Free Epic Fantasy Adventure: The Angel's Blessing: Holy Paladin's Quest: Book 1 (Sword and Sorcery Epic Fantasy Adventure Book With Dragons and Magic) by Blaine Hart Page B

as we waded up onto the soft sand shore of the Angel’s grotto, we saw that things were not right – not right at all.
    There was no light. The hundreds of little candles on the gravestones were all gone out. We paused on the shore. The glow from Gavial’s chamber was dark. Wendfala waved her arms and spoke a word and the cavern was lit as if by the sun, and what we saw stopped my heart.
    Every tombstone that surrounded the place was on the ground, as if some burst had exploded and laid them low. The two giant statues that guarded the chamber were broken. One had been shorn in half and the other’s head and wings were gone. But beyond that destruction and to my own horror, the Chaos was surged up against the grotto wall, its mast snapped and the rigging laying about in a tangle.
    “Anna!” I cried as I raced blindly toward the Angel’s shrine. “Anna!”
    But there was no reply. Kell and Wendfala caught up with me and we reached the top of the stairs together. At the top I stumbled and almost fell in. Kell just managed to hold me back and we gaped down at the abyss.
    Where once Gavial had tested us and greeted us and finally blessed us, there was nothing but a deep round void that seemed endless. As if some force had reached up from beneath the earth and tore it away, the Angel’s chamber was no more. In its stead was a yawning dark chasm lit only by Wendfala’s magical flame.
    “Anna!” I screamed into the darkness.
    “What power on this good earth could do this?” Kell said in quiet amazement.
    “No power on earth,” Wendfala answered. “We must leave here. My heart doesn’t feel good and we must leave now if we want to live.”
    “No,” I cried, and then shrieked long and loud into the abyss again, “Anna!”
    Someone clutched my shoulder but I shook it off. I stood in despair listening to my own echo.
    “We must go,” Wendfala said. “There is nothing here that we can do, and if the powers that did this returns--”
    But even as she spoke a single soft word drifted up from the depths.
    “Longo . . .”
    I sank to my knees gazing down. A small vapor of mist appeared. I craned to look as it rose, and as it rose it began to take shape and the form it took was,
    “Anna?” I said.
    “Longo,” the misty apparition smiled. “Would that all of your kind was as simple as you.”
    “Anna . . . what?”
    “Is that what you call the child,” the vision said. “She wouldn’t tell me her name. She has this silly notion about names holding power. So quaint. Still, the body is young and fair, and it feels so nice.”
    “What have you done with the – “but before I could finish Kell slapped me aside.
    “The Angel,” my master finished. “What have you done with Gavial?”
    “And who are you?” Wendfala demanded.
    “Questions, questions,” the misty thing answered. “But that’s alright. I will answer because I want you three to tell the world who it is that has the power to enslave an Angel.”
    “Then tell us,” Wendfala cried. “Who are you?”
    “I am as I am,” the voice of Anna said. “I am the mind bending Mistress of the nightmare that witches and wizards would never dare dream of. I am she who terrifies the undead and who haunts the thoughts of the gods themselves, and I am she whose name they will not speak.
    “Go away then demon,” Wendfala goaded. “For truly there is no good here.”
    “There surely is not.” The mist laughed spitefully. “I am the right hand of the idiot who thought he could use my pet dragon to conquer your pitiful Nine Realms. While your cunning led to my pets defeat, my minion’s failure is also my victory, for while your holy paladin was distracted, I saw into Kell’s mind and knew it blessed.”
    “So now I know how to defeat you Kell,” the voice said with a sneer. “Your foolish quest may have defeated my dragon, but that bundle of bones was just a pittance of my powers, and your pathetic waste of an Angel’s blessing led me to the shadow