My name is Alexander Madigan. I inherited a mansion that’s so old it might have been built before the thirteen colonies existed. I live all alone so I talk to myself and the twelve suits of armor standing in the mansion’s upstairs great hallway. In fact I had just said goodnight to them when right in front of me, so close it touched my toes, popped a thirteenth one. I swallowed down fear before I talked to it.
“I’m not really seeing you, am I? You’re nothing, only a case of loneliness tremors, or something akin to that. So do me a favor, just go away and right now.”
Of course it didn’t. It stayed and began changing colors, slowly at first, until it became a dark violet that radiated heat. Its helmet visor moved upward and two fiery eyes did things to my mind while staring through my skull and out its back end. A knife edge voice electrified the mansion’s air and raked my spine.
“At last we meet face to face.”
That was the beginning of my adventure that took me from modern day Earth and sent me through a dimension door to a medieval Earth.
An eye wink later, everything changed. I went sailing over the cliff and started falling through the air. Two miles below was the boulder-strewn ground. I twisted and turned in midair. Thoughts exploded in my head. How could this be? I was in the castle…In the castle!
The wind whistled around my falling body. It cooled my armor and hissed through my helmet. Below was my death.
Princess Rowena’s ship rested on clear, smooth water in the lagoon. I hoped she didn’t see me falling, or dying.
I fell so rapidly, my stomach felt like it was lodged in my mouth. I felt no fear, only sadness. I had failed to avenge Kadzal and Zerk’s deaths. This Earth would not be avenged, and Princess Rowena and her people would remain enslaved.
“Goodbye, my love. If it’s possible to come back, I will. I love you.”
