Second Soul (The Dreamon War Saga Book 1), page 1
SEcoNd
SouL
The Dreamon War Saga
Book One
Corwin Michaels
© 2024 Corwin Michaels; all rights reserved.
ISBN 9798882628559 (paperback) 979-8-8692-2371-5 (hardcover)
No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, photographing, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First edition April 2024
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Front cover design Vivien R.
HearthTales Publishing
Rochester, NY
www.corwinmichaels.com
DEDICATION
To Jen, for listening to every version of this story.
And to Heather, for being there.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vi Chapter Twenty 255
Prologue 3 Chapter Twenty-One 276
Chapter One 12 Chapter Twenty-Two 294
Chapter Two 23 Chapter Twenty-Three 306
Chapter Three 34 Chapter Twenty-Four 316
Chapter Four 44 Chapter Twenty-Five 327
Chapter Five 68 Chapter Twenty-Six 340
Chapter Six 78 Chapter Twenty-Seven 353
Chapter Seven 93 Chapter Twenty-Eight 366
Chapter Eight 107 Chapter Twenty-Nine 370
Chapter Nine 116 Chapter Thirty 396
Chapter Ten 133 Epilogue 403
Chapter Eleven 147
Chapter Twelve 159
Chapter Thirteen 170
Chapter Fourteen 180
Chapter Fifteen 195
Chapter Sixteen 208
Chapter Seventeen 220
Chapter Eighteen 234
Chapter Nineteen 244
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sometimes writing a book feels incredibly lonely, but the journey from a blank page to where this book is now is because of the efforts and support of so many people. Without my close friends and family who had to listen to my ideas and talk to me about where this story was going and convince me that I wasn’t crazy to pursue this.
I also want to thank my beta readers and ARC reader team who helped to smooth out the rough edges and keep me on track. It certainly takes a village to raise a book!
Prologue
Kai whistled low under her breath, impressed by the sheer size of the cavern under Aurumount. The engineers had worked wonders in expanding and improving the natural space. You could almost forget, nestled deep in the capital mountain, that there were miles of stone above you. She and thirty-five of her fellow Second Souls would use this cavern to finally put an end to the war. It could easily fit the entirety of the capital and half of Shatterpoint too, but it wasn't the size that was the most impressive part. That honor belonged to the fifty-foot wide ring of eighteen obsidian obelisks, carefully arranged in the center of the underground expanse.
Each seventeen-foot tall obelisk gleamed in the torchlight, their surfaces perfectly smooth to the touch. Kai’s blurry reflection on the closest one shifted in the flickering light. Kai knew that decades of research and careful planning had gone into their construction and arrangement here under the mountain. The head of the Second Souls had finally agreed to a joint operation with the Crown of Delrythia. Historically, Second Souls were neutral in the affairs of any one country, but neutrality had kept them locked into a constant state of defense. Kai wasn’t sure if the other nations had been approached, but if this worked, they would all finally be free. For the first time in recorded history, the entirety of Alvar would know peace.
“Thank you all.” The Stone’s clear voice called out across the cavern, echoing off the distant cave walls. Kai and the others immediately stood at attention as the older man spoke from the dais slightly above the cavern floor. The robes of his station were dark blue with silver trim, with the sigil of the Second Souls embroidered on his chest. Two crescent circles, one embroidered in white, the other blue, to denote his rank and class. His carefully maintained white hair matched that of his beard. Reddish hues in his copper skin hinted at his Lytalian descent. Stone Walden, the man who held the highest position within the Second Souls and with it the respect of every person on Alvar. As leader of the Second Souls, the first and only line of defense against the Dreamons, the Stone selflessly gave his entire life to the cause. It was a dangerous position, not just as a target of Dreamons, but spending that long working magic took an emotional toll, one Kai couldn’t even begin to fathom.
“Never before has Alvar seen this many Dreamwalkers in one place before!” The Stone’s strong baritone boomed out across the cavern. “And that should make the enemy tremble indeed! For today our many plans finally come to fruition!”
A loud cheer roared up from the Second Souls. Normally they were a very reserved group, guarding their emotions carefully, but soon they would be using their strongest emotions anyways, so even Kai joined in.
“You have each already faced great adversity in bonding to the Shatterstone and taking up the mantle of Dreamwalker. Let us all take a moment of silence to remember those that gave their lives during their Bonding.” The Stone bowed his head; Kai and the others followed suit.
Kai knew that pain far too well. When the call had gone out last year that the Second Souls were recruiting heavily, specifically for Dreamwalkers, she and her sister had both volunteered, traveling all the way from Shale to Shatterpoint, arriving just after Kai’s sixteenth birthday. Her sister Opa, despite being a year older, had always been the more free-spirited of the two of them. She smiled faintly, remembering Opa’s bad jokes and many pranks. They had both undergone the bonding ritual, along with one hundred other volunteers from across Alvar. However, Bonding to any of the prime materials is dangerous, with Shatterstone even more so. Sixty didn’t survive, including Opa.
Kai reached up with the first two fingers of her right hand and lightly tapped the left side of her chest twice, where her own sigil was, purple and silver, the Second Soul salute. Then, out of habit, she grabbed her Shatterstone pendant and squeezed it twice. Each Second Soul wore one, but only Dreamwalkers were Bonded to theirs, an act that split the stone and buried half in her chest.
“What we do here will mark a new era for all of Alvar!” The Stone gripped the edges of his podium, his voice piercing the heavy silence, amplified by the smooth stone of the cavern. “Not since the Shattering itself has something like this been attempted!” The Stone paused, looking down at Kai and the others. “You all know the plan. Every one of you has an important part to play.” Murmurs of assent bubbled up from the assembled Dreamwalkers.
“We are tired of losing friends and family to their destruction. We are tired of the nightmares that plague each and every one of us. And most of all, we are tired of being held hostage, unable to progress because any night might be our last. So tonight, we draw the line. Here and now. We end their occupation today! We declare our world reclaimed! Our dreams reclaimed! We declare in one voice for every Alvarian. ‘Dreamons no more!’” The Stone raised his left fist and tapped out the Second Soul salute, smiling down at them all.
More yells and salutes echoed around the large cave, all their emotional discipline training forgotten. But after today it wouldn’t matter. They would also be reclaiming those as well today.
Kai felt a tear fall from her chin, but for once she didn’t try to force herself to remain stoic. Not today. Not after everything she had been through to get here. This cavern full of Dreamwalkers had little more than a year of training, five years less than a traditional Second Soul would have. But the entirety of it had been focused on this moment, and they were far more prepared for this than any other Second Soul in history, Dreamwalker or otherwise.
“Pair off and take your positions at your assigned obelisk, please. It is still a few hours until nightfall, but it will take us nearly that entire time to infuse each obelisk,” the Stone reiterated. They all knew the plan, but it was worth repeating.
Kai went over the battle plan again and again. Each obelisk would have two Dreamwalkers to infuse it with high levels of emotional energy. This would draw a Dreamon to it, thinking it to be an easy meal. The obsidian’s properties would enable them to trap the Dreamon inside and render it inert and unable to escape. She had learned about the other Prime Infused materials, the ones the other classes of Second Souls used to bond to Alvar, but obsidian was different. Being touched in equal portions by the Wellspring and the Whirlpool’s Currents, obsidian could pierce the veil between their realm and that of the Dreamons.
Nearly seven thousand years ago, her ancestors, the precursors to the Second Souls, Shattered the world. No one knew how or why, but what they did gave humans access to the magic of Alvar through the process of bonding to it. Since then, the war against the Dreamons had raged for countless generations, the magic of Alvar giving them their only fighting chance. Tonight, they would hopefully end the war for good.
Kai and her assigned partner, Taye, walked to their obelisk. Kai gave him a salute and a smile. He sported the tan skin and dark hair of a Delrythi, just as she did, although his hair was much shorter than hers. Taye walked with easy confidence and gave her a lazy salute back. It took effort not to be jealous of him and the way the lessons they’d been taught had come so easily to him, while Kai had struggled through every single one.
“Taye.” Kai nodded quickly, slightly flustered under his intense gaze. His eyes were pale blue and seemed to know more than they should, as if they were capable of seeing in some other spectrum. There was a quiet rage in him as well, one that Kai could understand, a depth that matched her own grief.
“You have the lattice pattern memorized?” he asked. Kai blushed in response. She’d forgotten once, and he had never let her live it down.
“Of course!” she replied, a bit too quickly. Kai had spent the last week going over it again and again. Though Delrythi, or any language, could be used to build the lattice, most of the Second Souls were taught to use Ancient Alvarian. The argument was that the ancient language had clearer intent and didn’t bear the weight of muddied meanings, colloquialisms, or historical inaccuracies. Each character was simple, specific, and proven through repeated study to build the strongest lattices.
“Excellent!” Taye whispered excitedly. “Sunrise meet you, Kai.”
“And you, Taye,” she whispered back. Though they were supposed to stay neutral, it was hard to break the Delrythi blessing.
“It is time!” the Stone called out. “Place one hand upon the obelisk and begin building the lattice. Keep it simple and strong! Push!” He yelled the last word in Ancient Alvarian.
Kai drew each rune with her right hand, tracing the lines through the air, her left placed on the cool black surface of the obelisk. With each completed rune, she pushed a piece of her strongest emotion into it. Her grief. Still raw, buried just below the surface of her mind. Opa’s smile. Her embrace. The summers spent working on the farm. It was a deep well within her, nearly bottomless.
Over and over. Draw, push, draw, push. Everything else faded away. Her entire being was focused solely on infusing the obelisk with her grief. She would lure the Dreamon here. She would trap it.
Feel my grief, you monsters!
It was hard to tell how much time had passed deep within the mountain. Hours, certainly. The combined energy of the Dreamwalkers infusing the obsidian had heated up the air until it was thick and stifling. The cavern was silent, save for the occasional gasp or grunt of effort. Kai glanced back up to where the Stone stood watching over each of them. Each pair of Dreamwalkers around her assumed the same positions, their faces stoic and determined, filled with the hope that they could end the suffering of generations.
Kai’s ears popped suddenly, and the air around her grew still and stale. She gasped, feeling the cavern’s pressure trying to equalize. The black stone grew hot under her hand. It was working. Something was being pulled in. She redoubled her efforts, drawing each rune with practiced and precise movements. Memories of Opa playing over and over in her head. Her heart pouring out its grief, begging the obelisk to take it all. Under her hand, it burned and quivered. The vibration built, becoming stronger and stronger. Her vision swam, bleeding to black briefly, but still she pushed. Tears flowing free.
The air cracked, loud as thunder, deafening everyone in the cavern. None of them paused for even an instant. They pushed harder as a red mist gathered around each of the pairs of Dreamwalkers. Their Shatterstone pendants glowed, floating slightly, tethered to the cord around each of their necks.
“Now!” the Stone screamed. “Hold!”
Each of them drew the new rune seconds after he called it out. Hold, you bastard! Sweat plastered her dark hair to her face, and her soaked shirt clung to her. Even her trousers were sticking to her legs. It was a struggle to even breathe in the thick, suddenly humid air.
Her arm grew sluggish, pendant thudding back onto her chest. The red mist that had been swirling around her was gone. She thought she could see a reddish hue in the obsidian now, but she was beyond exhausted. She felt hollow. Drained. Kai fell to her knees at the base of the obelisk, her forehead resting against it.
“It’s done,” she whispered. “We’ve done it.”
Blood rushed in her ears, muffling the world around her. Kai thought she heard a scream, but her mind felt strangely slow. She couldn't remember what she had been doing. Nothing made sense. The events began to slip away from her. Her grief was finally gone, but she couldn’t feel anything else either. Despite the heat in the cavern, she shivered, a deep chill seeping into her soul.
“My soul?” she whispered. “My second soul?” She tried to squeeze her pendant, but the effort was too much.
A comfortable current pulled at her, encouraging her to drift away. She had done everything that had been asked of her. She could rest now and know that Alvar was safe.
Chapter One
It was Dreina’s Folly, the darkest, deadliest, night of the year, but for Callum, it was the perfect night to run away. From the window, Callum watched the pale orange light burn bright on the edge of the horizon, pulling a sheet of darkness with it. The last sunset of winter, according to the calendar, but spring had been creeping in for weeks, thawing the land. Tonight, the moon would hide herself away, passing through the dark miasma high above Alvar, to contemplate the mysteries beyond. A quirk of nature, turned into a myth, shaped into an omen, and pressed into the fabric of society to mark the changing of seasons. There was a stillness, a deepness, to this night. Though Aurumount had proclaimed the end of the Dreamon War, a primal fear hung heavy and thick; twenty-five years was too short a time to drive that away. However, levity had slowly emerged these last two decades, and with levity came laxness. Wards were still set, of course, but there were weaknesses to them if one knew where to look. And Callum knew where to look. A smooth, practiced flutter of his fingers, along with a soft mutter, and he pulled the lattice of the Ward apart. He slid the window up and hauled himself through with barely a whisper from the edges of his cloak. Shifting his pack off his back, he reached back through and pinched the Ward closed again. True dark had settled upon the woods surrounding the modest cottage, and the velvet blackness beckoned Callum in.
He lifted his pack back up, slung it over his shoulder and crept away from the cottage, his home. Each soft footstep pried a memory free, threatening to overwhelm the growing lump in his throat. He had promised himself he wouldn’t look back, but he couldn’t stop himself. A small candle flickered in one of the upstairs windows, his parents’ room. He held his breath, heart thundering in his chest, waiting to see if his parents were going to check on him, but no calls sounded out. He took a step back, away from the house, and this time a more recent memory flared briefly in his mind.
A red hood pulled low over the stranger’s face.
Black fingers, curled and talon-like, extending from a bone-white hand.
A silver knife, shimmering and strange, prominently laid on the table.
Whispers, harsh and commanding, changing the course of his life.
He swallowed the lump and steeled his resolve while stuffing the memory deep within him. The course of his life had suddenly changed when he overheard his parents talking with that strange man. He had spoken in a familiar way, calling them Edward and Genevieve, not using their honorifics or their titles. It was hard to reconcile this one memory of his parents with the countless other memories swirling in his mind as he snuck further and deeper into the forest. Mornings spent with his father practicing with the sword and learning woodcraft. Evenings spent with his mother pouring over dozens of books on history, science, and magic.
Just the day before they had been making plans for a special dinner for his sixteenth birthday. His father was allowing him to hunt for a deer by himself so they could have venison, and his mother was going to help him bake his favorite cake. They were going to talk about sending him to the university in Shatterpoint, to study magic and become a Second Soul.
Hot tears brimmed in Callum’s eyes, making it even harder to see the few feet in front of him. He just wanted to scream, to run, to hit something! But even now, even after their betrayal, his parents' training kept him from being overwhelmed by his emotions. Running blind in a forest was stupid and dangerous, almost as dangerous as going to bed without setting a Ward. A twisted ankle was the last thing he needed.
Trying to keep his mind off the painful memories, he went over the checklist of supplies in his head. Callum wished he had been able to bring more with him, but he needed his parents to believe he had simply gone hunting. He had his bow and with it a quiver of arrows. No sword, so he had opted to bring a couple of long knives, one tucked into each boot. His bag contained one change of clothes and a sewing kit for repairs. He’d also brought a map of the Delrythi expanse. He had wanted to bring the world map of Alvar, but that would have been a dead giveaway as it took up half of one of his bedroom walls. Callum had risked going back into his mother’s library before bed and had managed to slip a few small books away, ones he hoped she wouldn’t miss. The small green one was the newest edition of Forest, Fields, Sea, & Sand: Alvar’s Flora and Fauna. The red book was Volume 1 and 2 of the historical record of Shatterpoint and the Second Souls. And the last, a slim blue one with many dog-eared pages, was Callum’s favorite. It was a Dreaming collection, a series of short passages gathered from across Delrythi by the Chroniclers on dreams centered around various hearth tales.
