Fractured Aspects: The Cordelian Chronicles, #2

By Waugh Wright

Philadelphia teenagers Joni and Kelly find themselves chased across parallel Earths, from underground, gang-infested cities to medieval kingdoms. Different factions think Joni might be the latest of the Cordelians, young women with the ability to bridge the gaps between these worlds. Joni has to decide if she believes it too and what she's willing to sacrifice to save these new found worlds, as well as her home.

 

Building off of Aspects, Bright and Fair, this novel starts off with Joni stuck in the medieval world of Avalon, with Alejandro, someone she believes to be her friend, thrown in the dungeons. The rebel forces, led by the young Brith want to help her, but aren't sure of what to do. Meanwhile, Kelly wakes up in a hospital, after stealing a car to get her friend Marcus to safety. She has to decide if she trusts his corporation and what she can do if she doesn't.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Waugh Wright
• Release date: Sep 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386440130

Waugh Wright

 grew up in Los Angeles, went to college in Maine, lived in Oakland, Philadelphia, and moved to Durham, NC in 2014. I have taught high school science (biology, earth science, physics, environmental science, or whatever else we need) for fifteen years and have had parents complain that I’ve turned their children into Doctor Who addicts. The geeky science nerd in me insists that my worlds have internal integrity, even if they’re full of rhino-bears and messages across time. The ten-year old boy in me who grew up stealing Tolkien, Le Guin, and McCaffrey books from his big sister’s bookshelf just wants characters and stories to fall in love with. In my spare time, I listen to a lot of music, travel, watch baseball when I can, play with my dog and daughter, kayak, and go hiking (often rushing off the trail to write down ideas). The Cordelian Chronicles was written half in Philadelphia and half in Big Bear Lake, California and revised in Durham, NC.

Book preview

Fractured Aspects

WAUGH WRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 Waugh Wright

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13:  978-0-9989586-1-3

Dedication

TO CORDELIA,

This book wasn’t supposed to be about Cordelians. But somehow, you kept squirming your way into it. You’re so bright and full of joy, so curious and inventive, so passionate and self-reflective, that if I were to write a character based off of you, no one would believe it.

Love,

Daddy

Table of Contents

Dedication

Major Characters and Beasts from Aspects, Bright and Fair

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Major Characters and Beasts from

Aspects, Bright and Fair

(in order of appearance or mention)

Joni Margulis (Ebullus of origin: Earth, Age: 15): Native Philadelphian, who, while checking out something suspicious at her parents’ physics laboratory, opens a video communication across time with her father, who tells her to run. She discovers portals that lead to adjacent worlds (or ebulli ) and winds up in the medieval ebullus of Avalon. Different factions are hunting her, believing her to be a Cordelian, one of a group of young women throughout history who are able to see or even transfer across worlds and precipitate societal change.

Bramble: (Earth, 4): A very good dog. Technically owned by Joni, she also loves and is loved by Kelly, Alejandro, and just about anyone else she meets. She travels with Joni and Kelly throughout the first book.

Alejandro Escovar: (Garstin, 19): A young man whom Joni meets while walking Bramble near the Schuylkill River. Joni discovers he is carrying a photo of her with the newspaper caption, Local Girl Shot Dead. Later, when Joni and Kelly are being chased through an abandoned airport in rural Pennsylvania, Alejandro shows up and opens a portal that the girls jump through, ending up in the ebullus of Seecanus. Alejandro eventually finds them there and claims he is trying to protect Joni from the crime-lord Matabbi. While being attacked by Matabbi’s forces, Alejandro uses his last emergency gate to portal with Joni to the ebullus of Avalon.

Schuylkill Sally (Cruger): (Chelonis, age unknown): A little studied species of megafauna, crugers are giant turtle-like creatures, with a strict sense of ritual, who are believed to be the progenitors of the Japanese folklore creature, the kappa. Schuylkill Sally appeared in the Schuylkill River of Philadelphia just after Kelly left the river and has not been seen by any other natives since, due to the fact that trans-ebullic trappers Darl and Menlo were able to capture her and hide her within the Eastern State Penitentiary historic site nearby.

Kelly Grebe: (Earth, 15): Joni’s best friend. Her hobbies are math, physics, any type of animal, and following Joni’s whims, while regretting it later. She traveled with Joni to Seecanus, but then transported to the Sunset Strip in Hollywood with Marcus, where she bought a jazz cd for her father, ate chili dogs, and got shot at. She was able to get the injured Marcus to his home ebullus of Esculenta, where she stole a car to get him to a hospital.

Peter Margulis: (Earth, 44): A university physicist and Joni’s father, he specializes in creating advanced technologies based on cutting edge research, such as exploring the existence of membranes and the ability to communicate across time with them.

Petra Margulis: (Earth, 46): A double mathematics and physics PhD, as well as Joni’s mother, her research has focused on cosmological theories.

Tamara Grebe: (Earth, 43): One of the youngest winners of the prestigious Fields Medal, for her work which laid the foundation for (among other things) the Abelian-Gauge Apparatus that Peter Margulis has been developing to observe membranal flux across dimensions.

George Grebe: (Earth, 44): Kelly’s father, who does some sort of corporate work downtown.

Anita Redpoll (alias): (Ebullus unknown, age unknown but considerable): A member of the Order of the Crescent, she has protected Cordelian initiates for many decades. She became a friend to the Margulis and Grebe families, teaching both girls survival skills without explaining her ulterior motives. She is separated from Joni and Kelly on Earth but finds them again at the end of Book One, where she is last seen engaging in a firefight with Matabbi’s forces.

Schmitty: (Earth, 59): An often homeless Philadelphian, whom Joni sometimes exchanges words with when she walks Bramble down by the river.

Marcus Gemsbock: (Esculenta, 17): A spy for the trans-ebullic Marganus Corporation, who poses as a high school student to take an internship at Joni’s father’s laboratory. He claims to want to help the girls when he meets them again in Seecanus and admits his earlier espionage. He takes Kelly back to Earth but is injured and needs Kelly’s help to return to Esculenta.

Imbrium: (Seecanus, 51): An innkeeper in the town of Chiliquinn on Seecanus, she feeds and houses Joni and Kelly. She explains to them how there are parallel worlds of different sizes all around them and introduces them to Darl and Menlo.

Darl / Menlo: (Telgar, 38 / Mumbarum, 51): Trappers of exotic mega-fauna, they capture large animals that have somehow crossed from one ebullus into another. They have numerous connections across the ebulli and agree to help Joni and Kelly.

Matabbi: (Attaban, 55): A trans-ebullic crime lord, he was originally duke of a small ebullus. He married, blackmailed, and fought his way to controlling large portions of many ebulli, legally and illegally. Extremely superstitious, he thinks Cordelians may be the key to his ultimate goal.

D’Vico: (Pendor, 32): A failed Cordelian initiate, she works for Matabbi as his soothsayer and fortune teller.

Assassin: (Name unknown, origin unknown, age unknown): The personal assassin to Matabbi, he is a master of weaponry and combat. He may be a member of an order dedicated to killing Cordelians.

Petrichor Gemsbock: (Origin unknown, 48): A top scientist for the Marganus Corporation and father to Marcus. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Theopolis Brithwine Urthinus Wulfstyn: (Avalon, 17): the youngest son and only remaining child of the 63rd Earl of Avalon, a lineage that traces its heritage back to 991 AD, when Viking invaders and defending English villagers fell through a portal after the Battle of Maldon and found an ebullus bereft of people but containing the ruins of an earlier kingdom. Brith leads a rebel force against Matabbi’s armies who are occupying this small ebullus to test their weaponry.

Malfirick Olaggvason: (Avalon, 19): Brith’s best friend and confidant. Before the occupation Malfi was studying to become a scholar, which in Avalon is someone who uses powers native to the ebullus that would be called magic in other places.

Jedder: (Avalon, 54): The head of Brith’s armed forces.

Darius: (Tromaskis, 112): A member of the rare feline species, lomaxpard, who can travel between ebulli at the moment of their death, up to eight times. A very bored and condescending Darius meets Kelly in the underground city of Esculenta and advises her to steal a car to bring Marcus to safety.

Doctor Sweeney, PhD: (Sup’sus, 62): An anthropologist, specializing in social development within the micro-ebulli, he came to Avalon under Matabbi sponsorship, but has since joined with Brith’s rebel forces.

Director Koid: (Esculenta, 72): The director of the Marganus Corporation’s trans-ebullic research.

The damsel of beauty ravished,

With eyes of amber burnt,

And hair of summer night,

Beheld aspects, bright and fair,

Reflected in a crystal fractures.

She held no command,

Yet commanded all.

The hounds of hell did fawn and yield,

Whilst the demon herald did dally,

And ask for ransom.

Then didst the princeling step forth,

Young but of worth as the highest of his line,

Sea-wolf at his side.

He did laugh and offered only

Ash-spears, poisoned tipped,

Although he himself was weaponless,

And the girl held the shield.

The Weapons of the Drake

Translated by Malfirick Olaggvason

CHAPTER ONE

J

oni pushed back the tent flap and stepped outside and saw the bodies lying strewn about in all directions, detritus from the night before. She walked a few paces to sit down on the remains of a stone wall, probably hundreds of years old, and counted at least a dozen men and women within a bowshot and a few more scattered here and there on the grass in the distance, like dolls dropped by a giant toddler. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from a few fires still smoldering, as a chill wind blew from the north. Joni squeezed her thick robe around her frame. Bramble, her loyal hound, who had adventured with her through three worlds filled with monsters and battles in the few days since leaving Philadelphia, left Joni’s side and bounded over to a blond man, about 20 or so, who lay face down in the short grass, his outstretched arm cradling a tuft of flowering heather.

Bramble licked his face—a big, smacking, and wet lick.

The man snorted and pushed away at the dog’s face. Bramble then started licking his hands, and the man rolled over to his other side, knocking over a jug that was still half full of mead or ale or whatever they were drinking the night before.

C’mon, Bramble, Joni said to her. Give him some space.

The man belched and then started to heave a little. Joni didn’t want to see him retch in the morning dew and so turned around and walked towards the large tent that had several flaps open and was emitting aromas of freshly baked bread and what passed for bacon, in this hidden, medieval bubble world. It made her homesick and then made her worry about Alejandro, who wasn’t even from her bubble; she didn’t remember the name of his world and wasn’t sure if she had even asked. Her belly rumbled and she cursed softly at her body for betraying these base needs, while Alejandro lay in a prison cell somewhere.

She had slept fitfully, reliving the moments when Matabbi’s assassin had captured Alejandro over and over again in her dreams, while all the drunken celebrations kept going on outside her tent. For Brith’s people, it had been a great victory: the bulk of Matabbi’s forces had traveled through a portal, off to some other ebullus, giving hope to the young earl Brith and his followers that they would soon overthrow their yoke of serfdom.

But it had spelled catastrophe for Joni. Alejandro had been taken captive right in front of her. Alejandro, the only person who seemed to have any real idea of how all these different worlds work and how one might travel between them. And it was Alejandro who knew why this Matabbi person was trying to capture her, was willing to turn worlds over to try to get at her. All because of ancient fairy tales, Alejandro had told her. But for all she could reason, she was stuck in a fairy tale, here in a land called Avalon, as if King Arthur would stroll around the corner, perhaps with a laser bazooka the way things were going.

That was the rational side of Joni: analyzing the situation and calculating the chances that she could get home without Alejandro, while finding her best friend Kelly along the way, in whatever ebullus she and Marcus had ended up. But the other side of Joni, hiding behind that rational façade, worried about Alejandro and feared for all of them. Alejandro had hidden the truth from them and still was, she was sure. But there was something so earnest, so protective about him. He would sacrifice everything for her. Besides, Bramble liked him, and he liked Bramble. Joni tended to trust dog people.

Still grumbling at her stomach, she made her way to the food tent, Bramble scampering ahead of her. A large wooden table had been set up out front, where a blond woman dressed in a sleeveless beige dress, straight out of Nottingham Forest except for her tennis shoes, handed out food. Joni thanked her as the woman handed her a clay plate holding bacon and warm bread, topped with a great scoop of golden butter. The woman also poured out some leftovers on a flat stone for Bramble.

Joni went back to the stone wall to eat her breakfast, followed soon after by Bramble, who had apparently swallowed his meal in three bites. Most of the inebriated sleepers were slowly getting up and making their way to their own tents or to the privies, half-joyful, half-hungover. Joni was considering her options when Sweeney, the gray-haired, bespectacled, outworld anthropologist, who had embedded himself in the rebels’ camp the last couple of years, came trotting over. He pulled a notebook out from a satchel that hung over his fleece pullover.

Joni! There you are. I was hoping to talk to you.

He bent down to give Bramble a good scratching, who responded by turning her belly up in the air. Joni, her mouth full of food, gave a friendly grunt.

Were you part of the revelries last night? he asked. It was glorious. Brith, striding from group to group like a young Alexander energizing the troops. And the songs and the poems? Oh, the poems. I wish my digital recorders would work in this world. Let me see.

He flipped his notebook open and went on before Joni could respond or even swallow.

"Yes, yes, here it is. Young Malfi is quite the bard. He gave a fascinating recitation of one of the foundational poems of Avalonian culture, a ballad about the battle that led to their ancestors first arriving in this ebullus. Voyages across dark seas, fights with sea serpents. And then on the shore the