The Soulburn Talisman, Chapter Three: Through the Portal
Welcome to the other world.
I’m publishing the opening pages of my debut novel, The Soulburn Talisman, here on Substack. If you like the sound of it, make sure to pre-order your copy ahead of the release date on May 31.
Previously:
Chapter Three: Through the Portal
When Dale opened his eyes, he found he was flat on his stomach and his face was pressed to cold, smooth stone. With a groan, he pushed himself onto all fours. Stars danced and popped in his vision for a few seconds, then faded.
Brooke was a few feet away, lying on her back. He crawled over to her, dimly aware he could no longer feel the breeze beating at his face. They weren’t in the fog anymore.
‘Hey,’ he muttered. ‘Brooke, wake up.’
She was breathing softly; he shook her shoulder.
‘Brooke - ’
She sat up with a small cry and clunked him on the chin with her forehead.
‘Ouch!’
Brooke pushed blonde hair from her face and looked around, dazed. Dale wondered if she was seeing stars, too.
‘Where are we?’ Brooke said.
‘I’m not sure – ’
‘Oh no! No, no, NO!’
Dale looked up. The hooded girl was standing nearby, her back to them. She waved her arms frantically, yelling into the gloom.
‘What have they done? What have they DONE?’
For the first time, Dale properly took in his surroundings. The room they were now in was dark and cold, and there was an odd smell in the air, like scented candles at Christmas. Rubbing his chin where Brooke had head-butted him, he looked up to the ceiling but could see only darkness. The hooded girl’s voice echoed around them.
‘This can’t be happening,’ the girl said to herself, as though they weren’t there. ‘ Oh no, no no…’
Brooke staggered to her feet. ‘Is everything ok?’
The girl ignored them, her head bowed low; Dale noticed her shoulders were heaving.
‘Excuse me,’ said Brooke, taking a step towards her. ‘Are you alright? Do you know where we – ’
Suddenly, the girl threw back her head, spilling a tangle of dark red hair down her back. She rounded on them, fists clenched.
‘Of course I’m not alright, stupid!’ she spat. ‘Can’t you see what’s happened here?’
Dale stared at the girl’s face, which even in the dim light appeared not entirely human. Her eyes were large and puffy with tears, and her irises were now hazel, flecked with golden shimmers. She was perhaps an inch taller than Brooke, who was herself slightly taller than Dale.
‘Well, actually we can’t see very much at all,’ replied Brooke. Dale heard the coolness in her voice. ‘It’s dark in here, you know.’
The girl met her gaze and held it; for a moment, neither said anything. Dale, horribly uncomfortable, opened his mouth to speak, but the girl beat him to it.
‘Fine.’
She spun on her heel and marched across the room, disappearing into the darkness. Dale glanced at Brooke, saw her jaw was set, and decided to say nothing.
Somewhere in the shadows, the girl said ‘Eydrom’ and a flare of green briefly illuminated where she was standing. Then with a whoosh, multiple balls of purple light fizzed through the air and zipped away in different directions above their heads, each leaving a hazy trail in its wake; after shooting around for a few seconds, they erupted into blazing purple flame at intervals high above them, driving the darkness further upwards and casting a violet glow down the walls, all the way to the floor.
And now Dale could see the sheer size of the space. It was an immense room of sorts, larger than any he’d ever seen; the walls extended up from a circular floor, rising in a cone shape towards the still-shrouded darkness of the uppermost ceiling. Everything was smooth stone that glinted in light thrown out from pyres ringing the walls (at least a hundred feet up, Dale estimated), which the purple orbs had ignited; the walls themselves were etched with words and symbols he didn’t understand, and in places the likenesses of people and strange creatures were carved into the stone. A single set of narrow stairs opposite them wound their way from the floor to the level of the burning pyres, ending at a doorway cut into the stone. It felt like they were inside a massive cathedral, one that could comfortably contain a football pitch.
The girl was in the middle of the room, standing next to a huge stone pedestal. It rose almost to her eye level, and from it branched seven raised sections in the floor, each with a groove carved along its centre; these sections ended at seven enormous stone archways spaced at equal distances around the walls. Each archway, reached by three wide steps from the floor, bordered nothing but smooth, blank stone with a single rune carved in the centre. Dale and Brooke were standing at the foot of one of the archways.
And as the girl crouched next to the central pedestal, her mutters echoing across to them, Dale began to understand why she had been hysterical a few moments ago - the entire room had been decimated. Chunks of stone lay scattered all over the place; there were scorches and deep cracks in the walls and archways, all of which looked fresh, and debris (from ornaments, maybe) was littered everywhere. In places, it looked like a wrecking ball had smashed into the walls.
‘Dale, what is this place?’ Brooke breathed next to him, awe-struck. ‘Are we… inside the mountain?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, bending his neck back to stare at the ceiling. ‘This doesn’t look like it was made… by people.’
The red-headed girl stood up with a despondent sigh. ‘It’s called the Great Cavern.’ She walked back over to them, some object wrapped in her arms. ‘Though I’m not sure why you don’t know that. Did you hit your head when you came through the portal?’
‘Portal?’ said Dale and Brooke in unison.
The girl sighed again, exasperated this time. ‘Of course, the portal – what do you think that is?’ She nodded at the archway behind them. ‘It’s closed now, obviously. But the ghouls will come through soon. We don’t have long.’
‘Ghouls?’
She narrowed her golden-brown eyes at them.
‘Who exactly are you?’ she asked, her tone hardening. ‘You look… wrong. Where’s your armour? What’ve you got on your backs? And where are your weapons?’
Dale looked at Brooke, who gave a small shrug. The girl started to say something else, but Brooke interrupted.
‘Our friend, from school. Is he ok?’
‘Ss-kool? What’s ss-kool?’
‘We go to Farmont High. He’s called Charlie, he’s in my Geography class. One of those… ghouls… grabbed him on the mountain, just as you showed up. Is he ok? And the others, what about them?’
The girl looked slowly from Brooke to Dale, and a flicker of realisation began to creep into her expression.
‘Wait,’ she said, unsure now. ‘Aren’t you – ’
Suddenly, there was a muffled clunk from behind them. Dale turned and saw that the rune in the archway had begun to glow blue, brightening rapidly, and blue geometric patterns were spreading out from it.
‘Oh no, not now! Not already!’ the girl cried. She spun wildly and ran to the stone pedestal. Not knowing what else to do, Dale and Brooke followed.
The girl reached up and placed a large, ornate-looking hourglass on the centre of the pedestal. Shimmering blue crystalline sand started to tumble down from its top half.
She faced them again. ‘We have to leave, right away.’
‘But Charlie, and the others…’ Brooke began.
‘Forget them,’ the girl snapped. ‘If we’re still here when the ghouls come through that portal, we won’t stand a chance. Let’s go.’
She made for the stairs and they followed, dodging pieces of debris on the floor. As they started up the steps, Dale felt the room begin to vibrate around them. A humming noise filled the air, growing louder. He scrambled up the steps behind Brooke, using his hands to keep his balance – the stairs were narrow and twisting, and he didn’t dare look down while they ascended.
The girl reached the top first and disappeared through the doorway. Brooke followed with just a fractional hesitation. Dale paused at the top of the stairs, breathless, and stole a glance back.
They were dizzyingly high up, further than he’d thought, and he had to lean back against the cold stone of the wall to fight the tug of vertigo. The pyres around the walls, now level with him, blazed with violet light; far below, he could see the devastation of the room clearly. The “portal” they’d apparently come through now glowed blue all over, no longer a stone wall at all. The humming sound in the room rose in pitch and the floor beneath his feet trembled.
If we’re still here when the ghouls come through that portal, we won’t stand a chance.
Dale Reed hurried through the doorway.
They followed the girl along a dim passageway, descending gradually towards some brightness up ahead. Their footsteps echoed off the walls. The further they went from the Great Cavern room, the fainter the humming sound became.
After several minutes they emerged into open air, which was unexpectedly fresh after being inside the narrow passageway. Dale in particular was relieved to be outside again, and gulped it in.
‘Hang on,’ said Brooke, ‘why’s it almost night?’
Indeed, the sky was now a deep navy streaked with purple, as it had been the previous evening as they sat around the campfire while Mr Green told ghost stories. But when the fog descended on them during their hike, it had been no later than midday.
The girl either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the question. ‘We should leave, they’ll be right behind us.’
She pulled her hood up and started along a path ahead of them leading down the mountainside – they had no option but to follow. Except, as Brooke scanned their surroundings, she saw that they couldn’t possibly still be on the same mountain. They were now descending a stony trail hewn into the side of a different mountain, a much smaller one, with no fields, sheep or cows in sight.
The trail sloped down to the edge of a luscious green forest and then ran parallel to it, eventually disappearing over a hill. Somewhere in the distance (presumably where the path led), thin columns of black smoke rose into the air. The hooded girl paused only once on the way down the mountainside to stare at the smoke, clenching and unclenching her fists, before continuing on.
Brooke had been sure she was dreaming all this – the fog monsters, the tunnel portal, the big cavernous room, even the girl with strange eyes – but as they made their way down this new path, doubt began to creep into her mind. She could feel a warm breeze on her face, one that brought the scent of flowers and trees to her nostrils, as well as the faint smell of smoke; the path beneath her feet was uneven, made from stones carved into rough square shapes that frequently caught the toes of her boots as they hurried along. It definitely felt like she was outside, in a real place. If she was asleep and dreaming everything, it was incredibly vivid – if she was awake, then she had no idea what was going on. And it seemed like Dale didn’t, either.
She glanced at him. His face was strained and dirty from having lain on the floor of the cavern, and he was beginning to limp a little on his injured ankle. His orange backpack was muddied along the bottom, as were his trousers and boots. She imagined she looked the same. The straps of her red backpack (borrowed from a friend) had loosened since that morning, and she could hear its contents clinking inside.
‘What is that?’
The hooded girl paused, looked to where Dale was pointing, then carried on, calling back, ‘Never mind that now.’ It was a statue, Brooke thought, but what it depicted couldn’t have been human. Standing just to the left of the path, it was about eight feet tall with bulging muscles under rune-engraved armour, all made from stone. A huge axe was strapped to its back. Its face was humanoid, but instead of a nose there was a snout, and its ears hung down well below the chin, punctuated with many rings. And it had four arms.
More statues appeared on the path the further down they went, usually upright, though a few had toppled over. Some were people, others were definitely not. Brooke saw one that looked like an enormous wolf walking on its hind legs, and shivered. All the statues had two things in common: they all seemed to be made from the same dark grey stone, and the people or creatures they depicted were all running up the mountain path towards the Great Cavern.
Why are they all in such a panic to get there?
The path had begun to level out when the hooded girl hissed ‘Wait!’ and ducked down behind one of the toppled statues. ‘Quick, get out of sight!’
Brooke and Dale crouched down next to her. Close up in the daylight, Brooke could see her brown cloak was weaved from some strange material and smelled like earth. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell - it reminded Brooke of trees after heavy rain.
‘What is it?’ asked Dale, rising to peek over the statue. The girl grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back down.
‘Enemies,’ she said in a low voice.
Brooke leaned around the broken base of the statue and squinted down the path. The sun was low in the sky and it was now difficult to make out what was ahead. But she could indeed see figures coming in their direction, still some distance away.
‘What should we do?’ she whispered.
The girl looked her way for a moment. Brooke noticed for the first time that her skin, which had appeared alabaster white back in the Great Cavern, was actually tinged with green. Her lips, now pursed, were a darker shade of green. She was pretty, though perhaps not beautiful; Brooke wondered what age she was. There was indecision in her golden-brown eyes.
She’s frightened.
‘The forest,’ whispered Dale as the figures drew closer. ‘Let’s go into the forest. They won’t see us there.’
Brooke and the girl both looked past him. The path had started curving along the edge of the forest several minutes ago and the trees were now close, densely packed together. They could hide in there easily, if they could make it.
The hooded girl deliberated for a few more seconds. ‘Alright,’ she whispered at last. ‘Suppose we’ll have to. We can – ’
She stopped, frowning. Brooke thought she looked like she’d either heard or smelt something. Then, peering over the top of the statue, her eyes widened in fury.
‘It’s him!’ she seethed from between gritted teeth. ‘He’s actually here! I’ll kill him!’
She started to stand. Brooke and Dale each grabbed a shoulder and forced her back down. They had to strain every muscle to do so – she was stronger than she looked.
‘What’s he doing here?’ she snarled under her breath.
‘Who?’ said Brooke, trying to keep her voice low. Faint conversations drifted towards them.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dale. ‘We have to go, right now. Brooke?’
‘I’m coming.’ Without thinking, she grabbed the girl’s green-tinged hand and squeezed it. The girl turned her golden-brown eyes on her, startled by the touch. ‘We have to go,’ Brooke said. ‘You saved us - now it’s our turn to save you. If we go now we can reach the trees before they see us.’
The girl stared at her, clearly torn between the desire to attack whoever was coming up the path and the logic of escape.
Finally, she whispered: ‘Yes, you’re right. But the forest is – ’
‘Let’s go!’ said Dale, grabbing her other hand.
As one, the three of them scrambled off the stony trail and into the undergrowth near the edge of the forest. Crouched low, they quickly crossed through tall grass and heathery shrubs to the trees. They stumbled breathlessly over exposed roots and rocks until they’d gone some distance into the forest and the mountain path was no longer easily visible. Once there, they ducked behind separate trees, pausing to catch their breath. Brooke could feel her heartbeat in her ears.
The girl sat with her back to her tree, hands covering her face. Her shoulders were shaking as though she was crying again, but when she took them away, Brooke saw no tears. Only rage.
‘I would have killed him,’ the girl said in a trembling voice. ‘I would have, you know. I… I could have.’
‘I know,’ said Brooke gently, though of course she didn’t.
‘Who were those guys?’ asked Dale, looking back towards where the path was. Dusk settled quietly around them; it was dark in the forest.
‘Enemies,’ the girl repeated, her voice steadying. ‘Evil, monstrous enemies. And he’s with them now. That liar… that coward. That betrayer.’ Brooke looked across at Dale, who shrugged.
The girl sniffed and rose to her feet. ‘Let’s keep going.’
‘Shouldn’t we go back to the path once they’ve gone?’ said Brooke, also standing.
‘Of course not, they’ll be looking for us soon. And the ghouls will come. But they don’t know the forest, and I do. So come on.’
With a final glance back the way they’d come, where the rapidly-fading evening light silhouetted the trees, Brooke and Dale followed.
Pre-order your copy of The Soulburn Talisman here.
I got confused about the time in this third chapter. At first it seems to be sunset or later. Then you speak of daylight. But then the sun is fading. If it’s dusk, how can Brooke see the strange girl clearly?
Also, while I don’t have a problem with characters dying, to wipe out Charlie in the beginning of the book seems heavy for an MG story. I realize that he may still be alive, but will a kid think that?
After reading the 4 chapters you shared, I realized not much makes me interested in what is to come. Maybe except of the first guy :-) Brooke and Dale are not really enjoyable at this point. I will probably give your book a try and buy it, because I want to support you, but I don't feel sucked into the story :-)