King's Gate 2: A High Fantasy Harem, page 1
Copyrighted Material
King’s Gate 2 Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Pierce
Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by Daniel Pierce
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
Daniel Pierce
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King’s Gate 2
Book 2 in the King’s Gate Series
Daniel Pierce
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
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About the Author
1
"Gather ‘round kids. It’s the most important time of the day,” I announced cheerfully.
“What time is that?” Mathus asked, his enormous head tilted in curiosity.
I dug through what was left of our provisions in my backpack and pulled several bacon sandwiches.
“It’s bacon thirty.” After shoving one in my mouth, I offered two to Mathus.
The giant's massive stature meant he was always hungry. I grabbed another sandwich and a flagon of juice, and offered it to Emely's little sister. Celeste hadn't been saying much the last few days. Her magic flaring up inside her had been wreaking havoc on her system, and it hadn't been easy on her.
I could empathize. The evolution she was going through would be hard on anybody, especially someone as young as she was. I was grateful I was able to get through the process more quickly than others. Being able to channel Dark Fae magic as the source of my power while also being the Savior of Ratonyia meant I was somewhere between light and dark. Combining the two magical factions enabled me to go through magical shifts and gain new abilities in fairly rapid succession, offering me a unique advantage over the majority of other genetic organic magic users, like Celeste or Emely. I would need the ability to adapt as fast as possible to be at my most powerful so I could defeat our enemies, but it didn't mean I wasn't sympathetic to the struggles of others.
What Celeste was enduring was particularly challenging. No one on this planet had seen her changes for centuries. The rare organic magic affecting her made her a part of only a small group, an army we were searching for during my quest to stop The Covenant, in hopes they would be able to help her. We had to find them as we went, gathering them together as she sensed them, and we hadn't yet found the first. My combination of abilities and powers were unique, but Celeste was undergoing changes in front of us, whereas mine had largely completed. I hoped.
Watching her struggle and suffer was painful. I couldn’t identify the particular abilities Celeste had, but they were obviously intensely powerful. Occasionally she would drop to her knees in pain, unable to even utter a sound as she clutched the sides of her head and clawed at her stomach. It was a testament to her strength, and likely also to her stubbornness, that she didn't rise and scream in agony when she went through these phases. There was no way to comfort her when she was going through them. None of us had any idea how long the pain would last when it struck her, so we couldn't offer her the reassurance that she was almost through it. The urgency to stop The Covenant kept us moving at as blistering a pace as we could maintain, but we had been doing our best to work with her side effects and give her the opportunity to recover as much as we could.
"How are you holding up?" I asked.
She shrugged as she bit into her sandwich. Mathus put one large hand on her shoulder, making the elven teen look even smaller, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She smiled up at him. Despite their tremendous differences, these two had become fast friends and seemed to find comfort and reassurance in each other. It was cute and seemingly unrealistic in an afternoon special sort of way. Without the quest that drew us all together, these two would have no reason to interact, much less to forge such a strong bond.
"Name all the weapons you can think of in sixty seconds," the giant said.
Celeste's face screwed up like she was going into deep thought, and Mathus looked up at the glaring mid-day sun, checking the time and the speed of our progress. He rarely said anything about it, but I knew he was always monitoring our pace. He rubbed a hand across the magically weeping hat that marked him a Red Cap giant. Considerably more jarring when first witnessed than his large size, this cap bled when he sensed violence or was overcome with anger. The blood dripping over his head and down his face made him look fearsome and brutal even in the first seconds of a confrontation. I’d admit, it was a hard look to wear with authority, but Mathus owned it.
"Short sword, battle axe, throwing knives . . ." Celeste started, and Mathus glanced down at her with a slight smile. They had been playing this game on and off for a few days to give themselves a distraction. I didn't know if it was more of a distraction from the long and often tedious travels, or from Celeste's suffering. Either way, it seemed to help both of them.
"Broadsword, mace, throwing star . . ."
I zoned out at that point and instead of listening to her growing list, did a quick note of the location of everyone in our pieced-together little family. Mathus was walking at the front of the group, alongside me, with Celeste just slightly behind. I could hear Emely and Riley talking behind us, and I glanced behind me to check on them. Neither of them had answered when I asked if they were hungry, and I wanted to make sure they weren't so wrapped up in their conversation they'd missed it.
"Last chance for chow," I called back. "You sure you're not hungry?"
"We're good," Riley said with a smile. "We're about halfway to the Dragon Boneyard, right?"
"That's what the map said," I told them.
They were going to have to trust me on that. I wasn't about to go digging through my bag again to pull it out and check.
Emely cracked her neck, her expression determined.
"Dragons," she muttered. "Good. I'm ready for some action."
"I'd think you would have appreciated a bit of a break after that last battle," I said.
"It's never a break, Alex," she said. "Just the journey from one battle to the next. They never stop, so I won't."
I nodded. I knew there was no arguing with her. Emely is nothing if not driven. Celeste was still rattling off weapons, even though I was fairly certain the sixty seconds had long passed. Mathus was going to let her keep going as long as it kept her mind off whatever else she was going through. Her voice started to trail off as she ran out of items to add to her list.
"Are you sure you're still up to this?" I asked Celeste when she was silent.
She knew what was waiting for her at the Dragon Boneyard. Her magical abilities had allowed her to sense that the first member of her army was there, so we hoped a victorious battle would make collecting that first member easier for her. From there, I didn't know where we would go, but it would come. I had to just trust that the path would be obvious for us when it was time to follow.
"I'll be fine," Celeste said, taking a long sip from the flagon. "It'll be good for me." She passed the juice back to me. "This isn't anything I haven't handled before, Alex."
She was a fighter, just like her sister. Even with the uncertainty of her magical growing pains hanging over her, she was like steel.
"Poisons, Celeste," Mathus said. "Go."
While they kept themselves busy to help ignore the countless steps they had already taken and the ones ahead, I took in the details of our surroundings. Either side of the overgrown path we had been following since yesterday morning was lined with trees that towered high above us. Those trees had been the milestone given to me to look out for by a wise old man in Emely's village who knew the backwoods better than anyone. Though we still had to take a few switchbacks along the way, his guidance meant we were still making progress rather than being hopelessly lost. Without that man's h
Having checked in with all of the others of my merry band of misfits, all that was left was Nia. She was always quiet, so I didn't expect her to jump in and socialize with everyone else, but I didn't like how much she was drifting to the back of the group. If I let her, she probably wouldn't ever stop working to eat. She had been fully engrossed in researching the evolution and meaning of my tattoos since the end of the fearsome battle between the elves and the giants in the elven village. It had taken up so much of her attention, she seemed to have forgotten about everything else. I was worried about her ability to notice anything else happening around her.
She wasn't the best at detecting when things were out of the ordinary, unless they were recorded in the pages of the leather-bound ledger she carried around like her security blanket. If The Covenant decided to pull another stunt like the attack from the giants, she might not be ready to defend herself.
I walked back to the end of the line and found her exactly as I expected her to be, her head buried in the massive book as she muttered under her breath. Walking along beside her, I tried to listen for a few seconds to what sounded like an argument she was having with herself. Finally, she either sensed I was there or noticed me out of the corner of her eye and looked up, startled.
"Alex," she said.
She said my name like she intended for there to be something to follow it, but hadn't planned it the rest of the way through.
"Are you hungry?" I asked. "I offered a few minutes ago, but I think you were too lost in your research to hear me."
"Sure," she said. "I'll have a sandwich."
I pulled another sandwich out of the bag and held it out to her. She fought the leather-bound book into her messenger bag before accepting the sandwich and taking a bite, then she sighed like she had forgotten how good food could taste.
"Any luck finding something that might help?" I asked.
My eyes slid back toward the front of the group and the teenage elf walking along side Mathus.
Nia made a sound in her throat that was somewhere between frustration at not having an answer for me, and incredulity that I would even ask.
"Not yet," she said. "I don't have an instruction manual. If I just had a little bit more time, I'd be able to do more research and reference some more of the books."
"We don't have time for that," I said. "We're rushing as it is."
"I know," she said, nodding.
I watched Mathus for a few seconds to make sure he wasn't veering off the path, too distracted by his game with Celeste. We definitely didn't have the time to try to figure out where he took a wrong turn if he got us lost.
"Keep in mind, Riley is trying to figure it out, too," I said. "She knows more about this than either of us do. Why don't you give yourself a break? Rest your mind for a little while and enjoy the trees. I think it would do you good to refresh yourself. "
"I can't," she said. "The more of us who are looking for a cure for Celeste, the better the chances we're going to find it, and the faster we will be able to help her. We're running out of time, Alex. Every second we are still looking for that cure is another second closer to The Covenant finding her."
She'd only stuttered over a few of her words, and I took note. It was a major improvement that showed incremental but impactful growth in her confidence and social skills.
"I know we're running out of time,” I said. It seemed like that was a theme surrounding me right now." Nia looked like something was bothering her, and I tilted my head to look into her eyes. "What is it?" I asked.
"Even if we do find the plant we’re looking for, there's no guarantee it's actually going to work. There aren't any verified records outlining how it works, or even any verifiable instances of it actually helping somebody like Celeste. All we have is rumors. We're still taking a major risk."
The cuctocha leaf, an extremely scarce and difficult to find plant, would help to keep Celeste's symptoms more under control as she developed her abilities and moved through the challenging transition. Even more important, it would make her rare organic magic undetectable to The Covenant and the spies I knew they had scattered across the land, looking for her. She had been kept in hiding the majority of her life to keep her safe from anyone who may want to exterminate her because of her unusual magical gifts, or capture her so they could use her for their own benefit. Anything we could do to veil who she was and what she could do would be valuable for protecting her, and the rest of us.
Emely had been looking for this cure the morning I was first drawn through the portal into Ratonyia. It was a mission for her, a consuming quest that dominated her life. We had taken some of that burden from her and spread it out among all of us. It eased the pressure crushing down on Emely but was still a tremendous challenge. Finding this plant wasn't as easy as just going to a field and picking some. The cuctocha couldn't be cultivated and grew in an almost haphazard way, choosing where it would sprout, remaining there for an indeterminate length of time, and then disappearing without warning. It was like chasing a ghost. But we were determined to find it. Some whispered wisdom among the Dark Fae and the elves said the growth wasn't really as random and unpredictable as it seemed, and we were trying to trace it using the information we had. Only Riley knew more about it than Nia. She had once hoarded it in her home, but a Covenant raid ended with the destruction of everything she had.
I swept one hand back over my face to push my hair away from my forehead. I knew my dirty palm probably left a streak across my skin, but I was so sweaty and grimy at that point it didn't much matter.
"Is there anything you're not telling me about Celeste's abilities?" I asked. "Anything in that book of yours that might tell me something I need to know?"
Nia unraveled a strand of blue hair that had at some point gotten tangled around one of her horns.
"I don't think it's my place to tell you everything," she said. "But you need all the answers to be able to do your job effectively." She bit her lower lip as she looked up through the group toward Celeste. "Why don't you ask her?"
"She's going through enough without me trying to get her to talk about the pain she's dealing with. I was trying to avoid talking to her about it. I don't want to make her uncomfortable by forcing her to think about it when she might be experiencing some relief."
"I guess you're right," Nia said. She adjusted the position of her messenger bag hanging across her body and let out a sigh like she was preparing herself. "You know she is a rare magic user. What you might not realize is she is the first in centuries. Once she was born, others started to manifest as the genetic line resurfaced in response to the planet's need for the stronger, deeper organic magic their people possess. Celeste is extremely gifted. She has both telekinesis and the ability to influence people's minds."
"That's a lot for anyone to handle," I said.
"More than you realize," Nia said. "She hasn't reached the full extent of her powers yet. She's still learning. When she has gotten completely through her transition and developed her abilities to their full power, she will be unimaginably strong. But it's exactly what she needs. She is facing the task of taking charge of an army that will bring down The Covenant and stand guard to destroy any future powers that might try to stop the free flow of organic magic on our planet. That is what these powers will enable her to do. She just has to get to that point."
