Chronicles of Aquilae: The Victorian incursion [Book 1]

Foreword, White halo

"Jenny!", Zahara called with some traces of concern in her voice. Again, she didn't get any response.

Jenny went down the second floor stairs with caution, then she arrived to the living room. The blackout had already completed six hours, it was getting dark outside and her laptop was pretty much useless to watch videos on the internet since its battery died, so she was getting really bored.

"Jenny, where is your brother?", Zahara asked.
"My brother, or your boyfriend?", the teenager replied playfully while she aimed at Zahara's face with her flashlight. The girl hissed like a cat, making her friend laugh.
"Where is he, Jennifer?", Zahara asked again.
"He said he'd go to the basement to look for something, but he's been there for half an hour and hasn't returned.", Jenny replied.

Woodheim was a quiet and pleasant town, no one got in trouble and the inhabitants kept great harmony between them. The neighborhoods were pretty, people were gentle and everything could be considered stable, that's why a blackout was such a strange event. It was even stranger that the backup power systems were not working either.

Both girls sat on the couch while the flashlight Jenny carried with her softly lit their faces. Zahara sighed.

"What if this is some kind of sabotage?", the teenager asked.
"Why would you believe such thing?", Zahara replied.
"Don't listen to me", Jenny said. "Sometimes my head conspires too much."

The girls heard a noise coming from the basement, and they stayed put while they believed Zahara's boyfriend was coming up. But they decided to go down after several minutes passed and he wasn't returning. They wanted to know what was so distracting for him.

Zahara went a lot of times to the basement taking a look to the things kept there by Evangeline, her mother. She always found something entertaining and heard so many different stories, she could touch and manipulate every single thing in the basement if she wanted to, but there were some exceptions that remained hidden from her eyes on purpose. Zahara's mother never let her touch a chest that was lying under a few Persian rugs, always alleging it was an ancient delicate relic in danger of breaking. But the girl's boyfriend was a little bit more disobedient and he payed a high price when he saw what was inside the chest without proper protection.

"Mama, what the eff is in that chest? Cordell was convulsing and it seemed he was hallucinating!"

Zahara was worried about her boyfriend, so she called her mother while she was at a nursery shift in the emergency room of the Woodheim Hospital. When the girl saw him passing out next to that open chest, she immediately realized Evangeline had been keeping a huge secret for years, and it was one of those that only was seen in fantastic movies.

The last thing Zahara wanted was to become the Chosen One from an Order of Assassins with principles who didn't kill civilians, or the cornerstone of a ritual to save the world that only required her to exist, she just wanted to make ends meet and sit down to watch mixed martial arts fights in the sports channel without being disturbed.

The mother sighed. She always wished for that moment to never come.

"Sweetie, I assume the power isn't back yet. Do you want me to explain what happened to your boyfriend when I get home?", Evangeline asked.
"Please! He was crazy and he said he wanted to go back to London, I've never seen him so altered. He lost his voice afterwards", Zahara replied.
"Did you say London?", the nurse said.
"Yes, he has never been there. What the hell?", the girl said.
"It will pass shortly, don't worry", Evangeline said. "My shift ends in two hours, leave the chest like you found it and I'll explain to you what we'll have to do from now on. I need to talk to you very seriously about this".

Zahara sighed after hanging up with Evangeline. When she said she was going to do something seriously, she really meant it.

While Cordell returned to normality, his girlfriend helped him sit on an old chair in the basement. Jenny rushed in with a glass of water for her brother.

"Why was he talking about London? He never mentioned that he wanted to go there", Jenny asked.
"It must be part of the hallucination he got into, stay with him while I check the chest he decided to stick his hand in without telling us. My mother has a lot of explaining to do", Zahara replied.

The girl took a look to the chest her mother guarded with so much suspicion until that moment and she was able to see it wrapped in a white halo that radiated enough light to let her see the content. There were many indentations with different shapes, and inside of them there were specific articles wrapped in pieces of black fabric. The inside of the chest was engraved with a feather-like symbol and next to every space there could be read many names in gold letters that seemed handmade.

Many names were familiar to her because she saw them in books, but when she found a specific one that didn't belong to a historical figure, her curiosity was exacerbated. Maybe he was not a worldwide celebrity, but the owner of the pocket watch that fit the space with his name was someone important in her family.

"Sir Wallace Amery", she thought. "My mother is his great-great-granddaughter."

Zahara took a deep breath. She would have preferred to talk about birds and bees with her mother instead of mentioning the Amery family. She was one hundred percent sure it was going to be a very uncomfortable topic to talk about.