Edge of Dawn

By Clinton A. Seeber

Jacob Hope has cleaned himself up, is engaged to be married and has a child on the way. This will not stop the Lord of Nothingness and Prince of the Dead - Samhain Sharmat - who has recently broke his way free from the subterranean prison that had held him in bonds for over two millennia, from making one final attempt at conquering the fair land of Talmora and the whole world of Eradus for his own. Jacob Hope is thus summoned to Eradus once again from his domicile of California - this time by the giant and enigmatic wizard-druid Melek who will reunite him with his erstwhile lover, Queen Trena Treelimb of Redwood and their son, Prince Ruel Hope Treelimb and introduce him also to a new companion that is the last thing that Jacob "The Slayer" expects or wants. Jacob Hope will be in constant trepidation and turmoil as the companions journey for what will finally be a face-to-face final confrontation with Samhain Sharmat, the evil immortal whom fancies himself a god. All of this while the reluctant bard-hero Jacob "Slayer" Hope is constantly fretting about how he will ever survive to be able to return to his finance and their unborn child!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clinton A. Seeber
• Release date: Dec 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463130254

Clinton A. Seeber

I am a mystery. I am an enigma. Currently, I am like unto an evanescent wisp of vapor. What exactly am I? I have not yet become what I shall be. Only time will tell.

Book preview

Edge of Dawn

The Slayer Series Book Three

By Clinton A. Seeber

Jacob Slayer Hope’s final quest in the world of Eradus - one in which he intends to finally confront and defeat the Immortal Dark One Samhain Sharmat and restore the sun to Talmora

Published by Clinton A. Seeber at Smashwords

Copyright 2016-2019 by Clinton A. Seeber.

All Rights Reserved.

Dedication/Acknowledgements etc.:

This one is for the universe, for the heavens, for love and valor! Epic/High Fantasy is a genre quite unlike any other. It is untrammeled, knowing no scope or bounds. The ineffable art and beauty of the story type truly cannot be described in words. Those of us who express ourselves by crafting such stories - and all those who just love reading those types of stories above all others - we just get it!

My acknowledgements are simple this time around. I just want to recognize and thank every reader and writer of fantasy fiction in all of its forms. If I left anyone out - then I apologize. He-he!

As long as you’re reading this anyway - checkout Shana O’Quinn and Brian Burke - they are two of my personal favorites. And don’t forget ME!!!

LET THE STORY BEGIN!!!

Chapter One: Paragons of Death

Chapter Two: Wailing Waste

Chapter Three: Shadows Stalk

Chapter Four: To Greystone

Chapter Five: Dwarf Friend

Chapter Six: The Season of the Story

Chapter Seven: A Bridge Over Muddled Waters

Chapter Eight: Giant Trouble

Chapter Nine: Out Of the Frying Pan and Into the… Freezer?

Chapter Ten: Desert Days

Chapter Eleven: This Storm Cometh

Chapter Twelve: A Measure of Respite

Chapter Thirteen: Where the Departed Gather

Chapter Fourteen: Edge of Dawn

Chapter Fifteen: First Hope

Chapter Sixteen: The Crisis Upon the Ridge

Chapter Seventeen: A Little Slice of Haven

Chapter Eighteen: Pirate’s Pride

Chapter Nineteen: Madrak

Chapter Twenty: The Final Encounter

Chapter One: Paragons of Death

Jacob Hope had just showered a little while earlier, and his mass of brown hair was slick and flattened out. He felt good tonight on his thirty-fourth birthday. He had come out of drug rehab some nine months ago. The former heavy metal guitarist had found a good job at a veterinarian's office in his town of Redwood City, California almost immediately after checking himself out. He was getting out of debt, and he had just recently participated in a tryout to be the new guitarist for a big time hard rock band known as Razorback. That had been less than one month ago, and he had slayed it on his Fender. The band had let him know a few days ago when their lead vocalist had phoned him that he was on their shortlist of potential new guitarist for the band. Another tryout for the California-based band involving just a handful of candidates would be held sometime the following week. Another phone call and a spot in the second tryout was a near certainty and quite imminent. That made him smile.

He was clean and sober when he had gone to see his parents and family earlier in the day. He hadn’t shot heroin in well over a year and had been almost totally drug free for just as long. He had only knocked back a couple of twelve ounce bottles of beer at his folks’ place.

Tonight was different, though - it was the night of his birthday, and he was with his now pregnant girlfriend of the past seven months whom he had known for almost a year-and-a-half. He had met her in drug rehab, in fact. She was beautiful, young Starla Monsoon, a pale twenty-six year-old with long rich black hair and fetching eyes of deep blue. The brown-eyed handsome man whom had given his thick beard and mustache somewhat of a trim earlier felt that they were a perfect match for one another. She was sweet and tender yet somehow as hard as iron, had a school-girlish appearance with no tats and piercings only in her ear lobes, and she was effervescent and charming in a weird sort of way. He knew that his silly caveman-looking ass was not exactly debonair, but that was okay. He still felt right with her.

Starla always wore her makeup pretty lightly, but she had something of an unsurpassable natural beauty. She reminded Jacob Hope of Queen Trena Treelimb of the Redwood Elves in both personality and appearance. However, Starla had a bit of a naughty and gritty side that the elven queen explicitly lacked. She was also not quite so lithe, nor as tall as Trena, who was about a half-inch taller than his own five-foot-eight-inches. Starla was instead just over five-feet-four-inches tall - not short, but not so tall. She also, of course, did not have the inhumanly tall and high-rising ears of the Queen of Redwood.

On this March night, Jacob and Starla were at Masters of Metal nightclub in downtown Los Angeles. They were there to see one of the hottest original local metal bands perform - Paragons of Death. They were a progressive young band that sort of combined death metal with thrash metal with punk with classic, guitar-driven, bluesy hard rock. He, on this night, had reverted back to his favorite old hanging out outfit of black t-shirt with the word Slayer in red on the chest and an outline of a yellow five-pointed star beneath it, dark blue jeans and black combat boots. Starla was dressed in black with her leather jacket, corduroy pants and leather boots with long, slim heels; she was eye-to-eye with Jacob with that pair on. Her small diamond pendant earrings jangled from her white ear lobes.

As was mentioned before, tonight was a bit different as they were out celebrating Jacob’s birthday. They had indulged in a bit of drug use. They had taken four percocet pills and a hit of paper acid each. They were feeling in the groove.

Starla parked her little red car in the asphalt parking lot of the club; there were already a good number of cars parked outside. Tiny droplets of rain were drizzling upon them as they stepped out of the car, but the night was clear under a crescent moon and twinkling white stars. Masters of Metal was a stone building with a huge blue electric neon sign that stretched all the way across the whole upper front side of the building, brightly displaying the name of the place. Jacob held open one of the glass double doors for Starla, and he walked in behind her.

The doorman that sat on a stool near the door appeared to be in his mid-thirties or so. He was bald with blue eyes and a goatee that was dark brown with hints of grey in it. Dressed in a black Metallica t-shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes, he was stout and burly with a nosering. He was also quite short as he stood to block their path, coming between them and the bustle of the barroom, a good two inches shorter than Starla would have been in flats. As it was, she and Jacob both towered over him.

I.D.’s? he barked tersely as Starla tilted her head down at him, pondering how he looked like a cross between Mister Clean and Scott Ian.

After the young-looking couple flashed their I.D.’s to him, the bald doorman grumbled Twenty dollars each to get in for the show.

Jacob retrieved his brown leather wallet from within his front right blue jean pocket, flipped it open, and proceeded to pull out two crisp twenty dollar bills from within which he then handed to the bald doorman. Jacob then handed his wallet to Starla, who placed it into her jacket pocket where the car and apartment keys also were.

The club was large with wooden flooring and wood-paneled walls, capable of holding a standing room crowd of five hundred plus people. A dark marble bar was at the end of the club to the left of the front entrance, and a fairly long stage made of the same was at the opposite end. All of the normal bar lights illuminated the club as it was still well over an hour before showtime and only a few dozen people were gathered near the stage that a crew was just finishing the setup of.

They made for the bar where a handful of metalheads were gathered. From the petite young bartender with long, soft blonde hair, girlish green eyes and a tongue piercing Jacob ordered a Long Island Tea whilst Starla opted for a Bloody Mary. After Starla paid for the drinks, they sat down upon swiveling, leather upholstered barstools and began drinking.

So, Starla, what are we going to name the baby? Jacob asked as he turned toward her with glass in hand.

I don’t know, silly. Starla giggled, I’m not even two months yet. We’re going to find out what sex the baby will be the next time that I go to the doctor; remember?

Oh yeah! I’m so nervous and excited that I can’t even think. Jacob slapped himself on the forehead, which made Starla laugh all the harder.

It’s okay, dear. Starla purred, caressing Jacob’s beard with her ivory fingers; his already ruddy face turned even redder.

Still… Ya know… I would kind of like for us to be married before then.

Starla raised a thick, dark eyebrow at Jacob as she took a sip from her drink.

Are you trying to propose to me, Jake?

Jacob turned yet more red and actually began to tremble.

Well, I suppose I am. his words came slowly, tensely, Thing is, though… I… I… I’ve never been good at romantic walks on the beach or candlelight dinners, being mushy, bowing down floridly before a beautiful woman and speaking all elegantly and all that shit.

Starla was smiling in grand amusement as she batted her long eyelashes at her boyfriend.

So, since I’m messed up enough… Jacob fumbled in his front pocket until he found the small white gold and diamond ring and held it before Starla, Will you please freaking marry me, woman?

Of course I will, idiot. she said in an outrageously sweet and seductive voice and began kissing him deeply as he slipped the ring on her finger.

They were able to stand near the stage before the lights later went out with the barroom packed. The crowd was predominantly of young metalheads, punks and hipsters. They were dressed mostly in leathers and dark colors, many were covered in tattoos and/or had a bunch of facial piercings, weird hairstyles like mohawks and such that were colored pink or purple or blue or green or whatever. As the multi-colored incandescent stage lights flashed on, a picture of a hideous-looking reptilian face came onto the jumbotron screen at the rear of the stage. That face was of a dark and coarse greenish-black with an extremely long and aquiline snout that was almost a beak but had rows of curved and razor-edged teeth, and it also had teardrop-like eyes of solid fire red. Below that head was a yellow ribbon-banner with Paragons of Death spelled across it in red letters of what appeared to be somekind of strange, archaic writing.

Then the crowd broke into a massive roar which sounded to Jacob Hope like the Lord of the Abyss arising from the Nine Hells as all five band members almost seemed to materialize on stage. Their lead vocalist was front and center before the microphone with his black, almost oblong shaped, electric rhythm guitar in his big hands. He was a hulking specimen, probably six-foot-six, dressed in black leathers and with a huge, thick neck and sloping, angular jaws and chin. He had a dark mohawk-like scalplock hung over one of his strange, pale, nearly colorless eyes. He had one of those gazes that seemed as if it were looking right through people instead of looking at them.

Slowly the song arose as the crowd hushed. It was the band’s biggest hit, an eight minute plus opus entitled Throes of Misery, a song that went through just about every speed, pace and mood imaginable. His voice went from almost weeping and droning to bellowing out like a demented wolf throughout various parts of the long song. A good portion of the crowd started a mosh pit, flailing at and slamming into one another, somewhere behind Jacob as Starla clutched warmly onto his hand and their fingers entwined. They were directly in front of the lead vocalist and only five or six heads back.

Upon the conclusion of that first song, the singer bent over and placed his guitar upon the stage floor. When he stood erect again, he cleared his throat and began to speak. His voice was very deep and husky.

Then a transmutation suddenly took place that Jacob Hope did not know for all the world if only he were imagining. As tall as this menacing man was, he had become even taller in the blink of an eye - much, much taller; he was now at least ten feet tall with his head almost touching the ceiling, and he was no longer human!

He had the reptilian head and face of the thing on the jumbotron, and there was a long, slithering, serpentine neck attached to a torso with a very wide shoulder base and from which hung tendon-like, crooked arms, that were proportionally as long as an ape’s arms and ended in hard, crab-like mandibles rather than hands. The long legs were also crooked with a sharp and natural bend at the knees, and the feet were like huge clubs or paddles that each had six downward-curving toes that ended in sharp claws that scraped upon the floor. The only thing the monster lacked, strangely enough, was a tail.

The dreadful eyes of fire looked directly upon Jacob Hope, filling him with trepidation and freezing him in apoplexy.

What’s wrong, Jake? Starla asked him, his dread palpable as she clutched his arm.

He seemed to ignore or to be totally oblivious of her - one or the other. His brown eyes appeared vacant. The naturally ruddy skin of his face had gone clammy and pasty. He was standing stark still.

A voice came from the monstrosity’s beak-snout, one that was too deep and bellowing to be human, a voice that reeked with thick malice: "Jacob Hope, Slayer, I have come to claim that which is rightfully mine. I, Samhain Sharmat, Lord of Nothingness and Prince of the Dead, I have broken from my prison that Lord Benderek Evilbane sought to keep me in for all time, but the mortal pissant has failed. He could not stop me, Melek cannot stop me, and you shall not hinder me."

Jacob Hope felt his lurching heartbeat and his pumping blood fill all of his essence, flooding his brain and ears as Starla gaped at him, blue eyes gone wide as she clutched his arm so hard now that her fingernails dug into his flesh and drew tricklets of blood, but he could not feel it.

"Oh, they will summon you to face me, but that shall be to no avail. I will bind and torture you. I will not kill you, no. Not until I have forced you to watch me pick apart your beloved Queen Trena Treelimb little piece by little piece and you have seen me gnaw on her bones." Samhain Sharmat reached his left arm out and pointed its mandible toward Starla Monsoon.

Of course Starla Monsoon was not Queen Trena Treelimb, but she bore more than just a passing resemblance to the Queen of Redwood. And with the boot heels on, she had about the elven maiden’s natural height. Jacob somehow found just enough lucidity to swallow the apple-sized lump in his throat. He could now smell the perspiration and body odor of the others in the crowd as if they were all sardines packed in a can together; their chatter filled his ears like the teacher’s voice in a Charlie Brown cartoon. But most of all he smelled the reptilian-charnel stench of Samhain Sharmat. It wasn’t really a smell, though. He didn’t know what in the hell it was. It was like it was somekind of vibe or air that radiated from the Prince of the Dead so strongly and blackly that it could be smelled, felt, even tasted. Yes, it was on Jacob’s paralyzed tongue, a scorching bile. Then a coppery taste as of moist blood filled his mouth. He could not be sure that he had not bitten deeply into his own tongue, and he couldn’t even muster the will to check and see if he had.

I am the rightful master of Talmora and the heir to Eradus. I shall imprison you in the clouds of darkness and force you to witness from on high all that shall befall the Creator’s work and Mother Nature’s creatures after I have usurped from them The Will, The Word and The Power. ALL IS MINE!

The gigantic reptilian monster began to rush toward the edge of the stage, seeming for all the world like he was going to pounce upon Starla. Jacob Hope willed himself out of apoplexy and into action. He shook off Starla’s grip on his arm, and with a scream he surged into those in front of him. He knocked at least a dozen bodies out of his way as if he were a bowling ball knocking down bowling pins, this despite the fact that he was a bit slight of build.

Jacob Hope heard Starla Monsoon scream out to him as he neared the stage with no one else between him and the reptile-monster’s gigantic body that was now plummeting down off of the stage toward him. He barely felt the impact for an instant before blacking out.

The huge lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Paragons of Death was in utter shock as he picked himself up off of the floor with a bloody lip and one chipped front tooth. He looked down at the much smaller man now at his feet that he had landed on top of. His eyes were fast closed; he moved not at all, and his cell phone had fallen out from his pocket and had a shattered screen.

What the fuck?! the big man turned his head and spat; this stage dive had gone horribly and inexplicably wrong.

Chapter Two: Wailing Waste

Jacob Hope opened his eyes to find himself laying on a cold stone floor. He blinked. He really couldn’t see anything in the dark room or chamber that he was now in. He could, however, see the fire red teardrop eyes of the dark god Samhain Sharmat staring malignantly at him from not far away. They were making him hot, making his insides burn and shiver at the same time. Then he could see the silhouette of the Prince of the Dead’s gigantic reptilian form as it began to advance toward him. The claws of his huge feet scratched and scraped the cold stone with a steely hiss.

Jacob hurried to his feet, but he was disoriented and had an aching, throbbing head. He lurched and stumbled as he arose and half-turned in the wrong direction before straightening out and somehow maintaining his equilibrium. He lifted up his t-shirt and pulled out his old hunting knife with the hardwood hilt and half-foot long stainless steel blade out from the leather sheath at his right hip, and Evilbane loosed its own cold, dry hiss. For Jacob had worn his shirt untucked in order to sneak the knife into the club. He liked to carry it with him everywhere that he could, more so because it had been given to him by his late maternal grandfather a few years before his passing than because of any sense of safety that it gave him. It was the sentimental value of the knife.

Jacob held his blade out in front of his body as Samhain Sharmat slowly drew very near him. Jacob had a problem - Evilbane was not sparkling or shining at all. Its power was somehow inactive. Curses!

Jacob lifted his head and swallowed hard as the eyes of fire glared down at him. Samhain Sharmat drew back a superbly long reptilian arm as if he were going to thrust and gouge Jacob in the head with the pincers. He inadvertently toppled back and fell upon his butt. He closed his eyes. Nothing happened.

When he opened his eyes, the room was slightly illuminated, too brightly in comparison to the nearly complete darkness that it had been shrouded in before. He shielded his eyes with his left arm.

Jacob Hope. a voice said, a familiar one that spoke in a droning monotone.

When he dropped his arm, the form of the great wizard-druid Melek came slowly into focus - just over seven feet-tall with very broad shoulders, dressed in a thick cloak of dark grey, black leather boots and black leather gloves, the cowl of the cloak hooding and enshrouding his face in deep, dark shadow so that not a single bit of his human flesh showed. In the southpaw’s left hand he held his great five-and-a-half foot long staff in front of his body with the butt almost grinding into the cold, dark stone of the floor. It was made of a long platinum rod with black oakwood entwined coilingly around it. The head of the staff was a black serpent head nearly as large as the head of a typical grown person. It had gleaming emerald eyes and four sparkling silver fangs inside of its open mouth. Set inside of the teeth was a small crystal orb that was about two inches wide and two inches tall and provided from within itself the white light that was filling the chamber with a pale pastel.

Melek! Jacob Hope breathed as he jumped to his feet with his head reeling and sheathed his knife. After a few more seconds, he discerned that they were inside of a tall, sizable chamber that was bare and odd-shaped. The dark masonry of the walls was strange, rough hewn and cyclopean in nature.

The time has arrived for you to fulfill your final purpose in the world of Eradus. Melek, who was standing as still as a statue about ten feet away from him, spoke, Samhain Sharmat has finally freed himself, and your task is to defeat and eternally bind him. His servants finally found this place, my order’s secret stronghold. They sneaked in when my guard was down, while I was sleeping another of my great sleeps. How they managed to get past the defenses without alerting and awakening me, I do not know. They stole away the venerable Staff of Benderek from within its vault. Again, how they got past the traps and alarms, I cannot say. Eventually, they found a way to destroy that great staff, and thus Samhain Sharmat was able to escape from his subterranean prison deep within the earth that Lord Benderek Evilbane, first Emperor of Talmora, had trapped him inside of for well over two millennia.

Well, I mean, um… he was just here, so why didn’t we do that just now? Hey! How did you manage to drive him off? Jacob thought that he heard Melek almost laugh.

That was just an illusion, an image of him. I had to summon you back to our realm on my own this time. I could not dawdle around and wait for help from The Divine. That tells me that I was intended to do so; for the Creator’s time is never off. In any event, I created the image to reach you and bring you back once more. Furthermore, we do not have everything that we need in order to do so yet.

No. Jacob shook his large head apprehensively, Melek - I don’t need this. I’ve got a good job and possibly a much better one on the way. I’ve got a child on the way. Melek! I’ve just become engaged! To be married! Why can’t there be another hero? Why don’t you just let me go home?

You know better than that, Jacob Hope; Melek shook his head, you know better. I suppose that I must show you what we are up against. If you have any love at all for Eradus, for Talmora, for Trena Treelimb and for Ruel Hope Treelimb, then you will be forced to understand why you must do what is required of you.

Jacob shook his head again as his lips twisted and the tears began to stream down his ruddy face. Trena Treelimb! That was a name that he would always remember. He had seen her on the edge of dawn, had felt her there before she was born, had balanced her dreams upon the edge of thorns. But he didn’t think about her anymore.

No! He would not - could not - think about her. She wasn’t really real. Melek wasn’t real. Prince Ruel Hope Treelimb was not his son; he didn’t even really exist. He had a real son (or daughter?) on the way in the real world; he had a real lover and soon to be wife. He did not want this; he did not need this.

And so Jacob went on a walk with Melek. But it was not some type of tour of this edifice, this place that Melek called Watchers’ Keep. Instead they walked through a few halls and chambers to tall and heavy dark iron doors that big Melek pulled inward and open by huge iron rungs attached to each of the double doors, both at the same time, one with each arm while resting his ever present staff against the corridor wall. They stepped out into a dark purple twilight rife with thick, pinkish clouds in which neither the sun nor moon could be seen. The wind was not at all cold right now, but it had to it a sound, a quality as of forlorn moaning, even a wailing. They stood upon the summit of a tall semi-spiraling dark mountain. The more than two hundred foot-tall spire of a tower that they had just stepped out from looked for all the world like it was a part of the mountain from outside, which would certainly hold even much more so true from the surface of the earth and from a distance, yet it was not. It had actually been constructed upon the summit by the hands of great men, and it looked as though it were the mountain peak itself. Of course to further this illusion, the base of the building filled out almost all of the mountain summit, which had been flattened out. So they were standing quite near the edge of the summit of the steep mountain when they stepped just outside of those doors. They were, in fact, much too close for comfort for Jacob Hope, whose dizziness and vertigo really set in now, causing his mind to swim in a swirling haze. And as tall as this mountain was, must have been about seven thousand feet, it was pretty narrow.

This is the Wailing Waste. Melek said as Jacob clutched onto his right cloak sleeve for support and assurance.

Below them and all around them, Jacob saw for miles and miles a land of barren, rock and moss strewn earth. Far away he could see a few dark rocky ridges here and there and also the dark outlines of a few small mountain ranges with mountains significantly shorter than this one. It wasn’t so much a desert as it was a true wasteland.

Uninhabitable, almost even untraversable at points, nothing but insects and vermin live here. It was the perfect place for the Order of the Psion to hide their base of operations. It took our enemy more than seven thousand years to discover this, the oldest surviving edifice in all of Talmora. But at last it was discovered.

Why does the wind sound like a baby crying? Jacob Hope thought but did not speak.

Tell me, what time do you think it is?

I don’t know? What season is it here? Spring? Summer?

Summer.

Oooh… Jacob blew, about seven-thirty to eight-thirty in the evening.

It is just past noon, the time of the high sun.

But… Jacob Hope was stunned.

Samhain Sharmat has sealed Talmora in perpetual twilight. The sun and the bright of day has not been seen on this entire continent for some nine months now.

That’s terrible… Jacob croaked in a barely audible manner as he shuddered and quavered throughout his entire body.

You must end it. You must entrap Samhain Sharmat to be bound until the end of ages before the peoples of Talmora shall have the sun to shine upon them again.

It’s terrible. Jacob shook his head and trembled as he sobbed, still holding onto Melek’s cloak with one hand, It’s really, really terrible - but it still isn’t my problem.

You think not? Melek said as he turned his head and looked down at Jacob.

They talked, or mostly Melek talked and Jacob listened. It went on for hours. Most of that talking was done in the library of Watchers’ Keep. It was in a large room about midway up the edifice. The library had sort of an oblong shape to it. The ceiling was high, and both the floor and the walls were of that dark rock of rough hewn masonry. They had entered by a rosewood door that opened into the middle of the library. The walls were lined with tall darkwood bookshelves that housed thick and ancient leatherbound tomes that were all well preserved. At the center of this library there was a long, rectangular reading table of dark-brown polished oak. There were a few high-backed chairs that were of the same on each side of the table. Melek had lit the long white candle in a brass censer at the center of the table to give them some small amount of light in the room.

Jacob sat opposite of Melek at the center of the table. There must have been at least three hundred tomes of knowledge upon those shelves. There was a strangely warm chill within the keep that caused Jacob to sweat and shiver at the same time. Melek had his staff propped up against the table as he expounded upon many things to Jacob Hope. He even read to him out of the ancient prophecies of the Order of the Psion, all that he could find pertaining to third coming of The Slayer. Still Jacob Hope could not accept it. He mostly just kept his face down and shook his head slowly. When he did speak, it was but a low, slow mumble always along the lines of This isn’t real, I can’t believe it, I don’t need this, I don’t want this, I have to get back to Starla.

After long hours, Melek sighed and pulled a long, open-face, bronze timekeeper out of his cloak pocket.

It nears midnight. the wizard-druid said as he checked the time, You should get some rest. We ride in the morning.

Where are we going? Jacob yawned as he lifted his head to him.

North of here, to a place named Mystus.

Why?

That you shall discover for yourself after we have arrived.

So Melek picked up his staff and turned to leave. Jacob sheepishly arose and followed him. On the way out, Melek shut the rosewood door which had been left open while they were inside the library. They walked a short way down a corridor and turned onto some winding stairs to head downward. The footfalls from Melek’s boots echoed in the narrow, enclosed stairway.

In the unlit halls of the dark keep, Jacob could barely discern the walls and the dark silhouette of Melek in front of him, so he just followed him as closely as possible while taking care not to stumble into him. He was very tired.

Melek led Jacob down to a little room on the keep’s second level. A plain mahogany door led into it. Like the other rooms and chambers in Watchers’ Keep, it had a high ceiling, rough and cyclopean masonry and a shape that essentially defied description or classification. A small latticed window of darkwood faced out east at the far end of the room, and it was about halfway open, letting the strange dark purple that passed for natural light stream into the room. It was just enough for Jacob to see what was in this room that was nearly as small as a typical dungeon cell, and that wasn’t much at all. Toward the northern wall and not far from the window was a long wooden pallet covered with a cotton mattress and linen sheets. Past the window that was near the northeastern corner there was a small wooden, square table with a small drawer in it, almost a desk, with a candle inside a brass censer at the center of it, and a small wooden chair with armrests in front of it, at the southeastern corner of the tiny room.

Melek wordlessly left Jacob in the room alone, pulling the door to as he exited. Jacob listened to the wizard-druid’s prominent footfalls as he retreated down the hall. Then Jacob sat down on the bed-pallet, stretched out and yawned, unlaced and pulled off his combat boots, his low-cut socks and his Slayer t-shirt as well. He left his blue jeans on and his knife at his right hip. He laid down upon the pallet, on top of the sheets instead of getting under them. For despite this perpetual twilight, it was still summer, and Jacob sweated slightly. He fell almost immediately asleep, though.

Jacob, however, did not sleep long at all as his slumber had become very fitful. He faded in and out; he tossed, turned, sweated profusely and curled up fetally. He was plagued by nightmares, nightmares where Starla Monsoon was alone in the dark crying out for him, carrying their baby inside of her. Even the unborn baby seemed to wail for daddy within the mother’s womb. Then the nightmares would switch to him standing in an equally dark, featureless place while facing his beloved Trena Treelimb and their son Ruel Hope Treelimb. They were pleading with him and making angry demands as they faced off with him. He couldn’t really remember what they moaned and shouted and screamed. All he could remember is that it was along the lines of he had to stay here with them; they demanded that he save them and their land because they were doomed without him to aid them. The nightmares switched back and forth between the two repeated scenes, more and more rapidly as they continued. And the more rapidly the scenes alternated, the more he tossed and turned and balled himself up and flinched and sweated and trembled.

Jacob suddenly opened his eyes and sprung from bed. Before him was somekind of creature. It was a creature of shadow. It was a silhouette that seemed to be vaguely shaped like a humanoid, but it was utterly silent and still, seeming not even to breathe, and it looked insubstantial. It lurched the short distance toward him. Jacob quickly drew out his knife. The blade sparkled in the darkness as he thrust it forward. He caught the shadow creature less than a half-arm length away from himself, and the thing combusted into a pillar of white wildfire that momentarily blinded Jacob as he closed his eyes and threw his arms up into an X in front of them with his knife still in his right hand. Then he did hear a rush as something