Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Lazaar was achieving what he’d been sent to do. To love and provide care. His magic was one of beauty.
He didn’t understand why they were being attacked. What offenses did the gods think they’d committed?
These hideous creatures with fur, fangs, and claws were clearly demons because they were strong and vicious and were tearing through the small cottages and markets as if the structures were made of paper.
Pale-faced men in tattered black gowns flashed around so fast Lazaar couldn’t keep up with the blurs. His people were using weapons and fighting formidably with the skills of warriors, while Lazaar was being forced to run like a coward.
He cried out in agony as one of his favorite teachers fell from his wounds after he’d leapt in front of a fireball to shield him.
It should’ve been the other way around.
Lazaar was confused and terrified. He couldn’t use his magic to help because he was still being dragged by too many forearms.
And it wasn’t as if he knew any defensive spells.
He closed his eyes against the carnage that had been his beautiful paradise. Sturdy columns and homes were shattered or leveled.
Lazaar could only see his feet and what he was trampling over.
The graphite-colored foliage that’d taken him years to grow was destroyed in seconds. The smoke-velvet trees that grew only in his shadow were chopped down with bladelike claws.
Gods, no.
It wasn’t long before his specially blended maroon succulents decorating the main square succumbed to the raining fire and became nothing more than ash.
Miles of shimmering black landscapes and marble statues of their deities were demolished.
Before Lazaar was shoved toward a dark passageway, he craned his neck and saw a menacing woman in a crimson-colored cloak who appeared to be orchestrating it all.
Her face was an angry mask, with vantablack eyes and fingertips the color of coal.
She made direct eye contact with him, and with Lazaar’s enhanced abilities, he heard her whispering in a language he’d never learned, one that sent shivers down his spine.
“Wait! Who is that woman, and where are we fleeing to?”
Lazaar didn’t know where else there was to go. They were alone in this realm. If they left it, heaven only knew what awaited them in the void.
Perhaps worse than what they were battling inside.
“This is madness! Someone, please tell me what’s happening.”
“They cannot stop fighting, my lord, and there’s no time to explain why. I must get you to safety first,” Oleksandr insisted while keeping a close eye on the melee. “I wish I’d had more time to explain your bloodline, my lord, but I can rectify that if we live past the next minutes.”
“What?” Lazaar hollered at anyone who would listen. “I will not leave Myst. I need to find her!”
“Myst will follow wherever you go,” his guardian reassured him.
Lazaar took a forced breath of putrid, smoke-filled air while his handlers increased their pace.
A towering tree exploded and fell before them, forcing him to dive for cover.
A red-eyed demon—or whatever in the gods they were—charged at Lazaar, and before Oleksandr could react, Myst dove through the darkness, her massive wings spread to their full length, and caught the monster in her large talons.
She soared back into the sky, dodging the raining hell before dropping her catch from a lethal height.
Lazaar was hefted back to his feet and shoved through a door hidden within a hill. Steep stairs descended several floors before the pathway leveled out.
“Your people will survive if you do, my lord. Now, go!”
Oleksandr yelled at him to run, and he did, leaving behind the sounds of battle and bloodshed.
Lazaar
Lazaar and his guardian exploded through an opening disguised as a grassy landscape. Once he, Oleksandr, and Myst were safely on the other side, his escorts turned back the way they’d come.
“Don’t go! Wait—” Lazaar shielded his eyes from a light that almost blinded him in its brilliance.
An overwhelming heat blanketed him from head to toe, making an energy he’d never felt sizzle beneath his skin.
Everywhere the light touched him made him feel stronger.
Lazaar’s world, Chessuven, had been comforting, black, and beautiful. The sky always had the look of polished onyx, except for the rare occasions when he’d use his powers to create shimmers of white light his elders called stars.
A reward to his people who brightened Chessuven with a glittering gray hue.
Those evenings were always dearest to him. He would lie on his back and stare at the sky, imagining himself in a land full of colors, images of faraway places ruled by other magical lords like him.
Lazaar read stories and enjoyed plays acted out by his people of fictional worlds nurtured by a blazing entity called a sun, beyond even the reach of the gods.
In these sun-tales, the people relied on this burning sphere to nourish the plants for their food and oxygen.
The mythical worlds they made up were always the most entertaining, if not a bit ludicrous.