Skander Draco: Empyraeum Novellas, #1

By Alan J. Fisher

Skander Drago woke up in the backstreets of Santo Domingo one morning. Considering he is what is locally known as a Gringo Rico it is actually quite the miracle that he woke up at all.  

 

He is a man without an identity, without documentation, without any memory prior to waking up that morning except for fragmented and strange dreams. He soon finds that without money here, he is a no-one. He descends deep into the underbelly of Santo Domingo and comes back out again alive. Soon, it is obvious there is something very different about Skander. not just his pale skin and very blonde hair, not just his oddly coloured eyes. Something much deeper. People love him, people follow him. Men who would normally kill an upstart Gringo without blinking are following him and completely loyal to him.

 

He is soon running his crew of three hundred until one of them suggests a completely new direction for the incredibly charismatic Skander...
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan J. Fisher
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201513016

Alan J. Fisher

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Alan has since lived in various parts of the world before settling in Spain with his family.  Influenced in early life by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and the traditions of High Fantasy, Alan has studied history and mythology from around the world and has always been interested in how the same stories have been told and re-told from one side of the globe to the other. He is alway deeply interested in languages and their influence on society.  Work on what would become the Empyraeum Cycle was begun when Alan was 13 years ago, the first draft being completed on an old mechanical typewriter and later re-written on a school computer

Book preview

Also by the same author;

The Empyraeum Collections - Shorts and verse

The Wondering Wanderer

The Wakeful Dreamer

Turn Out to Inward

Whispers Behind the Eyes

The Empyraeum Novellas

α - Skander Draco

β - The Victory of Wolves

γ - Neshaa

δ – The Charmer of Snakes

ε - Son of the Dragon

––––––––

Poetry

F*** You Poe, an Anthology

The Chronicles of Enoch

Chronicles of Enoch: Preludes

Chronicles of Enoch: Pentad (Coming Winter 2022)

I - Darkness Within

II - Sons of Chaos

III - Gods of Deceit

IV - Midnight Moonlight

V - Son of Light

Chronicles of Enoch: Albuquerque Tales (Coming Soon)

All characters and events are works of fiction and are meant to represent no persons living or dead. Any similarities are purely coincidental. All historical fact is free for public use though the great men and women who have discovered it have our eternal gratitude.

© 2017 EMPYRAEUM, EMPYRAEUM CYCLE, KALSHODAR, DRACOGRATH, the Empyraeum logo, and associated faction details, characters, technology, artwork, and logos are the property of the author of this work. Alan J Fisher reserves the right to be recognised as the author of this work and owner of all Intellectual Properties related thereof.

\No part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, altered, broadcast, or shared without the copyright owner’s express permission

My vision of Alexander would be impossible without the incomparable Valerio Massimo Manfredi and his brilliant Alexander Trilogy.

I thank Santo Domingo for the interesting four years I spent there as well as my wife and children. One day my daughters will know that it was them that inspired this series in a way nobody before them ever managed.

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My name is Neshan Alkemet; I am Turkish; of the great land which used to be called Anatolia. I am also a resident of Istanbul, which was once called Byzantium, but not many people remember that. I am a small businessman, I sell trinkets to tourists who come to see our beautiful architecture and learn of our colourful history. I tell them how Alexander the Great - who we call Ìskender - rode an army across the great Bosporus and ended an empire, quite close to here while forging another. I tell them of how he died in Babylon, which is now in Iraq, not a nice place to visit. I sell coins (which are fake) and show them artefacts; weapons, pieces of armour, one of Ìskender's lion helmets and various small articles (which are not fake) in my small shop-cum-museum. I sell them little histories which I printed myself and give them sweet tea in glass cups. Some have commented that my history is a little different than that which they have heard in other places, I tell them these things happen, history is an inexact science. They believe me and sometimes buy my trinkets. They leave and they learn some things, perhaps. They never learn a very important thing, though. My histories differ because I was there.

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Kaleb Aristedes looked out over the glittering skyline and, not for the first - nor the hundredth - time marvelled at the difference of the world. He enjoyed this view, which is why he had bought the place. He had a painting on his wall of a man in beautifully ornate golden armour, helmet in the shape of a snarling Dragon. The figure in the painting bore a pair of beautifully wrought short-swords. From between the golden jaws of the helmet, a pair of eyes looked out, an odd stormy grey-green, like Kaleb's own. Many of his visitors and clients commented on this painting, on its beauty, its skill, its fine brushwork. Many asked what it represented for it resembled no armour they had ever seen before, was it Japanese or something? Many decided it was some kind of Fantasy role-playing type thing and wondered how one as successful and serious as Kaleb would have a taste for something in the realm of nerds and suchlike. Kaleb never told them he had painted it himself, from memory. He painted of a memory that was not but also, oddly, was. A memory of a time very different from today. Of a time when Alexander did not die in Babylon at all. Of a time when he had led Alexander´s army from China to Ireland and helped to found the greatest Empire that ever was.

What he told next to no-one was that this was not the only representation of that armour that he had made. He was still making it but soon, perhaps, he would display the life-size artwork he was casting from metal. Not yet, thought, no.

As he looked out from the window on nights such as these, he saw not the New York skyline of 2006 but he saw bright lights from the great docks of the Kalshodar lunar base; space-craft readying to leave, to carry he and his brothers out in search of Alexander. He saw a truly gigantic ship still in the process of being built also. The Dragon’s Crown the flagship of Alexander, for him to command as soon as he came back...Alexander was dead though, he'd died three thousand years ago, in what was now Iraq. The wars there made the remains of that city hard to visit, even for him. He wished he could make the trek and try to locate Alexander's tomb. He sort of remembered where it was but the world had changed so much. Even Macedonia was not the same; wars there had changed it a lot too; divided that once great nation up between Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia.

He wasn't sure that the tomb was even there anymore. Slow descent of the full moon.

He could have gone to see therapists, as was the popular thing to do in this country today; he could have submitted himself to psychiatric analysis and maybe enjoyed medication. He would have done that and more except that he knew something nobody else did. He had been there, in Babylon when Alexander died and had been lost and directionless on the Earth ever since, with his occasional memories of another time. He used to be called Kalliades, back when he had served under Alexander in Persia (now Iran) but he had learned to change both his name and location every fifty-years or so to avoid suspicion. They kept such records these days, seemed like they had nothing better to do.

He had suffered this curious duality since the Dragon had breathed immortality into him and remade him, back under what was called Mount Everest in this world, in the country still called Tibet. In the world he sometimes remembers, he had been remade into a giant of a man, an immortal too, and given the armour he wore in the painting. He had followed Alexander from the Sea of Japan in the East to the West Coast of Ireland, building an empire – The Empyraeum -  which would last for thousands of years until Alexander disappeared, about 2 thousand years ago in this time, right after Jesus Christ (Yeshua the Kristoman in that world) died.

He was there, he had worn that armour and had that adventure, he was certain. So why was he here now instead? He remembered, clearly though, a strange thing; as he stood under the Dragon's breath, being remade all that time ago, he had skipped into this world and lived moments from it, he was certain of that. He had fought in the trenches of World War I, he had watched Alexander die in Babylon, and he had seen Alexander meet a man who was not Shamshir (of the snakes no-one ever saw and the ever-lighted pipe). He had been there and he had also been here. Now, it appeared, he was stuck here, in a world where nothing made sense, where Alexander was long dead and the Empyraeum had died in Babylon with him, breaking into four parts through civil war and in-fighting before his body even got cold. His world had never been and he had never been reborn of the Dragon.

This made complete sense until one remembered one thing, one that troubled him daily. He was still alive and had been for the past twenty centuries. That was not normal. But, if his world, the world of the Empyraeum and Dracograth had never been, he should be dead too; he should have died a long, long time ago, fishing on the Thermaic Gulf near his hometown of Ichnai.

Thanatos appeared to have simply forgotten all about him...that made no sense at all.

Nor was he the only immortal around these parts.

It was around twenty years ago that it happened. He was in Madrid for a conference on Ancient Mediterranean History. He enjoyed attending these events to see how inaccurate they were going to be, he found their guesses amusing sometimes. They were right about how Alexander shaped the Western World of today, no questions on how his campaigns laid the groundwork which Seleucas and Ptolemy later ran with. The Roman Empire would not have existed had Alexander lived; this was true because it hadn’t. We rolled right over their embryonic armies as if they were children! Only they hadn’t. Alexandria was an often ignored city rather than the jewel of the Empyraeum...

Their theories and biographies on Alexander, though, those made him laugh! They had no idea who the Hegèmon really was; their theories were rather facile, in his opinion, romantic and fanciful. He attended the lectures and stayed quiet. When one was immortal, one's sense of humour got a little odd, this is a fact. He spent three days circulating through the talks and lectures, avoided the chats and academics, they tired him, and was having a drink in the bar when he walked past.

The Indian snake! Shamshir was supposed to be dead! Kaleb had never seen him die of course but he had assumed ... the man was a mortal; he had vanished from Alexandria in the dead of night. In this other world, he and Kaleb had never met. Kaleb had assumed the man was dead because there were no indications that he anything but mortal, no Dragonfire or Hegèmon's blood for him. Now here he was, oval glasses perched on his nose as he read a medical journal, as alive as Kaleb. Sham looked in excellent health and his hair and beard were as black as they had been when Kaleb saw him last. Kaleb decided to play it safe and observed for a moment, reading the name tag on Sham's rather nice sherwani  suit and watching him for a moment while deciding how best to approach him.

I know you're there, Kalliades, Sham did not look up from his reading nor raise his voice as he patted the seat beside him. Join me please.

Kaleb was at a loss but decided to follow his curiosity and find out what was going on. He sat in the indicated chair and waited. Sham continued reading, at his complete ease, for a moment until a young man approached the table with a tray. He set down a carafe of coffee, milk and sugar with practised ease and efficiency. He also set down two saucers, two cups.

Sham waited until the waiter had finished and poured strong black brew into each cup, leaving them to add their own extras. Kaleb added milk to his, Sham tore open and dumped a couple of sugar packets into his and stirred with deliberate slowness, looking up at Kaleb under his glasses for a moment.

You have not changed, Kalliades. he sounded surprised.

Nor have you. Kalliades sniffed, he realised Sham had spoken to him in perfect Greek, the Koinè from the time of the campaigns, with that perfect Macedonian accent which had always amazed Kaleb. You're supposed to be dead.

So are you. Sham said simply, taking an experimental sip of his coffee. Dark and sweet, just as I like my ladies. he winked, it sounded silly coming from Sham as it did but Kaleb still struggled to contain a chuckle. You met no Dragon this time around, never reached Tibet, you know this. You followed Perdiccas back to Macedonia to bury Alexander and help hold Greece together. You left Ptolemy and their lot alone to fight it out. You were supposed to have died in your fishing shack in Ichnai. You sit here in front of me all the same. Isn't that odd?

I don't understand, I have lived since that day, unchanged as I was, His voice was plaintive, afraid, not the strong warrior's voice Sham was used to. How are you still alive?

I quote Mark Twain of this time, Sham smiled. Neshaa never told you?

Told me what?

On the moon, Kalliades, after that mission when you lost another spear?

Kaleb froze, disbelieving, there is no way the Indian could know that. Back in his time, around 1999 EA (Empyraen Age) the Lupernikan Edict had opened up space travel to the masses, in a controlled manner at least. They had built huge ships, using the technology