Dreams of Fury
Descendants of the Fall Book IV
Aaron Hodges
Contents
About the Author
The Kingdoms of Humanity
Prologue
1. The Tangata
2. The Prisoner
3. The Sovereign
4. The Tangata
5. The Prisoner
6. The Sovereign
7. The Tangata
8. The Prisoner
9. The Sovereign
10. The Tangata
11. The Prisoner
12. The Sovereign
13. The Tangata
14. The Prisoner
15. The Sovereign
16. The Tangata
17. The Fugitive
18. The Fallen
19. The Fugitive
20. The Sovereign
21. The Fugitive
22. The Sovereign
23. The Fallen
24. The Queen
25. The Sovereign
26. The Fallen
27. The Queen
28. The Sovereign
29. The Fallen
30. The Queen
31. The Sovereign
32. The Queen
33. The Fallen
34. The Sovereign
35. The Queen
36. The Sovereigns
37. The Tangata
Epilogue
Note from the Author
The Evolution Gene
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Also by Aaron Hodges
Edited by Genevieve Lerner
Proofread by Sara Houston
Illustration by Eva Urbanikova
Map by Michael Hodges
Copyright © May 2021 Aaron Hodges.
First Edition. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9951422-1-3
About the Author
Aaron Hodges was born in 1989 in the small town of Whakatane, New Zealand. He studied for five years at the University of Auckland, completing a Bachelors of Science in Biology and Geography, and a Masters of Environmental Engineering. After working as an environmental consultant for two years, he grew tired of office work and decided to quit his job in 2014 and see the world. One year later, he published his first novel - Stormwielder.
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THE KINGDOMS OF HUMANITY
Prologue The Sovereign
Standing atop the marble balcony, Lukys looked down into the amphitheatre of the Sovereigns, down at the thousands that had gathered below. The citizens of the capital were dressed in every colour of the rainbow, though Perfugian blue was most prominent. In one corner, a group of yellow cloaks marked where King Nguyen and his Gemaho waited.
A lump lodged in Lukys’s throat as he felt the weight of all those eyes upon him, the hush of expectation. He had not expected so many to accept the invitation, not with the events that had led to this day, and the woman who stood beside him. And yet…come they had, from all across Perfugia, come to witness the inauguration of their new Sovereigns.
Lukys struggled to swallow the lump, and his stomach tied itself into a knot instead. A buzzing filled his inner mind, the whisper of a thousand voices, generations of lives lived, the knowledge of every Sovereign that had come before him, each screaming to make themselves heard. He clenched a fist and fought to press them down, to ignore his own inadequacy compared to those that had come before him…
Every Sovereign before this day had been chosen at birth for their ability as Melders—humans who had inherited the mental abilities of their inhuman ancestors. From that day forth, the Sovereigns were trained to rule, prepared for their elevation—when the minds of every Sovereign before would be passed to them.
But for Lukys and the woman beside him, the process had been almost accidental, a desperate act committed by their dying predecessors. Now he felt exposed, a fraud before the gaze of his people. Surely they would see the truth beneath the purple robes, that he was nothing and nobody, a failed recruit who had been destined to die on the frontlines fighting the Tangata.
At that thought, he reached out an unconscious hand for the woman at his side. Sophia. Warmth touched him as she entwined her fingers through his and he felt the reassuring touch of her consciousness against his own. Smiling, he exchanged a glance with his lover, with the woman he had chosen to share his life with.
The grey eyes of the inhuman Tangata looked back at him, though…he no longer saw the Tangata as inhuman. More…distant relatives, long lost to human history.
A glint appeared in Sophia’s eyes as she smiled, and in that look Lukys saw a flicker of the knowledge she possessed—that they both now possessed. Memories, stretching back to before the founding of Perfugia, before even the creation of the kingdoms of the mainland. So many lifetimes, they could both spend a lifetime sifting through the memories, and still not know them all.
So far, those memories had revealed much, and nothing. They were so convoluted, a flickering of images without rhythm or reason. Some things they had managed to piece together—confirmation that Lukys’s theory had been correct, that the first founders of Perfugia had been Tangata, not human.
In a way, those memories meant Sophia deserved to stand as she did, more so than Lukys himself. Afterall, the abilities of the Melders came from her people. But there was no convincing her of that. Even now, he could sense her fear, a doubt that matched his own reservations. The title of Sovereign was sacred amongst his people, a line of secretive, powerful rulers that had protected Perfugia since its founding.
But of course, that secrecy had only been a means an end, a way to conceal Perfugia’s true ancestry from its people. It had also protected those few amongst Perfugian society fortunate enough to possess the abilities of the Tangata—Melders like Lukys, though his ability had not been discovered until his first encounter with the Tangata on the frontline.
But that was all in the past, and forcing the memories aside, he leaned in close to Sophia. “Are you okay?” he said out loud.
A grimace crossed Sophia’s face but she nodded. Yes, she whispered into his mind. Then turning to face the crowd, she opened her lips. “I will…be okay.”
The words came out with the hesitation of someone unused to speaking. Indeed, even now the hairs on the back of Lukys’s neck tingled to hear his partner’s voice. No Tangata in living memory had possessed the ability to speak aloud, something that had no doubt contributed to their conflict with humanity. Now though, with the knowledge passed onto her by their predecessors, Sophia had rediscovered the ability to speak.
Lukys smiled back at her, savouring the almost musical accent to her voice, strangely similar to his friend Cara’s. Something stirred in his mind at the
