Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

reason with her. Aged just nineteen when she first met Gabrian, she was more at home in the crowded city streets at night and rarely stayed in one place for long. She was indeed the unstoppable force to Gabrian’s immovable object. The name Redfletching came from Velena's trademark ruby-coloured feathers, which adorned the tails of all her arrows. Catriona adopted the practice and earned the name on the day she outshot her mother.

Despite their differences – or perhaps because of them – Gabrian and Velena were hopelessly attracted to each other. Catriona was the fruit of their love, their only child. Trained in the formidable archery and hunting skills of her mother and the gentle magic of her father as she grew up, she proved to be highly gifted in both sides. From a young age, she appreciated the strength that is found in diversity and committed herself to the pursuit of Balance in herself, in magic and in the world.

Outwardly, modern-day Faery were slightly smaller than the average human and considerably lighter, possessing hollow bones as a legacy of evolution from creatures that could fly. Faery did not have wings, however, and depictions of winged Faery were generally deemed offensive. Their most distinctive feature was a stripe of small brown spots that ran down each side of their body, legs and arms. Catriona’s markings extended to her face, although as a half-Faery, they were faded, so they could easily be mistaken for freckles. Cat was always quick to make it clear that they were not.

The mortals of Tempestria shared their world with higher planar beings, powerful even beyond the gods to whom they prayed. Every now and then, Daelen StormTiger would drop out of the sky and fight some unfathomable cosmic threat known as Kullos, and often their great and terrible battles took their toll on innocent Tempestrians. According to legend, one particularly devastating battle, in ages past, caused Daelen to somehow split in two. He and his twin, generally known as the dark clone, did not get on, and so Daelen had two nemeses to fight. Relative to my mother’s time, that was a thousand years ago and even now, almost a thousand beyond that, we know almost nothing about the world before that time. There are no records, no history books. Nothing. To all intents and purposes, that was Year Zero, but that’s clearly impossible.

All mortals knew of Daelen was that he was something called a shadow warrior – as was Kullos – a being of incredible power and their world’s self-styled protector. It was a matter of some debate as to whether the world would, in fact, need a protector if he would simply go away, which, to the relief of many, he did for long periods. Still, nobody, not even the wizards and the clerics, had the power to do much about it when Daelen StormTiger chose to return and ‘protect’ them once more.

*****

At first, the attack on Catriona’s village seemed just another unfortunate site of these cosmic battles. Daelen appeared, as he always did, in the middle of a violent storm, bringing thunder, rain and lightning flashes that seemed to be shaped in the image of a great tiger. But there was something different about this attack: this time Kullos appeared to have an ally, which was unheard of. An ally who seemed intent on razing their quiet little village to the ground, as if in revenge for some terrible affront or unknowable offence they had caused.

The village was not entirely alone in the face of this supernatural force. The Champion of the Gods, the faithful companion of Daelen StormTiger, was with them. He was called Ossian Miach Kaidool, but Tempestrians tended to call him ‘Michael’ as they could never pronounce his real name correctly. Trust me, gentle reader, it is not as simple as it appears on the page. There were complex inflexions to be observed and several of the common mistakes apparently translated into something highly insulting in his language. So frankly, he’d rather they just stick to ‘Michael.’

Standing at seven feet, with dried, translucent skin stretched like parchment over a horned skull, he was somewhat disconcerting to look at. Still, he was quite an amiable chap. Just as long as one did not mispronounce his name and he wasn’t suffering from one of his bouts of depression, which were pretty understandable considering he was Fated to die at the end of every Final Battle. And there had been many Final Battles. Such death was not permanent – Daelen would always Resurrect him at a later time, but he could only do that when there was dire need.

On that fateful day, Michael was forced to leave Daelen’s side, and try to defend the village, while the shadow warrior assailed Kullos with powerful blasts from his beam cannon and drew their great battle away from the area.

The being attacking the village, gentle reader, was difficult to see – a phrase I use quite literally. He certainly wasn’t hiding, nor was it merely a case of camouflage. He wasn’t invisible as such, but more like a ‘void-creature.’ When one looked at his position, one didn’t really see him, so much as see the absence of him. As if there were a humanoid-shaped hole in the fabric of reality in the place he was standing. Michael had never seen anything like it before.

Or should that be, he had ‘never not-seen nothing’ like it before? Whatever. Let’s just go with ‘void-creature.’

Michael brought his powers to bear on this individual, but it remained unaffected. He summoned swarms of deadly insects, but they were swallowed by the void. He tried ‘A Murder of Ravens in Fugue’ bringing forth a dozen undead ravens from the Gates of Hell. Heralds of Death, they would inspire fear in those they attacked, but their calls seemed to echo and fade as if the void-creature were simply much too far away for their song to carry. Abandoning such tactics, he decided to go