Arrows of Darkness is an epic Sci-Fi/Fantasy adventure thrill ride that is engaging every step of the way. B.I. Woolet is pulling the reader into this world that has strange beasts, magic, and the stuff that legends are born from. For all the fans of Tolkein, the King Arthur tales, and the famed Star Wars-Arrows of Darkness will be your next favorite. So, gear up and get ready to journey into the lands of the Arcas with B.I. Woolet's Arrows of Darkness.
Orlund Johannes looked out at the tumultuous waters swirling twenty feet below the falls.
Taking one last breath, he pushed against the rocks to his right with the blade of his paddle.
Plunging down, down, down through the liquid vector splashing violently around him, he held
his paddle straight alongside the cockpit and tucked his body as close to the deck as he could
bend. The riotous waves were deafening, but his mind remained clear and focused. He dove
straight down, beneath the rapids. Battle raged against the orange hull of his kayak, flipping him
instantly. His paddle’s blade crashed into a hidden rock pile underneath the plunge pool. It broke,
sending the half in his left hand flying violently backward into his lip and nose. He was still
holding his breath but now tasting blood.
Watery vortexes continued pushing Orlund under. Like the gates of Hell, merciless rapids
above barred him from reentering the world of the living while the waters below beckoned him
like an open portal to enter a new realm. Terror and adrenaline flooded him, but Orlund was used
to these sensations. Each time he developed a new method of cellular manipulation within his
field of biomedical nanotechnology, he felt the same. One wrong digit could cost him his hold on
a groundbreaking experiment; one wrong twist below the rapids could cost him his hold on the
breath of life.
Orlund felt both powerful and powerless releasing the useless, broken paddle from his right
hand. Then, instinct took over. As his chest constricted from the lack of oxygen, he tightened his
abdominal muscles and rolled. Orlund’s head and body fought up through the current in the
plunge pool. His mouth gasped open, pulling in the taste of moist air and blood as he balanced
himself above the water. The rapids pushed him downstream as his friend Zach paddled out to
him.
“That was a monster!” Orlund yelled out as his friend approached.
“Yeah, you look like you got in a fight with a monster.” Zach shook his head, pointing at
the blood and bruising.
“Dude, I told you to chuck and duck!” Jeff lightly smirked as he threw a rope from the
bank, grateful his friend was safe. Orlund grabbed the rope through his gray gloves as Jeff pulled
him to the bank.
The three buddies set up a quick camp to rest and eat before they continued down the river.
The weather this fall was unseasonably warm out west, allowing them to kayak much later
than usual. Occasional clusters of trees in this rocky, desert terrain still held the majority of their
yellow, red, and orange leaves. Colorful leaves along with tan-and-red-striped rock, and the
bright yellow sunlight surrounding them, created a deep sensation of visual and physical warmth.
This quick, early-November weekend trip to the wilds of Utah was Orlund’s “last hoorah”
before winter’s cold took over. Orlund, a man of action and an innovative genius, typically
surrounded himself with sterile environments, precise equipment, top technology, and statistics.
The wild outdoors was his mind’s retreat, and adrenaline was his preferred drug. Kayaking every
free moment supplied Orlund with a frequent dose.
Orlund pulled the rubber wetsuit off his arms and shoulders near the chosen campsite. After
sitting to remove his shoes and tugging the suit’s legs off, he rested for a moment and admired
the amazing bluffs. Out of nowhere, a silvery, white image appeared in the distance, blazing with
a striking contrast to the red-rock landscape.
“Guys, look at that!” Orlund anxiously pointed toward a natural rock arch in the distance
where the brilliant image was standing.
“What’s it this time?” Zach asked, uninterested. Orlund’s antics and jokes wore thin after a
while. He wouldn’t fall for his friend’s convincing emotional hype this time.
“Dude, quit playing around and help get the fire started,” Jeff added.
“No, I’m dead serious. I couldn’t make this up! There is a man with huge white wings up
that hill by the arch. He just appeared dragging a kid along with him.”
“Your paddle hit you good, huh?” Zach wasn’t buying it and wasn’t looking up. “A man
wearing wings. Poor guy just missed trick-or-treating in the desert.”
“Ha! Funny, Zach. Let’s see, the storyteller has threatened us with tales of bears and water
snakes and cave dragons before, but a drag queen in the desert might be his scariest tale yet!”
Rather than laugh or reply with a sly remark, Orlund continued to stare at the arch. Faint
voices echoed off the canyon lands until Jeff and Zach casually looked up to see where the
noises were coming from.
“What the!” Jeff exclaimed.
“I told you. That man has wings.” Orlund scrambled to his feet and grabbed his dry pack
concealing his pistol and phone. “I’m going up there. I think the kid is injured.”
The arch faded out of sight as they climbed the steep bank. When the huge, curved
landmark came back into view, no one was there.
“Where are they?” Zach scanned the uneven terrain.
“Maybe it was just a large bird?” Jeff reasoned.
“No. That man definitely had hands and legs. Feathers, yes, but no beak.” Orlund
continued, unraveling his black .44 Magnum and phone from the waterproof layers.
“Dude, seriously?” Jeff looked at his armed friend, preparing to fight the vanished villain.
“It could have been a Native American ritual costume! Maybe the boy was starting a
coming-of-age ceremony. There’s a reservation up north.” Zach would often bring up Native
American culture. He claimed to be some sort of expert because his great-great grandfather
was supposedly a full-blooded Cherokee.
“No way, that bird man was even whiter than you are,” Orlund teased.
“Hey, I’m not totally white,” Zach protested.
“Believe what you want, man, but one-sixteenth Native American wasn’t enough to get you
a scholarship, and it really isn’t enough to claim you’re a minority,” Jeff jumped in.
“Whatever. You’d both claim me as a Native American in a second if it got us another
research grant.”
“That’s right, Tonto,” Orlund agreed with a smile.
The three reached the base of the huge arch towering before them. The canyons lay quiet. A
few birds flew high in the distance and several rodents scurried in the valleys below, but no
humans moved within sight.
“There’s nothing here. We’re just hungry.” Jeff turned to walk back to the river. “Let’s go
eat.”
“Wait! We walked all this way. Let’s at least get a picture under the arch.”
“I’ll take one of you guys first.” Orlund replaced his pistol in the dry pack and grabbed his
phone. “Step back a little so you’re right under it.” The young scientist took several rapid shots
with the tap of his finger.
Suddenly, Jeff and Zach disappeared from the frame on his phone. When he looked up, the
arch appeared empty, though strange, colorful heat waves seemed to be dancing within it.
“Did you guys find something?” Orlund walked under the arch expecting to see his friends
on the other side of the natural rock columns, but he saw much more.
Orlund joined his paralyzed companions as they witnessed a black horse and rider gallop,
then dive off a cliff to their left into the ocean below. A bear, woman, and man ran from the
scene and climbed up and over the white fortress walls.
“Someone is hurt!” Jeff alerted. As a former battlefield surgeon, he instinctively ran
forward followed by the other two.
Nothing could prepare them to see the dead body in front of them. Blood pooled around and
on top of the corpse with a severed stump at the end of his arm and a large hole through his
chest. A second lifeless body was lying nearby.
“What is this place?” Orlund grabbed his .44. White-winged flags waved in the sunlight on
top of the fortress while the sound of horns and shouting echoed beyond the walls. Suddenly,
soldiers, wearing red tunics with white wings and three suns, streamed into the large courtyard in
front of the seaside peninsula.
“There! At The Bridge!” Soldiers shouted. “Those Earthians killed Sulafat! Find White
Wings!” Threats, commands, and accusations exploded through the air as otherworldly troops
stampeded toward the confused travelers.
Orlund dropped his gun in alarm, terrified they would arrest him for murder. Dead bodies,
angry allegations, and sword-wielding soldiers devoured the three friends with panic. They
bolted frantically back through The Bridge. In moments, they were in the familiar canyons just
past the arch. They raced over rocky mounds and down steep valleys. Stopping to breathe or look
behind weren’t luxuries they couldn’t afford. Frenzied upon reaching the campsite, they threw
together only essential gear, grabbed their kayaks, and slid back into the safety of the white
rapids.
The vivid visions of the dead, the strange creatures, and the great white fortress haunted
their well-educated minds while riding away on the river. For their safety and sanity, the friends
swore each other to secrecy. Once safely back in the company’s private jet, they headed to the
Pacific Coast. A quick medical-tech innovations seminar and then a day of calm ocean kayaking
would clear their troubled thoughts. But the extraordinary world they had wandered into was
going to collide again with them soon, for the ocean tides were slowly pushing a creature to
shore, a creature that didn’t belong to Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment