DARK LIGHT:
A WORLD WITHOUT HEROES II
By Dale Sherman
As some of you may remember, I wrote the original KISS novel, A WORLD WITHOUT HEROES, back in 1998-1999 as really just something fun to take my mind off of other pressing writing projects. Chris, Beth and John here at KISS ASYLUM were kind enough to present the chapters here on a regular basis at the time and as it turned out, the book ended up becoming a successful project for KAOL (www.kissarmyonline.com), with illustrations and even a CD of original covers done by a variety of excellent fan-artists (and I recommend getting the book just for the CD if nothing else).
When that novel was finished, I thought my work was done and I could sit back and relax. However, I began getting a lot of letters and emails from people who were asking when I would start on a sequel.
Frankly, I never planned on one. I thought the story I wanted to tell was all there in the first novel and there was no need to do anything more. Besides, I had my other writing projects to worry about and this was more of a kick than a job, so I just never thought it would happen and told people as much over the past year.
That changed earlier this year when it occurred to me that perhaps there were some questions left unanswered in the first novel that would be worth considering for a sequel. Add that to the fact that I ended the original novel in 1985 and never resolved what happened to the final Talisman, and ideas started clicking away in my head.
So here's the result, and I dedicate it to everyone that kept asking me when a sequel was going to come out. If you want anyone to blame, blame them!
To those of you coming back after the first one, I hope you'll enjoy this one as much or even more than the first; for those who are first-timers, I hope you'll want to go back to the first novel sometime to see what had happened before. To all, I would be interested in your comments when and if you have any to make.
Just don't start mentioning about "finishing up the trilogy" after this one is finished! You don't want to see a grown man cry.
Until next time --
Dale Sherman
December 2000
The Elders are a far-advanced race that exhibited powers and abilities making them masters of time and space and masters of physical and mental realities. After millions of years, however, their abilities began to stagnate and they found that they had started to revert to a former state of evolution.
Knowing this, the Council of Elders reached out to other races in the universe that showed the potential they themselves once had. Of those races, one of the favorites of the Elders was found on the planet Earth. To help guild the human race, the Elders created 12 Talismans that contained powers generated from the essence of the Elders. The Talismans influenced hidden abilities of the individuals who accepted them and remained with those individuals, known as the Guardians, until the Talismans came into someone else's possession.
The Elder's children, the Ancient Ones -- a race of creatures that were a throwback in evolution -- did not take such glib resignation of power in stride. Thus, battle lines were drawn between the Elders and the Ancient Ones and the pawns caught in the middle became the humans on Earth. Such a war of the gods was fought for centuries until the early part of the 20th Century when the Guardians -- with an army of Elders commanded by Blackwell, an Elder war-general -- defeated the Ancient Ones by imprisoning them behind a dimensional gate, trapping them for all time.
The battle had been intense, and not only were some of the Guardians killed in the battle, but the 12 Talismans had been damaged as well. Those ornaments remaining were fused together into four Talismans.
After the war, the years went by with the Elders choosing certain individuals as the Guardians of the four remaining Talismans. The members of the Council who had most sway in choosing the Guardians had been Blackwell and his brother, Morpheus.
In the early 1970s, Blackwell had made his latest selection, but they were not to become reality. Upon announcing his choices, Morpheus exposed Blackwell as being set to turn against the Elders, using the new Guardians he had chosen to destroy the Council of Elders and return the power of the Talismans back to the Elder race who, Blackwell felt, still had room to progress.
The Council expelled Blackwell, and in Blackwell's place Morpheus chose four musicians from New York who were known as the rock band KISS. Each member received the powers of the Talismans. Blackwell, in hidden exile, gathered up the humans who were to become his team of Guardians and began a campaign to obtain the Talismans from the Guardians. Blackwell's goal: to open up the dimensional portal that held back the Ancient Ones and use them to conquer the Elders.
Blackwell was stopped, but the final battle in 1985 served to combine the four remaining Talismans into one Ultra-Talisman. It also left the band members without their extraordinary powers. The group decided to go their separate ways, with Gene, Paul, Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick remaining as a band, and Peter and Ace going back to their solo careers. However, one member was later given the Ultra-Talisman to keep until another arrived to take on the powerful responsibilities of the glowing orb and continue the history of the Guardians on the planet Earth.
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Copyrighted (c) 2000-2001 Dale Sherman / KISS ASYLUM
Artwork by Larry Blake
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