The Awakening (The Fempiror Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  “How did you do that?” David asked, truly very curious. It was the first time since he had arrived that he actually felt sincerely interested in something. What just happened was, in his opinion, impossible, but there had been a lot of impossibility in his life over the last day.

  “The light button,” Zechariah replied as if it were nothing.

  “Light button?” David repeated, incredulously. “You just push a button and—“

  “David, one of the first things you’ll notice about Fempiror society is that centuries of peace and a long life span have allowed our people to create things that humanity doesn’t have.”

  “Like the lights,” David clarified.

  Zechariah nodded. “We are night dwellers, and not by choice,” he said, “so the first thing we created was some kind of light source that didn’t require fire. It took about thirty or forty years before they got it worked out, but that’s thirty or forty years of the same people working on the same basic idea. They were able to create it, refine it, and perfect it themselves without having to teach another generation. What you see here is three hundred years of further refinement.”

  “How does it work?” David asked. In the back of his head, he also wondered what the other “things” were that Zechariah was talking about.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, but since almost everything you’ll encounter with us revolves around this one source of power,” Zechariah said gesturing for David to follow him to one of the other two doors in the main room.

  Curious, David willingly followed Zechariah into a room constructed exactly like his bedroom, but in the center of the room was a near perfect circular pool of water with what he could only describe as lightning flashing under the surface. Zechariah pressed a light button in this room, and David could see that larger lines, similar to those in his room, led out of the pool and through the walls into the other parts of the house. A tube led in from the outside wall to just over the surface of the pool. He knelt down to the surface of the water and watched it, mesmerized by the flashes within it. He guessed the pool was about three feet deep but about halfway down was something turning within a ring that went around the outer edge of the bottom of the pool. He noticed that the flashes occurred at the points that these circling arms touched that outer ring.

  David reached out to touch the water. “I wouldn’t do that,” Zachariah warned.

  David jerked back his hand and looked at Zechariah pensively. He looked back at the water. “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s called a churning pool,” Zechariah explained. “This supplies the power to the lights in my house. The buttons set in the rooms throughout the house allow me to control whether or not the power reaches the lights. The tube you see there deposits rainwater into the pool to keep it full and there are drains at the top to keep it from overflowing. Over many, many years of development, we have perfected this to the point that you’ll find it powering everything in the world you’re a part of now.”

  “Everything?” David asked. “What else is there?”

  “You’ll find out,” Zechariah said, finally giving him a genuine smile. “Come on.” He held the door to his churning pool room open for David to exit, and once David left the room, Zechariah turned off that light. David stood back as Zechariah strolled across the main room, pressed the button in the main room and the lights extinguished. Even after the brief lesson on how it all worked, David still stood in wonder of the sudden darkness without fear of fire or smoke as Zechariah left the house.

  “David, come on!” Zechariah called out.

  David took a few cautious steps toward the door before steeling himself into entering the new world he had ahead of him. He closed the door behind him and walked through the short tunnel into the night air.

  He was finally able to look around for a moment at the landscape, which he did recognize despite the darkness. He turned around to see where he had spent the last day and saw a large unassuming mound behind him covered in grass. He noticed Zechariah was walking to a smaller mound next to the main house mound, both of which blended into the landscape perfectly.

  Zechariah’s house faced north, and he could see Hauginstown off to the east quite some distance, so Zechariah’s house was nowhere near the old mill and the cave with the other Fempiror, which was further east of the town itself. He had probably seen this mound a thousand times in his life and never thought for a moment that someone lived in it.

  “Zechariah,” David said, still gazing at Hauginstown, “how long have you lived here?”

  Zechariah thought for a moment and played with his fingers to reckon the time. “I guess it’s been about twenty-five years,” he said and chuckled. “I imagine that means I’ve been here longer than you have.”

  David scoffed. It actually did. He looked at Zechariah who gestured to David to come to him. David walked to the other mound and stood opposite Zechariah. Zechariah had a sort of devious look on his face as if he were about to do something terribly clever.

  “What are you—” David began, but Zechariah held up a finger to shush him.

  “Patience. Watch.” was all he said in reply. He felt along the face of the mound until he found a hole and then pressed his hand into it. A small click sounded, and then Zechariah pulled up on the side of the mound, which opened very easily to show a small storage space inside.

  Sitting inside the mound was what appeared to be a wagon or cart of some kind, but it looked unlike any cart David had ever seen before. The exterior looked like the typical box design that David had always seen, but the seats for the driver and passenger were set down into the body of the cart a couple feet from the front, and the inside of the front and rear were closed off for some reason. The rear had leather straps on top, which David assumed Zechariah used to tie things down so they would remain stable on the cart while it was moving. David had seen that sort of thing done before. He saw hinges set into the top of the closed off areas of both the front and back, which no doubt allowed access to each of those compartments.

  But the oddest features of this cart were a glass window set into the cart just in front of the seat, no hitch for a horse, and even more surprising, no wheels. It sat directly on the ground on four very short legs that did little more than hold it about six inches off the ground. He could not begin to fathom why Zechariah was opening his little storage cave to find a wheel-less wagon with no horse to pull it.

  “What is it?” David finally asked.

  Zechariah smiled. “That is how we’re going to get to Erim,” he replied.

  David shook his head. He hoped Erim was close since it appeared they were not only going to be walking, but also dragging this wagon behind them. It did not sound like it would be a lot of fun. Maybe Zechariah was going to show David how much strength Fempiror possessed…

  David knelt down to look under the cart. Zechariah only watched him, still with an amused expression on his face. The underside held nothing of further interest except four circular protrusions about six inches in diameter sticking out a couple of inches from the body, placed evenly on the four corners of the bottom of the cart. Maybe they make it easier to push, he thought. He stood back up and noticed that the front side of the cart also had two of the circular protrusions.

  “Um,” David began, “how is this going to get us there?”

  Zechariah reached inside the cart. He moved four levers that were set side by side and David heard a faint sloshing noise, like water moving. With a click and a crackle, the cart began to hum. David took a step back as it lifted off the ground about six inches above the legs that had been holding it up.

  His jaw dropped in surprise. His words and thoughts failed him. This thing was not only beyond his imagination but also completely beyond his comprehension. The cart floated. No part of it touched the ground. David’s heart jumped in his chest and fear streamed through him. But it was not a fear that makes one run away. It was something different – almost exhilaration. It was as if he was suddenly e
xcited to go on this journey, but scared to death to take it.

  His life flashed before his eyes in an instant upon seeing this machine that defied his upbringing and provincial lifestyle. In that moment, the part of him that desired something beyond the boundaries of the town he loved to hate came alive while he also knew at that moment, he could never truly return to what he was before. His hands shook as he took a careful step toward it, still resting on nothing inside the mound.

  Zechariah reached in and gently pulled the cart out of its resting place and into the moonlight of the open field. The backside of the cart had two more of the circular protrusions. David was breathing heavily and desperately trying to recover himself. He attempted to speak several times before a word finally came out.

  “How?” was what he managed followed by “What?”

  Zechariah smiled again. “Instead of weapons of war,” he said very matter of factly, “we create efficiency. We have to. Since functioning in the daylight isn’t possible for us, we need to get where we’re going as quickly as possible.”

  David still stared at it. “What is it?” he asked again.

  “Well, it’s a levitating cart,” Zechariah said, looking at it. “We just call it a Levi-Cart.”

  Simple as that, David thought. Zechariah referred to it as a simple device he used, instead of the wonder it clearly was.

  “How does it work?” David asked.

  “Remember the churning pool?” Zechariah asked.

  David nodded.

  “Well,” Zechariah continued, “each one of these devices…” Zechariah tapped one of the circular protrusions on the front of the Cart. “…contains a miniature churning pool that powers a device that creates a field that pushes against the ground and also makes the Cart go forward and backward.”

  David just stared. None of this made any sense. “How…?” he asked, but Zechariah held up a hand.

  “We have to reach Cerebdim by sunrise,” Zechariah said. “And we have a lot to talk about on the way.”

  “Cerebdim?” David said. “I thought we were going to Erim.”

  Zechariah closed the side of the mound and then climbed into the right side of the Levi-Cart. He pulled a lever near his seat and the short legs that the Cart had been sitting on folded up into the bottom of it.

  “Get in,” he told David.

  David climbed in and sat on Zechariah’s left on the divided bench that served as the forward seat. David noticed that there was another bench behind them, which meant that this Levi-Cart would hold four people. There appeared to be room behind this second seat as well.

  Zechariah had a handful of levers, buttons, and switches directly in front of his seat as well as a lever on either side of it, one of which divided their seats.

  “We are going to Erim,” Zechariah said, “but it’s too far to reach in a single night – especially a summer night. Cerebdim has a Rastem Safe House that will accommodate us on our journey.”

  “Safe house?” David asked.

  “Again,” Zechariah sighed, “I will explain later. You’ll want to remove your hat.” He slowly eased forward on both of the levers alongside his seat. A low hum sounded from the back of the Cart under the raised rear portion where the leather straps were.

  The Levi-Cart moved forward to the north, slowly at first, and when Zechariah pushed the levers further forward, their speed increased. The wind tried to catch David’s hat, but David removed it and placed it on his lap. The wind whipped through his hair.

  Zechariah pushed the left lever further forward causing the Levi-Cart to turn gently east. Once they were facing east, he pushed the right lever forward more while pulling the left back, which served to set them going straight, and they rapidly passed to the north of Hauginstown followed quickly by the old mill before they were traveling over the vast expanse of the European fields between Hauginstown and wherever Cerebdim was.

  They were moving faster than David had ever gone before, and once they were past the town, Zechariah pushed the levers even further forward and the hum grew louder from the rear of the Cart. They passed the scenery around them at an alarming rate. David put out his hand and felt the wind rush past his fingers. This was incredible! His heart raced again as he experienced the greatest thrill ride of his life.

  By the time he looked back at Zechariah, he had a huge smile on his face. Zechariah was watching him, amused by the change that had come over him.

  “So is it not so bad after all?” Zechariah asked.

  David lost his smile and shrugged. He had forgotten about everything for the moment, but it all came back to him with one question. He was something else. “Not human” as Zechariah had said. He had failed in his attempt to leave this new life and return home, though part of him was very happy he was experiencing this. Yet he knew once the thrill wore off, he would be longing for home – well, not exactly home.

  In actuality, if he could make a life from this, it would spare him the droll existence he lived with before. He could not be a tailor anymore. He would be unable to help in the alley with the shirt dying. He would be unable to help in the store because he could not get there in the daytime. He was actually free of what he was.

  But Zechariah would not let him return, which meant he would not see Beth anymore, and if he could keep any part of his life, that was all he wanted. He knew he would have to grow up and do something eventually, and he had been afraid he could not just follow in his father’s (and brothers’) footsteps. However, these restrictions would be his freedom if only he could get back there. All he had to do was endure this old man and his trip.

  “You were going to explain,” David reminded him.

  Zechariah nodded looking away for a moment, staring into the darkness. “Where to begin,” he said. “Fempiror means ‘new warrior’ in an old language called Felletterusk that the Fempiror still use and that you will have to learn.” The last thing David planned to do was get too involved in whatever this society was. He did not want to learn anything from them except who he is now and what he had to know, in their opinion, to get back home. He failed to hide this very well as a scoff slipped out, but a quick glance to Zechariah showed the old man too lost in his story to notice.

  “It was 1385, and there was a war between the Felletterusk and our enemies, the Corelnesh. We were losing.

  “Now, the Felletterusk and Corelnesh weren’t always enemies. They were actually great families some two hundred years before the war. They had moved away from their homelands and settled side by side.

  “The families, which, as I said, were large to begin with, grew into hundreds until other people also settled in their rapidly expanding lands, and they established cities and towns. The individual homes of the founding fathers of each of the clans grew into mansions over the years as the population grew. Over those two hundred years, they grew to the size of small nations, and they lived in peace with one another remembering their old family friendships.

  “Then, the Felletterusk prince and the Corelnesh princess disappeared. Our king accused the Corelnesh of kidnapping, and the Corelnesh king did the same. You see, by this time, the countries had become very egocentric, and they would only allow their heirs to marry one of their own people. An intermarriage would, in their minds, dissolve each country and destroy their individual power over their people, so when the prince and princess first found each other, further contact was forbidden.

  “It is widely believed that the two actually ran off together to be anonymously alone, but neither king would believe that their beloved heir would do such a thing, so until one side returned the other side’s child, war would be on the horizon. Obviously, as neither side had either child, neither would be able to return them, but neither side would listen to this either as each believed the other was lying.

  “I hope that wasn’t too confusing,” Zechariah said, breaking from the story.

  “No, I understood,” David said, shaking his head.

  Zechariah nodded and continued. “So, w
ar erupted around 1375. It had ripped both nations apart for ten years by the time I enrolled in the Felletterusk Army in 1385. We were required to be a part of the Army since we were experiencing such heavy losses. It is likely that our country would have collapsed even if we did win since the Corelnesh were decimating us so completely.

  “Our rulers had been trying to find a way to make the soldiers stronger and faster to give us an advantage against the Corelnesh, and they finally got in touch with a well-known alchemist in the Transylvanian Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Hungary…”

  “The where?” David asked.

  Zechariah thought for a moment. “I believe it’s part of the Austrian Monarchy now, which was nothing to speak of at the time,” Zechariah explained.

  He looked at David, who still shrugged. David knew where Hauginstown was. He had never been anywhere else.

  “Anyway,” Zechariah continued, “someone we only knew as Voivode Draculya, who was an alchemist as well as someone of import in his homeland, created this serum to become what we called Fempiror. Anyone who didn’t take the serum was called Eltpiror, or ‘old warrior.’ We were all volunteers, though, since they weren’t sure what it would do to us, or if they could ‘fix’ us once it was all over. We all felt the pain you felt when we were changed.

  “The serum worked perfectly, though. We were faster than anyone in the Corelnesh army was, and we had strength beyond our wildest dreams. We used our night restrictions to our advantage and destroyed most of their encampments without any problems within a week. Our superior speed and strength meant that we could overtake them before they knew we were there, and we easily defeated anyone that drew weapons against us. We completely destroyed the Corelnesh within a month, and that’s everything. Their soldiers, their towns… Their entire country was laid waste by us.”

  Zechariah looked down as if disturbed by the memory. He shrugged. “I don’t think of it much,” he said. “We let our power run away with us, and most of us regret how completely we wiped them out. And by completely, I mean the women and children, too. There was not a single Corelnesh citizen left alive anywhere that we set upon. They are extinct. But at the same time, it was war, and we did what we were designed to do.”