#Excerpt : Chandrea- The Return of the Avatar Queen by @MWynnAuthor #Fantasy ~ Reviewing in Chaos

Chandrea - The Return of the Avatar Queen
by: Marlene Wynn

Publication: Sept. 22, 2014
ISBN: 147911569X
ASIN: B00N4EW3A4
Length: 430 pages
Genres: Fantasy, New Adult

Blurb:

Chandrea Averill thinks she's just like any other normal young woman. But, on the day of her 23rd birthday, her life changes forever.

Surrounded by magical creatures, dangerous sorcery, and insidious political intrigue, Chandrea desperately wants to return to Earth and the only life she's ever known. But, the longer she stays, the more she realizes that she may be the only one with the power-- both magical and political -- to save the people of Lyrunia. Will she find the courage to remain and fight for her home world?

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After circling high above the palace ruins once more, she banked Tadia away, and with a gentle pressure of her knees, had her angle down toward the Averill Bay and the beach far below. There, the three of them would rest before journeying back home. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the shadowy Amir moving between the trees as he kept up the chase.

Then, in an instant, everything went wrong. One moment they were soaring over the cliffs like arrows in flight, and the next, Tadia jerked hard and, screaming in pain, started spiraling downward out of control.

Holding on with everything she had, fighting against gravity and speed, Denae needed to discover what had happened. She knew Tadia hadn’t hit anything; there was nothing nearby for her to hit. Besides, the bird was far too careful during flight for Denae to even consider it as a possibility.

That meant that something had hit her. The question was what?

Holding tightly to Tadia’s neck feathers with her left hand, Denae reached down around the bird’s body with her right hand, hoping to find the cause of her friend’s sudden pain. This was not a simple task as they were now falling out of the sky in a dive that caused her head to spin and her heart to pound. The ground was coming up at them with incredible speed, and if Denae didn’t do something soon, they’d both be smashed upon the cliffs.

Denae bent down over Tadia’s body, grimacing with the effort…and lost her hold. Screaming in fear, panting from the exertion, Denae saw the world spinning out of control and felt for the first time in her life a true and terrifying sense of vertigo.

With the aid of the oncoming rushing air, Denae muscled herself back up onto Tadia’s back. Momentarily safe again, she realized that she would have to take matters into her own hands.

Looking around in desperation for something that she could use to rectify the situation, she took note of the sharp, jagged cliffs. No help there, she thought with a grimace, and looked toward the beach. There, at the base of the cliff beneath the old palace, she saw two women, one standing, the other sitting. But even as she took note of this, the one sitting suddenly shot to her feet, staring in her direction. Neither the women nor the sand could be of assistance to her in this, so Denae dismissed them from her mind.

Her attention then turned to the water. Could she summon enough power this quickly to save them both? She realized she had no choice in the matter. She had to try!

Closing her eyes against the spinning world around her, shutting out Tadia’s piercing screams of pain and fear, Denae concentrated as she never had before. She focused on the water below her, willing it with her all her power to move, to rise up, to form a cushion for them to land on.

Muttering under her breath, the words were torn from her lips by the rushing air even as they were formed. Denae felt the power inside of her swelling by the moment.

Taking a deep breath, she then screamed into the wind and thrust the power toward the bay. Pushing with all of her mental concentration, she visualized the water of the bay surging up out of its bed to form a large column of water beneath them.

Responding to the incredible amount of power surging from Denae, the water rose swiftly toward her. Tadia, even in her panic and pain, was trying her best to control the fall.

Breathing heavily, controlling the rising water and trying to not fall off of the bird, Denae focused with everything she had. The water rose up, up, up – and then met them with a cold splash.

Denae shifted her power to force the water to push against their falling bodies, thus slowing their fall. As the seconds sped by, she allowed the water to slowly start bringing them back down toward the bay. Feeling Tadia shake beneath her, Denae knew that the bird was in a great deal of pain and fear, but she couldn’t spare a moment to comfort her. Any lapse in her focus could end up crashing them to the rocks below.

Slowly, Denae lowered them until they finally reached the point were the sand met the water at the tip of the beach. Softly, so as not to cause too much pain to Tadia, she set them down.

When she felt Tadia relax beneath her, Denae released her hold on her power and let the water flow back out into the bay. Then, with the exertion and terror too much to take any more, she slumped forward on Tadia’s back. The world became a small, shimmering dot of light, and then even that was gone, and she was surrounded by darkness.

Marlene Wynn is a Utah native - fondly referred to as "Utonian" by a friend. She transplanted herself in 1992 from the majestic Rocky Mountains to the beachy shores of sunny Virginia Beach, Virginia and has been there ever since. Though she has worked in the Benefits field for several years, she finally worked up the courage to chase her dream as an author.