The Angel of Elydria

The Angel of Elydria is book one of the Dawn Mirror Chronicles, written by A. R. Meyering. It follows the story of Penny Fairfax as she is mistakenly trapped in a sister-world to Earth called 'Elydria' by her professor Hector Arlington.

Plot Summary
Twenty year old Penny Fairfax begins an ordinary day at her community college in Oregon with a feeling of dread. What she doesn’t know is that it will be the last normal day of her life.

            Abandoned by her father, rejected by her grandparents, Penny lives with her mother Paulina, the owner of a metaphysical bookstore, Willow Street Wonders. They are just barely getting by, and Penny has been haunted by an early memory of a violent intruder for as long as she can remember. On the morning of her last day on Earth, she suffers a nightmare where an enormous spider is drawn from her body. As Penny begins her day, she meets an illusionist, Simon Shaw, who seems to have some important information for her, but disappears without a trace soon after revealing that he mysteriously knows her name. After her professor begins to act ill in English class, Penny doubles back to retrieve her forgotten back and glimpses the professor, Hector Arlington, performing a luminary magic spell. He is, in reality, the sole survivor of a race of magicians from another world called Nelvirna. Later that night, Penny becomes victim to a surprise attack from a murderous, zombie-like creature called a ‘wraith’, but Hector arrives just in time to protect her. Hector uses his magic to try and help her, but instead accidentally transports them both to the parallel world of Elydria.

            Elydria is a place filled with steam-powered wonders, fantastic beasts (both feral and friendly) goblins, elves and other magical folk, yet is also gripped by an energy and economic crisis that centers around one failing commodity-- raw magic. It is also being terrorized by an invasion of wraiths, which Penny discovers are people whose names and souls have been stolen. Desperate to return to Earth, Penny and Hector set out for the capital city of Iverton for more information. As they travel through the woods, Penny is mortally wounded by a savage creature, and begins to die. Hector begs a local priestesses, Armonie and Elise, for help. She sends them to a nearby enchanted spring called Warwick's Grotto, which is imbued with healing powers. However, Hector is a little too late— Penny’s heart stops and on the border of life and death, she has vision of a specter with an iron funeral mask for a face. Although her life is restored, she is haunted by the malevolent spirit in both her dreaming and waking life.

Continuing their journey, they encounter Simon Shaw for the second time. He explains to them the reason he was after Penny in the first place: he was ordered to kill Penny by an Elydrian man, Baron Deimos Geller in return for a magic wand that would grant his dearest desire—to become a famed stage magician. Yet Simon could not find it in his heart to hurt her. Deimos then sent the wraith to Penny’s home. Next, Simon explains that a winged woman called Adrielle gave him a sealed box intended for Penny, and that it contains instructions explaining how to return to Earth. The problem is, no one can figure out the riddle inside of it. They learn, however, that in the Nation of Goblins, which lies far across a vast ocean, lives a priestess named Della who knows how to unravel the secret of the box. She can be found in the goblin’s capital city, Hulver. Penny, Hector, and Simon continue toward Iverton in order to find passage to Hulver. Through an accident, Penny discovers that by touching Simon’s skin she can view his memories. They see the memories as a shared dream, and though this mystifies and excites her, Penny finds that her nightmares worsen.

            When they reach Iverton, they take up residence at an inn and Hector begins to research ways of returning to Earth at the Archillion. Through a series of mishaps at the local theater, Simon and Penny see Deimos and overhear his plot to kidnap the doll-like starlet of the play, Annette Deveaux. Deimos intends to abuse Annette’s peculiar ‘gift’ – which is to make anyone obey her spoken commands. It is revealed that Deimos and his brother Phobos want to use Annette’s ‘gift’ to transform hundreds of people in the goblin city of Hulver into an army of wraiths.

Penny, Simon, and Hector warn Annette about Deimos’ plot just in time, and Annette says that she will arrange for them all to get to Hulver if they will act as her bodyguards at an upcoming ball. At the ball, Penny meets a handsome stranger, Noah, who turns out to be the King of the Nation of Men. Deimos arrives with a trio of goblins, whom he transforms into wraiths with the help of Cyrus, and nearly succeeds in capturing Annette. In the aftermath of the attack, Annette manages to persuade Noah, (with the help of her ‘gift’) to allow them to act as liaisons to the King of Goblins in Hulver. The king lends them the royal dirigible, but calamity follows en route. Stricken by a terrible nightmare of the masked entity, Penny sleepwalks over the side of the railing of the airship and plummets hundreds of feet downward into the ocean. In an attempt to save her, the others are also pulled over the edge and Hector uses what’s left of his energy to save them from being killed by the fall. However this comes with a heavy cost: Hector is gravely injured. By a stroke of luck, they are fished from the sea by a mysterious crafter of magical goods and tools called Argent Clemons. He reveals himself to be fan of Annette’s, and that he has a special, if not peculiar, interest in their expedition. After some negotiating, he agrees to host them while Hector recovers.

            When they are healthy and rested, Penny goes to the goblin castle with a message from King Noah to the goblin royals. She is surprised to discover that Deimos has taken over the castle and is taking orders from the angel, Nestor, whom Penny instantly recognizes as the violent intruder from her earliest memories. Hector teleports them out of danger to Argent’s home before the Angel can destroy them. Deimos and his goblin minions follow, and proceed to attack and burn Argent’s Atelier. Penny and her friends flee to the forest and finally, through much painful searching, solve the riddle of the box and locate the witch, Della. It is this witch who tells them the true story of the Angel, Nestor, and of how he murdered his brother Seival by dismembering pieces of his body and incenerating them with divine flame. She explains how the pieces have now been reattached into a handful of people from the three different worlds. She further reveals that Hector and Annette each have piece of Seival within them (Annette, the tongue and Hector, the hands). This further goes to explain their miraculous abilities.

Della has yet more to say: there are even more lost people bearing pieces of Seival’s remains scattered across the three worlds of Elydria, Nelvirna, and Earth. Della explains that when all of the pieces of Seival are finally brought together once again, they will have the power to stop the Angel Nestor, who is summoning a dark force that will threaten not only Earth and Elydria, but the fabric of reality. He is pursuing this dark purpose in hopes of quenching his deepest, yet secret, desire. With this knowledge in mind, Della sends them back to Hulver on the eve of the Goblin Carnival in order to foil Nestor, who is planning on that very night to turn a multitude of citizens into wraiths. Deimos intercepts them before they can reach the city, and he kidnaps Annette. He tells her she will be forced into using her power against all the innocent citizens of the city. Penny and the others storm the castle and confront Nestor in hopes of stopping Deimos before he can make Annette rob the innocents of their lives. However, the Angel (being an almighty deity) easily cuts each of them down and attempts to persuade Penny to help him in return for the answers to Penny’s most urgent questions. Though sorely tempted, she refuses. Penny uses her ability to call forth dreams, and touches Nestor in hopes of paralyzing him. She could not have predicted what this does to him— it fills him with a sinister, crippling energy that sends him fleeing in terror from the scene. She soon finds, also, that the spirit that plagued her for so long no longer haunts her every waking moment.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">With Nestor gone, the team returns to Iverton, exhausted, but ready to take on the challenge of gathering the rest of Seival’s remains which are embodied in the scattered others.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Now that Hector is aware of the angelic power within himself, he knows that it is that power which allowed him to travel between Elydria, Nelvirna, and Earth in the first place. After much practice, he offers Penny a chance to go home for good. At first, she is thrilled to return to her normal life, but then slowly realizes that her journey has only just begun. She decides to remain in Elydria with her new family of friends and see her quest through to the end. <h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%">Trivia


 * The Angel of Elydria was written in the year 2009, and will be published in 2013 through Telemachus Press
 * The song "In Dreams" from A. R. Meyering original album "Our Best Laid Plans" is about this novel. The song "Hector's Lullaby" from the same album is a reference to the moment in Mulgrith where Hector protects Penny as she sleeps. The moment where he sings the tune for this song is when he is practicing a stringed instrument in Annette's music room and sings to himself in his native tongue.