SPIRITS OF FALAJEN
Sethi’s Song - BOOK 1
By Ginger Salazar and Jasmine Shouse
Cover art designed by Ginger Salazar, edited by Jasmine Shouse
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Laura Salazar for her long-standing dedication to reviewing and proofreading for us, no matter how many or how small of changes we made.
Thank you also to Anthony Crump for his contributions to what became his fictional alter-ego in this world we built.
We’d also like to thank everyone who took the time to read and preview, and to our families and friends for their (sometimes begrudging) support and encouragement while we gushed on about what we were working on for the book.
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Prologue
“For three-thousand years the Resarian Dominion has been at war with us, ensuring we never return to our native land on Sariadne. They continue to practice sorcery and witchcraft against us, melting entire fleets and summoning demons just as their first emperor did at the Dominion’s inception. If we continue to fall before them, no one will be able to stop them when they decide to conquer other nations. It’s time we ally with the rest of Falajen to throw our deadliest war machines against them. You, my dear, are one of our deadliest war machines. With your help, Pahl’Kiar will prevail.”
Kiaran Emperor Vimbultinir Shani
The chill of the autumn night mixed with the ocean breeze felt like icy glass against his skin. Captain Tuvalyn Bryns and his Marine squadron of ten men approached the heavily patrolled Sariadne coast in a lightly armored watercraft. They were fortunate enough to have terminated a small group of Resarian Dominion soldiers just hours ago near the icy island where their ship was anchored, but at the cost of two of their own. It had taken thirteen Kiaran Marines to extinguish four Dominion soldiers in the skirmish. Between Resarian Dominion mystics and Kiaran guns, the battle was quick. That particular group of unfortunate Resarians was without a healer or a shield summoner. Even their destructive mystics were minimal with very little power and diminished energy use.
Captain Tuvalyn and his team were sent to scout the Northern Coasts of Sariadne, just a day’s ride from the main Resarian City, Res’Baveth. The reconnaissance mission to determine how many enemy soldiers patrolled and how often was meant to find a weakness in their defenses. The Kiarans usually kept to the warmer southern route, farthest away from the main Resarian city but thought to try a new, colder area.
“I don’t see the logic in scouting just outside their main city. Of course it’s going to be heavily patrolled,” whined Sergeant Jonsen.
“They won’t be expecting us in the north - they know we hate the cold,” Tuvalyn replied, attempting to stifle a shiver. “They know the East and South is where we always strike from -”
“Then why did we only bring one ship? Why not an entire fleet?” asked another Sergeant.
“I told you why days ago, Valin, lay off the tressel mushrooms, they’re messin’ with your memory,” Tuvalyn ordered. “The fleet will come along with our new allies once we’ve determined the Dominion’s armory and posts up here. Our potential new allies will be in need of this information if both of our nations are to take on the Resarians from two sides.”
“I don’t trust our new ‘allies’, these Lantheuns,” stated Sergeant Jonsen, breathing into his gloves to warm his hands.
“You don’t trust anyone with pale skin,” chuckled Tuvalyn. He readjusted his wool cap when strands of his thick, black hair fell to his eyebrows.
“I barely trust half of our own,” Jonsen sighed. It wasn’t until he enlisted into the Kiaran military that Jonsen had seen the first person with skin that wasn’t as golden brown as his. He’d also never seen someone that actually had pupils in their irises unlike the Kiarans. But meeting a Resarian who wielded magical powers had made him more astonished and resentful that his people had been stripped of their own mystics and exiled from the same continent thousands of years ago.
It was an hour before dawn when the men reached the shore, quietly disembarking to scout the area. Tuvalyn knelt down to one knee and longingly pressed his fingertips into the wet sand.
They were home.
However, the Kiarans were forbidden by the fierce regime known as the Resarian Dominion to remain on their own land.
The familiar sound of horse hooves trotting along the nearby dirt road alerted the Kiaran men to hide behind a cluster of boulders. With their backs to the calm sea and under the reflecting light of the two moons, Tuvalyn could see six horses approaching, each manned with a Dominion soldier dressed in black and red uniforms trimmed in gold. One of them broke away from the others to examine what had arrived on shore. Tuvalyn listened to the men speak in Resarian, addressing their officer in charge. A woman’s voice replied.
“Why do they let their females have combat roles-”
“Quiet,” whispered Tuvalyn to silence Jonsen.
They were so preoccupied with the three Resarians who were gathering at their watercraft that they hadn't noticed the Dominion soldier behind them.
“Surrender your weapons!” said a female Resarian Dominion soldier in fluent Kiaran tongue from behind them.
Instead of surrendering, the Kiarans readied their flint lock rifles, aiming at the woman who gave the order.
“It would behoove you to return to your boat and your ship. Failing to do so will result in your death. All thirteen of you,” she stated calmly as her five fellow soldiers surrounded them. Her pistol remained in its holster. Their laws of war stated that she would not need to fire it against an intruding adversary.
“We didn't return to our native land just to die to you!” Tuvalyn shouted and fired his rifle at her, grazing her neck. The others followed his lead and also fired their rifles at the six Dominion soldiers.
At seeing their commanding officer take a shot to her neck and falling off of her horse, ice shards, shockwaves, and fire fell upon the unfortunate Kiarans from the mystics conjured by the Resarians, whose firearms were only used for even numbered fights.
Tuvalyn heard the screams of his enlisted comrades as they were either frozen instantly, set afire, or launched back into the sea behind them. Jonsen was one of those thrown into the water. Profoundly shaken, he swam to shore to retrieve his rifle. The water droplets on his skin became ice when the Resarian targeted him. Jonsen’s labored breathing intensified as he felt the beginnings of frostbite on his fingers and toes. He screamed when his limbs froze, followed by his blood vessels and organs. Death swiftly followed.
Tuvalyn stood and dropped his empty rifle to unsheathe his dagger, regret filling his nerves when his uniform caught fire, melting to his skin. He dropped back to the ground, shouting his surrender as he rolled in the wet sand to douse the flames. Through his agonizing pain, he was dimly aware that he was the sole survivor of his team as the remaining five Resarians closed in on him. Dazed, he wondered why they hadn’t finished him off with more powerful flames as he watched them whisper to one another.
“Leave this land,” the female commander demanded. Blood was still seeping out from the wound caused by the Kiaran captain, but she seemed to have recovered enough, though her voice was raspy.
Tuvalyn cradled his side, breathing sharply from the pain made worse by the salty water. His dark blue uniform had melted into his skin in places. As his eyes fell upon his fallen men, he groaned audibly, the burned unrecognizable. His mission was one at a familiar end, the same as most Kiaran missions when attempting to infiltrate their rightful home of Sariadne. Very few ever survived Dominion wrath. On his knees, he tried to straighten his posture when the Resarian woman walked close to him. Her uniform was drenched in her own blood.
Masking her own pain, the woman observed the young captain, assuming this was his first scouting mission away from Pahl’Kiar, the nation of the displaced Kiarans. She placed a bloody hand on his face to look into his hazel, pupil-less eyes - a distinctly Kiaran trait. “Do not allow your arrogance to force us to destroy your entire ship, Captain. We’re giving you the chance to go away.”
“Why? Why not end me now?” Tuvalyn pleaded as he hunched over from the unbearable deep skin tissue burns.
“We always send someone back with a message, Captain.” Her voice was remarkably calm and soothing. “As I state to each one of you that steps foot on Sariadne, our peoples will never co-exist on this continent again, Kiaran.” She turned from him and gave an order to the Resarian healer in their group tending to their fallen comrade. “Sergeant Wenders, heal his nerves so that he doesn’t die of shock on his way back to his ship.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied and shuffled to the Kiaran.
Tuvalyn remained on his knees and elbows, enraged at his own weakness, his failure to keep his men alive. He watched the Resarians carefully place the bodies of his men into the watercraft they arrived in. The pain was so intense, he could have sworn to seeing a hint of remorse in their weary faces. Their healer knelt to touch him, and Tuvalyn considered refusing but wanted nothing more than the throbbing pain of his burns to subside. Within seconds of the healer’s mystic aura reaching him, the pain was gone.
The Dominion soldiers mounted their horses after carefully tying their one corpse to his horse to follow behind. Tuvalyn watched them fade out of sight into the night through the grassy plains before solemnly returning to the watercraft.
“We were once brothers, the Resarians and us. Living peacefully as small tribes among the dragons. When did it come to this?” Tuvalyn shivered, rowing the watercraft through the ice-cold ocean waves. “I’m sorry, boys,” he muttered as he moved, “We’ve heard the stories, we’ve seen the log entries of every defeat. War is not the solution if we ever want to return home.”
Spirits of Falajen
Part I – Progenies of the Dominion
Chapter I
Pushing away any and all second thoughts, she held her hand up as ordered. “I, Brisethi Sen Asel,” she began.
“...Vow to support and defend Sariadne against all adversaries…” First Lieutenant Ubrey continued to recite the oath to her.
Brisethi repeated his words and hoped that the Dominion officer didn’t notice her trembling hand.
“I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me,” Brisethi said after Ubrey.
The officer concluded the final words of the oath.
“According to the Uniform Code of Dominion Regulation,” Brisethi declared.
They took a seat at her family’s dining table where her mother had prepared tea for them. Brisethi skimmed through the contract one last time, knowing this was what she had wanted since she was a child. Using the fountain pen imprinted with the Dominion symbol, Brisethi nervously signed the contract. For the next four years, she belonged to the Resarian Dominion Armed Forces.
Naiana gasped after reading the morning bulletin. “No! ‘Sethi, my baby, you’re not going!”
The Dominion recruiter arched a brow from his cup of tea as Brisethi leaned in toward her mother. “What is it, mother?”
“They were just outside the city last night!” Naiana shrieked.
“I assure you, Mrs. Sen Asel, we took care of the Kiarans rather hastily. Your daughter may never even see a Kiaran in her short time in the military. Unless she decides to stay in,” the recruiter replied.
“I intend to stay in!” Brisethi grinned.
“You won’t be able to handle the expedition, ‘Sethi,” Naiana discouraged her. “Recruits have died during the basic training! Your father warned you.”
“The weak and reckless have died, yes,” First Lieutenant Ubrey replied rather lightheartedly and stood to his feet. “It is time.”
“Sethi, please reconsider, stay at home!” Naiana pleaded.
“Mother, I already signed the contract, I took the vow! I’m leaving…”
Naiana drew her daughter in for a final embrace. “Please don’t leave me,” she weeped as the recruiter made his way to the door. He waited outside the carriage to let the mother and daughter say their goodbyes.
Brisethi told herself she wasn’t going to cry. Dominion Warriors in training were supposed to be stripped of emotions. But witnessing her own mother hysterically plead for her to stay formed the tears. She wished her father wasn’t at sea all the time to calm her mother’s nerves.
Brisethi placed one foot onto the carriage steps and stole one last glance back at her home. She never meant to break her mother’s heart by shattering her dreams of her daughter becoming an artist or housewife to raise children. But she had no desire to become as emotionally unstable as her mother, nor did she aspire to be as salty and drunken as her Navy Admiral father. “I’m sorry, mother,” Brisethi whispered. “Your dreams for me, are not my dreams.”
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Brisethi Sen Asel nervously remained on her knees, glancing over at the three brash women chopping off the hair of anxious Resarian Dominion recruits. Word spread quickly of last night’s attack so close to their city as each recruit whispered worriedly to one another.
Brisethi had just reached her twentieth year of life in the world of Falajen and like most of the recruits alongside her, she enlisted immediately into the Dominion Military to defend her nation against the relentless Kiarans. She had higher ambitions in life, however, than to merely defend her continent of Sariadne.
Gloomy clouds threatened to drop snow in the crisp fall air above the courtyard of the Dominion Command Citadel in the city of Res’Baveth. Brittle amber and rust-colored leaves scattered in the breeze along the cold, cracked dirt beneath her knees. Brisethi watched her breath steam out before her while braiding her lengthy, burgundy hair one last time, dreading this day of stripping away her eccentric life to be a soldier. All one hundred recruits in her division would have the same haircut for the Four-Year Expedition that was used as the Dominion Armed Forces basic training.
“Chin down, keep still,” one of the women said gruffly as she grabbed Brisethi’s thick, long braid in one hand and brought up a sharp knife in her other, cleanly chopping off the braid. Brisethi guessed the middle-aged Resarian woman was nearing five hundred years old as she continued to cut at layered strands until her hair was no longer than her smallest fingers. Brisethi exhaled deeply when the woman was done and raked her short hair. It was as symbol of stripping away their individuality to become one team. Every six months, she and the others would have to cut it to the same length until their four years of basic training were done.
Brisethi looked at the petite girl next to her who had stifled a sob after her long, blonde hair was chopped away as well. To spare the poor girl any reprimands from the fearsome commanders glaring at each recruit, she decided to attempt to cheer her up. “Last night was the closest the Kiarans had ever come to our city. They won’t ever be that close again. We will prevail. They won’t touch you, or your family.”
“My boyfriend’s going to cheat on me!” the girl sobbed, burying her head in her hands.
Brisethi exhaled loudly, staring blankly at the back of a recruit’s head in front of her and wishing she hadn’t said a word. Thankfully, Brisethi had ended her young relationship just before enlisting, knowing that she would be away for four years, training and patrolling the continent.
The first week at the Citadel had the new recruits shuffling from one section of it to another, obtaining their new gear and sizing for uniforms. While they waited on their names to be stitched onto their uniforms, the drill instructors began testing the recruits’ physical abilities by working them in countless numbers of squats to push-ups to squats again. Sweat dripped down her face as Brisethi tried not to stare in awe at the ornately decorated swords and pistols attached to the hips of the instructors
. The same petite girl next to her made no attempt to conceal her admiration of the physique of the men training them.
Brisethi’s training division, known simply as Division Forty-One, consisted of one Army officer and three higher enlisted Navy and Army instructors who would oversee their Four-Year Expedition. Due to how arduous and lengthy the basic training was, the average graduation rate was about eighty percent. Those eighty or so who completed the training were allowed to choose to serve in the Dominion Navy, Army, or return home to serve in the lifelong reserves. To begin with, however, the division would remain at the Citadel’s barracks for the first month of their preparation of further physical processing and paperwork.
Finally, the instructors called a halt to the physical training and barked orders to organize their packs. A lanky, dark-haired girl accidentally bumped into Brisethi during the shuffling chaos of recruits. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she quickly apologized.
Brisethi ignored the clumsy girl even as she sat beside her and turned her pack inside out. They were instructed to ink their last names onto everything issued to them from hygiene kits and underclothes to winter garments. Each time one of the drill instructors walked by to inspect each recruit’s stenciling, Brisethi was called out with a few others for their terrible penmanship. Their reprimand was the intensive feet shuffling move while resting on their hands known to them as “mountain-climbers”.
Brisethi returned to her items, frustrated that she couldn’t make straight enough lines of the Resarian alphabet of her own name. “I didn’t join the Dominion to spell my name on items,” she muttered.
The clumsy girl next to her kept glancing over at her while neatly placing her items back into her pack. The girl felt bad for her and wanted to help if only to spare her from more intensive training. “Hey, Sen Asel, is it? I just finished with all of my items, would you like assistance?”
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