Below is an EXCLUSIVE extract from the first novel in the series, Axtelera Ray: The Chronicles of Astrone. Copyright: Axtelera Ray (2014) **** For as long as he could remember, Victor Garnett had been plagued by a recurring dream. In this dream, he would often be standing on the edge of space, staring out at the vast nothingness beyond. An expanding universe filled with mass and particles, light and blackness, elements and compounds, minutely-tangible and infinitely-abstract entities, and countless other things that science, nature and religion had not yet considered. All about him was the sea of stars; as many speckles of light in the boundless cosmos as there were grains of sand back on Earth. The galaxies hung in space with nobility and tranquillity; it was hard to imagine any turmoil existing within. To his eyes, these great swirling clusters where magnificent in colour, laden with crimson or indigo or emerald, fading to white as their tails sped off in various directions. A thin veil of wispy smoke floated like an encompassing orb around Victor, translucent and barely detectable, but a partition nonetheless between him and the eternity outside. Each time he dreamt, he forgot about its presence and, each time, it was not long before his subconscious became aware of it. Until that moment, he always enjoyed a peaceful state of bliss as he absorbed the wonders of this universe, but then everything would change. A sensation would begin as a prickle in his chest, steadily ascending to a mild but concentrated burning on his skin, like sunlight penetrating the cracks on the roof of an abandoned loft. The area between his ribcage would begin to glow, dull at first, but soon becoming an intense spectacle of brilliant blue. His fingertips would tingle as electric currents shot from his extremities to his heart, finally accompanied by an unstoppable surge of information flowing from his brain and down his neck, causing his muscles to tense. Light burst from his chest like a hologram, illuminating the spherical veil around him with symbols and shapes and characters, each of them the same colour as that radiating from his torso. The writing was different sizes - four different sizes to be exact - but was a random jumble of Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Ancient Egyptian and other languages and scripts, none seeming to form any particularly-coherent message. They collected in layers of horizontal rings that slowly encircled the hazy orb, respectively spinning in opposing directions to those above and below. When the dream first became a regular part of Victor’s life, he was many years younger, and had not yet learned much about history or other cultures. It was only with time, education and his developing observational skills that he started to recognise that the unusual images projected on the veil were, in fact, words. As he grew older, for one reason or another, he was able to identify a number of the languages, often experiencing the same emotion that one might expect from solving a prominent section of a difficult jigsaw puzzle. Latin was the first, easily distinguishable as the structure closest to his native tongue; it was from Latin that English and most European languages had been derived. This was followed at the age of ten by Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics when his primary school class studied the pharaohs and the grand pyramids built to entomb them. Now, he had become familiar with the appearance of a handful more such as Chinese, Mayan, Arabic, Sanskrit, and even one he believed to be an outdated Old Norse dialect. The repetition of the vivid dream over the years had even allowed him to unintentionally memorise some of the characters, absently scribbling them in a notebook when his thoughts wandered during school lessons, or occasionally using the Google search engine in an attempt to make sense of the words. Despite its unnatural frequency, the visions had never been the cause of any alarm for him, but he acknowledged how unusual it was. Even his mother showed no visible signs of anxiety about this strange attribute, choosing not to seek outside assistance or therapy for Victor. Then came the day that the crystal arrived; that cold October evening in the yard of Blatchington Mill when the direction of his life changed course forever. The touch of the azure stone; the electricity in his veins; the appearance of the fiery cyphers beneath its glassy surface; and the realisation that these were the same as those he saw when he slept. Suddenly, this was not just a dream anymore; it was everything. ***** Please feel free to feedback on this passage and tell author M. J. Gallagher what you think.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 23:15:00 +0000
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