Book 2 of the Eternal series

Chapter 1

Ashta:

The Book of Fire

Ashta stared wide-eyed at the man who had raised her throughout her whole life, and suddenly, flashes of visions flooded her mind. They were unclear, but she saw the man before her lying on a kitchen floor in a pool of blood and a girl with blonde hair standing behind the counter. She shook her head, hoping the disturbing images would disappear, and then she looked back at the man.

Yinlin looked at her oddly, and then she saw Lashanna standing beside him. Another flood of visions invaded her mind of Lashanna stabbed by a sword and she was holding her dying friend in her arms. Again, Ashta shook her head and wondered why the images felt real.

“What happened?” she asked as she stared at Yinlin and Lashanna, and Yinlin reached over and patted her hand.

“Oh, honey. You were in the backyard, and you fell off of the boulder. You hit your head when you fell,” he explained, and Ashta looked at him strangely.

“What?” she stuttered, and Lashanna looked at her with care.

“You hit your head pretty badly, and you have been in a coma for one year,” she said, and Ashta looked at her, confused.

Why were they talking so strangely? she wondered.

For a moment, Ashta tried to think about her life before the said coma, and there were only blurry bits and pieces, but she couldn’t make out any of the images. Her heart screamed at her that something wasn’t right and that she was missing something. Heavily, she sighed as she looked at her grandfather and Lashanna.

“This can’t be true,” she mumbled, and Yinlin smiled at her.

Their eyes had no life in them, and when they smiled, it sent eerie chills down Ashta’s spine. Again, her heart screamed that things were not correct, and she took a deep breath.

What was going on? She thought to herself.

“It’s okay, Ashta. You are back where you belong and home safely,” he said, and she looked at him as she tilted her head to the side.

She thought that was an odd thing to say as she tried to hide her facial expressions. Again, she felt something was missing and looked around the room. She couldn’t figure out what her gut was telling her, and she didn’t see anything in the room that would register her memory.

“I need to find it,” she mumbled as she tried to sit up.

She felt dizzy and unsteady at that moment, and she laid her head back. Yinlin and Lashanna looked at each other and nodded as they looked back at Ashta with care. Yinlin smiled his eerie smile at her as he reached over and patted her hand again.

“You need to rest,” he said softly, and she thought about how Lashanna had told her that she had been in a coma for a year.

“I have rested long enough,” she said sleepily.

A nurse walked into the room, and she looked at Yinlin and Lashanna. They didn’t speak a word to each other. The nurse only nodded, and then she walked over to Ashta’s IV stand. She pulled a syringe from her pocket with a pinkish-colored liquid, and she injected the contents into her IV tube. A few minutes later, Ashta felt like she was floating on a cloud, and then she drifted back off to sleep.

****

It had been a week since Ashta came home from the hospital, and she was back in her bed, in her home, in Erendel. Every morning, she would have the urge to ball her eyes out, and she missed something dearly, but she didn’t know what it was. The visions became more apparent, and she saw that she was battling beside four others. Two men and a woman, but who were they? She didn’t recognize their faces.

As time passed, the visions became less and less, and then one day, they became a distant memory. One day the images seemed to fade out, and so did the other’s faces, so she began to forget them. She argued that the visions were not memories, that they were of some dream she had while she was in the coma.

Slowly, Ashta opened her eyes, and she got out of bed. Quickly, she got dressed, and then she headed down the stairs. Every time she looked at the kitchen, she would remember the vision of finding Yinlin in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor. Oddly, those visions didn’t fade away as the other ones had done.

She sighed as she looked at the older man standing at the stove. Yinlin heard her come down the stairs because he turned to Ashta and smiled his eerie smile.

“Good morning, dear. Breakfast is almost ready,” the strange old man chirped, and she looked at him oddly.

She did remember one thing from her past. Yinlin never cooked for them, she was the one that cooked for him, but now, since she had come home from the hospital, he did all of the cooking. Ashta walked over to the kitchen table, sat down, and looked out onto the backyard. It still looked the same as she remembered.

The giant wooden swing, flowers planted along the fence line, and the flat boulder in the center of the yard looked all the same as before. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but she felt like there was still something that just wasn’t right, and she wanted to figure out what it was. She turned her attention back to her grandfather.

“Yinlin, are you feeling alright?” she asked, and suddenly, the old man turned to her as he looked at her with wide eyes.

“How do you know that name?”

Ashta looked at him oddly, and she placed her hands on the table.

“You told me, if I remember correctly. When you told me about my real parents,” she said, and he only nodded sadly.

“Yes. It was tragic what happened to your parents. You are lucky that you survived,” he said as he pulled the frying pan off the stove, and she only nodded.

“The police could never determine how you survived the crash,” he added, frankly, and she looked at him as she tilted her head to the side in confusion.

At that moment, every fiber in her started screaming that what he said wasn’t right, and she felt a chill move down her spine.

“Crash?” she asked, surprised, and he looked at her oddly.

“Are you sure you are feeling alright, child?” he asked, and she just looked at him with a dumbfounded look on her face.

Again, something in the back of her mind screamed that things were not right, but she ignored it. Yinlin looked at her, and he sighed a heavy sigh.

“Don’t you worry? You will get through this,” said Yinlin reassuringly as he set a plate of bacon and eggs on the table for her.

“Nothing makes sense,” she breathed as she picked her fork up.

“Give it some time. It will,” said Yinlin as he took the seat next to her.

“When?”

“Only you can answer that question,” he said, and she only nodded.

Quietly, they finished their breakfast, and then Ashta helped him clean up the kitchen and the dishes. So many thoughts swirled in her mind, and when they had finished cleaning, Ashta turned to Yinlin.

“I am going for a walk to clear my head,” she said, and he nodded.

“Remember that the forest on the far side of town is forbidden,” he said, and she only nodded.

She slipped her sneakers on, and with a quick smile, she walked out of the door.

****

Ashta stuck her hands in her hoodie pockets as she walked down the long driveway, and she walked through the quiet neighborhood as she made her way towards town. Surprisingly, everything looked the same. They built the houses the same, and they ran down the side of the streets in neat little rows with their perfectly mowed lawns and matching garages.

Young children played in the yards with the same toys while their parents or grandparents sat on the porch and watched them. Ashta noticed a red-haired girl about four years old, and the little girl smiled and waved at her. Politely, Ashta smiled at her and waved back. The little girl laughed, and then Ashta watched her as she ran up her driveway. Happily, Ashta sighed as she continued to walk toward town.

A few moments later, she found herself in front of a small grocery store with a gas station across the street from it. Curiously, she looked down the road, and she could see the edge of the Forbidden Forest. To her surprise, men with guns were standing just on the edge of the forest, and she didn’t remember any guards ever being there.

Soon the memories faded away, and she shook them from her head. Ashta sighed as she turned away from the forest and headed toward the coffee shop. She remembered that she used to walk down here to treat herself to a latte and a muffin before the coma. However, that felt like ages ago, but when she looked around the town, it was like she had never left.

Ashta stopped in front of the coffee shop, and she stared at it for a moment. The door opened before she could move, and Lashanna looked at her as she smiled her dead-eye smile at her.

“Ashta, how are you?” she asked, and Ashta thought she sounded as dead as her eyes.

Ashta sucked in a breath as Lashanna approached her with her eerie smile. Heavily, she blew her breath out, and then she looked at the girl. She still couldn’t believe that Lashanna was alive, and something about that did not feel right. It was a creepy feeling.

“Better,” she breathed with a smile, and Lashanna only nodded.

“So, if you are interested, there is a job opening here,” Lashanna said.

“Alright, I’ll think about it. I am still trying to sort out what is real and what’s not,” said Ashta, and Lashanna looked at her strangely.

“What do you mean?”

Ashta thought for a moment and wondered what last memory she had of them being together before hitting her head, but she couldn’t think of one. She straightened as she looked at the girl, and she swallowed hard.

“What was the last thing we did before I ended up in the hospital?” asked Ashta,

“Why?”

“Because I am trying to piece together my memories,” she said, and Lashanna thought for a moment.

“Well, we were at the coffee shop, and you came in to get you and your grandfather lattes and muffins. After that, you went back home,” she explained, and Ashta thought for a moment.

Yinlin didn’t drink lattes. Ashta tried remembering that day, and a vision popped into her head and a dream of her dropping two coffee cups and running out of the shop.

Another vision popped into her head of two men dressed in armor walking through town toward her house, and they both had swords. As she tried to think harder, the visions faded away, and she looked up at Lashanna as she blinked a couple of times.

The awkward feeling crept up Ashta’s spine, and she shivered. A small voice in the back of her mind told her that none of this was correct and that she should trust her instincts. For some reason, she started to forget where she had come from, and the visions got blurrier and blurrier. Heavily, Ashta sighed, and she only nodded.