Blood Solstice: Part Three in the Tale of Lunarmorte Read Free Page B

back into citizenship… no one knew or remembered his family
or their connection to Ephialtes’ murder. Indeed it was a legend
now. A mystery.
    The familiarity of Athens, its bustling Metropolis and
beautiful women, were a salve to his wearied and sorrow-filled
soul. However, it was not long before rumblings of Galen’s movement
grew increasingly amongst the supernatural elements of Athens. His
first home was no longer safe. With a great sadness Kirios had left
and travelled to Rome. He hid easily within the city, mesmerising
anyone who challenged him. After a while, though, even Rome was no
longer safe from Galen’s madness. It had been a century since Galen
had started his campaign, a century of trying to create a furore
against vampyres and lykans. But the gods, Artemis in particular,
were wrathful in their vengeance upon those who committed
atrocities against the vampyres and lykans. Many magiks and faeries
were fearful of the consequences of joining Galen. Yet Galen could
not be stopped. Instead he and three of his most powerful magiks
tried to invoke Athena, the goddess of war, into their cause.
Kirios smirked at the thought. Athena had not been impressed by
their war-mongering. Unfortunately Her half-brother, Ares, the god
of War, favoured Galen. They sacrificed an entire village to Ares
and He bound the three magiks to Galen through, what would become
known as, trace magik. Galen was inextricably connected to the men
and to any children they bore. Eventually, their company grew into
a coven and one of the Romans suggested they call themselves the
Medium Nox Noctis – the Midnight – because they believed they were
rightfully sending lesser supernaturals to the Underworld, where
they would never see daylight again. Word spread. Their opposition
turned to Athena. Enraged at Her brother’s idiocy she decided to
even out the battleground by granting the same binding trace magik
to a magik called Penelope and her second and third-in-command,
lykan and vampyre. They were now a coven unto themselves: the Dies
Lux Lucis – the Daylight. It was not long after those lines were
drawn in the sand that the unimaginable happened. Kirios groaned in
remembrance, the emotional agony as fresh as it had been then. The
omnipotent protection of the gods was lost to them, their last
weapon in Galen’s war. It was the beginning of the
2 nd Century A.D. and it was becoming more and more apparent the
gods’ power on earth was waning. A new faith had begun to spread, a
belief in one almighty God. Some said his birth had killed their
gods and that only those with supernatural children had survived,
although trapped up on their mountain in the Otherworld and down
within the Underworld. Kirios’ grief, like all his brothers and
sisters of Gaia, was great… but he endured and moved forward,
travelling the centuries alone in the new world. He found sanctuary
for a time in Brittania, but then the Emperor Commodus’ death
created such a crisis he was forced to return to the Mediterranean.
He almost smiled, remembering the heat of the sun on his cold skin,
the fragrant scent of the sea air, the lightness of his steps where
he touched shore. How different the climate of Brittania was. He
hadn’t realised how much he had missed home. He snorted. How wrong
he had been. He wasn’t home. This was an entirely different
landscape from the one he remembered.
    Galen was dead, having died in battle against an opposing
magik. And with the entrapment of the gods, younger magiks were no
longer living eternal lives, although their life span was greater
than human and they were still immortally difficult to kill. Galen
had been hundreds of years old and his son, who was nearly as old
as Kirios had known Galen, was the only child of his left. His
children and his children’s children carried on their father’s
name, bound as the others within the Midnight Coven by the trace
magik. How curious Kirios became as he wandered his home country,
encountering