THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (ereader that reads to you .txt) 📕

lost his grip and hit his head on a branch before grabbing the tree and hanging from that branch, blisters on his hand, by just a hair. His hand was hurting and he felt a drop of blood trickle down his forehead toward his nose.
He had hit his head.
The drop travelled down toward his nostrils and stayed there.
Slowly it dangled, grew bigger and was pulled by gravity toward the ground.
It dropped in what for him seemed to be a slower motion of movement.
He watched the blood drop travel toward the ground and hit the stemroots.
He watched the branch crack and remembered Fabian telling him he was a magician.
The branch broke and fell to the ground.
Alexander watched the branch fall to the ground.
He looked at his right hand. It was free.
It was not holding on to anything.
He looked at his left hand. It was free.
It was not holding on to anything.
He looked at his right foot. It was free.
It was not holding on to anything.
He looked at his left foot. It was free.
It was not holding on to anything.
He was levitating. He was flying.
He saw his hands moving about. His feet.
In mid air he then spun twice around and circled the tree, saw the gym and the blacksmith’s shop, flew past the inn and ended up where he had started. He touched the wound on his forehead. It was healing.
A huge smile spread across his face as he levitated over the ground, feeling that odd sensation of nervous joy in his lower bowels. Flying had also been part of the training. He had been taught that in an illusion like the one he was living in the rules of gravity don’t apply. He had made himself younger in order to be stronger and now he could make himself fly.
He felt as if butterflies were circling his intestines, dancing about from his lower crotch up to his lungs. He had indeed learned his lesson. He was able to levitate. He believed in himself and not in the illusion. That was a good sign. Now, could he believe in himself enough to conquer fate?
He slowly descended down toward the ground and landed next to the branch, crouched over.
He saw the drop of blood on the stem. His drop of blood.
He moved his finger toward it and slid his finger along the tree. He looked at it and then touched his forehead.
The wound was gone.
He felt his face.
A clean shave.
He stood up and began walking toward the gym, which was no more than a rebuilt barn with a leather mattress. Something told him that he would find something in that long beige building with its thatched roof. Something told him that he would find something that he never knew existed.
He opened the door and walked in.
There in the middle of the hall he knew so well, having been trained to become a sorcerer there, standing upright in a well carved wooden stand of thick mahogany, was … a sword.
He walked the fifty feet to the middle of the hall, each step seeming an eternity, and bent down to look at it.
He felt as if he was in a room full of people.
But he was alone here, was he not?
The handle was green and red and very thick. There was a decoration on the handle, a branch circling the handle. The branch was thick and dark green with red thorns embedded into the silver metal. Two thin turtles stuck out on each side and formed what was the end of the handle.
The stand was dark brown and had decorations on it the form of sea grass and flowers.
One large wooden rose decorated its top. The sword itself was stuck into a thick block of ebony that had two long wooden pieces on each side holding the sword up.
There were decorations on the sword itself, carved on the side.
But in Gothic writing very clearly to be read on the sword itself was the name:

S T . M I C H A E L

What he had not seen before was the belt and holder that lay behind the stand.
It was thick and round and there were so many decorations in the leather that he realized he was looking at a work of art.
He bent down and picked it up, felt the leather in his hand and put the belt on. The buckle closed almost by itself.
Then, the holder was buckled onto the belt and it actually felt like he was made into a warrior. Someone chosen to fight for the good of man. At least for his own future.
He was St. Michael’s fighter on earth.
He turned around and picked up the sword.
It was not half as heavy as before.
After all, he had more muscle now.
He swung it around a few times and spun around, bending forward and letting the weapon switch hands a few times. He felt himself lift another four feet and perform a summersault in the air before letting the sword again switch hand a few times, surprised at the easy with which he handled this heavy weapon.
He looked down at his biceps and found himself admiring his own muscles. When he swung his head upward he felt long hair tickling his neck. It was then that he first realized that he was not a man with short hair anymore.
He had the hair that he had enjoyed having at age 19. He was shaven and muscular.
He held the sword in both hands, swung it around and landed.
Then he watched the sword like a man who would watch a newly aquired reward which is what it was. He put the sword into his belt and instinctively started walking back toward the door.
He was still in the training hall, but as he walked toward the door he realized that it was changing shape. It was now a wooden door.
Slowly, as he found himself walking closer to the door, he saw the walls change. He was not anymore in the house he had been.
“Find out what is behind that door, Alex!”
The voice that spoke was soft and familiar. He could not place the voice’s owner but knew him well. The door handle was gilded and so well decorated that it seemed that he had to concentrate in order to recognize it as a door handle at all. Many of the round pegs that stuck out from the thick mahogany were so sharp at the end that it seemed an impossibility to touch them without hurting oneself. Four very large model mountains were on positioned on each side of the door.
Two on the left and two on the right. They were fixed upon large grey podiums on the top of each alp was a wolf howling. Behind each wolf was a statue of Lucifer, obviously bronze, painted red.
He was opening his mouth and screaming. It was a soundless scream. The sides of his mouth were cocked upward in a snarl.
“Ridiculous.”
The word came from the look on the demon’s face. It simply spoke those words loudly and clearly. Sire Winsletenna, the king of Prosperania, found himself walking in stately, solemn step toward a door whose owner he did not know in a palace where he had never before entered. He raised his right hand, the one not clutching the sword, and realized he was dragging the sword behind him. His hand was trembling. Like a child scared to open his mouth in fear of what would come out.
“Wish yourself somewhere!”
But where? Closer to his goal maybe?
He had no power over this. Whatever lay beyond that door was his fate. That much was clear.
He turned around and discovered the forest was gone, the gym was gone, the trees were gone, the inn was gone. He was now in a castle. The ceiling above him consisted of thick beams of what he supposed was hustilar wood, the thickest and most vicious of all Nocturanian trees, above an oak background. There was a throne at the end of the hall, obviously gilded mahogany on a podium of satin carpeted silver with two steps leading down to a marble platform above sandstone.
There was a painting above the throne.
Above it read, in Nocturanian: “Diabolus Rularis Nocturaniae” and four eagles were landing on a lion. The lion was screaming and under it was a small sign, clear enough for him to read it: “Prospurus mortis” and a castle in the background that clearly looked like Iuventus Sacrum.
Along the walls were stone statues, tigers and dragons and snakes and the like. Each one was separated by a spear with four large thorns sticking out from its middle. One large torch was hanging from a handle above each statue.
As he approached the door, Alex found himself shivering hoping to fall asleep and wake up somewhere else.
“Fire! This place thrives on fire! The fire of the heart!”
He knew not from where these words came, but he knew that Lucifer’s face spoke of ridicule and that whatever this castle was had its origin in the place that Raphael had spoken of as the dungeons of darkness.
He lifted his sword and grabbed it by both hands.
Now his stood in front of the door and he could not help but smiling at what he saw.
The door slowly opened on its own and beyond the scattered leaves on the front steps lay a forest not thick but open. A hillside that seemed to lead toward a town of some kind. The sky was blue and the few clouds that decorated it were interrupted only by one large rainbow that led from the sky’s northwest to northeast.
It was a gigantic panorama that met his gaze and he had to gasp for air in order not to fall down upon the sandstone floor and let his sword drop. Four robins had gathered among the dry leaves on the step to eat a few crumbs of bread that some had left behind.
The only trees he could see were scotch fir trees. Close to the castle were bushes. There was a slight breeze so he found himself watching how they swayed.
He picked up the sword again with both hands and discovered biceps and triceps that must’ve rivalled most of the soldier muscle he had seen in his life. His shaven face and long hair was a nice contrast to his brown skin clothed by the leather vest and fur trousers.
The shadows from the trees outside were transparent and showed off more sun than darkness.
The sun was bright that day.
He walked out of the palace and at once, standing there on the front stoop. He realized that this was the landscape of his soul. The little robins, which did not move, were simply his happy memories and the town was his pride.
He definitely had left all reality behind him now.
He was completely in his own world.
But this world was influenced by demons, wasn’t it?
That meant he had no control over it.
This was still Nocturania and he still was on his way to the Cave of Yambalah.
Maybe Lucinda created images that would make him want to shiver or scream or sing.