The Golden One: The Golden One Chronicles

By Catherine Phoenix

When Megan's Grandfather passes away after a long battle with a brain tumor, she inherits his house, his money and a deed to a magical world he has created just for her from a magical book.

Skeptical, she sets aside the book only to find herself sleepwalking down to the cellar where she discovers a door hidden behind a shelf. Her curiosity finally gets the better of her and she finds herself trapped in this strange world of Elves, Dwarves and Demons hunted and expected to fulfill not one but two prophecies, one that will destroy the world her Grandfather  has created for her, or one that will save it from the destruction and total ruin.

Will she succeed, or will she fall to the Demon Prophecy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Far Horizons
• Release date: Jan 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386076803

Book preview

The Golden One.

By

Catherine Phoenix.

Book One of The Golden One Series.

1.

Dust particles swirled in the disturbed air to dance daintily in the shaft of sunlight as Megan awkwardly flicked the old bedspread from her late grandfather’s bed.

It had been a tedious task to go through eighty years of a man’s life all packed haphazardly into one small cottage. A task made worse since the passing of Grandma Georgia to keep Gramps’ hoarding of strange tokens, trinkets and books in check.

Going through these items had eaten up more time for Megan than she had anticipated, but she had been absolutely fascinated by her grandfather’s all-consuming hobby. Right up to his last breath he spoke to her of a strange world that he was on the verge of uncovering. She thought it nonsense, the crazed ramblings of a man in the last days of dementia brought on faster due to a brain tumour.

She had sat by his bed in the hospital on his last day, watching, waiting for his final breath. Just before he shuddered and died he held out his hand and whispered his final words to her.

The cellar... his voice had croaked before the breath rattled between his lips and he closed his eyes in eternal sleep. Gramps’ hand relaxed, fingers opening to reveal the necklace he wore.

It was a pendant of a golden dragon that hung on a golden chain, its claws clutching a white oval opal covering its belly. The Gemstone was beautiful. Instead of the pastel stone colours that one was used to with opals, this one shone more with gold and reds.

Megan had gently taken it from his hands and placed it around his neck. Later, however, a nurse handed it back to her in an envelope with a note for her written by Gramps in one of his more lucid moments.

"Dearest little M, soon I leave this world of pain to join your gran. I write this letter to you while I am still able, I know with its growth, that the tumour in my brain will leave me unable to write or speak to you.

Don’t weep for me, I have lived a full and somewhat eccentric life, and you coming to live with us after losing your parents in the car accident brought both your gran and I unfathomable joy when we had lost so much.

Forgive me those times when I was too swept up in my own little world to be there for you, it is this little world that I now leave to you. In the cellar of my cottage you will find a room behind a door, the charm that was around my neck on the chain is the only key to this door – not even a locksmith can open it for it is made by arcane means. Once in my worldly travels, before your time with us, I came across a strange book in an old bookstore that no longer exists.

This book, the seller told me, was a book of spells in which to build a world. Now during my last few months in the cottage, I’m not entirely sure what I have put into this world.

Things often got muddled up