Yin and Yang: The End Comes

By Odette C. Bell

Castor's dead, never to return. But Yin isn't alone yet.
Together, Yin and her comrades are transported to the last of the Arak strongholds. There, they must fight to find out the secrets of the ancients before it's too late. For the Night is coming, and unless they sacrifice everything, there will be no holding it back.
Tune in for the thrilling final chapter in the Yin and Yang Series.

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Yin and Yang follows a prophesied savior and the soldier sent to help her fighting to save their kingdom and the world. If you love your epic fantasies with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Yin and Yang Book Four today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Nov 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386352839

Book preview

1

Yang

I’ve never experienced anything similar. It’s so wrong. Disjointed. Like a Nightmare in fast forward. As we transport through that magical spell, it feels like my insides are pulled from my mouth and tied into knots.

Eventually, after what feels like years that have been crammed down into mere seconds, we arrive at another location. That is no mistake. As I land on my hands and knees, Yin and Li and Jasmine beside me, I slowly tilt my head back to see the walls of a city.

I’ll admit I have not traveled every great land, but within the libraries of the capital city, I all but have. I know this world. But this place…?

"What on earth just happened? Where are we? What is this place?" Jasmine gasps through her words as she shakily presses to her feet. Li is beside her, and his eyes couldn’t be wider. The skin is so stretched, I swear it will start to crack and his face will fall apart.

For several seconds, I’m carried away by the moment, as Jasmine, Li, and I stand in absolute, gob-smacked amazement.

Then I hear the sobbing.

Yin is still down on her hands and knees. She hasn’t tilted her head back once to view this impossible city.

She is wracked with sobs, her already bruised and broken body shaking back and forth, a few droplets of blood spilling from cuts. They don’t splash against the unusual marked stone beneath us. Instead, they sizzle up as they strike the Armor of Light.

Instantly I push away the amazing scene, press down to one knee, and clasp a hand over her back.

Li and Jasmine quietly press forward. Jasmine has come a long way since the days of being jealous of Yin. Now she watches over Yin with the pressed concern of a mother hen attending to one of her chicks.

Though we’ve lost most of our bags, and they’re back with the horses at the Temple of Light, Jasmine reaches a hand into a pocket. She rummages around for several seconds until she pulls out a small, flat parcel of herbs. At first, I think she’s going to grasp out that blue vial of light liquid that her mother gave her. The same blue vial that, with merely a drop, gives one the energy of a bear, but at the cost of tiring them out several minutes later.

It’s okay. It’s okay, Jasmine says, her voice a light coo as she keeps a hand firmly clasped on Yin’s back. She tries to coax Yin into eating some of those herbs, but Yin bats them away, clamps her hand over her face, and continues to sob. They’re violent moves, and they wrack her shoulders, making her pulse back and forth, grinding her knees into the rough stone beneath her.

The stone is….

I haven’t had a chance to stare at it until now. The incredible view and Yin’s despair have distracted me. But now as Jasmine manages Yin, I allow myself to stare down at the stone for several seconds. It is… carved. But in a way I have never seen.

The lines that twist around and through the stone seem… alive somehow. Rather than being the marks of an expert craftsman, they appear to rather be the result of some organic process, as if the stone itself possesses an artistic eye and has decided to draw upon itself the most fantastic of patterns.

It draws me in….

Li shifts, and with a quick, strong movement, clamps a hand on my back. He leans close to my ear. You know where we are, don’t you?

There’s a low, ominous rumble to his tone. I don’t think Li has remembered his old hate for me and is about to start anything. Instead, his voice is thick with a warning note that tells me we may yet again be in trouble.

My back stiffens.

Out of the corner of my eye, I keep a permanent watchful and wary gaze on Yin. Though Jasmine is attending to her, I can’t forget what Yin has just been through. Not just… the loss of her mentor at the hands of Garl, but also, and most importantly, she managed to claim the Armor of Light. Who knows how taxing it is to have it on her form. Though it doesn’t look that heavy, I can tell from here how much magic it must be absorbing from her.

Not least the importance of the fact that she finally has it. For with the Armor of Light, though incomplete….

I can’t go there. I can’t allow my mind to fast forward to the End of Days. I tell myself that we still have days, if not weeks. That the battle for the end of the world is not just around the corner. For if it is….

I close my eyes, and I turn my face to the sky, swallowing hard. If the End of Days is mere hours away and we will be provided with no time to recover and recoup, then we may all die.

Li hasn’t removed his hand from my shoulder. Though he isn’t usually a cautious man, he keeps his voice quiet and makes no demonstrable, large movements as he watches Yin and Jasmine out of the corner of his eye. For a few seconds, Yin resurfaces long enough from her grief to stare at the both of us, but she soon collapses into her shaking hands once more.

Li presses in until he’s right close to my shoulder. This is the final city of the ancients. His voice barely makes it from his throat. If he were not close against me, I would have precious little chance of hearing his words. But I do, and they have a measurable effect on my body, bypassing every sense of reason and plunging into my heart until they make it shake like a baby bird that has fallen from its perch.

What? I control my voice, but it is truly hard. All I want to do is hiss out my words and give into my fear. But do that, and I’ll do the one thing I can’t afford to and disrupt Yin again.

There are legends of this place, Li continues. It is meant to be the location of the final battle.

I thought that was meant to be elsewhere? I say.

There are multiple myths that abound about the legend of the Savior. And this is one of them.

I go to point out that if there are multiple myths, then there is no reason to believe this one over any others, but I don’t. There is so much import behind Li’s stance and the firm grip he has on my shoulder that I would be a fool not to appreciate his point. Li and I have come far. Not only has he pledged allegiance to the Savior alongside me, but he’s saved me more times than I can count. So I owe this to him. I do not doubt his words.

I step to the side, reluctantly wrenching my gaze off Yin as I turn and walk several meters away. Li is at my side, following. He keeps most of his attention for me, but periodically, at least three times every minute, he switches his gaze over to the city wall behind us.

The wall itself is remarkable. I’m used to walls made of brick and stone, even of pressed, ornate metals. But this? It looks to be made out of the very substance our Arak weapons are produced from. That very same strange white metal that is seen nowhere else in the land.

If that is the case, then this place is….

Li grabs me by the arm, leading me further away. Yin is still sobbing uncontrollably, but she is the Savior, and her senses are strong. The last thing she needs is to listen to this speculation. She has to grieve before she finds out where we are and what is about to occur.

My back straightens and hardens on that thought. I just can’t comprehend that after all our desperate journeys, we may finally be here, at the end.

Li momentarily switches his gaze toward the wall. You know what that is, don’t you? It’s the same metal our Arak weapons are devised from.

Yes. My voice has now taken on the same somber, ominous tone that Li’s has.

"That means I’m right. We are here. At the end."

My back was straight before, but once more it elongates until it feels as if my very spine will plunge out of the top of my head.

Li suddenly grips his fingers into my arm all the tighter. Once upon a time, if I was still a Captain in the Royal Army, that would’ve been an offense punishable by death. Now I just bear it as I warily stare into the face of a friend and comrade.

"We can’t stay out here long. This place is meant to be dangerous. The foot soldiers of the Night, the husks," he hisses that word, his voice strong enough that it’s as sharp as a sword to the neck, are meant to infest the plains beyond these city walls.

Alarm spikes through me. It has been barely several minutes since we arrived, and the same adrenaline and fear that shook my heart at the presence of General Garl returns once more.

Jasmine is still attending to Yin, and she’s just made Yin lie down.

I stare seriously at Li for less than a second before I whirl on my foot, deciding to trust his assessment without further question. I get down on one knee in front of Yin. Facing her and seeing her tear-streaked cheeks and red, grief-filled eyes wrenches my heart. It reminds me of the emotion I once promised myself I didn’t have, yet the very same emotion Yin kept relentlessly searching for like a prospector discovering gold.

Yin, I’m sorry to do this, but we have to move. I switch my gaze over to Jasmine, shooting her a serious stare – one that hopefully explains everything without a word being said.

Sure enough, Jasmine understands. She puts the herbs she was administering to Yin back in her pouch, hiding them away in her pocket. She leans down, wraps an arm around Yin’s shoulder, and starts to pull her to her feet. But Yin won’t be moved. She just grinds her back into the ground, making her body weigh as much as it can. What’s the point of moving anymore? Everyone will die anyway. There’s nothing—

Yin, I know. I’m so sorry for what happened. But we must move. You must get to safety—

Safety? She suddenly looks up at me, jerking into a seated position as she screams. Her word echoes out, and I swear it meets the strange metal of the city walls, ricocheting off them as if her voice has the power of a cannon. There will be no safety. Ever. There will be no end to this. No matter how much power we gain, no matter what magic we unlock, there will be no end—

Yin has been a lot of things over the course of this adventure, but this is the first time she has lost all hope.

If her comrades weren’t strong, at the sight of their leader caving, they would despair. But with a quick glance Jasmine and Li’s way, the only expressions they have are compassionate concern.

Me? As my heart wrenches at the sight of Yin’s misery, I never let go of my fear. Though I haven’t heard the noise of any husks pulling themselves out of the cracks in the ground, and nor do I sense the same ominous feeling that always heralds their presence, I’m not about to let Yin sit here in the middle of this strange stone circle and advertise her position. We have not come this far and given up this much to allow her to end it all here and sacrifice herself at the last hurdle.

Yin, I lean in closer, allowing my voice to drop as I make my expression strong. I stare at her with all the combined passion I can muster. I allow my water magic, with its inherent connection to emotions, to flow through me, not to stagnate like