The Protectors: Book 1 in the Protectors Saga

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter
1

The long cold steps seemed endless as she rushed
towards the screams of her friends. Why had she just left them?
Were they alright? These were the thoughts that raged through her
mind as she finally reached the enormous stone doors. She flung the
doors open with as much force as she could muster and then entered
into the impeding darkness with both fear and anger weighing on her
heart.

Once she was inside the chamber the doors slammed
shut behind her. She couldn’t see or hear anything, but she felt
him. Everything inside of her knew that he was close. Then, out of
the darkness, his voice bellowed. Chills ran throughout her body as
he spoke, “How does it feel to be so powerful and yet not able to
save the people you really care about?”

Her confusion was laced with despair, and her voice
trembled as she spoke, “What are you talking about? Why did I hear
the screams of my friends?”

His laugh was cold and hard as he answered, “The
screams of the dying are often heard for miles, and I don’t think
your friends hold any exception to that.”

She felt the bile of panic rising up in her throat,
“You’re lying,” she shouted, “my friends are at home, and alive,
and out of your reach!”

“Poor child,” he scoffed, “you are so naïve; so
young, and you have no idea as to how far my reach can extend. All
together the Protectors became, and now all together you shall
die.”

“You speak to anger me and it’s working…now…where…are
my friends?” The silence that followed was broken as she screamed,
“
Show me
!”

A second later a mist began to rise from the floor
and in the middle of the room a luminescent glow began growing.
Then, the glow started to turn into ghostly images. She saw the
figures of her friends, her family; the people she knew and loved.
She watched in horror as hordes of the darkest kinds of Demons
raided her village, her home; the place where she had crept away
from in the middle of the night, telling no one where she was
going. She had done it for them, to protect and save them, and now
all she could do was watch as they died without her. She kept
silent as the destruction played out in front of her, until the
image of her best friend, her most loyal fighter; laying dead on
the ground in a pool of her own blood forced a scream of pure pain
to echo throughout the empty chamber. Her legs gave out and she
fell to the floor, unable to stop the tears.

“Now, now,” said a cold voice from behind her, “as
much as your crying may delight me, it certainly won’t bring back
your little companions.” He paused a moment, savoring her anguish,
“As much as I’ll miss you and your friends getting in the way of my
plans, everything must come to an end.”

“But…the prophecy,” she whimpered, still kneeling on
the ground, “the prophecy said that if I came alone, it would only
be me…it would be over. No one would get hurt…only me.” She could
barely get out the last words.

He laughed, “Prophecies are just mist and dust. No
one believes in them, except for fools.” He delighted in the fact
that his words made her tears fall harder as he continued, “You
really only have one course of action left, my dear.”

Desperation crept over her as she stared at the cold
stone floor, praying for the answer to what she should do. She knew
what it was that the Emperor wanted. He wanted to fight her; if he
were able to defeat the leader of the Protectors his reputation
alone would be enough to secure his place as a God amongst the
darkness.

I can’t do it, she thought to herself, he’s too
strong and I’m so weak. I’ve never been anything but weak…I’ll
lose. Then the knowledge that she had already lost consumed her.
What was the point in fighting if she had already lost
everything?

“Get off of your knees.” He was getting impatient,
“Fight me…
now
!”

She wiped away the warm tears off of her cheek. It
took only seconds for her to make a decision, but to her it seemed
like an eternity.

With sleek eyes she looked up at him and spoke with a
soft defiance, a defiance that came from the knowledge that she
wasn’t about to give him the pleasure of killing her, “You are
right about one thing Emperor; I do only have one course of action
left.”

She swallowed hard and drew in what she knew would be
her last breath. Her movements were quick and precise as she drew
the long steel dagger out from sheath strapped onto her waist. She
thought how strange it was that holding the dagger would give her
comfort. Even though she knew what she was about to do with it, to
her, it was like an old friend. She raised her head towards the
heavens, but all she could see was the dingy stone ceiling.

She spoke quietly, only audible enough for her own
ears and couldn’t stop the tears from re-forming in her eyes,
“Forgive me.”

In one swift movement she plunged the dagger deep
into her chest and through her heart. There was no pain, only a
dull sense of discomfort and a tightening that grew with every beat
that her heart could not make. But even without pain she knew that
she was dying; she was a skilled warrior and her aim was accurately
deadly. The life was draining out of her and she could feel it,
feel her body growing limp, and the air around her becoming colder.
As she fell back onto the floor, in her last moments, she searched
for the guilt she knew she should feel. The leader of the
Protectors ending her own life before attempting to fight for this
universe was an unheard of thing. A thing of guilt and shame, but
she felt none of it, only a silver thread of relief. Relief that
maybe it was finally over; all the worry, pain, and responsibility;
everything that her life had been made up of. Although, there was
something deep down inside of her that told her it wasn’t over,
that this wasn’t it; a chapter had ended, but the story was far
from being finished.

“Noooooooo!” The Emperor screamed with such fury it
seemed to shake the chamber walls.

It had all happened so fast, too fast for the Emperor
to stop her, and now he was deprived the acclaim of killing her. An
act he knew he would have accomplished. In her condition, beaten
down by grief and without the aid of her fellow Protectors, she
would have been no match for him at all.

The Emperor walked over to her lifeless body and
knelt down beside it, wanting nothing more than to bring it back to
life so that he could strangle the life out of her with his own two
hands. After a while he became amused at the irony of the
situation. From the second of her birth he had hated her and wanted
her dead more than anything else in the world, but now that she was
actually dead, he realized he hated her more than ever. He began to
gently stroke the torn flesh around the area where the dagger had
pierced through her skin.

His thin lips traced the outline of her ear as he
spoke to her body, “Avery,” he breathed her name, “I may not have
the honor of your death on my hands, but now there is almost no one
left standing in my way. Soon, even your little warriors won’t be a
threat. In the end, I suppose you made it easier for me. In the
end…you lost.”

The large chamber doors flung open once more, but
this time instead of a single Protector walking through them, it
was an assembly of some of the vilest beings alive, dark Demons
from the underworld, brutish trolls, foul ogres, and monstrous
beasts; all of the things that nightmares are made of, and all of
the creatures that the Protector’s spent their lives
eliminating.

“My friends,” The Emperor gushed, standing up from
the body, opening his arms out to his visitors, “I’m so pleased you
could all come.”

A large Demon, humanoid in appearance, except for the
fact he was covered in red scales, was the first to notice Avery’s
body lying on the ground, “Is that her?” He asked, a hint of shock
in his voice, “Is that the Protector’s leader, dead on your
floor?”

The Emperor smiled slowly and motioned towards the
body, “Yes, I suppose she was.”

“You actually succeeded.” Another Demon spoke, this
one was grayish and covered in rancid ooze that smelled like
stagnant water, “Although, I do not sense your power on her…you did
not kill her with your own hand.”

“That is irrelevant!” The Emperor shouted, he was not
about to let any of these putrid insects begin to challenge him, “I
provided the false prophecy which led her here! I created the
illusion of her village’s destruction, and if she had not been too
weak to fight me I would have torn out her heart with my own two
hands!”

A hush fell throughout the room. Not one of the
creatures wished to anger the Emperor, fearing his power and
wrath.

“The body of a Protector is still a grand trophy!” A
massive green troll, standing against one of the far walls said,
“You should display it outside for all to see!”

“Leave the body where it lies.” The Emperor bellowed,
“Trust me, it’ll be much more effective this way.”

“What do we do now, my Lord?” The red scaly Demon
asked.

The Emperor could barely conceal the anticipation in
his voice, “We wait until they come, and when they do…we show them
the same kindness that our previous guest received.”

Chapter
2

“I can’t believe we let her go alone!” A girl in blue
riding a buckskin horse yelled over her shoulder.

Another young girl, wearing gray, and mounted atop a
smaller white horse, shouted back, “Nobody let her go alone, Jade!
Nobody even knew she was going!”

“Bunny did!” Jade shouted, pulling her horse up and
cutting off the other girls riding behind her, so that they had to
stop as well.

“Jade, what are you doing?!” The girl in gray asked,
surprised, having to hold onto her reins tight as her horse bucked
up slightly from the sudden stop.

“I’m getting some answers, Skylar.” Jade spat out,
“Like, why, in God’s name, would Bunny show Avery some obscure
little prophecy, in some archaic little book, found in the very
back of our dusty little library, that basically tells Avery to go
off and die!”

“I had to show her.” A girl in green, on a dark brown
horse, spoke nervously, the beginning of tears wetting her eyes,
“Avery’s our leader; we have to go to her first about anything. She
had me looking through the books for anything that involved the
Emperor, and then I found the prophecy, and I showed it to her, and
she begged, she ordered me not to tell the rest of you. Especially,
you, Jade.” Bunny began to cry uncontrollably, “I already told you
all of this. She gave me an order, and she made me promise not to
tell, and I broke both!”

Jade stared at Bunny in disbelief, shaking her head.
She couldn’t believe that Bunny had been so weak and so stupid and
now, because of that, Avery was in trouble.

“You told us thirty minutes too late, Bunny!” Jade
shouted.

Bunny wiped at her nose with her hand, trying to get
a hold of herself, “Besides,” she hiccupped, “the prophecy didn’t
say anything about dying; it just said that two leaders, one of
light and one of dark, shall meet alone and from their sacrifice of
blood, peace could be had by both sides.”

Jade’s mouth dropped open, “How is that good?!” She
screamed, “Sacrifice of blood, Bunny! Sacrifice of blood!”

“That’s enough!” A fourth and final girl in red,
saddled upon a dusky gray horse, yelled angrily, “Bunny feels bad
enough as it is, don’t make it worse. Avery knew what she was
getting into when she went off by herself. That’s what our
leader
is best at…doing things by herself and telling us
about it later.”

“Sasha, don’t you even start with me.” Jade gave
Sasha a stare that would have sent most other people running away
crying, “If anything happens to her…” Jade’s voice trailed off. She
couldn’t even force herself to finish the thought, “Let’s just
ride.”