Book I of III: The Swords of the Sultan (34 page)

After digging himself out of the ground, a
dozen-or-so seconds after having awoken, he first began the lengthy
process of dusting off most of the sand, before trying to figure
out where he was through sight—the sounds, however, clearly
revealed that he was by a raging ocean—perhaps the Sea of Albusina.
Additionally, he could feel a piece of parchment tucked inside his
shirt, as well his necklace with arrowhead pendant, but not his
saber on his belt hook.

Once he had cleared enough of the sand to
see, he looked all around the sandy dunes for his saber, just in
case there was danger nearby. Yet as his saber wasn’t to be seen
anywhere, he next threw his gaze up toward the sea, which began
about twenty feet away and was very vast and very dark….

Though Baltor saw neither moon this
direction, he did see thousands of stars that radiated over that
sea alone—a few seconds later, he sighed aloud, “Perhaps this is
the Sea of Albusina, and if I simply turn my head one direction or
the other, I will see Pavelus.”

Now patting off the sand from his clothes to
make himself look presentable, he turned his head to look both
directions, yet his eyes spotted no signs of civilization at all
anywhere.

With a very confused look on his face, Baltor
spun a one-eighty—he glimpsed the last fractional bit of sun
disappear behind the trees. A dense lair of both palm and jungle
trees that lay just beyond the last of the sandy dunes about three
hundred feet away.

A second or two later, he realized that the
direction he now faced was west, which meant that the sea behind
him was to the east, which meant that this wasn’t the Sea of
Albusina at all.

Suddenly, Baltor’s mind began to ask him
these series of questions,
Am I even on the same continent?
Maybe I’m on a completely different planet, or maybe even another
dimensional plane of existence, but then if this last possibility
were true, why would I be buried underneath the sand?

Only a second or two after these series of
questions had finished, he said, “Obviously if any of these answers
are true, then that means it would be pointless to go west, as
there is no Pavelus in that direction. So where should I go?”

It was only then that Baltor observed half of
the all too familiar large moon that was just starting to wane in
the northeastern skies, as it rose above the sea’s horizon—the
other moon wasn’t anywhere in the sky. He was on his planet.

A few more minutes passed, yet never was a
solid answer given for his last question of which way to go,
internal or external.

Several minutes later and still without any
answers, not only did he become frustrated and upset, yet he
screamed out his last question out to the sea, “So where in the
hell should I go?”

Other than the continuous sounds of the waves
crashing into the coastline, still another minute of silence
passed.

Baltor, in frustration, shifted his body to
look to the north in order to scream out his question yet again.
Before he had the chance, he felt a piece of parchment still tucked
in his shirt also shifting.

He stopped in mid-shift, pulled out the
parchment, blew off the excess dust, and then gazed at it carefully
with his right hand—it was the original bottom half to the map.
After lightly slapping himself in the head with his left hand,
Baltor’s eyes mysteriously began to translate the second half to
the message.

It read, “all that this Chosen One has
created, so that Law and Order will prevail until the End of Time
within these Universal Realms, which the chaotically evil
Vompareus—otherwise known as the ‘vampiric beast overlords’—seek
first to conquer and then to utterly destroy through Chaos!”

Just as he finished reading the final word,
he heard Trendon’s voice say within his mind,
Go west, young
man. Go west!

In what was obviously a western direction,
Baltor turned around, tucked back the parchment into his shirt, and
then surprisingly ran almost as fast as the speed of light—the
speed of shadow.

He was not only extremely delighted about his
incredible and inhuman speed, yet he became even more delighted to
discover that he also had the dexterity and the agility to easily
maneuver his way past the sandy beaches, and into the border of the
thick, lush and dark jungle forest!

Approximately five minutes and a dozen miles
later, he suddenly stopped at the edge of a large prairie harbored
by thin trees all around. The only reason he had stopped was that
he had felt the map slip out from underneath his shirt, and fall to
the ground.

Before Baltor had the chance to run back,
pick up the map and tuck it back into his shirt, he both heard his
stomach grumbling from hunger pains, and his nostrils detected the
smells of something living nearby!

He sniffed the air again, and turned his head
over toward the direction where he caught the odor of a whole pack
of animals.

As his night-vision eyesight dramatically
increased like binoculars, he was able to see all the way up to the
animal pack that stood about four hundred feet away from his
current position.

These animals appeared to resemble deer, but
they had large, curved horns that wrapped around their head several
times. His human mind faded to black only a moment later, as his
beastly mind fully emerged and dominated. Before the animals even
had a chance to react, the beast had already crossed the extensive
distance, ripped into the animal’s neck, and ravenously
feasted.

Though the fresh blood ever so slightly
quenched the predator’s hunger,
it
did not like the taste of
this prey’s blood at all, and found it very unsatisfying. Yet all
the other animals were long gone, so it was too late to get
more.

The very second after the feasting had
concluded, Baltor’s human mind regained control, and he
discovered—with a whole lot of shock—that there were no traces of
blood anywhere. The rest of the animal was intact. And just as
shocking, his clothes and boots were on his body and completely
intact!

He raised his hands into the skies that had
only just begun to lighten up to the east and screamed into the
heavens, “What, oh God, have I become?”

After a dozen or so minutes that passed
without any sort of external answers, he began to shoot for the
internal answers. He first reflected back toward his conversation
with Trendon, specifically to the part when Baltor had been told
that he was about to become “a vompareus,” or as he would
understand, “a vampire.”

Once again, he began to think long and hard
about everything that he knew about these evil, undead creatures,
especially now that he was one himself. But other than that one
book, there was no other useful information in his deepest of
memories….

Due to all his contemplative thoughts, he
hadn’t been paying to the fact that not only had the skies
seriously lightened up, yet the sun was only a dozen or so seconds
from rising to the east.

As he squinted quite painfully, just from the
sun’s first indirect ray that poked into the morning sky, he
quickly scanned his horizons, noticing that at the southern end of
this prairie, there stood a massive hill covered with lush jungle
trees, perhaps a thousand feet away.

He next saw the map still lying on the ground
four hundred feet away in a slightly different direction, and as he
looked up one more time to the hill, he saw a cave leading
underground at the base.

Immediately he booked, and only a second
later, he had already picked up the map, and a second after,
reached the entrance.

A split second after having entered the cave,
he turned back around and looked out—the sun’s rays had just burst
over the eastern horizon, shedding their powerful light onto the
land.

As his eyes already had seriously begun to
hurt from the incredible light, he turned back around, tucked the
map under his pants and shirt, and then proceeded deeper into the
darkest recesses of the cave.

A moment later, the fresh smell of animal
crossed his nostrils, and he suspected that he was not alone in
this cave. That confirmation came as a giant black bear stood up
from its sleeping spot in another part of the cave, with teeth
bared and a low-pitched growling noise coming from its throat.

Due to the low height of the cave, the bear
could not stand up on its hindquarters, but it did slowly begin to
approach him on all fours. Once it drew nearer, it began to kick up
dirt with its front paws, stirring dust into the air.

He instinctively reached for his saber, only
to realize again that it wasn’t there, yet from that simple
movement alone, he felt very weak. And as the seconds passed, he
came to realize, quite exhausted.

With his peripheral vision, he quickly looked
around the cave in search of a weapon, though the pupils remained
locked on the bear—other than a few bones scattered throughout the
cave, there wasn’t anything useful.

Better that than nothing
. He thought,
before rolling backward away from the bear, while simultaneously
picking up a jagged bone.

Only once he had gotten back to his feet did
he realize that this bone actually had a rather sharp point at the
end, and that this might turn out to be a decent weapon after
all—he readied it for the bear that had neared to eight feet
away.

The bear growled ferociously, swept both of
its paws into the dirt yet again, which caused a lot more dirt and
dust to fly in the air, and immediately it charged toward him.

Though he could no longer see, he heard the
stampeding approach of the bear—he rolled to his left and jabbed
the bone ahead of him.

The bear first roared in pain, lunged right
for him, and then bit its sharp teeth deeply into his shoulder!

He yelped out in utter pain, but did not stop
his desperate jabs into the bear with the bone.

The bear finally received a fatal jab in his
neck, fell right on top of him, and died!

Despite his best attempts, he could not
squeeze his way out from underneath the immense weight of the
bear—he was just too weak and exhausted.

Without even realizing it he immediately fell
asleep; and only moments later, a dream began to form.

Within this dream, at first Baltor could only
see that he existed within a black area of unknown proportions,
floating in the middle of the air. Though there were no sources of
light at all, he, upon glancing at himself, could surprisingly see
himself as if he was standing out in broad daylight.

Just after he had physically pinched himself
to be sure that he wasn’t dreaming while surprisingly feeling
substance, he began to suspect that maybe he wasn’t dreaming at
all, but more likely, fully conscious in another dimension!!

As he looked around one more time, he
confirmed yet again that there are absolutely no sources of light,
or anything else, anywhere else.

It was then that he purposefully yelled out a
question, “Is this all a dream, or am I really awake?”

His own voice repeatedly echoed the question
around the void for about a dozen moments or so, until the area
once again immersed into complete silence. Meanwhile, he waited
patiently for the answer.

Another dozen or so seconds of complete
silence passed, until suddenly, his eyes spotted the prismatic
twinkle of a tiny light far off in the distance—a brilliant twinkle
that only lasted but a nanosecond.

He squinted to try to scan in on the area
that was once again utter dark, but all for naught.

A few moments later, that twinkle
unexpectedly re-emerged, but it remained for another
split-second.

Two seconds later, he began to suspect that
maybe he was seeing a flickering star, though it did seem to get
bigger and bigger each random time it flashed.

Seconds later, once the star had drawn much
closer, Baltor soon realized that it wasn’t a star at all, yet a
glowing sword that was floating in the middle of the air, twirling
and spinning around in a slow and chaotic fashion.

Once the sword had neared itself to five feet
from Baltor’s position, its pommel pointing straight up and its
blade straight down, it stopped twirling and spinning, though it
continued to float.

The moment the sword stopped, he instantly
recognized and remembered that this very sword had been his
father’s most-prized possession.

The dream did not end there with this trivial
discovery, yet instead added the complete backdrop of his father’s
workshop behind the sword, where it once again rested within his
father’s trophy case.

Even though Baltor was still aware that he
was within the parameters of a dream and that his father was dead,
he surprisingly saw and heard the very man walk into his field of
vision with that all-too-familiar limp, unlock and open the glass
trophy case, and then carefully pull the sword out.

Now lovingly holding the sword in both hands,
Baltor’s father turned back around, and then he proudly declared,
“Countless hours of meticulous work has my father, your
grandfather, invested to create this masterpiece I consider
priceless—you’ve never met the man, as he died five years before
you were born. Despite the fact that Grandpa Veran spent most of
his life trying to make another, all his best attempts ended in
failure.”

For some strange reason at that very moment,
Baltor gazed down at his own hands and surprisingly discovered that
they were youthful in appearance, like when he was nine years
old.

“Baltor, you need to pay attention to me when
I’m talking to you. Now please look at the sword, okay?”

Almost surprisingly, Baltor heard his boyhood
voice saying, “Yes, Popa.”

He then saw his eyes averting to the blade
that his father was gesturing toward with his left hand.

Once the father saw that he had his son’s
attention, he continued, “As you can clearly see, boy, a whole lot
of valuable materials were used to construct
her
—gold,
diamonds, ivory, and of course, the platinum. Don’t be deceived in
thinking that there’s even an ounce of silver in there, which
tarnishes so easily. Platinum is worth twice what gold is, and
rarely ever needs polishing.