Worlds of the Never: A book with Dragons, Faeries and Elves, mixed with Science Fiction and Time Travel, for Young Adults and Teens. (Tales of the Neverwar 2) Read online

  Copyright (c) 2015 by CJ Rutherford

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are purely the result of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people or events is entirely coincidental.

  Any reference to real life or events happening in this world is intended to enhance the storyline, and give it a sense of realism and authenticity.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means-electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording or otherwise-without prior permission in writing from the author, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote brief passages in the review.

  Worlds of the Never

  Book Two in the Tales of the Neverwar

  Books in the series

  Origins of the Never

  Souls of the Never

  and the upcoming

  War of the Never

  This is a work of fiction. Magic is returning. Is there Magic in your world? Look around, you may be surprised.

  Chapter one

  Cern Facility, Switzerland

  “You're not thinking straight, Jason. Jesus! I don't think I've ever heard a crazier idea in my life!” shouted Julia as she watched her boss prepare to commit professional suicide.

  “I don’t have any choice, Jules. They’ve suspended me. This is the only way, don’t you see?” His face was crazed with grief.

  Jules took a deep breath, forcing what she hoped was a calm and understanding expression onto her face. “Jason, you’ve just driven through a security barrier, nearly killing the guard on duty. Then you go and pull a gun on Ted at reception. Jesus H Christ, the poor guy’s probably having a coronary up there.” She jerked her thumb upwards.

  “I need to try, Jules. I need to try to bring Alice back.” Jason’s expression was pleading as they descended in the elevator.

  “She's dead, Jason. For God's sake, we all saw it...whatever it was.” Julia grew morose as she remembered the fateful day over two years before.

  That day was the beginning of the end for Jason, as far as she was concerned. The death of his wife Alice rocked him to the foundations of his soul.

  Even now Jules suspected he awoke at night screaming and crying, wracked with guilt even though there was no way the accident could have been foreseen, never mind prevented.

  But no amount of logical persuasion could divert Jason from his irrational desire to explain what the object was which appeared for an instant before vaporizing his wife and unborn child.

  He glowered at her.

  “Where's the proof, Jules?” he hissed. “Never mind that there was no body, but there was nothing...absolutely nothing left. No DNA, not even a single trace of an errant molecule. Nothing!”

  There was a feral look in his eyes as he pleaded for her to understand, but Jules shook her head.

  “Jason, the level of energy released that night was enough to make a crater ten miles wide and two miles deep. It was concentrated in an area barely two meters across. How could anything exist in that type of bombardment...I'm just amazed she was the only...”

  Julia broke off as she saw the ghost of grief cross her friend's face. It was a look he had done his best to hide and deny for months, ever since he'd come up with the crazy notion his wife was still alive.

  But he just shrugged, and a grimly determined expression replaced the sorrow as he spoke.

  “Jules, that energy level is one of the reasons I’m doing this. Think about it. There's no way we dialed the beams up enough to cause the sort of readings we recorded...There was something else there, something causing the energy spike.”

  Further conversation was halted by the doors opening at the main laboratory level, and Jason rushed out of the doors towards his old lab. The floor was deserted at this time of night but he looked furtively back and forth.

  Julia ran to keep up. He swiped the card and opened the door into the room, crossing over to the familiar consoles which controlled the central emitter assembly.

  “Jason, you can't do this!” Jules shouted, glancing at the fire alarm panel on the wall to her left. If she could reach it, the emergency cut outs would shut the whole lab level down. “I won't let you end your career like this.” She began walking towards it.

  Jason drew the gun and pulled the trigger. For a second Jules thought he’d shot her, but when she opened her eyes there was a sparking hole in the wall where the panel had been. He turned the muzzle in her direction.

  “I won't let you stop me!” he screamed. “I know she's alive, Jules. She has to be! They have to be.”

  Her terror subsided as she watched anguish replace the madness and tears form in his eyes. Not many people knew Alice was two months pregnant when the accident happened. Jason told her on the flight back from the service, but she already knew. Alice confided in her only a few minutes before her disappearance inside the ball of energy which appeared. This didn't matter now, however, as she knew she was the only one who could stop this insanity.

  It was pure luck she had been driving out through the security gates as Jason ploughed through them. She'd turned straight around and ran after him, catching him just before the elevator doors closed.

  “How could they be, Jason?” she asked, softly. “It's been two years. Two years of nothing.”

  She saw the sentence cut into his hope. It was true, however. All his attempts to gather evidence to corroborate his belief that his wife hadn't been vaporised resulted in nothing.

  Unfortunately, the guilt driving Jason outstripped the logic everyone else knew to be true.

  “I needed more power, Jules!” he shouted. “They never let me have a full power test since that day.”

  “Jesus, Jason, do you blame them?” she asked. “What happened scared the shit out of them. Fuck, it scared the shit out of me!”

  She knew it was useless as she watched Jason's calm expression turn angry.

  “I thought you at least might have understood, Julia.”

  She flinched as he used her full name for the first time in years. He knew, ever since they'd met she vastly preferred Jules to the name her parents called her.

  “You knew her,” he continued. “Alice was your friend. You should be doing anything you can to bring her back.”

  Julia’s face reddened. “Damn you, Jason!” she hissed. “I miss her just as much as you do. But there's nothing to bring back! Can't you see that? She's gone. Accept it before you screw any more lives up.”

  It was a low blow, Julia knew, but she saw it hit home and was glad of the pause it produced. If only she could delay him a few more minutes. Maybe security might be able to reach them.

  She regretted the words as she saw the pain on his face. Jason knew exactly what Julia meant when she accused him of screwing up lives. He’d abandoned his daughter Katheryne to this crazy idea. They hadn’t spoken more than twice since her mother disappeared.

  She saw the moment of indecision pass as Jason sat down at the console and began typing. He typed-one handed, keeping the gun pointed at Jules.

  “Come on, come on. Load up, you piece of shit!” He banged the console in frustration. He couldn’t keep an eye on her, and operate the complex controls at the same time.

  He waved the gun to a chair opposite him. “Sit down, Jules. And keep your hands to yourself. I don’t want to ha
ve to hurt you too.”

  This sentence and his possession of the keycard in his hand caused a cold pit to form in Jules’s stomach as she watched Jason’s hands fly across the keyboard. It was a master bypass key, issued to only ten or so people on the entire staff. Sure, most of them were Jason’s friends, but she didn’t think any of them would be stupid enough to willingly hand it over.

  He finished the first sequence, and the control board lit up with alarms as he bypassed the lockouts with the key card.

  And if they hadn’t handed it over, then just how desperate was he? She wondered, Desperate enough to harm a friend?

  “Where did you get the card, Jason?”

  If I can just stall him, give the guards enough time to get here, she thought.

  He didn’t reply. He simply rushed recklessly through the startup process, totally oblivious to her and the alarms.

  “Who did you hurt to get it? Lars? Piotre? Brigitte?” she persisted. The last name caused Jason to pause and turn.

  “She’s not hurt,” he said as his face reddened. “She’s...I drugged her. She’ll be fine in an hour or so.”

  Julia gaped at her friend. A desperate plan flashed into her head.

  “You son of a bitch!” she screamed, “She’s pregnant, you asshole! What if what you gave her hurts the baby?”

  It was a stretch, and Julia felt sickened at her lie, but it was all she could think of to delay him. It succeeded. She relied on his grief at losing his own unborn child breaking through, and for a few brief moments, it did.

  He looked at her with tears in his eyes, and for a second, Julia knew she reached him. The pain on his face was heartbreaking to behold, as if the grief of the last two years was at last being set free.

  Jules started to walk over to her friend, about to take him by the hand and let him cry the tears he so badly needed to, but as she got closer, he was taken over by something which was hidden inside him.

  The eyes looking back at her didn’t belong to Jason McNair anymore. There was no way her friend and mentor could provoke the feeling of terror she felt right at this moment. His face was cold and emotionless, but his eyes burnt like embers of hatred as he gazed contemptuously at her. She didn’t care about the experiment anymore. She just wanted to live long enough to get to the door, and run.

  She didn’t worry about her immediate safety, however, as Jason, if that’s who he truly was, turned to the console, his hands flashing impossibly fast across the keyboard. She watched as he locked out all external access. Elevators, stairwell access doors, all of them were locked as he overrode the protocols.

  Dimly, she realized he shouldn’t be able to do this. Jason was a geek, like her. There was no way he should be able to access the mainframe security systems with the level of expertise he displayed.

  With this task complete, he continued on with his original plan. Jules watched as the power levels on the capacitors feeding the particle beams pegged out at maximum. The control display was a sea of blinking-red alarms, as Jason prepared to carry out what looked to her to be a simultaneous collision of every operational beam.

  All the safeties were locked out, and Julia knew a catastrophic reaction was imminent. Indeed, it appeared this was exactly what Jason wanted to happen, as she watched him fine tune the emitters.

  There was only one way to prevent it, she realized, as her stomach turned to lead. She paused for half a second before a grim determination boiled up inside her, spurring her into action. She ran out of the door to the lab, half-expecting to be shot in the back. The elevators were locked out, she knew but if only…

  “Please open, please, please, please…yes!” She let out a small cry of triumph as her card unlocked the heavy doors of the collider aperture assembly chamber. They slid apart slowly, and she squeezed through.

  The light forming in the centre of the aperture was approaching blinding levels, and she hadn’t thought to grab a pair of protective goggles on the way in. She’d been too busy grabbing the fire extinguisher. She paused to utter a prayer to whatever gods might exist.

  Oh God, Katheryne…I’m so sorry, she thought, as she threw the metal canister with all her strength into the beams.

  She imagined she heard a scream of fury and frustration as the fireball engulfed her and the rest of the entire level, destroying everything in an inferno as hot as the surface of the sun.

  Chapter Two

  The Glade

  Hallor was furious. His blood boiled with inner hatred as he watched the council members rise to leave the chamber. To anyone looking at him, he would appear perfectly calm. He was quite adept at hiding his inner feelings, but this latest debacle strained his ability greatly. His muscles grew tight as he gripped the arms of his chair, and battled to control his temper.

  His 'daughter,' his mind spat the word out, was on the verge of ruining the plans he'd spent over ten years putting in place.

  This story, she'd just finished telling his fellow council members, had the potential to unravel his attempt to assist the Great One, Olumé. There could be no greater honour than being tasked by with such an important job. How dare she put this at risk?

  Thousands of years ago, these Lands of limitless magic were hidden behind a barrier called the Veil, to prevent this very same power from being used by a creature called Tenybris.

  Tenybris had been a friend of Olumé's since childhood, but he was twisted to evil and hatred, and for centuries succeeded in using the power of the Lands to conquer a huge part of the universe. These captured and broken people were fed to his slaves, who consumed their souls to feed their master’s insatiable appetite.

  The unlucky ones were resurrected as slaves, their souls corrupted and bent to Tenybris’s will.

  Tenybris was beyond evil and beyond redemption. When Olumé's great plan sprang into action and the Veil began to fall, moving the Lands and their magic out of all reality, all of Tenybris's power, all of his evil deeds were undone.

  The souls he and his slaves had stolen were released to pass into the Never, to mix with the energies there and be reborn.

  The souls of the people of the Lands were called home. Not merely the members of the Eldar, Faer Folk or Dwelves, who were perverted for Tenybris's use, but all the creatures he created to use as tools and engines of war were irresistibly drawn back to the world of their birth.

  This world became the Veiled Lands. At the centre lay the Glade, an area of peace and tranquility which remained so for eons.

  There was a time, barely a century before, when all of the Lands beyond the Glade were peaceful, but something changed outside the borders of the Glade. There was a darkness growing on the fringes of the Lands, and it was creeping steadily, and unstoppably, inwards.

  In his visions, Olumé showed Hallor the cause. His great plan had failed. Tenybris was free and was ravaging the realms again. He was using this new power he had gained to pierce the Veil. He was coming to claim the magic.

  So, Hallor had his task. Release the magic at the time and place which would most benefit Olumé’s alliance. Yet the time had never arrived. Olumé’s allies were still unprepared, and too disorganized, to mount the killing blow required to end the threat of Tenybris forever.

  Unfortunately his daughter's tale upset his carefully planned schedule. He tried to speak against sending a force to assist the Faer folk in their attempt to banish this ‘darkness,’ which mysteriously appeared at the heart of their forest. He knew even before the vote, that Gwenyth and the pathetic golden symbol which granted her the proxy powers of the Faer Queen herself had them all under her spell.

  Perhaps she was in league with the Queen, and used her blossoming powers to put a glamour on them all. But no, he detected no such spell. The awareness Olumé granted him would warn him of any attempted subterfuge.

  Olumé informed him in the dream about the corruption of the Faer folk. They were in servitude to Tenybris. Hallor always suspected they had a sinister agenda, so when the Great One told him the truth, it was a
s if another piece of a puzzle clicked into place in his mind.

  Now they used his own daughter to sway the council against him. This 'darkness' was nothing but a fabrication, a ruse to divert the Council from the picture of peace he needed to portray for just a few more years.

  He watched helplessly as the last of his colleagues left the room. He sat in silence, pondering the situation.

  True, the decision to send a detachment of Magisters, the enforcers of the Glade, to the Tree had been approved. Fortunately these things took time to organize, and who knows what might happen to the Queen’s representative in the meantime?

  His daughter had proven her recklessness many times in recent years. If she were to somehow do something so foolish and get herself hurt, or worse, then another representative may be appointed to liaise with the Faer, one who knew where his loyalties truly lay.

  Hallor smiled, but there was not a shred of warmth in it, as he felt the beginnings of a plan grow steadily within him. He decided to murder his adopted daughter, and it didn’t cause him one tiny bit of discomfort. Indeed, as he plotted, he felt a sense of hopeful anticipation growing within.

  Chapter Three

  The Deep Forest

  The shadow laughed. At least, it might have passed for mirth, if it possessed a corporeal form. It was all so easy, it thought, drawing its consciousness back, away from the accursed Citadel and its swarms of Eldar.

  It knew there was little risk of being detected. The arts it projected were so subtle, even if it were suspected such a spell was being cast, finding out how, and by whom, would be next to impossible.

  No, these People of the Lands no longer possessed the knowledge of the dark arts the shadow employed. This magic existed within the Lands thousands of years before Tenybris rose up and tapped into the forbidden well of energy. It never occurred to anyone, not even after all this time, to wonder how Tenybris gained the knowledge to grow so powerful in the path of black magic.