Calle J Brookes [Dardanos, Co Out of the Darkness (epub)

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.Nothing would harm her now; the tree and grasses would ensure that.And what they didn’t, he would.He strengthened the defenses around the perimeter, closing the hole they’d entered completely.He didn’t need it to get in and out anyway.He’d only left it open for her sake.But she was asleep, probably for a long while, and it would take him little time to carry out what he planned.He’d be back long before she woke.With barely a thought he flashed himself into a bat and flew straight up, to the holes he’d placed in the cave’s ceiling, and out into the strange night.***Wherever they were was darker than he was used to.Almost like the longest winter night of Alaska or the far north of Canada.He’d been there a time or two.Siberia, as well.But this terrain wasn’t nearly as cold.Just dark.But it didn’t remind him much of Colorado, either.The grasses were thicker, more like the jungles of South America where his particular branch of Dardaptoans had originated nearly two thousand years ago.And the plants were unlike any he recognized.He’d seen some wildlife, though not as much as he’d thought he would.There were deer-like creatures, similar to the modern animal that roamed his world now.A few birds, nocturnal, competed with him for space in the sky.The air felt heavy and oppressive, though the temperature was moderate.He tensed, even hidden deep in the body of the bat.Every instinct he had told him something was wrong with this place, in a way he had yet to figure out.He picked up speed.He wanted to find the nearest town and figure out where in the three hells they’d been warped to and then get his ass back to his Rajni.There was nothing about this that he liked at all, and least of all having Cassandra alone.With just a damned tree and a few rocks to protect her.The distant lights of a city glowed miles away from where he flew.It was there he headed.Fifteen minutes later he was disgusted by what he’d found.The inhabitants of the city were humanoid in appearance, though he sensed some demon and other ancestry mixed in.They were barely on the level of Gaian Middle Ages in technology or hygiene.The city was a bit more modern in architecture, mostly stone and wood, but the windows had no glass.Leather skins provided what protection there was from the cooler night temperatures.He gave up on the idea of finding help in this place and instead started searching for information.With the portion of demon blood he could sense, there had to be someone in the place that sold portkeys.Or someone who knew where he could find some.That was the only way he was getting his Rajni back where she belonged.It took little effort to turn his physical self into something to match the creatures he saw loitering in alleyways and doorframes.The filth was much harder to manifest on his skin, and then he said screw it and kept his body clean.He was Dardaptoan, after all, and uncleanliness was something despised by most of his people.The woman who’d birthed him was the one exception to that characteristic he’d ever found.He stood several inches over the average of these people, and he enhanced that.Made himself taller, stronger, and cleaner than the people he’d seen here.Made himself stand out considerably.He even enhanced the ugliness of the scar on his face—it suited this place that he was in and signified that he was nothing to mess with.He carried his sword prominently displayed at his hip.He walked so that anyone staring at him would see the strength beneath his tunic.The tunic that was strangely similar to those worn by the inhabitants of this world.Did they possess common ancestry? Three hells if he knew—it was certainly possible.Wherever he was, it had similar elements to their society as that from which he came.Interesting.As only a handful of the eighteen realms could make such claims, from what he remembered of his studies centuries ago.Dardaptoans evolved from a mix of their goddess’s tears at her arrival in Gaia nearly seven thousand years ago.And they’d changed rapidly three thousand five hundred years ago when the goddess met the Wolf god and the war between the Lupoiux and the Dardaptoans raged.These changes stopped occurring when the other deities locked the damned bitch goddess and the dog in Levia for three thousand years.But the Dardaptoans came from those tears and the goddess’s family’s DNA, from the people of whatever world it had been that she had left behind.He had never asked, though he’d met the girl goddess a handful of times, just where she had come from.He’d barely resisted spitting on her for what she’d done to him.To his sister and brother.She was supposed to protect the innocent.None had been more innocent than his young sister.None.He’d had no interest in the other realms—other than the ones he hunted from—but now he wished he’d at least learned their names and how connected to each other every realm was.Some could be easily traversed.Others, not so much.Levia, the sparsely populated realm where the girl goddess and the Wolf had been kept for so many millennia, could only be reached by traveling through two interconnected realms.Levia could not be reached directly with any port key.An added protection that would serve the place well if the rumors of coming wars were true.But then again, from what he’d heard, Levia had little population except displaced Lupoiux and a handful of Dardaptoans who’d accompanied the girl goddess back after her mating with the Lupoiux god.The leader of the people the Dardaptoans had despised for millennia.Was this place the same? How in the three hells was he supposed to get her back home?He thought about the damned girl he’d do anything to protect.Thought of how she’d looked with a damned plant wrapped around her for warmth and protection.Thought of how beautiful she’d looked with the Druidic power in her eyes.Failure this time just wasn’t going to be an option.Chapter 10He searched for a marketplace, some kind of shop that would provide them with supplies, though he had the skills and powers to ensure that every need the girl had was met easily.A world’s supplies told him a lot about the place.And the economy.A marketplace that sold mostly goods needed for minimal survival hinted at a world far different from the one that he had left with its electronic toys and touch screen phones and other such stupid luxuries.And what magics existed in this place.Gaia frowned on anything not human in nature, though most of the damned idiot humans had no idea that real magics even existed.New Age shops were cropping up here and there—mostly ran by Witches who worshiped the goddess Nelciana—but the general mass of humans shied away from the places ran by the true Nelcian followers.The demon realm, Relaklonos, was far different [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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