The Realmskipper Saga : Book 1

The Last Phoenix Prince

1

The Sleeping Warrior

Grimlock’s sword pierced Rena’s chest. A spray of blood escaped Rena’s lips as he cried out. It seemed he had finally won the Realm-war, and his reward would be to watch the light leave Rena’s eyes before releasing his master. He was going to win. Rena slumped onto his long, purple blade. He swept his blond hair back, grabbed Rena by his mane and pulled back his head, not wanting to miss a second of his agony. Rena’s muscles were starting to slacken as energy bled from him.

 He was dying. There was no doubt of that anymore, but he told himself, as he lifted his hands to Grimlock’s sword, if he were to die, then he was taking out Grimlock in the process. The second he made that resolve, he no longer felt his own energy filling him. Instead, energy deep inside, where he could not normally reach, rose to aid him. He fixed his eyes on Grimlock’s and with a snarl of loathing pushed the raw energy to the surface and released a dazzling burst of light from his body, grounding his would be killer.

            Rena blinked, disorientated. He looked down at the sword in his chest. His hands were in a vice like grip around them. He slowly heaved it out, no longer worried about causing more damage. With the final tug, the wound let burst another cloud of red liquid, staining his brown jacket and green tunic. They would need repairing again if he made it back home; his armour had been no match for that sword. The battlefield was beginning to spin and Rena was becoming dizzier by the second. He could hear a voice in his ears as Grimlock, who had regained consciousness on the ground, blurred in front of him with every step his scarlet stained feet took. His foe was attempting to get up to continue the fight. Grimlock’s flashes of fury were blinking in and out of focus with a bright light. Suddenly, his world went black.

His next memory was a white light, shining in his eyes and a voice, “It’s okay Rena, you won. He’s been locked away. He cannot hurt you anymore”. It was an old, familiar voice which echoed to him soothingly. He knew the battle had ended, but when he tried to remember the events no image sprang to mind. As Rena tried to peice events together and failed, he faded out of consciousness once more.

-

Rena Wolf tore himself from bed years after the memories of events that still plagued his sleep. He yawned wide and stretched like he did every morning. He walked over to his window and looked outside with a frown. He had risen before the first, smallest of  the three suns. This, in his book, was strange and he could not bear anything strange, not even anything a little bit out of the ordinary. If just one thing was slightly odd it meant certain disaster. However, perhaps he was overreacting. The tiny yellow sun had just peeked over the trees now, glaring into his eyes. He turned his head to see the shambles that was his bedroom, or more precisely, his house.

            He stamped a foot down on the floorboards; to check they had not begun to rot. A solid clunk echoed to him that they were fine. The ceiling, walls and floor were all made of wood. He began to pick things up from the floor in whirlwind motions and throw them at certain positions in the room; into a corner, another corner, under his bed, to a desk under the window. He believed that everything had a place, a function and purpose; why else would it have been created? But the most unusual thing about Rena was not the fact that he lived in a tree house in the middle of a forest, was in a rush to tidy his room, or had woken up early, it was his belief in the fine art of waking at dawn and sleeping at dusk. To him it was just good sense.

            Despite his more mature quirks, Rena retained the essence of being a teenager. With every item he flung, he would give a low grumble at the work. He hated cleaning as much as any young person. Also, he had an average aversion to living in an orderly fashion, but his room was messy enough to give any loving mother a heart attack. A house as small as his should not have held so much clutter, but all of his worldly possessions were, with rapid strokes,piled precariously in one corner. By now, Rena’s house was the tidiest it had been in months. He was expecting an important visitor in a few hours. Rena caught sight of a picture frame half buried in the heap of ‘stuff’ he had deemed clean. In it was a photograph of himself as an infant in the arms, and claws, of his expected visitor. This was not an unusual sight as Rena lived in the realm of the Demies, a place rich with special animals each with a range of remarkable abilities. Some had claws instead of hands, and possessed extraordinary strength of mind or body. Rena shook his head and threw a blanket over the pile to hide his younger self from view.