Emily's Heart

Prologue

I've rewritten this chapter (new version uploaded 8/15/13). As always, votes and comments very much appreciated!

PROLOGUE

Ciardha became a black wisp and escaped the shadow prison that had been his home since before the Earth was born. He rode the wave of Dark Energy he’d used to send Brighid’s whelp back to Earth. His sister’s energy was so diminished that she had not the strength to contain him any longer. The door to Ciardha’s prison was thrown wide open. After countless millennia of imprisonment in the Umbra Perdita, his Dark Energy was at long last without bounds.

Ciardha pulled Dorcha into the wave of energy with him. They traveled, unnoticed, in wisp form to the human world. They arrived in the graveyard that Brighid’s brat had used to create a portal that she and her friends rode to Ciardha’s world of terrors. Ciardha hovered in the graveyard, a dark pulse of energy that blended into the inky night. He watched, unnoticed, as his sister’s chosen one argued with the two other humans Ciardha had sent back as was required by his accord with his sister.

He reveled in the argument that ensued amongst the humans.

“He lied, Freak Girl. Your little friend isn’t coming back, thanks to you.” The blonde girl spat the words at Brighid’s whelp. Ciardha felt his energy soar as the hurtful words and guilt brought a fresh wave of anguish on the flame-haired girl.

“You’d already lost her,” the boy said. Ciardha could sense her sadness rise as the boy said the words to her.

The blonde one huffed off down the hill and left Brighid’s so-called warrior alone with the boy. Ciardha could feel the girl reach out to him with her longing, and he watched as the boy rejected her.

“It’s too late, Emily. I’m tired of you. Good-bye, Emily Adams,” the boy said. Ciardha watched as the boy walked down the dark hill and away from her. Emily Adams stood alone on the hill and cried.

As her suffering grew, Ciardha’s Dark Energy expanded. She feeds me still, he thought. Ciardha also fed on the sorrow that resonated in the ground and trees and air around him. The cemetery had seen years of loss buried with the bodies of human dead and grief spilled in the tears of mourners. Ciardha pulled the residual anguish from the Earth beneath him and fed well on it.

I will grow strong on your beloved world, sister, Ciardha thought. I shall feed on the dark feelings of your precious humans. I will devour every last drop of their Lucent Energy, the energy you so diligently worked to create for so many of their years. The Universe will at last quake with the power of my Dark Energy.

Ciardha rolled like a tiny black tumbleweed out of the graveyard, and Dorcha followed close behind. The wisp of Dark Energy silently stalked the land of humans in search of Lucent Energy on which to feast.

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