Cursed Stone - Indigo Stone

1 Heat. That was all he could feel. A wave of fire that carried incinerating heat was flying toward him. Lorcan stared at it as if it was a movie clip shown in slow motion. Once that fire brushed over him, Lorcan knew all that would be left of him was a pile of ashes. He was stuck beneath a collapsed brick dome, half of his body was buried, and his legs were crushed. He didn’t think there were any bones left intact, so even if the bricks and stones didn’t crumble down upon him, he wouldn’t be able to move out of the way of the fire anyway. As death loomed close, he thought of Orla. He hadn’t had a chance to marry her properly. He thought of his family in Ireland, too, and regretted taking their love for granted. If there were a God—and somehow that God was compassionate enough to grant him another chance—he would take Orla to Ireland to meet his family and marry her. On top of that, he would go to church every week. Brandon’s laughter still echoed in the air—the sound of evil. How could a gatekeeper in a virtuous place such as the Daimon Gate turn dark so quickly? Lorcan wondered. As he closed his eyes, awaiting the coming fire, he heard the sound of a spaceship moving closer. Turning toward the noise, he saw it had parked close to where he lay. From inside the spaceship, Ciaran jumped out and rushed over to Lorcan. “Go away! There won’t be enough time, Ciaran!” Lorcan yelled. That man must have nerves of steel, Lorcan thought. Without a word, Ciaran blasted his weapon at the loose bricks around Lorcan and then used his daggers as levers to lift the large stone from on top of Lorcan. Ignoring Lorcan’s verbal abuse, Ciaran hauled Lorcan up and half-carried, half-dragged Lorcan into his spaceship. The door closed and sealed immediately after their embarkation. “Heat defense mechanism on!” Ciaran shouted. The spaceship shuddered, and they heard a click. “Affirmative and ready,” a robotic voice said. Then the storm of fire hit them. The spaceship tilted slightly when hit, but regained its balance soon after. As the counterbalance mechanism kicked in to compensate for the heat outside, the air inside the spaceship dropped to freezing. The storm continued to attack the spaceship from the outside. They heard the sound of hard objects hitting metal, and the force of the air blew through gaps in the outer body of the ship, creating a hellish howling noise. Then it quieted down, the fire went past, and the spaceship seemed to settle. Lying on the floor, Lorcan’s vision became blurry. He knew he needed to pass out so that his body could begin the healing process, but he had to tell Ciaran about his healing ability first or he would think that his system was collapsing. “Damn it,” Lorcan thought. He couldn’t force a word past his lips. And as he’d predicted, Ciaran was trying to prevent him from passing out because in the same situation, a normal person would pass out and go into cardiac arrest due to the shock of the injuries and the extreme changes of environmental conditions they had just experienced. “Lorcan, come on. Open your eyes for me. You’re not going to die on me. Come on.” Ciaran shook Lorcan’s shoulders so hard that there was no way he would be able to pass out and start any healing process. Lorcan wanted to scream, but again, he couldn’t get any words out. Ciaran ran to a small compartment and pulled out an emergency medical kit. Lorcan opened his eyes and saw Ciaran preparing a syringe. It had to be adrenaline, Lorcan thought, which normally he wouldn’t mind, but if that kick-ass chemical was injected into his system now, he’d be forced to remain conscious and deal with this excruciating pain. Lorcan summoned all the strength he had left and said, “No.” Ciaran c****d an eyebrow. “No? It’s only adrenaline. I know what I’m doing.” “No,” Lorcan repeated, but Ciaran approached him, still ignoring his weak protest. Ciaran crouched next to Lorcan, but before he could inject the adrenaline, something hit the spaceship so hard that it almost tipped the craft over. Ciaran fell, dropping the syringe on the floor, and it rolled away to a far corner. He hurried toward a control window to look outside, mumbling some profanity as he went. On the floor, Lorcan took his opportunity and slipped into his needed unconsciousness. After a while, Lorcan opened his eyes to find himself alone, lying on the floor of the spaceship. His body had healed. Getting up, he went to the window to see what was going on outside. A short distance away, Ciaran and a group of soldiers had barricaded themselves behind the ruins of a gothic dome and were firing at a small army of space creatures. To protect Lorcan, Ciaran shot and killed any creatures veering toward the space vessel. Lorcan immediately recognized the ambush attempt that had caught him off guard before. He searched the spaceship for the weapon compartment. He grabbed two long laser beam guns. He’d never used them before, but in looking them over, it didn’t take him long to figure out where the triggers were. Unfortunately, as soon as he touched the handles of the guns, a line of text flashed on a small screen located above the trigger: Unauthorized User. Lorcan swore and ran to the control panel. He slammed his palm on the verification screen and, ignoring the machine’s protest, hacked into the system. It didn’t take him long to prompt the system to give him a pass for weapon usage. Lorcan scanned the receiver of the gun over the verification screen dashboard and the recognition mechanism on the gun flashed a green light. Outside, Ciaran had nearly wiped out the small army, still keeping an eye on the spaceship to be sure no stray creatures wandered near it. He felt a sudden blast of heat and dust pressure coming from behind, an area that, oddly, backed up to a dead end wall of rock and stone. Ciaran was sure that nothing could penetrate the wall to come out at him from that corner. But it then dawned on him that he was fighting at a transitional zone in between universes. The dead end could be merely an illusion, and a dimensional hole could open before he had a chance to react. He whirled around to face the general direction from which the blast had come, but it seemed to be too late. He shouted to his soldiers to take cover and dove behind a rock. The pressure came like an explosion. He and all of his soldiers were thrown feet away, tossed around like rag dolls. Dazed, Ciaran tried to sit up and see through the dust storm. He saw nothing but the shape of a man walking toward him. He groped for his weapons on the ground nearby but found nothing but dust. He could feel the warmth of his blood streaming out from a gash on his left shoulder. Ciaran tried to spring to his feet, but his body wouldn’t obey. Looking up, he saw Brandon standing right in front of him, a cold smirk on his face. “Never thought you would face death like this, did you, Ciaran?”