Here's a special excerpt from my new eBook, Freedom from the Darkness. This is sixth book in the Warriors of Aralan series, and is available for download off Amazon. Enjoy! ------------------------------ Screams and shouts of dying men and women echoed all around outside of the cottage, and Allister smelled the sharp acrid tang of smoke. He dashed to the window and looked outside, but someone pulled him back and hands guided him towards the trap door leading to the cellars. He looked up—the fact that he had to look up was a shock—and realized it was his mother. Her well-worn face was ashen. “Allister, quickly please. I don’t know what’s going on, but your father has taken your brothers and sisters to go see.” “But mother!” his seven-year-old voice echoed through his mind, bewildering him further, “I want to help!” “No, Allister,” his mother’s voice shook, “I want you to hide.” A gleam of light caught Allister’s eye and he looked up to see tongues of orange flame beginning to devour the thatched roof. His mother saw it too, and hurried him towards the trap door with even more urgency. She held it open as he climbed inside and stood on the ladder. “Stay in there until it’s quiet,” she instructed, glancing back over her shoulder with a gasp. She let the trap door fall, but Allister cracked it open enough to see. A man clothed all in black kicked the door open and readied his spear. He grinned wickedly at his mother’s distress as she tried to find something to arm herself with. “Time’s up,” he sneered, and threw his weapon with deadly accuracy. To Allister’s horror the bloodied tip of the spear stopped inches from his face, protruding from his mother’s back as she lay slain in front of his hiding place. Everything began to spin as lights from the fire merged to blend with darkness of night until his whole world was a sickening, dizzying blur and he toppled from the ladder to the floor of the cellar where he lay stunned, the first of many hot tears beginning to streak his face. “Mother,” he whispered brokenly, shocked again by his young voice and just how much it hurt. “Mother.” As his throbbing being sank slowly into a bottomless black void, his eyes opened. Allister lay on his back heaving for air, both hands full of dirt and face glazed with sweat. Moonlight glared in his eyes, and he flinched as a piece of wood popped in the campfire. The nightmare… it had been so real! The pain he had suffered on that night was so vivid, his heart still ached even as the colors and sounds faded. He lay still for a while, trying to catch his breath and make sense of it all, but finally he sat up and saw that Aldyth was on watch. Fearing to go back to sleep lest the nightmare haunt him again, he relieved Aldyth and sat watching the peaceful, night-dark forest. “What was that all about?” he wondered silently, feeling a refreshing breeze cool his heated brow. He realized now how lucky he had been to not have suffered from nightmares before. “Lucky, no,” he corrected himself, “blessed.” But why would they trouble him now? Then he realized how silly he was being. One nightmare. That was it. “Allister,” he chided himself in a whisper, “You’re being a child. It was just a dream—one dream—it’s not real!” But it hadn’t felt fake as he dreamed it. All the events were just as they had happened on that long-ago day. He shivered. The nightmare might not have been real, but the night of destruction had been.
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Welcome!Welcome to Katelyn Buxton Books! I'm a Christian author and blogger, with a passion for writing stories that are not just enjoyable, but also lead people closer to Jesus. Feel free to look around, and enjoy your stay! Archives
October 2021
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