Ace of Pentacles

Chapter 1 Did the gray, dull, and inanimate garden wall in front of her just shiver, sweat, and leak out tears of blood? This was incredulous. She wasn’t Alice in Wonderland. Madeline shook her head. It must be fatigue. She looked at the wall again. Now, it stood still as any dull gray wall in any backyard. She sighed. It was fatigue. A strange shade of gray light spread over a garden of plastic-looking trees. Her eyes shot to the sky and widened. She was looking at the magnificent sunset in Eudaiz, a universe far away from Earth. She smiled. After what felt like decades of bloodbath and battles, she had survived and come here. The sunset was comforting. Madeline had read many science fiction novels, which at the moment served the sole purpose of preventing her from freaking out or making a complete i***t of herself. Then she realized the sunset in front of her was artificial. The smile left her face, giving way to a frown of anxiety at the daunting thought of an uncertain future. A few months ago, she would have laughed at the idea that she would ever space travel. But this was worse. She hadn’t just space-traveled to get here. She had traveled across dimensions of time and space and God-knows-whatever-else. The sort of travel that didn’t allow her to use a map to track the routes, the kind where she didn’t know where she had been or how long it had taken her. In 2015, she had been an accomplished New York journalist. A few short months later, she’d discovered she was not Madeline Roux, but Madeline Kelley. She was only half human from her mother’s side because her father was Eudaizian. She’d met Ciaran in London and discovered that she could love a man like madness. Ciaran said they were soulmates. But his words were too polished for her. She preferred to say simply that they loved each other. She’d married him a few days ago—in whatever dimension existed between Earth and this place. She was now Madeline LeBlanc, in whatever year it was in Eudaiz. Eudaiz was a multi-billion citizen universe, governed by a council of nine Sciphils—a word that stood for Scientist Philosopher. There had been countless times Madeline rolled her eyes internally when she used the term. In her lay English, she considered the council to be like royalty or a government of some kind. They controlled everything in Eudaiz. What intrigued her most was that the council members were mostly humans who’d come from Earth. A council of nine humans governing an immense universe of alien citizens was a concept she’d never have imagined in her wildest dreams. The thing was, her grandfather had been Sciphil One. Before he died, he’d appointed her as his successor of the Sciphil One position because she was the last living member of her family. So she was due to take up that appointment in a few days and became Sciphil One. That had been quite a shock to her peaceful life on Earth. Suddenly her vision wavered. The garden in front of her flickered. “Oh, no,” she muttered and turned around to go inside. On Earth, she’d thought she was a pseudo psychic. But since reconnecting with her biological family and accepting this Sciphil One position, her psychic ability had become stronger. She could see minds and track minds, and sometimes she could even read people’s minds. The baggage that came along with that ability was that she had precognition—mostly in regards to negative incidents. They called that her talent. She called it a curse. She didn’t think she could make it back inside the house. It seemed as if the ground was moving under her feet. On the wall at the other side of the garden, a blood-red text appeared: ENNEAD WILL KILL YOU ALL. The garden bed was covered in blood and gore. Body parts littered the ground. She wanted to run, but her feet were buried in what looked like bricks made of dried bones. She yanked at her feet but couldn’t free them. She called out for Ciaran, but no sound escaped her mouth. The bones built themselves up quickly, now reaching up to her body. She was suffocating in a tomb of bone.