Fate Shifter

1 The course of true love never did run smooth. A Midsummer Night's Dream , 1598 William Shakespeare The cold breezes seeped up from the ground, whirled into a small funnel, slashed at her skin, blew and tangled her beautiful long black hair. The gusts came from nowhere, carrying with them a strange chanting sound she didn’t care for. It was the hovering sound of Hell—the sound of the dark magic. It was not supposed to follow her to the Daimon Gate, a universe far away from Earth. She had escaped from the haunt of the dark magic seventeen years ago, fleeing from a remote village in Ireland to London. She ran again a month ago, this time not by herself but with Lorcan, the love of her life, exiling themselves from Earth to the Daimon Gate. She assumed they had found their Heaven here. Now she couldn’t make it home—to the small castle Lorcan had named after her. She stood at the corner of a dead end street, beneath a gothic dome—a place Lorcan had told her several times not to take the short cut through. But she had taken this route several times in the last month. It was quiet and easy. It only took a few hundred yards around the corner, and she could go up the hill to their place. It should be perfectly safe based on what she was told. The Daimon Gate was a virtuous universe—everything here was governed by righteousness. Orla couldn’t help but roll her eyes when she thought about it. Being righteous was the very reason this whole universe was governed by machinery and a wicked computer system called the EYE. Only machines could tell right from wrong with no exception. It was perfectly normal for her, a human, to make mistakes, wasn’t it? The fact that she wasn’t good at following the rules was only a minor issue. “All right, wallowing is a stupid thing to do, Orla,” she muttered to herself. She had developed the strange habit of talking to herself since they had moved here. She didn’t want to admit that it could be the result of loneliness and isolation. She shifted her stance and felt a tingling sensation on her toes and fingertips. It was just the chill, she thought, as she stared at a black brick wall in the place where she had seen her usual route home just a few seconds ago. She had charged at it three times. When she stepped back, the path revealed itself; but when she approached, it closed up on her. Orla was certain if she turned around to go back to the main road, that path would close as well. In this universe, the physical rules were strange. She didn’t understand them, nor did she appreciate them. She knew someone or something had to be playing a joke on her, and if this was a prank, it wasn’t remotely funny. Her psychic ability was telling her nothing at the moment. Her palms were clammy and, even in the freezing air, a bead of sweat trickled down her forehead. She shoved her right hand into her pocket to grab her cell phone and almost laughed at her own reflex. There were no such things as a cell phones here. In fact, the computer geniuses in the Daimon Gate considered her earthly technology primitive. She merely wanted to call for help, but there was no time to fumble with the thing they used in place of a cell phone—a wrist unit. It was a funky type of watch to her, and a useless object that she had never bothered learned how to operate. The wind grew stronger, and she thought she heard a howl echo from somewhere in the air. A dried tree branch on the ground flew up, whirled in the wind, and then aimed at her left arm, slashing into it. “Oww,” she yelped and grabbed at the cut. A small stream of blood oozed through the gaps between her fingers. A brick wall on her left cracked and collapsed. Orla just had enough time to jump out of its way. She turned around, glancing in the direction of the main road. A wall, coming from nowhere, slid across and blocked her view. She was being closed in. She turned back, looking at her usual corner path, open now. She made a small step forward, and the path closed up right in front of her. She remembered what Lorcan had said—there were invisible networks of dimensional holes that only gatekeepers had access to and could control. She was sure these walls had come from those holes. More walls slid out from dimensional holes, surrounding her like a maze. A wall came in close proximity to where she stood and hit her from behind. Orla fell to the ground. She stood up immediately, her hands balled into fists. “That’s enough, you coward. Wanna play with me? Show your pathetic face!” There was no response save for the sliding sound of black brick walls. Soon they would sandwich her, and she wasn’t in the mood to be anyone’s meal. She swirled her palms in a circle as if making a ball out of thin air. A ball of fire formed. She smiled as if she couldn’t believe what she had learned from her childhood had worked. She threw the fireball at the wall that blocked her way home. It crashed into the wall and burst into hundreds of pitiful fire particles. Another wall hit her from behind. Orla fell again onto the cold dirt road. She stood up, created a bigger fireball, and hurled it at the wall. Again and again, she threw them. The sound of the balls hitting the walls was as loud as thunder. The wall cracked and shattered into a pile of dirt and then vanished. The cold wind still whirled, but it was not the icy breeze sending the chill to her spine right now. A clapping sound came from a dark corner, followed by a man. He looked like a dark prince Orla had read about in gothic novels—tall with slightly long black hair framing a sinfully handsome face. His clapping and his smile sent a chill from her spine to her brain. Her blood ran cold. She had no idea who he was, but she had a feeling that he didn’t come here to see her performance. He came to see her death.