Post by Teg on Oct 22, 2015 8:25:56 GMT
Yup, so I'm totally writing a novel and thought I'd tease you guys with the first chapter. I'm participating in National Novel Writing month next month so I'll be super busy
Synopsis: A teenager finds out that she’s from a Royal, magical family. As she struggles to accept her destiny, she’s forced to embrace new powers, and her role, to save her people from an enemy clan. In the process, she falls in love… with the enemy. Will she prevail as the Savior of her people? Will she be able to keep her secret from her love?
Synopsis: A teenager finds out that she’s from a Royal, magical family. As she struggles to accept her destiny, she’s forced to embrace new powers, and her role, to save her people from an enemy clan. In the process, she falls in love… with the enemy. Will she prevail as the Savior of her people? Will she be able to keep her secret from her love?
Birthright
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
When I was eight, my mother vanished. I don’t mean she got up and walked out on us; she disappeared without a trace. I was traumatized by the ordeal.
I suffered from a Temporary Phlegmatic Complex. I was born with the disorder, but it remained inactive until provoked by something traumatic. The disease is most dominant in children and less likely to be triggered as a teenager or adult. Having the Complex meant that I was unable to “feel” emotions like an ordinary person, I was emotionless as if I were a programmed mechanical robot. I perceived feelings and knew what they looked like thanks to television shows, movies, and the people around me.
Over the years, I’ve learned to fake emotions to avoid scrutiny from my peers. I tried to live a normal life by making and hanging out with friends and dating. Though, Dad was never fond of the idea of me having a boyfriend. I went to school, studied hard, and even participated in various extracurricular activities such as cheerleading, soccer and volleyball.
Temporary Phlegmatic Complex is just that, temporary. The doctors couldn’t tell me when it would go away. It could happen a little at a time, over a vast timeframe, or all at once. Something traumatic would spark my emotions back to life.
At the beginning of summer, two months ago, my father received a letter from my mother. At first, he was reluctant to open it. It arrived in an envelope addressed to him with no return address, but he recognized her handwriting. His hands shook when he opened it. He read it quietly to himself, his eyes grew wide and his mouth gaped open. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair with his hands on top of his head and sighed. For ten tense minutes, neither of us said a word.
I wanted to ask him what was in the letter and needed to know why she’d disappeared. If she were still alive, why did she wait eight years to contact us? I shifted in my seat.
I couldn’t tell if he was relieved that Mom was still alive or angry that she had let us think the worst. His cheeks were red, yet his pale complexion could still be seen. He looked at me with tear-filled hazel eyes. “Ady, against my better judgment—the simple fact is this sounds crazy—I’m going to let you read this letter while I call your Aunt Clarise. After all, this is the first correspondence from your mother since her disappearance.” His voice rattled. “When I come back, we’ll talk about it. Okay?”
“‘Kay.” He handed me the letter and walked out of the room. My heart fluttered in my chest. I sat back on the couch and curled my legs underneath me. Leaning my elbow on the armrest, I read the letter.
My Dearest Christoph and Adalind,
I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen or heard from me. I want you both to know that I love you very much. I left to keep Adalind safe…
You probably won’t believe this, but my family comes from the Royal Salvatore bloodline. We have magic running through our veins. We are called Wagachi. Because of the magic within us, hunters and trackers consistently seek to destroy us. I thought I could hide from them, but I was wrong. They hunted me and found me. I had to leave to keep them from finding Adalind.
A war in against my people is approaching. Adalind is our only hope for winning the war. She will have to accept and embrace her powers to defeat the threat. It is written that she will be the most powerful Wagachi Queen our kind has ever seen.
Just before her seventeenth birthday, she will begin to have dreams. Our people call them visions. When that happens, it will trigger the emotions that she’s been suppressing since I left. That trigger of emotion will activate the Trace… and the hunters and trackers will be able to find her. Because of that, she will be in grave danger. She must go to Clarise’s and Clarise will help her become who she’s meant to be. It’s imperative to keep her safe, I can’t stress that enough.
I’m sorry and I
The letter stopped. I imagined the worst possible scenario. The people after her caught and killed her. But, if that were true, how would she have sent the letter? I imagined that maybe, they found her and she had to run. When she got away, she put the unfinished letter into an envelope addressed to Dad, sent it off, and continued to run. Yeah, that seemed more plausible.
A small ache filled my chest, tears welled in my eyes, and my throat was a little sore. Was I actually feeling emotion?
Before I had the chance to figure it out, My Dad yelled at Aunt Clarise through the phone. “This is absurd. I don’t hear from her for eight years and she sends me this crap?” He huffed and his breathing got heavier. I got up from the couch and walked to the wall to listen. I didn’t want him to see me.
“This has got to be a joke! You’re just as crazy as she is…” As if he kicked a wooden chair across the room, the shrieking sound of something as it scraped the floor pierced my ears. It hit the on the opposite side of the wall where I stood. I took that as a cue to go to my room.
Safely in my bedroom, I sat down at my desk. Where is my Mom? Who is my Mom? Why hadn’t she contacted us until now?…
I turned on my laptop and opened Chrome. The Google search page loaded. After typing Who are the Wagachi, a long list of myths presented themselves. About a third of the way down the page, Wagachi Prophecies caught my attention. “A Wagachi Queen will leave her daughter in fear for her life. The young Royal will suppress her emotions…” I sat back in my chair as my heart raced, my mouth hung wide open, and my body quivered. This can’t be true. Stuff like this isn’t real. The start of the prophecy had described me. Literally. Leaning forward with my elbow propped up on my desk and my chin in my hand, I read some more.
“She will be the most powerful Wagachi Queen our people have seen. She’ll wield the powers of each Tribe… She must embrace her role… She is our savior…” That’s insane. I couldn’t be Royal, Dad never mentioned it and I’m pretty sure that’s something he’d of divulged. Why had Mom waited all these years to tell us something like this? My body radiated in heat as I thought about it.
Deciding to dig a little further, I went back to the search page to look up each of the Wagachi Tribes. According to my research, the four tribes each had their own purpose. One tribe could morph from man to animal, some into wolf-form and other’s could transfigure into birds; usually owls. Another tribe, described as spell casters, wielded both dark and light magic. None of this makes sense. I slammed my laptop shut and paced in front of my bed.
There were footsteps on the stairs. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the time; two hours had passed. Dad knocked on my door. “Honey, can I come in?” His eyes were swollen and red. His hands trembled as he whispered. “I just got off the phone with Aunt Clarise.”
I plopped down on my bed. “What did she say?”
“Well, she says your Mom isn’t crazy and that she is, in fact, alive.” A tear fell from his eye.
“‘Kay, that’s a good thing right?” I asked.
“Of course, I just can’t wrap my head around any of this. She said she didn’t tell us because Mom asked her not to. She claimed it was the only way to ensure that you would remain safe,” he said. “But, she didn’t tell me why you could be in danger either.”
He sighed and looked at his feet. “Aunt Clarise said that your destiny is written and will not change.”
“I know, but I can’t believe that. Not yet.” I got up and walked to my desk. “Dad, I did some research while you were on the phone. The Wagachi people, if they actually exist, describe me in one of their Prophecies.”
I shivered at my own words. I’m a sixteen-year-old kid in high school, how the hell am I suppose to save anyone? “I mean, they actually describe me.” I opened my laptop and let him read the prophecy. His eyebrows rose as he gawked at the screen before he slammed the laptop shut.
“For now, this is just a story. Simply mumbo-jumbo,” he said. “I want you to promise me some things, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t go out alone. Take Cora or that boyfriend of yours, whatever his name is, with you. And, if you notice anything strange or anyone lurking around then you need to tell me.”
“‘Kay, I will.” I knew he was serious. He hated the idea of me dating. For him to tell me to keep Marcus with me, he had to be apprehensive.
“No, I need you to promise me.” He sat down on the bed next to me and pointed his finger at my face. “Promise me.”
“‘Kay, I promise.”
*
Over the next month, my emotions gradually came back to life. I was happy when I went out to hang with Cora and Marcus. When I got my first car, a feeling of excitement overwhelmed me. I found myself angry when thinking about the letter from Mom. How could she just leave and let us think the worst for so long? Then, write to us acting like nothing ever happened, explaining things about me through a letter; unbelievable things? Confused, I didn’t know what to expect. Everything she wrote and everything I read made no sense.
It was pretty far-fetched that I would become anything of such importance—not to mention the powers that I would have. Stuff like that just didn’t exist in real life. I was relieved to know she was still alive, yet I worried about her because of how her letter abruptly ended and the fact that we hadn’t heard from her since. I was feeling things. While it was exciting, it scared me at the same time.
Like my Mom’s letter suggested, I started having dreams – horrible nightmares. The first of them visited me when I fell asleep at my computer desk filling out a college application for Notre Dame. Several other’s followed suite. A blond-headed man was the killer in each one. He always murdered women between the ages of 17 and 25 with curled or wavy and auburn or black hair. After that, they came about three to four nights a week. I pushed them into the back of my head. Though I promised my Dad I’d tell him when I noticed anything strange, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t convinced that they were anything more than terrible dreams.
Often, the screams of the dying women woke me. I’d wake up shaking with sweat beading down my face and neck. On those nights, I’d call Cora and tell her about the dream, but I never told her about my Mom’s letter. After about thirty minutes, she’d reassure me that it was just a nightmare and suggest that I try to rest.
Two days before school started, I had my first conscious dream. I had just gotten out of the shower and was getting ready to meet Cora and Marcus at the theatre. As I put on my tennis shoes, it hit me like an ocean pummeling me with its waves.
On my way home from school, I walked down Main Street. On either side of me there were brick buildings, some of which were occupied by the local businesses, the others were vacant. Passing Keegan’s—the coffee shop my friends and I frequently visited—I heard a rustling sound behind me. It spooked me and my heart raced.
The growl from the deepest part of its throat made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. A black and orange cat jumped out of a trashcan and into the middle of the street.
I sighed in relief. While I walked down Main, I composed myself. My heartbeat regulated as I took in deep breaths and my hands stopped trembling. Still, I picked up the pace.
Footsteps pounded on the pavement behind me. I didn’t want to turn around, but I had to. Turning to look, the murderous blond-haired freak from my nightmares stared at me. His hair bobbed on top of his head with each stroke of his feet to the concrete. He took giant – leaping steps towards me as he ran. The distance between us diminished quickly. I saw his gruesome smile and rotted teeth.
I ran down Main and cut over to Fourth.
“Adalind Jade Salvatore, STOP!” he yelled when I cut through a backyard on Prior Street. Taking a hard right, I sprinted down Victor Mill into the park behind my house and paused. My chest heaved, and my mouth was dried up like a stoner’s mouth after smoking too much pot. I tried to catch my breath, but I was terrified. My legs shook like jello. My whole body trembled. My heart pounded violently in my chest like a boxer working out on a punching bag…
The images faded from my mind. As I sat on my bed, my body trembled and my head hurt. It felt like a bullet had penetrated my skull and bore through to the other side, a searing pain that wouldn’t end. This nightmare was different. He’d chased me. It felt so real. After grabbing my phone from my pocket, I called Cora.
She answered the phone on the second ring. “Hey, I know I’m running late. You don’t need to call me to remind me.” She assumed that I had called to gripe at her.
“No, look I can’t come. Please tell Marcus that I’ll meet up with you guys later.”
“What? We’ve been planning this all week. Why can’t you?” Cora groaned.
“I just can’t. Love you. Call me tomorrow. ‘Kay?” I heard the tautness in my voice as I spoke to her.
“Is everything alright?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah. I just can’t come out tonight,” I said.
“‘Kay. Love you, too. I’ll call you later,” Cora said. I hung up the phone and sunk into my pillow. Tears welled in my eyes.
What did it all mean? Are the visions or the dreams images of the future? Was he going to come after me? Who was he and why was he the evil man in all of my nightmares? The questions flooded my head and threatened to drown me.
Dad needed to know. I walked down the stairs, shaken from the vision I’d had. He was sitting in his recliner watching television.
“Daddy?”
He looked over at me. When he realized I was crying, he turned off the TV and walked over. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
My heart sank. I didn’t want to tell him, but I knew I had to. “We need to talk about Mom’s letter.”
His brows furrowed. Frowning, he looked at me with soft eyes. “What happened?”