Guardians of the Edge: The Paths of Power

By Patti Larsen

When the broken and insane Guardian Keymaster creates him a new Portal Key, Aiden Trent is able to finally continue his quest--to rescue his Keeper friend, Ashala, from the clutches of his enemy, Tremaine, while hunting for his lost parents. But, Ash's acquisition of Fire Paths complicate matters and have them scrambling to finish what Tremaine forced her to start before her evolution can destroy everything...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patti Larsen
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989925126

Patti Larsen

About me, huh? Well, my official bio reads like this: Patti Larsen is a multiple award-winning author with a passion for the voices in her head. But that sounds so freaking formal, doesn’t it? I’m a storyteller who hears character's demands so loudly I have to write them down. I love the idea of sports even though sports hate me. I’ve dabbled in everything from improv theater to film making and writing TV shows, singing in an all girl band to running my own hair salon.But always, always, writing books calls me home.I’ve had my sights set on world literary domination for a while now. Which means getting my books out there, to you, my darling readers. It’s the coolest thing ever, this job of mine, being able to tell stories I love, only to see them all shiny and happy in your hands... thank you for reading.As for the rest of it, I’m short (permanent), slightly round (changeable) and blonde (for ever and ever). I love to talk one on one about the deepest topics and can’t seem to stop seeing the big picture. I happily live on Prince Edward Island, Canada, home to Anne of Green Gables and the most beautiful red beaches in the world, with my pug overlord and overlady, six lazy cats and Gypsy Vanner gelding, Fynn.

Book preview

Guardians of the Edge: The Paths of Power

Patti Larsen

SmashwordsEdition

Copyright 2020 by Patti Larsen

Find out more about me at

http://www.pattilarsen.com/

***

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the vendor and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

Chapter One

The sun had already set, the city’s hum continuing in the background of his attention, streetlights and headlights and constant activity dulled to inconsequence.

Aiden Trent’s focus remained elsewhere, nothing in the scent of spent gasoline or the chatter of passing voices nor the heartbeat of a million souls carrying on their own lives held any interest for him. And despite the training his parents gave him—or perhaps because of it—he wrote off the majority of the goings on below and around and above in favor of the task at hand.

If Antoinette and Eric Trent had taught their talented son anything, it was to discard the unimportant while staying attuned to possible threat. Not an easy feat for a twelve-year-old (wait, he’d just had his fourteenth birthday, though a rather uncelebrated one since his missing parents hadn’t been there to spend it with him). But Aiden was no ordinary young man and nor was the job he’d set himself since the night they vanished in a wave of heat and light and his entire world changed.

Not just metaphorically, either. If he hadn’t lived it himself, he’d have struggled to accept other worlds existed out there, accessed by odd stones covered in runes called Portal Keys, that could take people like him—of the Blood, he discovered, a Guardian on his mother’s side if the truth was to be believed—through the Edge of Nowhere, through pathways created by those very stone keys only people like him could wield, accessing places and people and experiences he’d only thought possible in fairy tales.

Aiden suppressed the sigh that tried to rise as his mind wandered. Anyone else would have cut themselves a little slack, considering his young age, all he’d been through. Almost dying on the alien desert world of Rishi, rescued by his now dear friend and Keeper apprentice Ashala, only to be captured by the very man—a Guardian himself, or at least in possession of the Blood and a Key—Tremaine who doomed Aiden’s parents to who knew what fate the night they tried to steal the broken Key they’d been hired to liberate.

He'd lost Ashala in the final journey of the broken Key that had turned his life upside down. Forced to leave her behind in the grasp of his enemy. His only saving grace the broken and rather mad Guardian who had been prisoner to Tremaine.

A Guardian, Aiden had been assured, who could make him a new Portal Key.

He inhaled slowly, absorbing any changes to his surroundings through the sensitive peripheral detachment he’d been taught, sifting through shifts in traffic, descended darkness. Found nothing untoward and continued his surveillance, frustrated his mind misbehaved even enough to allow him to ponder where fate had abandoned him.

Here, back on Earth, his home world. No Ashala, but Reacher, yes, the insane Guardian and a stone he said was perfect, the very one Aiden retrieved from Rishi on a whim and instinct.

Had it been arrogance that made him believe Reacher’s abilities would mean a new Key overnight? Aiden shifted his weight a little where he crouched on the edge of a rooftop, observing the squat warehouse on the other side of the street. He bounced gently on his knees to increase the circulation, a faint tingle waking in the balls of his numbing feet. Because it was taking far more than a few hours for the Guardian to do what he claimed he could. In fact, it had been days and it took all the training and embedded discipline Aiden’s parents imparted to keep from allowing impatience to drive him to act impulsively.

Patience isn’t a virtue, his father said. It’s life and death.

A glance at his watch told him he’d been here for hours without a scrap of movement to tell him if anyone was inside. Not a typical dwelling anyway, though his careful research insisted this was the source of the odd website he’d found.

The website that chronicled runes of the Paths of Power. The very etchings Ashala now wore over her whole body, mixed Earth and Fire runes that were never meant to mingle, courtesy of Tremaine.

It was hard not to take chances when he thought of his friend’s peril. To rush inside, find out what the owner of that blog actually knew. To take what he wanted, what he needed. It would be, after all, a simple thing to simply break in and dig around on his own. There was even an excellent chance he’d be able to do so without the subject of his scrutiny even being aware Aiden had come and gone. But this was no ordinary job, his parents long missing in that flash of white light during what had otherwise been a flawlessly planned theft. Would have been, if he’d known a quarter of what he knew now. Which made him think of Ashala and the Paths all over again.

Aiden clenched his teeth against his impotence.

An anxious thief will soon have lots to worry about, Eric said in his head. And though Aiden knew his missing father was right, it was so hard to listen. Of all times, this was the most important he keep his calm and cool. And yet, his old life, stealing antiquities and anything else he and his parents were contracted to liberate, was a far, far cry from this mess he’d found himself in.

Trying to save the Edge. And the worlds connected by it.

Aiden bounced some more, shaking out one foot and then the other, eyes never leaving the building below him. He’d stumbled on the website in question after his parents disappeared, taken, he now knew, by a damaged and insane Portal Key to who knew where. In an effort to understand, Aiden did an Internet search and uncovered the creator of the website.

When he’d been forced to use the Key the first time, Aiden forgot all about the web search. About home. But now that he was stuck here, at least until his new friend was done of his work, Aiden had time and curiosity and the need to act burning in him to do something, anything, to gain an advantage. Even if such a search only ended in futility and fabrications that had nothing to do with the truth. At least he wasn’t pacing the house his parents rented, waiting for something to happen to him instead of being the one to act.

Aiden hesitated at first to leave Reacher at home tonight, working on making a new Key from the stone found on Ashala’s home world. But, when he’d finally relented, it was to the sight of the thin and hunched Guardian humming over the stone he sheltered in his big hands, his focus so intent he barely ate or drank, only when Aiden forced him to. The likelihood he’d do something rash was minimal, but Aiden still worried. If Reacher finished the Key before he got back, would the mad Guardian use it to flee to his own home world, trapping Aiden and dooming Ashala? Reacher had mentioned Airimeth enough times, Aiden knew the Guardian’s obsession could easily overtake him.

The young thief grunted softly to himself as he settled into observation mode further, refusing to worry about something he had no control over.

I swear to you, brother, Reacher promised, intense blue eyes almost painful to look into. I swear I won’t leave you behind. That incredible gaze fell to the stone, deeper blue and veined in yellow, he held carefully, lovingly in his hands. "On her."

The Key. That had to mean something.

Aiden knew better than to let himself think about Ashala, now a full Keeper, one of the watchers of the Edge. That was just another distraction he could ill afford. His worry for her peaked as he shifted positions, unable to keep still, remembering the etched tattoos on her arms and legs. Different runes, her lower body begun in the Paths of Earth, her Paths and those of her people. When he’d first rescued her from Tremaine, she’d been so upset to discover he’d had her marked with the Paths of Fire. According to her, carrying more than one set of Paths went against everything she’d learned. Though, she hadn’t said why exactly it was so very wrong for her to have both.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know at the moment. Bad enough she was in peril, he was here on Earth, she trapped with the enemy. Aiden shrugged under the weight of guilt at leaving her behind, though he had no choice or options. He and Reacher would still be Tremaine’s prisoners if it weren’t for the last gasp of effort from the old Key. It carried them home, to Aiden’s house on Earth, where his memories of his parents still hovered.

Reminding him every day he’d failed them and Ashala. And had to make things right.

Aiden shook himself loose from the pressure, tilting his head from side to side, the sound of vertebrae popping settling his nerves and his attention. Reacher was making a new Key. Soon, they’d be able to go back to Tremaine’s world and rescue Ashala. And then go looking for Aiden’s parents.

The last Key was old, damaged. She wasn’t able to help him the way he needed her to. The crack in her surface, either acquired through venerable age or some damage he’d never discovered, made it impossible for her to do what a Portal Key was meant to—carry a Guardian to the world of their choosing. Instead, she’d managed to drop him into disaster after near death experience while what seemed like dementia made it difficult for her to focus. And the fact it had taken her longer and longer to recharge between each use was almost Aiden’s end.

Not that he was complaining, not really. She’d saved his life, the soul inside her ancient and broken, but faithful to the end, sacrificing herself and the last of her existence to make sure he and Reacher arrived safely on Earth with the means to carry on. While he still struggled a little with everything else, the Blood in him made it easy to think of the Key as anything but an empty hunk of rock and he would always be grateful.

That