Unicorn Genesis (Unicorn Western) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Unicorn Genesis

  Copyright

  Unicorn Genesis

  A Note About This Book

  It Starts in the Farback

  A Little Ditty about Jack and Diane

  In the Beginning

  The Dark Tree

  Two Halves of a Whole

  Eating the Peach

  The Realm

  Homeward

  An Ocean of Death and Desperation

  Yar, Gunslinger

  The Storm

  All Alone

  Noah and the Ark

  Night Magic

  A Very Mysterious Cat

  An Important Decision

  The Dark Forest

  The Funeral

  The Pied Piper

  Enter Sandman

  Just Like That

  On the Road to Mead

  Young David

  David and Goliath

  Unicorn Superiority

  King David

  Edward Sees the Light

  Tunneling through Worlds

  The Seven Nation Army

  Epic Fairy Tale Battle

  The Genesis Treaty

  Cause and Effect

  Sands to the Triangulum

  Making Sense and Shapes in the Sky

  ALSO FROM REALM & SANDS

  About the Authors

  Unicorn Genesis

  by Sean Platt &

  Johnny B. Truant

  Copyright © 2013 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help us spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting our work.

  A NOTE ABOUT THIS BOOK

  The events in Unicorn Genesis take place before the events in Unicorn Western, but for the best possible reading experience, you’ll want to start with Unicorn Western first. You know how there’s that other really great series with the prequels that came out later, and if you had seen those first you never would have cared as much about the original trilogy? This is a little like that, except that Unicorn Genesis is way, way more awesome than those other prequels.

  You don’t need to have read Western to understand Genesis, and reading Genesis won’t really spoil anything when reading Western, but reading them in the order our stories were written will give you the best possible reading experience.

  In whatever order you read them, enjoy. And thanks for reading.

  If you’ve not yet read Unicorn Western, start by clicking or visiting the following link:

  >> Click Here to Get Unicorn Western<<<br />
  CHAPTER 1

  IT STARTS IN THE FARBACK

  The gunslinger sat on his front porch, looking old and feeling older, as the worlds ended around him.

  A moment before, there had been a tremendous splintering crash. Clint had stepped outside to watch the largest remaining section of The Realm cleave off and crumble into the void. Only that wasn’t right; it didn’t really fall away at all. It seemed to shift, and tumble backward, then shimmer in and out of existence. It was always different when a new section vanished. They never truly departed so much as shifted out of sync. Clint knew that if a man were to run from the island’s edge in the sky and jump toward the newly cleaved section, he’d fall past it, through disparate worlds and doors. A man could go insane thinking of the million possible windows.

  The worlds were a bag of fragile bones, broken by a blunt instrument.

  Now nothing fit.

  In the past weeks, Clint and his erstwhile unicorn partner, Edward, had fallen into a routine, every bit a rut as any of their older rituals, on the trail or otherwise. Clint rose with the sun when there was sun (there wasn’t on some days, though sky and void were filled on and off with a muted, shifting-colored hue, glowing enough for them to see) and would kindle a fire in his stove to brew coffee. The gunslinger would pour himself a cup, preferring it as black as their old foe the Darkness. Edward would stroll up to his door around an hour later, and then the unicorn (who’d never before liked coffee) would use his magic to pour himself a shallow dish. Then they’d sit on the porch and talk, and drink, and watch the worlds crumble as if what they saw were a flicker talkie instead of reality true.

  Clint’s property ended abruptly a few hundred feet from his front porch. Beyond it was a cut as clean as one gutted by a knife, and beyond the cut was an abyss. Clint had learned not to peer into the abyss. His first concern was practical: If he fell, he would tumble down into nothingness. The second reason came down to simple comfort. He didn’t like looking into the abyss. When he looked over the drop for long enough, some trick of the eyes made him think he might be peering up rather than down. That — the feeling that direction and gravity had lost much of their meaning — set his head to spinning in too many ways and made him feel that at any minute he might fall upward. So Clint stayed inside his house and exercised, tended his pen of frightened but still-intact turkeys, and brewed his coffee while waiting for Edward.

  Now, waiting, Clint looked up (true up, meaning that which was opposite his planted feet) and saw a few great white birds circling in what remained of the sky. The world’s ceiling wasn’t exactly black or especially blue; even on days when the sun spit down from up high, the color was wrong. The birds circling his property were strange. They had long, heavy bodies and wings that spread out too far and too wide. They circled like normal birds, though, casting idle circles in the fathomless space above.

  As he watched, one of the birds circled lower, growing larger, pumping its enormous wings. Clint could see its hocks, four legs, and hooves. Then the great bird cupped its wings for landing and stirred Clint’s hair with billows of air (and yar, there was thankfully still air) as it came in for a landing. Hooves stomped into Clint’s front yard. His porch shook.

  “Clever, how you’ve made it so you’re the only ones able to move around now,” said the gunslinger, making room beside him for the winged unicorn to stand. “It’s as if you knew this was coming all along, and only revealed your wings to rub it in our faces.”

  “That’s exactly why we did it,” said Edward. He folded his wings back, rustling them in a way that suggested the unicorn was making his body comfortable, like a stretch.

  Clint sipped his coffee then stared into the fragmenting void. “The end of the worlds,” he said.

  “In a way,” Edward replied. “But I prefer to think of it as a reset. All beings strive for order. They wish to build, to organize, to control. But nature and magic abhor order. Entropy is the natural way of things. What you call ‘the end’ is simply the end of order — for a while. This has happened before, of course. I was but a foal the first time we were forced to circle the sky while the world settled below us.”

  Clint raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t normal for the unicorn to speak of the oldest times.

  “By ‘the end of of order,’ you mean the end of humanity.”

  “Eventually, yar.”

  “The end of unicorns.”

  “Depends on what you mean by ‘end,’” said Edward.

  Clint rolled his eyes at the unicorn’s obtuse answer. “Will you ever just say what you mean, you great horned jerk?”

  Edward gave an equine chuckle.

  “I’m serious,” said Clint. “Speak true to me once — just once —
before it all falls apart. I’m supposed to be your partner.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How can ‘end’ mean anything other than ‘end’? What will happen to the worlds? How will we spend what time we have left? What happens in the void below? And is it only coincidence that my property has remained whole while my neighbors have fallen away? What happened to beget this? Why me? Why you? And why does none of this bother you, despite the fact that you died a few weeks ago, grew wings, and now face the end of days beside me?”

  Edward sipped his coffee from the dish on Clint’s porch. “The prophecies ended with the apocalypse,” he said. “This is all the fertile, delightful ground of the unknown. Your property, if I had to guess, has been protected by the magic of the Triangulum Enchantem that you still wield in your blood and the magic that Mai gives, both from her presence inside you and her body’s symbolic presence in the ground under your strangely thriving apple tree. In fact, the magic here is so strong that I may try to convince Cameron to come here with me, which benefits you because the presence of a second unicorn — whether you have come to accept her as my wife or not — will only strengthen the power of this place. The same goes for the rest of our ragtag crew … except possibly for Boricio, whose bloodlust frightens me. And you ask, ‘Why me?’ The answer is ‘Because I was chosen.’ Why you? Because I chose you. There is no down or up anymore, yet you still stick to your soil, giving you the illusion of up, because the worlds, though splintered, are enormous, and still have a center of gravity that lies below your feet — though when filtered through enough shifts and shimmers, you might find that center to paradoxically be above you, beside you, or nowhere. And as to the rest? As to the story? Gunslinger, I’ve said nar to you not because you are too stupid to understand. You are stupid, of course, and ugly — but at this point, I’m tired, and the tale, once told, would be long enough to fill books and books.”

  Clint sipped his coffee. Something exploded in Meadowlands. Unbelievably, they were still trying to live as they had. Clint had flown with Edward across the void once, touching down on the same high street where Clint had once faced Dharma Kold’s forces in OldTown. They’d scouted the town, assuming it deserted, and found people bunkered with spark generators, trying to tune in to flickers.

  “Come on,” Clint said, sitting on his porch and looking up at Edward. “You have something better to do? It’s the end of the worlds. Stories are all we have. What will we do? Wander the Sands?”

  “We could, yar,” said Edward. “The cracks start at the center. Ironically, the lands that were the most splintered back when we rode together are now the least splintered. We could return to Nazareth Shiloh. To Solace. We could relive the old days.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” said Clint.

  “It’s such a long story, gunslinger. And you humans live for such a short period of time.”

  “I want to hear it.”

  “And you’re so old.”

  “And magical,” said Clint, raising his cup. He was up past one hundred and sailing. But now that he’d claimed the power of the Triangulum as its true owner? Well. He might live to be a thousand.

  The unicorn sighed. “It’s so looooong, Clint. If you wrote the story down, it would take over ninety-two thousand words to tell the basics.”

  “Hmm. So precise.”

  “And also, order matters. You’ve lived the middle of the story, and you’ll live — hopefully — the end of the story in time. The end of the tale has only just started, so miring you in the beginning now will only confuse you. There is an ancient tale told by unicorns, about great battles in a galaxy far, far away. We know nar if the tale is legend or true, but the oldest unicorns told only the middle of that story. Scholars then added a beginning, and told that beginning after they told the middle. The tale became utterly stupid, filled with new angles and characters that the unicorns loathed.”

  “Mee-sa wanna hear the tale!” said a voice with a sea islands accent.

  Clint turned and saw his old horse, Joe — son of Joe — who was in turn the son of Joe, who’d wandered up from his usual resting place in the pasture. The original Joe had drunk the magic water of the Rio Verde and learned to speak like an idiot. The later Joes hadn’t drunk from the Rio but had held both the accent and the idiocy in their blood.

  “I’m not telling the story with him around anyway,” said Edward, looking at Joe.

  “How wude!” said Joe.

  Clint continued to sit on the porch steps, still looking up at the unicorn. Joe munched grass and looked at Edward with his big, dumb eyes. Edward stared back defiantly but was the first to look away.

  “Oh, fine,” he sighed. “It starts in the farback of time, back when I was a foal … ”

  CHAPTER 2

  A LITTLE DITTY ABOUT JACK AND DIANE

  A long time ago, in a meadow far, far away, a unicorn foal with long, skinny legs and a horn so small it looked like an oversized white mole ran across the sprawling lawns of Mead. The foal’s legs were so long and so skinny in relation to his body and head (and his tiny little wings) that he looked constantly on the verge of collapse as he ran. It seemed as if he might go rump over head, rolling and stumbling as those long legs caught beneath him. But he didn’t falter; his hooves stayed true as he screamed across Mead’s north pasture, his wings twitching in anticipation. The knoll was ahead, and this time he would make it.

  As Edward ran, his ammy and appy, Jack and Diane, watched from the edge, nibbling grass. Back in the earliest days, the grass had tasted sweet and rich because it was full of magic. Everything was full of magic. The air was scented with it; the clouds were made of it; the ground grew up from the Core as an expression of the natural outgrowth of balance. Jack ate grass, waiting for Edward to reach the knoll. Diane ate beside him, anticipating. They could fly, of course, as could their own ammies and appies. But Edward’s wings were so small, and Edward was so eager. He ran as if willpower alone could propel him through the sky.

  Edward’s hooves thundered beneath him. He could feel his magical unicorn blood coursing through his body, through his working muscles. He was a proud steed, the divine hammer of white magic. He was an antenna made for the direction of power. His wings weren’t yet fully grown, but he could do it. He knew he could do it.

  “You can do it this time!” Jack yelled.

  “We believe in you, Edward!” Diane echoed.

  Edward thundered across the meadow’s shallow rise. The knoll with the chipped-away downhill was ahead. He would leap, like yesterday and the day before, and flap his mighty unicorn wings. This time, he’d take flight — not just for a few feet and seconds but for as long as he wanted. All of the unicorns said that when you learned to fly, the learning happened all at once. It wasn’t about strength so much as realizing the proper trick of movement. Find the trick, and everything fell into place. Edward’s wings had tingled this morning. Today would be the day.

  As he reached the lip of the knoll, he could almost feel the rarefied higher air flowing through his mane, past his ears, across the curved surfaces of his wings. The unicorns also said that once you learned to fly, it became effortless. You didn’t need to try. You only had to coast, and feel your power.

  Today was the day. Edward was certain.

  The little unicorn reached the lip of the small hill, leaped, and gave a tremendous flap. Everything came alive. His powerful rear legs kicked him up; his wing flexors gripped the air. He felt the same tingle he’d felt earlier, giving him strength and filling him with belief. His lips wanted to curl up into the equine version of a triumphant smile. He felt a buoyancy in his chest, lifting him like a sprite. He was doing it. He was doing it!

  But of course, Edward wasn’t doing it, just as he hadn’t done it every day in the past. His tiny wings couldn’t find the wind no matter how hard they cupped and struggled. His leap was lost to a dive. Frantic flaps bought him a few airborne seconds before he tipped forward, his snout crashing into the ground w
ith painful percussion. He rolled over, his four long legs becoming weapons dangerous even to himself. The ground knocked his sense of orientation loose, and while he lay on the grass, panting and heaving, it took him a moment to figure out which end was up and how his body had fallen.

  “That was amazing,” Jack said to Diane, walking closer. “Tell me you saw that.”

  Diane was laughing too hard to reply. She could only shake her great white head, her sides hitching as she fought for breath.

  “I got it,” said Jack. “Here. Check this out.”

  Edward rolled over, looking up at his appy. Jack’s horn shimmered red, and a light seemed to project out from its tip. A smaller, less-corporeal version of Edward appeared in the air. He watched himself striving for the knoll. He saw how his lips had curled in concentration, his tongue wanting to protrude with the effort of his focus. The projection neared the hill’s lip.

  “Watch this,” said Jack. “Watch his wings.”

  The projected Edward flapped his tiny wings. Leaped. His wings moved like a hummingbird. His eyes closed; his lip curled even tighter down. He rolled forward and crashed. His legs spilled everywhere, like a pile of long sticks dropped onto the ground.

  Diane erupted in laughter. Jack looked at his wife then lost his own composure. The projection shimmered as he laughed, his giant blue unicorn eyes swollen with moisture. Edward simply watched. Then Jack said, “I love this part,” and replayed the actual crash over and over, forward and backward, pausing it at embarrassing stills. Edward saw his eyes open wide, and his mouth form a wide O of shock. He saw how one of his own legs had struck him in the face — something that, when his appy saw it, set off a new round of replays and guffaws.

  “Ammy! Appy! Knock it off!” Edward complained.