A collection of multi-genre stories.
From turbulent skies and stormy seas to magical lands and wintry forests, this is a journey which will awaken some of your deepest emotions. Mysterious creatures and peoples from a myriad of worlds, including...
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Music: STAND MY GROUND || Within Temptation
An elemental orchestra raged around the cliff tops. This would be a storm to end all storms. The clouds, black and heavy, swirled in a violent dance with the screaming winds; their multi-faceted nebula illuminated by flashes of wildfire, lightning. The sea whipped and surged high, breakers crashing on the razored rocks below, adding to the timpani of the turbulent weather. The island would surely vanish from the map before dawn arrived.
Within its epicentre, the crumbled ruins of an ancient tower were all that remained of a prison. Torrents streamed down its broken walls; symbolic tears grieving for all the time lost behind the cold stone enclosure.
For five long years, she had been locked behind the granite fortifications; incapacitated, subdued, despondent. Her diabolical captors had stood guard all this time, their continual ridicule, unforgiving and harsh. The enchantments and powers she had once possessed had been stripped from her by her subjugators' brutality. But, her inner desolation had been her actual shackles.
A trust had been broken, and her solution to the problem had cost her dearly. Once a strong and determined woman, one individual's retaliation had rendered her weak, afraid, unwilling and unable to trust again. Hence her incarceration ensued which over time drained her resilience, her fight, her will.
Until - she'd seen a face in a dream and heard someone calling her name; his voice a soft, seductive whisper. Something tugged at her mind. A memory from years gone by when she was young and carefree, living in a more innocent time where she smiled freely, laughed openly and loved fiercely. From her dossier of forgotten names and faces came a resonance that crossed time and space, inexorably pulling her up from her well of dark oblivion.
At first, she fought it. She could not afford to surrender to such whimsy. It seemed preferable to let her mind regress further until whittled to nought. But the timbre of the voice soothed and assured her, pinching at the tangential confines of her broken consciousness.
The voice beckoned her, invited her, teased her. Slowly, her vitality started to return. She muted her gradual recuperation from her captors. It would take time and much inner debate before she would dare allow herself to rise once more. The memory, however, delighted her, became insistent, encouraging, giving her the one thing she had thought lost forever - hope. He had awakened her.
Still, she needed time to build her strength, regain her energy, focus and abilities. The journey ahead would take all she had if not more, and she was unsure if she could survive the passage. But try, she must for this man had reached across the cosmos, banished her self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy. He had embellished her inner strengths, her self-awareness; and rekindled her desire. The nightly visits to each other in astral form had come to an end. Finally, she had regained her exuberance. Fuelled with an unquenchable need, she was ready. She had to break free, for daunting though the prospect was, she could no longer deny the pull. She had to be with him in the flesh.
