Meridian Dawns Prologue

The following excerpt is taken from a pre-release version of Meridian Dawns. Some sentences may vary compared to final release. To read the full book, click here.

Atilla’s feet raced faster than his heart could bear. Sweat swamped his armpits and drenched the back of his head as he dashed through the seedy streets of Falutown. Run, he thought. Above all else, Just run.

The image of his parents haunted him, their scorched faces burnt onto the backs of his eyes. The more he tried to blink them away the clearer they flared in his mind, as if it were their wraiths who chased him in this lucid nightmare. A nightmare he could not wake from.

He sped around the corner and burst onto the high street. He should’ve been able to lose his pursuers in the busyness of town, so long as—

He crashed into a vendor and sent his wares flying, potatoes and cabbages spilling into the crowd. The vendor cursed at him. Nearby activities ground to a halt as all attention was sucked to the boy in the dirt. Disgust soured their looks. They muttered bitter remarks, and Atilla’s arclines blushed. Isten, save me.

He scrambled away and sprinted down the nearest alley, panting his lungs out. Flashes of memory still whirled in his mind; it had all happened so fast—the waking sweat, the sweltering smoke, his father yelling out in the haze, ‘Atilla, they’ve come!’

The way his cry had blasted through the fumes, with the blurry glimpse of his beckoning hands . . .

Atilla had scrambled from his sheets to the floor to the door. ‘Already? I thought we had more time.’

‘It’s all right. We prepared for this.’

They rushed along the hallway, down a flight of steps, Father gripping his hand tighter than ever before. As Atilla looked out of the passing windows, the fire seemed endless in the faint light of dawn. Fields once rich and green with grapes lay black and red in flame. ‘The vineyard!’

‘Ashes, fiam.’ They darted downstairs. ‘Don’t mind that, we need to get you out. Your mother waits by the cellar. Remember what we practiced?’ Atilla squeezed his father’s hand twice; their secret code that meant Yes. The rumours from the capital had reached them last week, but he never thought the Rendors would come so soon. ‘Hurry.’

They had fled through their home, legs hammering the creaky wooden floors. The stench of burning fruit stabbed through the villa; Atilla’s eyes were watering by the time they reached the cellar. Mother’s were too. She knelt down and hugged him, her whole body trembling as she whispered, ‘Oh, Tilla.’ She pulled back and handed him a little ruby charm on a silver chain. The one she always wore around her neck. It was a charm of hope. ‘I am so sorry, my love . . .’  

Charred skin. Drooping, melted eyes.

The nightmares flashed in front of him. Atilla tried to shake them away, yet the horror flooded back with his tears.

Just run, he told himself. But the streets of Falutown felt a foreign maze in this madness. It was easy for the Rendors; they just needed to hunt him. Atilla turned every other corner that might throw the soldiers from his scent, though he had no idea where to go.

Uncle Tarjan lived on the far side of the village—that much he knew. The plan had been for Tarjan to collect him while his parents escaped. They’d regroup once it was safe, then lay low until this storm had passed.

His parents had promised him that all would be well. That the Harmony would end their culling, and peace would return someday.

Atilla hated them for it. His life should have never cost theirs.

And with that thought, the memories rushed back from hell once again.

He’d hid in the cellar, peeking through the hole of a wine cask, thumbing the charm around his neck. A cacophony of stomps and shouts had thronged the undercrofts with a tinkle of metal here and there. The shapes of men in vermilion warsuits had blurred left and right. Rendors, wearing the colour of fire.

‘Where’s the lad?’ one cried.

‘Not sure, milord. We’ve looked all over.’

‘He’s only a youth, Takson. Look harder, ’fore I give you a new pair of lusters.’

Takson’s tone flustered. ‘As you wish, milord.’

The clink of boots grew louder in the din; the scrape of a sword being dragged along the stone. ‘Husar Batar,’ a female voice called. ‘What of the parents?’

Batar moved into Atilla’s view, saluting with both hands. He was a portly man with short bronze hair. ‘Bound upstairs, Hadur. Took a few Katonas by surprise. Nothing major.’

She sighed. ‘My patience withers, Batar. Torch the villa. Let us be gone.’

Batar bowed. The figures dispersed, their footsteps receded, and all grew silent in the cellar . . .

They’re burning our home!

Atilla kicked the cask head to the floor. It clunked against the stone, and he was gone by the time it stopped spinning. Why was this happening? Father’s trade with the city had flourished recently. Were the Harmony paying him back for his wine smuggling days in the Slave War?

He took each corner cautiously, searching for signs of any soldiers who remained. Found none. Then, as he left the cellar, a thick wave of heat jolted through him.

Fire emblazed the villa, walls and pillars alight in roaring inferno. He winced, crouched, made for the front entrance. But when he reached the base of the stairs, the world stopped turning, and his life was caught in the flames.

His parents laid strewn over each other. Their clothes had been singed. Their flesh was dissolving like wax. Father still clasped Mother’s hand, while her—

Stop. Atilla sentenced the memories to death.

He bounded down the next alleyway. Puddles splashed. Guilt and fear racked his arclines, their ragged shapes warping his face.

But even as he remembered, his mind cleared from the clouds of anguish to a deep and thundering rage, arclines shaking with the weight of it all.

This wasn’t my fault.

He’d barged through the crumbling doors of his home, cheeks wet and hot with tears. It was stiflingly warm. The villa behind him raged with flames while the vineyard ahead lay in ruins, fires dwindling in the fields. High above, the Pulsar yawned across the heavens, the remnants of a fallen sun. Twin bolts of light branched out from its Core, with lesser strands curling off them like some static storm.  

‘Isten, guide me,’ Atilla had rasped, then coughed the ash from his throat. A black glob of phlegm slopped to the grass. That was when he heard them. Rather, when they had heard him.

‘The boy,’ someone shouted from the road. Atilla’s head cocked up with a fright at the familiar man with that same stocky build and curly bronze hair. ‘Run!’ the Rendor bellowed in the distance.

Atilla swore, speeding into the woods. Trees had washed past him as he sprinted through the small forest, cutting his bare feet on pinecones and snagging his bedclothes on briers, until he broke through the treeline and tumbled into the edge of town.

From there he’d flown, his wounds tearing wider with every stride as he ran from this pain that his parents were gone because of him.

But that was false, he had realised now. It was the Harmony who killed them. The Kendes and their Vaydas . . .

Atilla darted round another corner, then froze.

Up ahead, five Rendors lounged in the narrow alley, playing cards on a wooden crate with ale in their hands. Each pair of eyes flew towards him, and their faces dropped like pennies.

‘The halfblood,’ one gasped.

Hairs rose. Hearts pounded. Here was prey, trapped and helpless.

As a surge of blood charged through his veins, Atilla actually pitied them.  

He shut his eyes, shivered, and blazing colour flared in the darks of his vision. The vibration of every movement before him hummed with psychedelic light. A leaping general. Unsheathing soldiers. Ale floating. Cards being tossed. Crows in the distance taking flight. Everything slowed to a halt in that moment of crystallised time, and a dreadful calm took over him.

Energies churned all around. Atilla focused, drew them in, channelled the power to his hands. He retreated into this primal force—this arcane instinct that burned innate within him. It happened on reflex, as it always did. Except this time, he leaned into it.

Atilla opened his eyes. He narrowed his gaze on the Rendors, and strengthened the swell of his blood.

Those crows would be back for carrion.

Heat and light broke through his skin. Beams of purple and strands of pink streamed over his forearms, like rings of lightning in soft flux. He savoured the sting of their warmth, then raised his fist and launched it towards the nearest enemy. Energy swirled from his elbow to his wrist and out through his palm, whence it burst forth with an electric thrum in a blinding streak of blue and red, bright branches unfurling from the bolt.

It missed, yet still soared to take another man on the left. The Rendor shrieked, his back smashing against the wall as light ripped through him. It scalded a chunk out of his waist, and instantly cauterised the hole.

Atilla grew faint as the blood left his head. Then it flowed back nigh as fast.

His strength returned before the next victim reached him. She slashed forward with a knife, but Atilla dodged and grabbed her hand. He tensed with all his might to suck the juice from her veins. The swirls of light around his arms flashed faster—now shooting upwards—back to his chest. He watched the woman squirm as her skin bleached white, as the life ebbed out of her body and into his own. His ears were throbbing with each pulse. She squealed for mercy, but Attila was afire with a storm in his heart. Her arclines sputtered, and she hit the dust like a sack of refuse.

He scowled at the rest of them. Four left.

Atilla launched himself off the nearby steps and sent a wave of energy sweeping out to slash them all at once. This blast came easier. It was lighter and brighter and warbled as it flew. Three Rendors ducked while the fourth got seared through the head, and his corpse filled the air with the smell of scorched hair.

Like his parents’.

Screaming, Atilla landed on a pair of shoulders and clutched both hands into the sky. Power radiated from his body as he plunged his fists into the man’s skull, shattering bone and brain like pulpy pottery. He rode the limp body to the ground, then rolled forwards to evade a lunging blade. Atilla spun, drove two fingers right up their nostrils. Their head exploded in a mess of flesh as rays of light shot through the back.

When he drew his fingers out, intense vertigo slammed into him, blurring his vision with countless specks of colour, making him weary, making him stumble.

‘Korcs,’ the last one spat. Her punch sent him reeling in the mud.

Atilla groaned feebly. His jaw was buzzing as he lay on the ground. He felt that raw energy seeping back into his blood, pushing his body to move. Act. Fight!

But as he rolled onto his side, a second fist fell, and the Pulsar flickered out.

Atilla cringed at the ringing in his ears, prising his eyes open. Darkness enveloped the lair. A few dim lamps threw cold light from the far end, where a man in white sat facing away from him. He hummed tunelessly, clicking a stylus on the offbeat of a dripping stalactite.

‘Do you know the greatest obstacle to progress?’ the man asked. His voice was high-pitched, with a moist residue.

Atilla darted his head round in a daze. He hung from leather straps nailed into black rock above him. Tubes punctured his body in a dozen different places. They funnelled into a console on a nearby trolley that had buttons blinking all over it. Cluttered tables filled the space, littered with papers and piles of bloody tools. Needles. Scissors. Jars of strange liquid.

What . . . what have they done to me?

He checked his body frantically. The ruby charm was missing from his neck. His shirt was gone, his torso peppered with bruises. His trousers were still on, though gnarled and stained by ash. His feet dangled to the floor, but Atilla couldn’t feel them. He could barely feel anything, save for the pounding in his head.  

The clicking stopped, and the chair creaked, as the man stood. ‘Ignorance.’

‘Where am I?’ Atilla strained to ask. Voice frail, throat bruised.

‘Fear not,’ said the man. He chuckled as he turned, revealing an ugly Ember face. ‘Your suffering will soon be at an end.’ His grin was rancid. It splayed across his crooked face like a rat’s carcass. His hair was grey and greasy, like the fingers he now lifted to stroke Atilla’s cheek. Sharp, grimy nails scratched his skin.

‘What do you want?’ Atilla murmured, nauseous.

‘What do I want?’ He guffawed. ‘Oh, to be asked that question! You know, if I had things my way, I’d keep your kind around just to poke some more holes. Alas, such crude power is . . . unpredictable. And our Kendes and Vaydas cannot do with unpredictable. A shame indeed.’

The man licked his gums and curled back his lips, then kissed those pus-yellow fangs. ‘Mother, Ember. Father, Tunderi . . . Their offspring?’ He smiled, stale breath whistled out through his notched teeth. ‘A fatal binding,’ he said tenderly.  

Atilla tried to jerk free from the tubes and straps, but the struggle exhausted him before he’d barely moved an inch. His eyes darted around for a way to escape, but all hope was muffled by the shadows of the lair.

Atilla gulped, reckoning his fate. His arclines trembled. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Inquisitive runt,’ the man whined. ‘Personally?’ Atilla flinched as a drop of spittle splat onto his tongue from the P. ‘I wish to understand you.’

‘Because you fear us.’

‘Hardly like this,’ the man scoffed. ‘Leech enough plasma to neutralise a korcs, and the mongrel has nothing to drink.’  

‘Plasma?’ The word was otherworldly to Atilla.

‘The very quintessence of your talents, dear. It’s in your blood. It’s in the aether. Plasma, from both the ambient particles around you, and your own reserves within. The two sources flow together—a kind of confluence, if you will. They transmute in your veins, unleashing radical power. Science shakes her head, but the halfblood laughs. Oh, what glorious shift of paradigm!’

Atilla’s arclines recoiled. He didn’t understand.

‘This amalgam of plasma supercharges your vascular system, you see. It enables your body to wield untold energy through a symbiosis of mind and matter.’ He flicked a few switches on the instrument panel. ‘As Tudos, we’ve worked our alchemy, tried to harness it. But the more we learn, the more we realise how little man can comprehend this Myth. This aberration. This . . . abomination.’ He frowned happily. ‘In the end, it is simple. Some forces cannot be tamed, and therefore must not exist—no matter their . . . potential.’  

Atilla had had his abilities since birth. He’d always thought they were a gift from the stars—that nobody could know their nature. Is that why the rulers of the Harmony hated his kind, seeking to destroy what they could not control?

‘So your solution is to eradicate an entire generation,’ he said weakly.

The man shrugged, unperturbed.

‘They’ll never forgive you.’

‘That’s why they’ll be helped to forget.’ He smirked with that mangled mouth, then returned to his seat. As he moved, Atilla noticed a map pinned to the far wall with lines and circles scrawled across it. One marked his family’s vineyard on the western coast of Lake Tihan. There were hundreds more, all over Odamere, scarring the world red . . .

‘The Harmony thanks you for your humble contribution,’ the man said.

Atilla watched helplessly as the tubes darkened with blood, draining his lifeforce. He tried to speak, but the words were tar.

The boy closed his eyes, and drifted into hereafter’s cold embrace.

His parents had kept their promise. They could live in peace at last. 

EIGHT-HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO YEARS HAVE PASSED

If you enjoyed this taste of Meridian Dawns, be sure to check out the full book here!