Rainbows Wane (eBook)

Matthew Stirts (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-2181-4 (ISBN)

Infos

A soul divided cannot survive. The universe has been fractured and all life is threatened by the schism coursing through it. Spurred on by the ramblings of a mad god, a brilliant fugitive will embark on a surreal journey to stop this plague. His quest will span space and dimensions, art and enigma, as he discovers the truth of an extinct civilization with the power to bend reality to their whims-for a price. Awaiting him are Lovecraftian horrors, unreal weapons, and perhaps the love of his life. Can he overcome the losses of his past? Can he cleanse this schism or will the cure be worse than the disease? Everything is ending, on the words of a god, and he has a mere three days before everything is lost. The rainbow's broken; the rainbow wanes.

Matthew Stirts is an artist, caregiver, and author. He has always loved the art of creation throughout many mediums from painting to poetry and has been building worlds his whole life- out of Legos and clay when he was a child and digital illustration and novel writing as an adult. He believes words on a page should be like art on a canvas: playfully abstract yet keenly engaging. When not working on the abundance of projects that fill his head and home, he likes to read and hike in the beautiful state of Colorado. Rainbows Wane, the first book in his Signature series, is his debut novel.

Textauszug

2

They traveled a span of galaxies, faster than light, to a mission already in progress. The curtain rose on a tropical wonderland. Like exiting a starship, a wall of warmth and humidity hit Sayth in stark contrast to the cold harshness of Golsussuri. He was used to traveling from one interstellar location to the next and thought little of it anymore. The miracle of sylver. It was all part of the job of being a guardian dragon.

He wiped his face; moisture clung to him like a child. His glasses darkened, reacting to bright golden light radiating from the exposed core at the bottom of the world. Meteorites framed on all sides by tightly rooted jungle floated through the sky. The large-leafed trees and ferns shared a green coloration but shimmered blue in the light. From these heavenly islands, great waterfalls cascaded down one to another, island to island in lengthy chains, until eventually evaporating in the heat of the molten core. The geothermal energy sent the water up as great geysers of steam to cool in the upper atmosphere into an ocean in the sky. There it froze as an icy cocoon at the farthest reaches near space as the outer hydroshell, protecting the delicate ecosystem. The inner layer warmed and rained down upon the islands, thus sustaining the water cycle.

“Azalyske, locate Spiral,” Sayth instructed. A display inside his glasses showed a woman’s outline behind several drifting islands a few kilometers out. Sayth stretched his wings and leaped into the air. He flew around babbling streams and falls, over thick foliage encircled by small bird and insect creatures, and cut through the canopy. Pungent tangerine and cinnamon odors permeated his nostrils.

His dragon wings beat the warm air. An earmark of guardian dragons was the ability to shift partially or fully from dragon to their native form at will. Sayth often sustained human form with dragon wings and a tail protruding from his body. He could also fly without wings but not as fast. It was more a matter of self-telekinesis than flight, really.

Brak Thaa was a kelrite: an unnatural planetary formation where the mantle’s polarity mimicked the core. The rocky chunks were rejected by magnetism yet pulled by gravity into a loose orbit. From within the phenomenon appeared an inverted Earth, where the sun was at the lowest point and the sea in the sky. Reflections created a wavy net of light on the outer side of the islands. The core cast long shadows like an ocean sunset.

Atop one of the larger trees he saw her. Spiral took the form of a human woman, donning a full-length white coat and dress, both engineered of dragon scales and stitched with intricate spiral patterns, white gloves with crystal hemispheres on their backhands, a silver belt of interlocking spirals, white boots, and sylver glasses like Sayth’s. Long, wavy silver hair erupted from her head, the same color as the fur in her native form. Her face and right arm appeared auburn tan but her left arm was milky white. Sayth’s fantasizing was frequently fixated on how the colors swapped under her clothes. Was it a gradient or a sudden change by pattern?

“Sayth. Welcome hither. What pertains you?” Spiral asked in a strong, sweet voice. She was a garden from a hazy dream.

“Right. I gave the evidence to Sealveybreon but remain a fugitive. He wanted to take me in,” Sayth replied.

“A request denied? I was with you at the time First Drako harvested, and know your innocence. Fleeing, however, does not portray this of well. Do the Ogigah’s words so trouble you?” She turned to face him, the golden light casting rainbows in her hair.

“No, of course not. The universe isn’t ending. That’s ridiculous. To be clear, I planned on investigating Brak Thaa anyway, and this has nothing to do with Mr. Rhyme.

“Spiral, I’m sorry he dragged you into this. Mr. Rhyme attacked you to get to me. But with the sylver I collected from the seven weapons, he shouldn’t be able to touch you. Use it to line away if you need. You can return to TriCora,” Sayth said. He was the guardian dragon of Earth as Spiral was to TriCora in a dimension separate. It seemed the coding for a single guardian dragon to emerge was found in sentient species all across the cosmos.

“Fret not; Brak Thaa is marvelous beyond imagination. The forest, sun, waterfalls of flying islands: it is truly, how you said, one of the wonders of the universe. I, oh …” Spiral teetered as the island collided with another in a loud crunch. A white-furred tail with dragon-scale blades sprouted from her back and grappled the branch.

“You know, humans don’t have tails. You’ll need to refrain from altering your form in Alliance territory to avoid suspicion,” he remarked.

She pouted. “How inconvenient. Phantom limb syndrome irks me always as a human. They are complex creatures in all the unneeded ways. I, I am sorry. I meant not to offend.”

“You’re not wrong,” Sayth said. “Back to business; Mr. Rhyme’s warning is just one more reason to capture Altnexxis as soon as possible. Did you find anything here?”

“Sylver is truly miraculous. Such versatility even the archmages of TriCora could only dream of. Scanning for decay, as you suggested, I was able to narrow the scope of an entire planet’s span to but a small area. What is Altnexxis, precisely? You have reference to him the key of ending the decay?” Spiral polished her gloves as she spoke.

“The Drakean database classifies him as an imbalance, same as the schism. We don’t know what he is or where he’s from, but the life-form Altnexxis understands imbalances and the logic-defying decay better than anyone. Some theorize he’s from another dimension entirely. He’s a top-priority target, but I aim to find him first.

“There are rare cases of mutual symbiosis with the decay and Brak Thaa’s one. It was originally a normal planet until an imbalance meteorite collided with it eons ago. But rather than split all life into two decaying polarities, Thaa balanced into the kelrite you see before you. It defies physics and suffers no schism. My theory is that Altnexxis feeds on such cases, and evidence suggests I hit the mark.

“Imagine it. This decay plagues the entire universe. Countless planets have been split and burnt away. No one has ever been able to cure it, but Altnexxis survives despite being infected. What we could learn from him. Sustaining himself through cases of balanced imbalance. It’s groundbreaking. To shatter the glass that locks the sky,” Sayth said.

“Why not let the dragons capture him?” Spiral asked.

“Why not let a cleaning droid perform complex surgery?” he asked in reply.

“This schism means much to you, as I see.” She slid her hands in her pockets.

“It’s complicated. I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Of course. I need no confirmation of importance. TriCora and we of her are strangers not to such matters.

“As duty of guardian, I was asked to find a man broken by contact with a surreality crystal. It was his wife who sought aid from me. In the forest Harpe, I searched days and nights until a blue fire caught my eye. It was him I had found but truly not, for schism is a thief. His skin was burnt, peeling of ash, and his eyes had gone grey. Home, I returned him to find he was but half a man. His mind a sieve; only half of his memories did he retain. Half his soul. Days and years were lost like finer powder. For he had been split. Not his own wife did he remember.

“I thought and searched to find his other half. Although never before, my mind was to reunite him and perhaps, just perhaps, rid his schism. But so that half I could not find and how I did look. One night I returned the hour late, for he was nothing more than a pile of ashes on the bed sheets. To cure this schism, there is no greater act.”

“The schism’s taken something from us all. As for the task at hand, we’ll split up and search the final area. Contact me if you find anything,” Sayth said.

Spiral nodded, sprouted a pair of wings, and took off. Sayth did the same.

“Alright, Azalyske, the plants and animals of Brak Thaa have a rare resistance to decay. Usually, when something suffers the schism, it’s split into two bodies, each burning of an opposite polarity. Altnexxis has found a way to avoid this fate, probably pertaining to this kelrite, and features both polarities of decay. That’s what we’re scanning for,” Sayth instructed. “What is it? Don’t let Mr. Rhyme’s words concern you; focus on locating Altnexxis.”

He flew in between floating islands, each covered on all sides by thick jungle. They rotated and sometimes built up enough momentum to clash together despite being magnetically repelled. As he ventured farther from the hot core, mist and fog became prevalent. His glasses switched to bio-signature scanning when the sight distance grew poor.

He landed on an island. A flock of birds fluttered up. They were colored bright pink and orange, standing out in the blue-green jungle. Sayth phased intangible to let the chirping cloud pass by.

He thought about the harvest and destruction of Drako. It didn’t add up. Dragons were very secretive and secluded.; humans should have had no knowledge of their...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-2181-4 / 9798317821814