The Magician: An Epic Dark Fantasy Novel: Book One of the Rogue Portal Series Read Free

that? A lying coward! What did you do, Connor, search the filthy attic for some stupid trinket? Something to cling to like a damn child?"
                  Carrying this conversation further couldn't possibly end well. New tactic.
                  "I'm mostly packed. When do we need to leave?"
                  She let out a sigh, crossing her arms and drawing her mouth into a straight line of pure disgust. The bitterness made its way to her voice.
                  "In an hour. Be ready. I'll be downstairs."
                  "Sure, Mom."
                  The smile of lies, the turn of her face, the smirk of derision she thought he couldn't see but that he always did. And then she left, the click of the door offering him a reprieve from the verbal assault.
                  He fell back on his bed, heaving a sigh of relief, and stared at the now decently lit ceiling, closing his eyes for a brief moment, trying to swallow the feeling of anticipation and nauseating anxiety that washed over him. He didn't fear leaving home. In fact, he looked forward to it. But his life, which had been a predictable, if not miserable, sort of consistent, had started to offer up drastic changes in a short period of time. And then, of course, he knew his mother would be alone in the house, and he feared that she would succumb to the same fate as his father. Too many times he'd been plagued with frightening images of coming home on a break from college to discover her in the same position as his father. Screaming at her that she was a hypocrite. It was like a flashback to an event that never happened.
                  And then he would see the psychological masquerade for what it was - his fear getting the best of him. Life had been too disturbing, the atmosphere too negatively charged. For years he had felt that his house was not a home but a beast, welling with anger, ready at any moment to consume its occupants. His father had been taken, and now his mother was fading away into the clutches of the darkness that surrounded the house. He had no intentions of going with them.
                  Heaving a sigh he allowed resigned steps to carry him across the room to his backpack. He unzipped the front pouch. Reached in. Picked up the pocket watch and felt the cold metal as he turned it over in his palm. It had once been gold, but time had eroded its previous splendor to a rustic bronze that held a charm of its own.
                  He carried it back to his bed, allowing gravity to do its work. Felt the comfort of the pillow beneath his head. Stared once more at the wooden boards of the ceiling, knowing it was likely the last time he ever would. Flipped the pocket watch open, then shut. Open, then shut. Open...
                  His stomach dropped without warning, and a sense of being an article of clothing in a washing machine overwhelmed him. The spinning sensation gave way to one of falling. Voices broke through the silence around him. Children, women, tribal songs. A faint humming of a song he'd never heard before, but that something within him recognized nonetheless.
                  Scenes of lives he'd never lived covered the wooden ceiling. Flashes of memories that weren't his own. A swampy marsh against stark mountains. Flowers unlike any he'd ever seen. Darkness. Light. A universe of color stitched into the silken tapestry of human consciousness. A violently beautiful blue light that drowned all of it in a sea of mystic neon. And then nothing.
                  As he looked at the pocket watch in his hand, he snapped it shut. The world returned, unassuming, to the way it had been moments earlier. Only not quite. The room expanded, shrunk, distorting everything around him, transforming them into images seen in a cosmic funhouse mirror. And then, with no more warning than he'd had when it shifted, the world