Excerpt from Incarnation (Kid Sensation #7)

For those interested, I thought it would please you to know that I’m hard at work on Kid Sensation #7, among other things.  It’s coming along quickly (much faster than KS #6), and I’m currently contemplating whether to make it available for pre-order. In the meantime, I thought it might be worthwhile to post a short excerpt.  (As always, the usual caveats apply: hasn’t been proofed, edited, yada, yada, yada…)

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We popped up in a field – a wide swath of acreage filled with what looked like stalks of grain.  If grain were blue, that is, and produced soft musical tones when the wind blew. It was an immediate indication that we weren’t anywhere close to a place I’d call “home.”

“Where are we?” I asked, already knowing that we were no longer on Earth.

“That’s a little tricky to answer,” said my companion, Rune. “It’s not really a spot you can plot on a map – or pin down temporally.”

I frowned. “I take it this is one of those places beyond the conventional bounds of the universe – outside of space and time.”

“Something like that,” Rune replied. As he spoke, a bevy of unusual symbols and designs – the source of his moniker – moved eerily across the surface of his skin. It was an effect that most people found creepy.

I let out a slight groan of exasperation.

“What?” Rune said in mock surprise. “Did I fail to mention that we’d be going off-site?”

“Off-site?” I repeated skeptically. “This isn’t off-site. This isn’t even off-planet. There’s no word for what this is.”

Rune seemed to ruminate on this for a second, then grinned. “How about ‘off-cosmos?’”

“Feels like an understatement,” I replied, noting that I was being subjected to my companion’s sense of humor. “When you asked for my help, you didn’t say anything about dragging me off to this literal Limbo.”

Rune laughed. “Well, would it have made a difference if I had?”

I shrugged, then grudgingly admitted, “Probably not.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rune stated with a nod. “Besides, it’s not like you haven’t experienced this before.”

I didn’t say anything as I reflected on Rune’s comment. He was referring to the fact that he and I had had a previous misadventure wherein we found ourselves in a similar realm outside of space and time. It was then that I’d become aware of Rune’s true nature.

As far as most people knew, Rune was a member of the Alpha League (Earth’s greatest superhero team) and was generally considered something along the lines of a sorcerer or magician. On his part, Rune never disabused anyone of the notion and even went along with it, such as dressing the part by occasionally wearing a wizard’s robe (as he was now) and carrying a magician’s staff. In truth, however, Rune was far more than that. He was an Incarnate – the physical embodiment of certain potent forces and powers.

As evidence of this, there was the fact that Rune had brought us from my bedroom to our current location with a mere snap of his fingers. Now that I thought about, I realized that it had been around midnight when we left, but it now seemed to be daylight. I glanced up, expecting to see something like two suns, an array of planetary bodies, or something along those lines. What I actually saw was one of the most stunning spectacles I’d ever laid eyes on.

Above us, staring down, was a crowd of giants.

No, not giants – titans.

No, even that was an incredibly flawed and deficient description.

Frankly speaking, there was no word I could think of – colossus, goliath, polypheme, what have you – that could adequately describe the stature, the sheer magnitude, of the beings around us.

They looked like people – albeit people who had grown to a height that could only be measured in miles. Their heads weren’t in the clouds; they were literally above them. Well above them. Their bodies were equally massive, each easily as wide as a metropolis.

They were so gargantuan that I instinctively realized in the back of my mind that there was no way they were standing on solid ground – there wouldn’t have been room for them.  Instead, their towering forms extended down towards terra firma but seemed to visually dissolve around the horizon (which explained why I hadn’t initially noticed them). All in all, it was as if the realm or dimension Rune had brought us to were a snow globe, with a bunch of people standing around watching it. (In truth, it felt like any one of them could simply reach out and palm us like a basketball if they so desired.) However, they didn’t move – didn’t even appear to breathe. From all appearances, they were statues.

Somewhat in shock, I took a step back, essentially mesmerized by the scale of what I was looking at.

“Wh-what…?” I mumbled, spinning slowly in a circle and noting that the immense beings were all around us. “How…?”

I felt more than saw Rune staring at me intently, although with my peripheral vision I observed him following my gaze.

“Wait,” he muttered, sounding a little surprised. “You can see that?”

Not quite able to find my tongue, I simply nodded emphatically.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rune make a vague gesture. Instantly, the images vanished, replaced but what could be described as normal sky.

The visual change seemed to bring me back to myself. I inhaled deeply, suddenly realizing that I had been holding my breath.

Rune gave me a once-over. “You good?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a nod. “Just caught a little off-guard. What were those things?”

“Incarnates,” Rune answered.