectangular building of unremarkable nature, but at its street facing front was a mighty looking entrance consisting of a grey stone arch, flanked on each side by simple round columns. The way through the arch was blocked by two tall and wide pale green doors, both covered with a pattern of studded and embossed squares, thin reaching hinges on the surface in between them.

As he stood, the rain threw itself against the gigantic green doors in heaps and clumps, both of which were easily large enough to allow a real giant entry without need for ducking nor fear of bumping its head.

Benjamin looked up and down the rain soaked street. A few black taxis, a darting umbrella and an off white delivery van what he glimpsed, all engaged in the general bustle of the working day, rushing away from the dripping sky. But none of them seemed to notice the tall man standing silently in their midst.

Benjamin approached the doors, ascended a short row of steps and gave a firm knock on the slippery surface. He paused, his round and singular dark eye like a crosshair, aimed on its target with even determination. The rushing torrent of water continued to fall, playing like enumerable tiny drums on the bared entrance, each drop a deftly struck note. A thin slice of darkness was then revealed in the centre of one of the doors, two eyes peering out through the fine gap, there for but a moment before a sharp metallic snap! cut through the pouring rain, and the letterbox sized peephole was closed. After a thin wisp of time the mighty doors then began to slowly shudder open, leaving a space no more than the width of a regular man when they were still again. Benjamin had to turn sideways in order to allow his sturdy frame to pass through the doorway, and then slipped into the cold darkness beyond. The tall doors crunched shut behind him soon after, the only way in or out now barred, a booming echo sounding like the closing of some ancient crevice in the Earth’s crust. Benjamin cast his attentions ahead and into the unlit and unfathomable space, a pit of blackness to his still adjusting eyes.

Suddenly, from out of the dark a flame was ignited in front of his eyes, illuminating the shrewd but clean cut face of a prison guard. So small was the delicate pool of light, Benjamin could see little but the still man’s face and one arm, as it held aloft the flame filled lamp. Benjamin paid the mystery man no mind, knowing that this was one of the few guards who acted as gatekeepers to the prison. The guard looked at him with small suspicion, but did not ask any questions. He merely nodded to the Martial Master and extinguished the flame, dropping them both into a lightless domain once more.

As Benjamin’s singular eye rapidly adjusted to the low light, he gazed at a wide archway to his left, but otherwise no discernible features leaped out at him. Drips of water trickled down a nearby drain and into the depths of ancient pipes far below, Benjamin focusing his hearing on the lonely sound for a moment, as he ignored the wide arch to his left and instead stepped towards the back of the chamber. As he did so his steps oddly left no echo, the reverberating drips of the drain water still holding court in his ears. He made it to the far end of the unlit space, and stepped sideways into an opening carved out of the sheer rock wall. This opening led to a tight staircase, it too hewn from solid stone, and he took care as he descended the pitch black way.

Benjamin passed further guards during his decent, all of them looking in his direction as he passed but saying nothing, adding up to an even dozen before the staircase finally opened out into another starkly colder stone chamber. There were no guards in this space, Benjamin making for a candle and flint stone he knew was to his right. He set the thick candle alight, it reluctantly flaring to life, and the flame flickered with sorrow licks of light in the deep, spidery shadows now dancing along the walls and hard stone floor.

At the far back corner of the low roofed but wide chamber was a small cell, separated from the space by ceiling to floor bars; rounded, brown, and thick, all standing tall like harsh rusted guards, unmoveable and unsympathetic. Benjamin took a few steps forward, but despite the candle flame no light made its way past the haunting face of the cell bars and into the cell he now approached. It were as though the light knew what dwelt there, and was too scared to challenge the darkness laying within for fear of being devoured and lost.

‘It has been so long since I have received any friends of old, and yet here I am privileged to two in one day,’ a hollow voice spoke from the depths of the cell’s blackness. The words were strained and hoarse, yet carried with them a sense of cruel laughter haunting each word.

‘It is not out of any regard to give you privilege that I enter your pit of wallow,’ replied Benjamin with a shaking distaste.

‘But yet, here you are,’ said the voice, ‘and for what reason do you stand there, if not to brighten my soul?’

‘Don’t you know?’ said Benjamin with lightened sarcasm, ‘I thought gods were supposed to be all knowing?’

A sickly trickle of laughter echoed from within the cell, infecting the air. It was weak and short lived, like the sudden splash of ice cold water on warm bare skin, but enough to chill even the blood of a Lenitnes of Benjamin’s stature.

‘This is what you have been calling yourself, is it not?’ offered Benjamin, his resolute tone held firm despite the chilling setting. He could feel Arlan Fachan’s cold grey eyes on his, even if he couldn’t see them, and the air became thick, a swelling mass of all that was cruel and horrible and otherworldly.

‘Of course I knew you would come,’ replied Fachan, in a low voice which scratched like jagged claws, ‘how could you not?’ There was silence, not even the breath of either man could be heard above the gnawing stillness. ‘Why would you be here if not to atone for your sins?’

‘I have no sins,’ said Moham, solid. Another low titter greeted these words.

‘Come now, Benjamin. We all have sins for which we must be answerable. We all know what they are. The only discrepancy is that with people like you and I, our sins can not always be forgiven.’

‘I’m nothing like you.’ said Benjamin through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, but you are …’ replied Fachan like rose petals, ‘your visit to me here all but confirms it. I will not forget what is owed.’ Another deep silence then floated through the dank air, but Benjamin held his nerve, intending now to catch Fachan off guard.

‘I have come to tell you that a Wight has been found – the last in the line,’ said Benjamin, a renewed flourish in his voice. He waited for the effect these words would have, as they pushed themselves unwillingly through the thick steel bars of the cell.

‘Why would you tell me this?’ Fachan finally spat back, Benjamin grinning widely.

‘I wanted to hear the pain in your voice,’ the large man went on, ‘hear the anguish, know myself that after all these years, hundreds of years, that it still hurts you to know the blood which finally defeated you still walks the Earth, still lives and breathes. An everlasting legacy and rejoice in your downfall,’ finished Benjamin, his words delicate but his thoughts as triumphant as a king lording over a captured castle.

‘I have never been defeated! Gods can not be defeated!’ Benjamin smiled again. For the first time during their exchange Fachan’s voice seemed to rip like a delicate sheet of material, torn apart by unwavering hands.

‘And yet here you remain …’

‘For now …’ muttered Fachan, doing so by means of a changed voice. He bared a different edge now, taking over from the anger and speaking instead with wicked calm, his poisonous words like twisted and barbed brambles, scratching their way into Benjamin’s eardrums. ‘But not for long. Things are changing, and I hunger to continue my work … and to cease the work of others. Yes, I’ve been in slumber for too long … It’s time for my people to meet their god.’

Benjamin’s anger made to rise again, as he knew full well what the horrific monster before him meant. Fachan had ways of extending his foul grasp beyond even the innumerable depths of his prison cell, and this Benjamin knew all too well.

‘The Wight has already been brought to Firedrake,’ Benjamin pushed on, quelling his rising detest, ‘and will be trained, just as his ancestors were.’ The candle in his hand flickered suddenly, but Benjamin felt no breath of air upon his face. Fachan laughed a hollow lonely laugh, like a stone clattering down a deep and dry well.

‘But are you not worried I will come after the one you speak of, now I know they are there to be found?’

‘No such worry enters my mind,’ said Benjamin with confidence, ‘for so many years have your followers sped along in their ways. Tricked and fooled others on the back of your so called powers. Tried and failed to exercise anything of note in your name. And I have no doubt that they and you will continue to fail miserably, as is your worth. Your position has hardly improved.’

‘Then why is it you, Benjamin, who has come to me now? So long has it been since I have seen anyone, and yet now here you are … You could have passed your little scrap of news onto my messenger and be done with it,’ said Fachan, with as much vile steadiness as his soiled voice would allow. ‘But no … you came to visit me. And this has nothing at all to do with what I know of you, hmm? Trying to keep me quiet, maybe?’

The cruel smirk was there, Benjamin was sure of it. Even if the thick smoke of darkness would not allow it to be seen, it was still lurking, no less effective in its malice.

‘Pitter, patter, words of old … Words are new, but nothing’s told …’ Fachan added with cryptic hue. Benjamin, however, held his tongue.

The wan candlelight flickered again.

‘No doubt my messenger has reminded you of what is at stake?’ said Fachan with a fevered reverence, ‘or should I say who …’

At this Benjamin could not control his movement, as he then rushed at the thick steel bars of the prisoner’s cell, thrusting his hand deep into the cold black and grasped whatever he could lay his hands on. There was no sudden movement within the cell’s depths, as Benjamin clasped his thick tree trunk arm around nothing but thin air.

A cold chuckle of laughter rang around the chamber and seemed to amplify as it crawled up and down the walls.

‘Don’t you dare talk about her!’ roared Benjamin, as Fachan’s hollow laughter tapered off into an equally chilling silence, Benjamin breathing heavily. But suddenly he wrenched his arm out of the cell as if it had been covered with molten lava, a sensation rippling up from his finger tips and into his arm, surging into the rest of his body like an electrical charge. Benjamin stood there, still puffing heavily and swallowing deep mouthfuls of air, nursing his arm as if it had just been burnt and staring madly at the still black hole in the cell.

A deathly sounding cackle filled the air again.

‘Then let nothing more be said, and see that what you need to do is done,’ the voice of the dark said with a hushed menace.

Benjamin stepped back from the cell, almost dazed as he retreated the chamber with haste, throwing his legs at the stairs to lead himself away.

CHAPTER TWO

Sleep is for Dreamers

Ewan looked up to see a shattered cobalt sky frowning down at him.

He was standing on cold sharp rocks, his feet bare, the jagged points jabbing into his skin like angry insects. The sky pulsed and bubbled over his head with an agitated groan; it clearly didn’t want him there. Ewan didn’t want to be there either. He blinked concrete eyelids and tried to look around, the weight on his eyes slowly beginning to roll away as Ewan tried to fathom where in the world he was.

He was standing next to a long and tall wall. Its surface was smooth and dark, and as Ewan moved numbed fingertips over the blackened stone a cruel ripple ran its way up his arm, stinging his heart like a wasp. He yanked his hand away, searching up above his head and towards a small window set high in the imposing wall. The window had been swallowed by shadow and night’s darkened face, but now fleetingly it seemed to hold a faint glow, a pale white hue which looked down at him with a questioning gaze.

Snow began to fall like tiny iced leaves in a gust of early autumn, the wind whipping around him, lashing across his face.

‘Whispers in the night … ’

Ewan heard it clearly, the thin words piercing his ears as though they were needles made of ice.

He tried to focus his eyes more clearly, but the effort only seemed to bring on more crowding snow. A thin figure, gleaming more white than even the most virgin snow was still clinging to the edges of his vision. He took a step forward, but looked down at his feet to see them stepping backwards. He lifted his head again and was abruptly thrown to the ground by an unworldly gust of wind. So powerful was the wind it felt like an invisible bully had just pushed him down and now lorded over him, shouting and yelling threats for Ewan to move no more. The wind was angry, and it raged and raged and raged. But just as it seemed he had been under the barrage of the howling wind bully for days, suddenly it began to die away, and the air was now sad and sorrowed. Now it was whispering again, and called out to him in feeble tones.

‘I’m still waiting for you … We’re all still waiting for you, up here …’ said the wind, the words falling high and low in the breeze. But it couldn’t be the wind, could it? Ewan snapped his head around, long strands of white light teasing at the corner of his hazel eyes.

‘Where are you?’ Ewan called back.

‘Don’t you want to start the game?’ said the voice, ignoring his question.

‘What game?’ Ewan insisted, ‘this isn’t a game.’

‘But it is … But it is …’

‘I – I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know who you are!’

‘All you have to do is remember … Remember who you really are …’ said the voice swirling around him, kicking at his hair like the wind.

‘I can’t!’ bleated Ewan, his head blurring, his body tumbling.

The falling snow thickened, the white figure continued to watch from its window and Ewan woke up.

* * *

It was said by many that the white wraith took only those whose time it was to go.

Ewan, for one, wasn’t at all sure if he believed this. He knew through the reading of newspaper articles and sponging up of the stories of others that all kinds of people were taken by the white wraith – young and old, wealthy and poor, good and not so good.

So how, he thought deeply, was it possible for this well worn mantra to be true? How could it possibly be the time for a child, someone younger than he, to be taken away from everything they knew, and everyone who loved them … ?

How?

Why?

Ewan rolled over in his bed and gazed up at the ceiling. The twirling wood grain in the roof beams was lost in the shadows of the morning, long shards of pearl light cutting across them, and Ewan started thinking about his best friend again. He was thinking about Mathilde. More specifically, he was thinking about what she had told him a few days before the two cadets had parted ways before the summer, and what it had meant for her to tell him about her little brother being taken by a white wraith. It was the last piece of a puzzle she had dropped into place with her hands, the nails on her fingers painted a buttery yellow, the last palate of colour they had been covered with when he said goodbye to her on the last day of his first training year at Firedrake Lyceum.

Ewan saw the picture of the puzzle complete for the first time on that day, a picture of someone not too dissimilar to him, but who was somehow able to hide the horribleness of the outside world. Their outside world. The world away from Firedrake.

It was something Ewan could scarcely believe he would ever be able to do. It wasn’t that he could dream what her life must be like, to lose a sibling, Ewan had never had any brothers or sisters, so he couldn’t rightly speak on that. But it still drew from inside of him a tightness he couldn’t explain.

Ewan then also thought about Enid, his other best friend. Although, somehow he didn’t think she would let anyone call her their best anything. The coy pirate girl was more of an outsider at Firedrake than even he was, arriving late as he did and from a world that didn’t know a thing about the ways of Creatures and the Lenitnes. But something between them had clicked, even if it was at the constant risk of Ewan being knocked out cold by his fast to fight new friend – again.

Ewan had not had what anyone could call a real friend in his life before he first set foot inside the halls of Firedrake. And on top of that, he had not had what anyone might call real parents, either. The most time he had managed to stay in any of his many former foster homes was about a year. So now, to consider himself as having two people he could not only call friends, but best friends … Ewan still had a tiny bubble in the bottom of his stomach, a tiny doubt that any of this was actually happening at all. That it wasn’t just some kind of elaborate dream. A tempting image fighting with his true bouts of wakefulness.

Even now, after all he had been through at Firedrake Lyceum in just one year, Ewan still wasn’t totally convinced that he really had been saved from his tiresome and tenth set of foster parents, the Doe’s. He was now quite sceptical that he had been rescued by the Grand Master Lenitnes, Enola Whitewood, and brought to Firedrake, the training ground for the Lenitnes, a race of people charged with the ancient duty of being caretakers of the Creatures. Ewan couldn’t help but be a little suspicious of it all. Thinking that in a single instant it could all dry up, evaporating in the wind. His new life snatched away from him in the clutches of a ghastly white wraith, or worse.

The Creatures, as Ewan now knew for sure, were the real wraiths, piksis, trolls, giant nine-headed sea monsters and everything else in between and on either side which do exist all over the world, but to anyone but a Lenitnes, were invisible to the naked eye – or even the fully clothed eye for that mater.

Out of any of these monsters he had learned about during his first year as a Lenitnes cadet, it was the white wraith which he had seen the most of. Long and thin creatures with pale white skin covered in bleeding red scars, they looked like a gruesome cross between man and bat. White wraith had giant wings sprouting from their backs and faces with no nose or mouth, possessing only two deep milky white eyes which constantly wept blood. Their slender legs were almost as long as their bodies, and ended in needle sharp claws, stained black by the dried blood of their countless victims.

The thick late summer sun had now completely oozed its way into the Grade One boys dormitory. Ewan sat up, swinging his feet out of bed and down onto the pleasantly warm wooden floor. He wiped a thin layer of sweat off of his forehead and got dressed.

Ewan had spent the whole summer at Firedrake, the only Lenitnes cadet to have done so. But during this time he was never entirely alone, many of the Masters who instructed the cadets in the various Lenitnes disciplines calling Firedrake their permanent home, and had acted as Ewan’s joint guardians during this otherwise cadet-free time.

Ewan had turned over many a day in the particular company of Master Eimyrja, the Pyro Master, helping the fruity old man in his seemingly endless experimentations in the formulating of new Pyro concoctions. But