The Guardians (The Lost Realm Series #1)

Prologue

                                                                                    Prologue

  The night air was biting cold and the forest dead silent. A thick blanket of snow covered the treetops, hiding all signs of life. Anyone who dared to venture into the forest in the middle of winter would be assured certain death, not just because of the cold, but also because of the wild beasts that roamed it. But, if by some strange chance someone did come into the forest, they were either irrefutably brave, or a complete idiot.

            Suddenly the snapping of twigs broke the silence as a woman hurriedly dodged around a large tree. She wasn’t an idiot, but she wasn’t sure if she could be considered brave either.

            The woman pulled her cloak tighter and shivered as she inhaled a staggered breath of air, causing a puff of white smoke to form at the end of her nose.

            “I can sense her,” someone abruptly yelled, piercing the silence. “She’s near.”

            The woman’s stomach wrenched as she tried to control her breathing. They would hear her if she didn’t. A dark head floated in the distance and she ducked into a thick bush to avoid being seen. There was no way to get away without being seen. She held as still as possible and didn’t dare breathe as she waited for them to go the other way.

            “She went that way,” yelled a man’s deep voice. The figure pointed in the other direction, and the rest of the group followed it.

            She waited until they were out of earshot before heaving a sigh of relief and crawling out of the bush. It was close. As stealthily as she could manage, she weaved around another group of tall, silver-barked trees and came to a stone archway minutes later.

 She had made it.

            Her glory was shattered when a menacing looking man abruptly appeared in front of her. “I found her!” he hollered.

            “That does not mean you have caught me,” she replied, her turquoise eyes blazing fiercely. She pulled her dagger from its sheath and threw it at the man, the dagger landing in the center of his chest.

            He screamed, and moments later, the woman heard loud, echoing shouts and running footsteps from nearby.

            The woman took the diversion as an opportunity to escape. In one swift and graceful motion she lunged toward the archway and prayed it would work. Marek had said it would, but with the way things were going now, anything could happen.

            She closed her eyes as suddenly a strange, clear liquid surrounded her, the thick substance momentarily slowing her down, and the coolness of it causing her fair skin to tingle. It was after the woman had re-gained her wits that she reopened her eyes just in time to see the figures disappearing behind her.

It was closing just as she and Marek had planned. The light to the portal dimmed and she waited for something to happen. Where she expected to see a magnificent new world, she was instead enveloped by darkness.

                                                                        ***

The voices droned on around her, blending into one after a while.

It happened every day at precisely two in the afternoon, once everyone had eaten lunch, but not immediately after, because that was the time when everyone was sleepiest. The facility had scheduled it to where there was an hour between the end of lunch and group discussion for everyone’s stomach to settle. That way when it was time to sit and chat everyone wasn’t starving, but not at risk of nodding off to sleep either.