Emily's House: Book 1 of the Akasha Chronicles

Chapter 58: Dughall and the Portal

Chapter 58: Dughall and the Portal

 Dughall expected pain or at least some discomfort from passing through the portal like he had felt going to the Umbra Nihili. Instead, it was painless. It was like walking through a door. One moment he was running through the collider corridor toward the large magnet. The next he was running in a land made entirely of silvery mist and fog.

The entities of the Netherworld, thinking they can send a mere child to stop me. What fools they are. And where is she? The whelp did not even make it to the collider.

Dughall briefly considered that he should look for her, but he quickly dismissed it. He didn’t need to worry about her or anyone. No one knew where he was going. All that was left to do was to still his mind and focus on the time and place he longed to be. He knew he would end up there instantly so long as he could focus his mind. He had no worry that he would not be able to accomplish the proper concentration. He’d had over a thousand years in the Umbra Nihili to practice focusing his mind.

Dughall remembered the time and place he wanted to be. He had obsessed about it for so many years that it was easy to put himself there in his mind. All he had to do was close his eyes and picture the scene.

It was a bright, sunny day in a small village in the south of Italy. He was a fourteen-year-old boy walking home from his morning duties for his master, ready to enjoy his midday meal with his beloved mother. He smelled the scent of the cedar trees mixed with the smell of olives and honeysuckle climbing the walls of the cottages he passed. He was jubilant because it was the day he planned to take his mother and escape their slavery.

Dughall knew exactly where to jump into the stream of time. He had dreamt of it for years. Dughall longed to see the eyes of his mother’s attacker and take the man’s life. Dughall looked forward to boundless joy when he finally did what he’d wanted to do for countless years. He would plunge a knife deep into the man’s chest and twist it. He looked forward to watching the man suffer as the man had Dughall’s mother to suffer.

Dughall took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Before him was the familiar room of the confinement of his youth. There was a small hearth but there was no midday meal cooking. He did not waste a second lingering in the small outer room. He knew the action was in the next room.

Just as he had done so many years before, Dughall walked as quietly as a leopard, taking care not to show himself. But he heard no whimper from his broken mother. Excellent. I am here in time.

His knife was at the ready. Dughall could have brought with him a very sharp, excellent hunting knife from the future time. He chose, instead, to use the same type of dull work knife of his youth. Anything too sharp and precise would hasten the jackal’s death.

He turned the corner knife in hand, ready to take the man by surprise. But as he entered the room, he did not see the man who he intended to kill. What he saw instead was a surprise to him, and a most unfortunate complication.