Ascendant: The Revelations of Oriceran (The Kacy Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CONTENTS

  Oriceran

  Dedication

  Legal

  Oriceran US Map

  Oriceran Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Author Notes - AL Knorr

  Author Notes - Martha Carr

  Publisher Notes - Michael Anderle

  Social Links

  Series AL Knorr

  Series Martha Carr

  Series List LMBPN

  Ascendant

  The Kacy Chronicles Book 2

  By A.L. Knorr and Martha Carr

  A part of

  The Revelations of Oriceran Universe

  Written and Created

  by Michael Anderle & Martha Carr

  The Oriceran Universe

  (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are

  Copyright (c) 2017 by Martha Carr and LMPBN Publishing.

  DEDICATION

  From A.L. Knorr

  For anyone who ever wished they could fly.

  From Martha

  To everyone who still believes in magic and all the possibilities that holds.

  To all the readers who make this entire ride so much fun.

  And to all the dreamers just like me who create wonder, big and small, every day.

  ASCENDANT Team

  JIT Beta Readers

  Kelly ODonnell

  Alex Wilson

  Paul Westman

  Micky Cocker

  Larry Omans

  Kimberly Boyer

  Joshua Ahles

  Nicola Aquino

  If we missed anyone, please let us know!

  ASCENDANT (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  This book Copyright © 2017 A.L. Knorr and Martha Carr

  Cover Design by Damonza

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, October 2017

  The Oriceran Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2017 by Martha Carr and LMBPN Publishing.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Eohne lay with her back in the dirt and a cloth bag under her head to serve as a pillow. She munched on a piece of grass as she gazed at the stars sparkling down over Charra-Rae. The Arpaks—Jordan and Sol—had left that morning. Though Eohne felt a surprising amount of loss for two people she'd only just met, she figured it was probably a good thing they’d gone. Jordan had been a welcome distraction; it would be too easy to get involved in Jordan's search for her mother, too easy for Eohne to abandon her own mission—the mission Sohne had charged her with.

  ‘Find a way to synthesize the gersher fungus,’ had been Sohne's command. Eohne had documented all one hundred and seventy-three attempts. All had failed. Eohne was the Charra-Rae Elves’ best inventor, best deductive mind, and supposedly the most adept—other than Sohne herself—at understanding the language at the root of their magic. Yet so far, she hadn't even come close to success. She was able to remake the fungi so that it smelled, tasted, and had texture identical to the real thing, but it had none of the healing benefits. It was an impotent forgery, a perfect likeness in every way except for the way that mattered.

  A small cloud of what looked like glitter flashed through the air, drawing Eohne's eyes to the treetops at the edge of the glen. Here they came—her messenger bugs, back from their delivery to Allan, Jordan's father. Eohne reached for the jar sitting in the grass by her hip and tapped a fingernail against the glass.

  Clink, clink, clink! Her messenger bugs plopped themselves into the jar as Eohne counted the sounds of their bodies hitting the glass. Eleven, twelve, thirteen…

  The glass went quiet. Eohne frowned and sat up, looking into the starry darkness yawning overhead. She waited, but it took mere seconds of silence for her to deduce that something had gone wrong.

  The messenger bugs are tethered together by magic; it is impossible for only some of them to return and not others. Isn’t it?

  She picked up the jar with the little glass balls nestled inside, their legs tucked away. She recounted, but it was a useless exercise. It was easy to eyeball that almost half of her bugs were missing.

  She withdrew the syringe she had used to inject the bugs with Jordan's vocal vibrations, and plucked a bug from the jar. Inserting the needle into the belly of the bug, she drew out the liquid. Normally she would discard the juice—it had served its purpose and it wasn't bringing any return message. But there might be some information hidden within that would help Eohne work out what had happened.

  She sprayed a small amount of the liquid into her palm and pressed her middle finger into it. She closed her eyes, shutting out the night. But there was nothing. No vibrations to pick up, no information. The liquid was dead.

  She wiped the dampness away, huffed with frustration, and screwed the cap back on the jar. She got to her feet and tucked the jar into her sack. She brushed the leaves out of her hair and dusted the dirt from her clothing, and then made her way down the hill, into the forest, winding through the narrow loamy path towards home. Her footfalls were silent, her form a ghost in the woods, but her razor-sharp inventor's mind was racing. What does this mean? What has happened to the rest of my bugs?

  The music of flutes and drums drifted through the ferns and leaves. The bright blue fire of the Charra-Rae Elves h
ad been lit, and the smell of elvish cooking reached Eohne's nose. Her stomach rumbled, but she was too distressed to think about food. She reached the outskirts of the gathering and combed the faces for Sohne.

  The copper-haired Elf wasn't difficult to spot. Sohne was talking with two of the elders and drinking from a wooden chalice, lounging in an elaborately carved wooden chair while the elders stood around her. Eohne crossed the circle and approached as Sohne and the elders burst into laughter over something.

  "Do you have a moment?" Eohne asked in the tongue of Charra-Rae, her head bowed.

  Sohne's laughter died away, and she turned cool eyes on the inferior Elf. "What is it?"

  "May I speak with you alone, please?"

  Sohne pressed her lips together but nodded to the elders. "Give us a moment."

  The others moved away toward the food. Sohne got up from her seat, and the two elven women turned away from the crowd and moved towards the outskirts of the party. Eohne stayed just behind Sohne, the way she knew Sohne liked. When they were out of earshot, Eohne waited for Sohne to face her and signal that she could speak.

  Keeping her eyes down, Eohne said, "I allowed Jordan to use my messenger bugs to get a message to her father."

  "That was foolish," answered Sohne, crossing a long forearm over her stomach. Her voice was not disdainful, simply matter-of-fact. "Did it work?"

  "Partially. Not all of them have returned."

  Sohne cocked her head quizzically at Eohne. The shadows on her face sharpened in the firelight. "Where are the others?"

  "That's why I came to you. This has never happened before." Eohne wilted inside as Sohne's face hardened. She forged on, forcing her voice to sound stronger than she felt. "I can only assume they remain on Earth, though I've no idea why."

  "There was no information returned with them?"

  "Nothing. The juice is flat. Dead."

  Sohne let a long breath out through her nose. "But you don't know if it’s dead because the missing bugs were destroyed somehow, or if it’s dead because the rest are still trapped on Earth?"

  "No." Eohne dropped her eyes to Sohne's feet. "I don't know."

  "You had better hope that it’s the former."

  Eohne finally looked up with an expression of surprise. "Hope is not enough in this case. I need to get them back. It might have been foolish for me to send a message to Earth, but it would be even more foolish to leave them there."

  A look of understanding crossed Sohne's stark and beautiful features. Her sapphire eyes glimmered in the light. "You want to know if you can leave Charra-Rae?"

  "Yes."

  Sohne shook her head. "Your assignment is too important. I don't want you diverting your attention from it."

  "But—"

  "What do you think would happen to Charra-Rae if the gersher fungus stopped producing?" Sohne asked; her tone had an edge that made Eohne cringe.

  Eohne's mouth had gone dry at the denial to her request, but it didn't stop her from challenging Sohne again. "How likely is that to happen?" The fungus dying off at random was an eventuality that seemed near impossible to Eohne. It was true that it was their most important export, but they'd never suffered a serious dearth of it before—only slower growth cycles.

  "We don't know, do we?" Sohne answered with a frown. "We can't cultivate it; its magic remains elusive to you. You can replicate every other substance so perfectly that there is no discernible difference between yours and nature's. Why not the fungus?" Sohne cocked an accusatory eyebrow and crossed her arms. "If you had solved the problem already, I would be happy to let you go. But—" She shrugged in a way that said, this is on you, not me.

  Eohne frowned at her senior. "The fungus is not in short supply. We haven't had a deficiency in over eighteen years. But if those bugs are trapped on earth somehow, we've just knowingly left someone the ability to make a new portal—"

  "Not we," interrupted Sohne. "You." She dropped her arms and pointed a long finger into Eohne's chest. "This was a risk that you decided to take. Live with it." With that, the redheaded Elf turned her back on Eohne and returned to the fire. She looked back over her shoulder once to say, "Eat, Eohne. You need your strength."

  Eohne turned away from the fire and walked the faintly glimmering path to her home, seething. Sohne could be a brilliant leader—she could even give the impression of having compassion, at times. But Sohne never did anything that didn't strengthen, protect, or position the Elves of Charra-Rae for a safe and secure future. What did she care if some random Earthling accidentally found his or her way through to Oriceran, or got trapped in the in-between?

  Maybe Sohne didn't care, but Eohne did. Eohne cared very much.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jordan followed Sol as he descended to a large flagstone terrace. Throughout the stones in patchwork style were pockets of plants, foliage, trees, and flowers—some of which looked a lot like plants from Earth—but there was always something just a little bit different about them. There were flowers that had the droopy conical blossoms of foxglove, only with several long red pistils flowing out from each blossom and drifting in the breeze like hair.

  "Where are we?" Jordan asked, closing up her wings and wandering closer to the nearest garden patch, drawn by a sweet fragrance. "I mean, I know we're in Maticaw. But whose place is this?"

  She bent down to inhale, but had to go slowly. She still wasn't used to the weight of her wings, and the muscular soreness that had come with the last few days of travel was only now just starting to ease. Sol had coached her to keep her wings slightly flexed while walking—or just behaving like a biped in general—rather than letting them relax and go limp, but not before she'd toppled over more than once when bending over, as the weight of her wings pulled her forward unexpectedly. Jordan had a sneaking suspicion Sol had enjoyed her ungraceful tumbles and had delayed giving her this handy little tip.

  "This is where Cles lives and works; I've come to deliver this," he held up a small folded yellow letter. "I'm not sure how long this will take. It depends on what it says and if he needs to write a reply. Do you mind waiting here?"

  "Not at all." Jordan breathed in the fragrant perfume of a pastel green rose-like blossom the size of her head. This garden is a pretty beautiful place to hang out.

  "Thanks." Sol disappeared through an archway, and a few seconds later Jordan heard the sound of squeaky hinges as some door opened to receive him. The door closed, and she was left alone with the blossoms and the insects that danced among them.

  She strolled the terrace at her leisure, sniffing plants and herbs, and trying and failing to place the language root of the identifying glyphs that had been painted onto the tiny signposts thrust into the dirt. They had accents not unlike that of Hebrew, sharp angles of Runes, and the occasional swirling spirals of Sanskrit. But altogether, the language was indiscernible to her.

  The terrace was enclosed on all sides by a stone wall nearly twice Jordan's height. The exception was a handful of lower narrow ledges scattered about, where a view of Maticaw could be gained. The sounds of distant laughter floating on the humid, sea air drew Jordan to one of these ledges, where she was rewarded with a sprawling view of Maticaw. She hopped up on the thick mantel, flexing her wings for balance and sat cross-legged.

  Bright blue water threw off sparkles of the morning sun, already fat and hot. Jordan perched her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her palm as the wind tugged at her hair. Sailing vessels of all sizes and shapes drifted in and out of the large port. This one tall and slender like a schooner, that one winged and spiked like an Asian spice trader. A small rocky island just beyond the shelter of the bay, with a fortress-like construction on it, turned black as the sun sank low in the sky.

  Distant conversations drifted up from the city like puffs of smoke; loud brays of laughter and some harsher sounding exchanges filled the air and made Maticaw feel alive. Peering a little further over the edge, Jordan could see the long drop of a stone wall plummeting for several stories before
meeting the winding cobbled streets below. A narrow set of stairs zigzagged up the rocky hillside and wrapped itself around the curved walls of the tower on which Jordan now sat.

  Hopping off the ledge, Jordan crossed the terrace and wandered beneath the archway that Sol had passed through. A smaller courtyard opened up with a stone building on one side featuring two huge wooden doors, both closed. A wooden gate at the far end beckoned, and she found the staircase on the other side of it. Jordan looked back at the wooden doors. There’s no sign of Sol yet; surely I have time for just a short, exploratory walk. I’ll be back before he even notices I’m missing. Besides, I have wings now and can be back on the terrace in a flash.

  The gate squealed as Jordan pushed through it and descended the curving stone steps. Having the world suddenly wide open on one side, where the edge of the stairs dropped off with no railing or wall, made her heart skip a beat. The wind picked up her hair and whipped it around.

  Jordan followed the stairway down to street level and found herself in the midst of a busy city market. Fascinated, she followed the road downward, taking in the small quaint shops and the wares on display. It was like Nishpat, only much bigger and more cosmopolitan. As fascinating as the shops were, they couldn't compare to Maticaw's citizens.

  Amongst the humans were countless non-humans, all looking a great deal like someone had taken drawings from a fantasy artist’s doodle book and breathed them into life. There had been more than a few moments that hammered home Jordan was surely not on Earth anymore; walking Maticaw's cobbled streets was one of them. A large furry silver rat wearing a vest scampered by on its hind legs. He or she had a burlap sack held in its paws, just like a prim housewife would hold a clutch. A larger creature that still only reached mid-thigh went the other way, rolling a small barrel. His skin was a rich forest green color. The hands that pushed the barrel were three-fingered, and each digit was completed by a single, terrifying claw. One rheumy eye moving independently of the other darted up at her, and she looked away, sure that the creature wouldn't appreciate her staring.