Title Of Book: The Stranger of Ul Darak
By: SC Eston
Genre: Fantasy
Sub-Genre: Action/Adventure

Blurb:

In an age long forgotten, nineteen hundred and eighty-three Seals were forged—magical disks placed around the world to repel the cosmic chaos beyond.

In the centuries that followed, the Sentinels were tasked with protecting those Seals. For countless generations, they succeeded.

Until now.

At six years old, Shéana is recruited to the order of the Sentinels. A decade later, she displays powers unlike anything any Sentinel has shown before. When she feels the world stirring in pain, she knows the shield surrounding Tyronia has been breached. The great chain is broken. And the order of the Sentinels lies in discord.

In the isolated village of Valdur, young Arth struggles to belong. Spurned by the other children, he ventures south to the endless mountains, and the strange barrier marking the edge of existence. The Final Horizon. Here he witnesses the impossible: a man emerging from beyond the veil—where nothing can possibly exist. A man Arth knows he must protect.

Now the fate of two worlds rests on a knife’s edge. Only the courage of a village boy and the power of a fledgling Sentinel can save them.

But to save their worlds, they must reject all they’ve been taught, leaving behind everyone and everything they’ve ever known.

Excerpt

Rift Under the Mountains

They were unwelcome. The rejection welled up from the earth and emanated from the walls. It waited in the oppressive darkness ahead and the blackness chasing their heels. The mountains above and around wanted them out. The farther they ventured, the stronger the feeling became.
Maéva knew that Vìr, walking a few steps behind, shared her apprehension.
Something inhabits these rocks, he had told her a few days previous.
“Something in pain,” she had replied.
Yes, you are correct… He had paused and studied the earth around them, touched the wall of the tunnel with the palm of his hand. A tortured essence, he signed.
An essence. Something incorporeal, yet real and alive. Something that did not want them here.
Maéva looked over her shoulder, lifting her torch.
There he stood: Vìr, her best friend and companion, her lover. Despite his effort to hide it, he struggled. Sweat drenched his forehead, and his feet barely left the ground with each step. The gash on his right brow flashed red, unhealed, unable to heal. Still, he smiled and with a motion of his chin, he encouraged her to continue.
Despite her worries, Maéva smiled back and turned away, forward, slowing her pace ever so slightly.
These tunnels existed outside of the known world. The mountains of Ul Darak stood as the last barrier against eternal pandemonium. Historical accounts barely mentioned those who had explored the mountains in the past. There were so few of them, and little to say. The protectors patrolling the slopes of Ul Darak eventually recuperated their remains, unidentifiable pieces of wasted humanity.
For centuries, the appetite to explore Ul Darak had been absent. Then Vìr had arrived. He came from the west and his arrival in Ta’Énia changed everything. For many, but especially for Maéva.
Their progress was slow and the obstacles numerous: the complex system of passages, the uneven ground, the continual darkness, the rarity of food and water, and Vìr’s shattered health. For a while now, breathing had become difficult, the air itself noxious.
A grunt stopped her. Maéva turned and found Vìr crouched on one knee. One of his hefty hands rested against the wall. His sickness had worsened in the past few days. He had lost much weight, and patches of gray tarnished his dark skin.
“We’ve gone too far,” she heard herself say as she knelt beside him.
He shook his head and coughed. His forehead fell on her shoulder and she felt the fever seep through her shirt and warm her skin.
“Vìr, love, we only have two torches left…”
He shook his head again. Unable to stand yet unwilling to quit. Maéva carefully put the torch on the ground and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed his head, as much to give herself courage as to let him know she was there.
Vìr’s respirations came with difficulty. He coughed again.
“I miss your voice,” Maéva said.
At this, he lifted his head and looked into her eyes. With one hand, he drew a few signs in the air.
Me too. His smile was warm and reassuring, just like his voice had been.
“Rest for a moment,” she said, taking out her waterskin and giving it to him. He protested, but she insisted. After a quick sip, he rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “I’ll scout ahead,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She put another kiss on his forehead.
Picking up the torch, she stood and made her way forward. The tunnel went down and twisted to one side, its ceiling low, as if reaching down, as if trying to close the way. Then it opened and branched in two.
Another bifurcation. Another decision. The maze was relentless.
All of this to follow a vision given to someone else. Dàr, a protector in Ta’Énia, had been Vìr’s friend. After he found a mysterious object in the woods, visions plagued his dreams. In one of these, he had been shown a path through the mountains. He shared what he learned with one person only: Vìr. Eventually, he agreed to let Vìr share everything with her. And together, being who they were, Maéva and Vìr decided to investigate.
“Imagine!” he said one night, before the loss of his voice as they lay side by side under the stars. “Imagine… another world, beyond.”
The yearning in his voice exposed his need to start a new life, in a new place. Many believed that Maéva, whom they viewed as a respected scholar and a prominent member of the League of the Book, had much to lose by being with him.
But his desire had echoed her own. Their love for each other was only equaled by their passion for knowledge and learning, for discovering the undiscovered and explaining the unexplained. Together, they surveyed the borders of Ul Darak, sometimes leaving for days on end. Their searches lead nowhere and Maéva finally suggested that they push farther east, into the mountains.
She now wished that she could still feel the thrill of exploration, the excitement of reaching a new valley between the high peaks of Ul Darak. But her enthusiasm was gone. It had been years since they left the Yurita Highlands and entered the grounds of Ul Darak. They had walked valleys, traversed forests, climbed down into deep canyons, scaled high cliffs, navigated many tunnels and caves. They had built shelters, spent a month here and another there, often debating if they should go back, stay, or venture deeper.
Always, the latter eventually prevailed. And so, as the months and the days passed, they threaded farther into the heart of Ul Darak, the peaks growing higher and the tunnels going deeper.
Years… and everywhere, only mountains and caves.
This latest series of passages was the longest they had been underground, over a month. Maéva worried. Their quadrant and compass had become unreliable. They were running low on torchlight. Food was impossible to find. They had been rationing for a while, their reserves almost gone.
Years… and only one way to go: forward.
Maéva decided to take the left passage and climbed over some debris, massive rocks fallen from the ceiling. There was no way to know if it had happened recently. Something caught her attention, and she stopped. Slowly, she moved her torch behind her back, and to her disbelief what she had seen in the darkness became clearer.
It hung far ahead, suspended high above. A tiny speck of hope, a pale light breaching in from the outside, promising escape.
Maéva stared and waited, knowing it could be a trick. It had happened before.
But the light persisted.
Satisfied it was not going anywhere, Maéva rushed back. Vìr stood up when he saw her.
“Vìr!” she said. “There is—”
Suddenly, the ground and walls shook. Maéva tripped and found herself on her knees. Her torch rolled on the ground and stopped halfway between her and Vìr.
Somehow he stood, both hands on the wall.
The reverberations continued. Pebbles dislodged from the ceiling and Maéva put her head down. Some rocks bounced off her back while others scattered on the earth. Somewhere, a deafening crash resounded.
Inhaling dust, Maéva crawled forward, grabbed the torch, and pushed herself up. A few steps took her to Vìr’s side.
“There is light ahead!” she yelled over the lamentations of the mountains.
She took one of his hands in hers. He squeezed back and grinned, as if victorious, excited at the prospect of leaving the tunnels. Maéva wanted to smile back, but she could not. The uneasy sensation that the world opposed them had returned.
The mountains were angry.
Go, signed Vìr, directing her forward. We are almost there.
Supporting each other, they went down and around the bend in the passage. Tremors made each step challenging. As they took the path going left, a deep rumble started far away, rolling through the rock walls, making its way toward them.
“It knows,” Maéva said as she pointed ahead.
The light floated there. Vìr saw it and nodded.
She pulled him forward and they crossed the pile of debris. On the other side, they halted when another series of vibrations shook the cave. They knelt as a boulder crashed close by.
Maéva looked up, but floating dust had hidden the glow. The air tasted vile and poisonous.
“It’s a trap,” Maéva said between coughs, struggling to keep her mounting panic in check.
Vìr grabbed her shoulder, brought her face close to his, and shook his head.
No, he signed. We are winning. Look!
He pointed ahead. An opening appeared, different than the one she had initially found. This one was closer, lower, reachable maybe. The tremors had unwittingly exposed a way out.
She grabbed Vìr’s hand and pulled him toward the opening. A deep roar echoed, originating from the core of the mountains. It rapidly transformed into an ululation that chilled her bones. The tunnel shook and recoiled. Vìr’s and Maéva’s hands were painfully torn apart. More rocks fell and exploded. Maéva dropped the torch and its flame was snuffed out as it hit the dirt.
Gloom swept in and swallowed Vìr. The last thing Maéva saw was his eyes looking into hers. She yelled his name and the tunnel howled back.
A loud splitting noise echoed, followed by a blast of air. It forced Maéva into a crouch. The ground rumbled and the mountains raged.
Maéva thought of Vìr’s confident smile, of how hard they had worked to get to this point. Both strengthened her determination. Defiant, she crawled forward, keeping one arm over her head and probing ahead with the other.
She stopped, fear tightening around her throat.
The ground was gone.
She reached out again but found only emptiness. In a frenzy, Maéva extended her hand, left, right, up and down.
Nothing. There was nothing, until large fingers grazed her own. A mere brush, yet enough to connect, to know that Vìr was there, so close, reaching for her.
Another tremor pounded, pulling Maéva back, taking Vìr away.
The vibrations intensified and she screamed his name, once, twice, over and over, knowing that her voice could not be heard over the mounting roar of the mountains, knowing that Vìr, even if he wanted to, could not yell back.

Meet SC Eston

STEVE C. ESTON has been a lover of the fantastical and the scientific since he was a young boy. He wrote his first story by hand while still in elementary school—a five-page story about a tiger-masked ninja fighting mythical monsters that included his own illustrations. Today, Steve works as a manager in information technology, with over twenty years of experience in application and web development. He also has a master’s degree in business administration. When not spending time with his family, Steve makes time for his numerous hobbies, which include reading (and hoarding) books, listening to music, playing video games, watching movies, making puzzles, and playing hockey and tennis. He also loves to travel and developed an obsession with New Zealand after traveling there in 2015.