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

no traces of the campfire behind them. When looking ahead, they saw they were entering the forest.
No real path seemed too visible.
Neither of the men knew what to say to one another.
So they did not say anything.
One thing, however, they did have in common: strong, determined and ready as they were, nothing could take away their fear of the unknown.
Adnicul, the former leader of the country of the screaming birds, was here to win back his soul.
Alexander, the lost king of the haunted kingdom, was here to find his country. He had gone thirty years in escaping his destiny. He gone five years neglecting it. He had gone three years chasing it. Now, Alexander Roderick Winsletenna was about to face what his heart feared most: his sister.
But somewhere in his heart, he knew that beyond that road leading to an underground cave there was a land where the roses grew. A paradise lost to be found, where his heart would sing a song of salvation as before. Where his family would rule over bliss for generations to come.
The evangelists, the hermits, the forest peoples and the angels had made him into what he was today.
A patient lion with the strength of an ox.
Freedom forever his.
On his back was a sword.
So, as the fighter he was, Alexander Winsletenna rode calmly toward the forest, not really knowing what to expect. A guide by his side. A dream in his heart. And hope to last forever.


CHAPTER THREE

UNEXPECTED LIAISON

There was something that told him he was crossing a barrier.
He was crossing a barrier between the rounded and the straight, between training and expertise. This was no longer a paragraph with an intermission. It went straight to the point.
There was no beating around the bush. If this had been a book, the paragraph would start with words and not with a pause. At least, that is what Alex was telling himself. He was entering a world that would become Yambalah, the birthplace of the original sin.
This was a world full of cities and yet desolate and forsaken, the real Nocturania was a mixture of throbbing empire and haunted kingdom.
It was perfectly reasonable that the remarkable world he had travelled through wasn’t the Nocturania of real life. It was not the alternate reality Michael had spoken of as the mirror reflection of his own. It was not anything that he had seen before.
It had tutored him to become a warrior, yes.
But this new place, what was it?
This was the inside of something else.

This was a world left behind. Something someone had cleansed to prepare for him to arrive. He could imagine his own real Prosperania a place stuck somewhere in time.
If he were to see the state that his Prosperania actually was in, surprise would be the last emotion to arise in his soul. The real Prosperania was actually frozen in time.
It had actually not passed beyond the 23rd of September 1425.
But this place was stuck in its own self. It seemed that something had happened here before that date, the 23rd of September 1425. It seemed everyone in this desolate place had been disposed of before Nomed had served them the potion.
All of these details were clear to him. It was also clear that this place had been deliberately cleaned of all life.

He was currently riding toward a crack in time.
That much was clear. But what else?

He was riding toward his real self. Sitting there upon Mercutio, his brown stallion, and trotting forward through early afternoon, Alex was forced to look at his own hands. They were young hands. He let his fingers pass through his own hair, thick hair, a young man’s hair. He felt his cheeks. He enjoyed feeling the sensation of hands against his own close shave. But he realized he had not shaved for … how long, a week now? Why did his beard not grow here? The sword upon his back was pure metal with a silver handle, as unreal as it was magical.
His vest was leather, his pants were rough cotton.
He looked at his own arms, muscular biceps and triceps.
He had never had muscles like these until now.
Not even in his youth had he been so muscular.

What did this mean?
He knew what it meant. It meant he was still his own “mind-self”, young and taught to defend God. But he was entering what the world really looked like beyond the illusion. He was peeking through the keyhole of reality. Until he actually flip sided into the real world he would be his “mind-self”.
He had been in a world created especially for him to tutor him to meet Lucinda and whoever else he was about to battle. But he was a Warrior of God. And more than before, Alexander knew that although the world behind him was just a scam, a false pretence to cover up what actually lay behind it all, he knew that the angels might’ve just used this world to tutor him to be what he was now.
He was a visitor, a guest in a place waiting for salvation, literally.
A bird flew overhead and Alexander Winsletenna looked up and saw that it was a buzzard. Belinda had seen a few of these birds on the way back from Rigor Mortis in 1411 and they had remained angels to her since then. This was the way that he saw them now, as angels.
There were bushes and trees on each side of this road and most of them were pine trees. After having ridden for the early morning hours over rough valley terrain they were finally riding down a path that was easy for the horses to travel.

The two men riding down the path side by side said nothing to one another. They had been silent since leaving the lake. Now there was a mutual understanding between them that they were in the same proverbial boat and that they needed each other.
That morning, both Adnicul and Alexander had looked behind them upon entering the forest. He could clearly recall, just as well as Alexander he supposed, that he had seen Michael standing there next to Eric looking at them as they rode away. Adnicul also remembered what he had seen when he turned to look a second time, an entirely different scene, and houses with thatched roofs. He had seen barns and a well in the middle of the marketplace. He had seen a temple of some kind way in the distance. The two men glanced at each other and Adnicul could see that the Prosperanian King was aware of the real Nocturania back there. They had skipped a moment in time.
Adnicul recognized Michael’s look from before his disappearance. He recalled seeing him in the convent praying whilst Uriel was out taking Adnicul for a walk. There was solitude there in that stare that told him that everything was at stake. The look on Michael’s face told him that this was way too important for anything at all to go wrong. He, the tyrant, badly needed the protection of angels.
Basically, this was his road to be travelled with another man.
For once, and for two different reasons, these two men were unified in their cause to awaken the haunted kingdom from its cursed sleep.

Alex could not help but be sceptical. But he suspected that his former foe had been told that his soul would be terminated if he did not help Alexander in his quest. Having lived a lie for eons was most probably not the most inspiring thing to handle.
It had taken him a half-hour to realize that he had been taken from the imaginary world of his inner demons to what could safely be called the real Nocturania. This was none other than the world that he had left behind. The journey through the crack in the mountain had been a journey between worlds and nothing else. He could most probably travel to Prosperania now and see himself lying there on the table in the Grand Hall. But what did that make Adnicul? It made him a dimensional traveller, as well. It meant that Adnicul had actually been captured in the real world, not in any fantasy illusion. That meant that he had come to Alexander’s to take him back.
Was that true? Where had actually awoken? Had he been sleeping on Michael’s lap in the twilight zone between worlds? Had they met between worlds? Had Adnicul been handed over from his own illusion to meet him like someone that was handed over at the border of two countries? All he knew was that he was riding toward something that he hoped was going to give him back his home.

Alexander pitied Adnicul. He felt that the Nocturanian King was now nothing more than the ruler of something that he had no knowledge would still exist once he got back. Was it all destroyed? Was he to forfeit his throne if he did get back to where he had been?
There was something in the distance and Alex wondered instantly what it was. Alexander yawned and realized for the first time that he was tired.
There was not much to say.
What was this place?
Again, an avenue, forest on each side, deep ditch on each side separating it from the road. The road itself half dried mud, half sand. Centurion’s and Mercutio hooves were not clippeti-clopping down the road, but the sound they were making was more a swishety-swosh due to the mud.
The leaves were green on the trees and every trace of spring was in the air. But the sky was grey and it looked like rain, although not a drop was falling upon their heads.
A monument was ahead. The road had been paved around the monument. In this desolate place a black statue was sitting on a throne that sat on a platform with steps leading down to the ground. It was the monument that you would expect to find standing on the town square of some city in front of the City Hall, remembering its founder, but not here.
At that moment, Alex realized that he had not put a statue of himself on the town square. Had people told him to do so? Maybe they had. But why do it?
Because he had been ruling Prosperania now for such a long time?
Yes, perhaps that was it. But Alex, modest man that he was, knew what his father also had known. People remember you for the way you rule and govern and help them, not for some statue in a town square. If you have to put up a statue to tell them that you are king, then you are doing something wrong. They should like you enough to urge your family to put up a statue.
Who was the man on the throne up there, higher than the trees?
He recognized the long hair and the cape.
When he came closer he recognized the eye patch as well.
A few feet away from the monument, the two men and former foes stopped and looked up at the large thing staring at them.
A slight benevolent grin on the statue’s lips made Alex realize that the statue was pointing at the road behind them. He had not noticed it because the man sitting up there had his hand on his left leg because the other one was clenched in a fist.