I'm Back...With A Freebie

Ok. So I've been away from my website for a long time, mostly becuase I was working on Blood Ties: The Second and then when I finished with that, I revamped both Dragon and Roc. I am currently working on Basilisk right now but I'm hoping to still post some updates, new reviews, articles, and more. I may not be able to post a blog entry every single week, but I'll try. 

I have, as I said, been working hard on Basilisk, the third book of my Histories of Purga novels. In the next installment, we find that everyone is fighting to stay alive and the only hope for survival is to rescue the third Sentinel from Blak's control. Without him, everyone and everything will die.

Rone and Keiara put together a bold plan to break the third Sentinel free but will they be successful?

Aeole and Asher must fight to protect their homelands from Rook invaders.

Rowan and his band of refugees try to find a way to stop the Blak Army and break the mindcontrol its soldeirs are under.

It's a fight that will go down in the history books.

With that, here's a preview sample of the first couple of pages (unedited at the current time):

Chapter One

"Niku!" Someone was shouting. "Niku! Where are you?"

Niku recognized the voice immediately. He'd know it anywhere. After all, he'd been in love with its owner for a long time now. Except she didn't know it. For all his bravery in battle he could never summon the courage to tell her how he really felt.

Not like it matters anymore, he thought to himself. Not since the Rook showed up.

He felt that old, familiar hate boil through him. He despised the Rooks for murdering his father, Cyrus, and torturing his mother. They had stripped him of enough already and now one had taken even more from him.

He'd taken Keiara.

"Niku!" he heard her shout again.

"Keiara! What do you want? Have you finally lost interest in your damned Rook?" he sneered.

There was no answer.

"Why play these games?" he asked, after a couple seconds. He looked around but still couldn't find her. "Why taunt me? Why continue to torture me?"

"I have a secret," Keiara whispered from directly behind him. "I've known how you felt about me the whole time. I just wanted to watch you squirm and twist in the wind. I wanted you to think you had a chance with me. I wanted to watch your love grow so I could crush you like a bug. And let me tell you. It was worth the effort. The look on your face when I chose a Rook over you was absolutely priceless."

Niku was shocked silent at her words but more than that, he was shocked at the callous, vicious way she said them. It wasn't like her. She didn't have an ounce of meanness in her. She was kind and sweet. She wouldn't say those things. She just wasn't capable of it.

He turned around slowly and found no one there at all. In fact, he realized nothing was anywhere. The world around him was an empty, white void.

"Where am I?" he screamed. He was starting to panic now.

"Where you are meant to be," Keiara said. She suddenly materialized in front of him, as beautiful and perfect as ever. "Where you will stay. Forever."

Keiara suddenly changed into Rone. The smug Rook smiled cockily at him.

"This is where you belong. You're uselessness won't get in the way anymore. All you do is screw things up," he said.

Niku's fury rose to incredible new heights. His vision blurred. His heart thumped painfully. His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

With an incoherent growl, he charged blindly at Rone. Before he could get to him, however, the Rook dissipated into thin air and Niku stumbled and fell onto the ground. He got up slowly and looked for Rone but he was alone again.

"Coward!" Niku screamed loudly. His face went bright red and he could feel his blood pounding through him.

"Always so easy to manipulate. You're anger has been your downfall." Now both Rone and Keiara were back and they said the words together, their voices in perfect synchronicity.

Then they started laughing. They laughed and laughed, their voices contorting and merging with each other until it was one voice. Then Rone and Keiara melted into each other. There was a hideous few minutes where they looked like some kind of two headed monstrosity. Then their features smoothed over until Niku was looking at the burned man. The man that lead the Rooks.

The man that did...something to him but he couldn't remember what.

"What do you want from me?" Niku asked, afraid. The man scared him badly.

"What I want is to take. To corrupt. To pollute. To contaminate. This world and every other now that I have been freed. Believe me when I say this boy, I will never stop." He suddenly blurred and then he was inches away from Niku's face. "I cannot be stopped."

The burned man changed again and this time Niku's fear was so powerful that he could barely breathe. The man's twisted, burned face split open and the tear continued on until the two halves of his former body fell to the ground in a slimy pile. What crawled out of the husk was a thing that looked like a spider but a twisted, deformed version of one.

"My power is at its apex and no force on this world or any other can stop me now that I have you," it said.

Its voice was like knives that flayed the inside of Niku's head. He clamped his hands to his ears and fell to his knees as the pain quickly became unbearable.

"You will die here, halfling. You will die here, One of Both Worlds," it said.

"No! No. I. Will. Not." Niku yelled out his rage with each word and as he did the pain receded. His eyes flashed with bright green light the color of a field of spring grass.

His weirdly glowing eyes fixed on the spider-thing. He threw out an arm and the power rushing inside him flew out in a pulsing wave of green light. The air suddenly smelled like freshly turned earth and wild flowers.

As soon as the wave of power left him, Niku felt a wave of exhaustion roll through him. He fought against it though. He wasn't letting that creature get him. He wasn't letting it escape either. He was going to destroy it.

The spider-thing didn't even try to move. It just laughed hideously.

"Futile. All your efforts are futile," it said as the light hit it.

Its body swelled and bulged grossly.

Niku watched in horrified fascination as the revolting thing exploded in a wave of stench and putrid slime. The force of it smacked into him next and sent him flying a few feet through the air.

He hit what passed for the ground in that weird place a minute later but all it did was shatter like glass. He kept going, passing from that white void and into the sky of a devastated, ruined world.

He shouted in complete terror as he tumbled end over end through a brown and yellowed sky. Streaks of purple raced over and through the land below and whole chunks of the earth were just gone. Tendrils of darkness covered two thirds of this world and they were hungrily trying to devour the rest.

Niku's screams rose the closer he got to hitting the ground. He closed his eyes before he did. He couldn't stop his fall but he could stop himself from seeing his own death.

A second later, he smashed into the peak of an enormous mountain that looked like half of it had been sheared away. Rocks and pebbles flew into the air when he hit it and he created a crater about two feet deep.

He coughed harshly as dust flew down his throat. His eyes watered and his chest burned. He took a few seconds to get himself together. He was amazed that he was still alive but he was extremely shaky still. His body was still trembling from the fear of certain death.

He managed to flop onto his back. He waited a few more minutes, just sitting there and taking steadying breaths. Finally, he pushed himself to his feet. His legs still wobbled but they stopped a few seconds later.

He looked around the half destroyed mountain he was on and finally got a chance to take in this new place he was in. It was a ravaged wreck but he knew instantly that it was some sort of mirror world of Purga, only the real Purga was beautiful and vibrant. The Purga he was in now was a pale comparison. It was dry and wasted. Chunks of earth were just missing and tendrils of purple laced darkness invaded it like a plague.

"Now where am I?" he asked out loud.

[The world between worlds.]

He wasn't expecting an answer so when he got one, he was startled. He turned around and directly in front of him were two massive creatures.

One was a dragon. The other was a roc.

[And time is running out. You must fight back.] Both creatures seemed to be talking at the same time. Neither ones' mouth moved, however. Instead, their words filled Niku's mind like thoughts.

"I don't understand," Niku said. "What is going on here?"

[There is a war,] the Dragon said.

[And we are losing,] the Roc said next.

Stay tuned for more free excerpts from Basilisk!