Afterwards, they find Alder collapsed on the floor, and discover that he has been hiding his condition from them. He has the stillness, a mysterious condition that kills Wysterian men in their late 20’s.
Athel is devastated, but the situation becomes graver still. The Spiritweaver they brought in to test Ash to see if his powers are demonic has discovered something that shakes all of Wysterian society to the very core. Wysterian magic is broken, and has been for a thousand years, ever since the men were stripped of their powers when their god was imprisoned. In its current state, the magic of the women is shortening the life span of the men and killing them.
The news nearly drives Athel mad with grief. Her own powers have been slowly killing Alder ever since they were married. She presents this information to the matrons, pleading with them to follow her as she searches for a way to restore the men’s magic and save their lives, but the women refuse.
The church declares Athel a heretic, and forcibly removes her from the throne. The men, learning the truth themselves, rise up, demanding that they be treated as equals from now on. When the women refuse, the men attempt to leave Wysteria forever, but the women attack them, determined to make them stay by force.
As the men and women of Wysteria battle against one another, Athel is forced to launch the invasion early, even though they are not yet prepared. As she makes her escape, Athel is shot through the chest, and nearly killed. Privet, desperate to save her, throws himself on top of her, further bullets hitting his body instead of hers. When Athel comes to, she discovers the horrible news: Privet’s injuries have left him permanently crippled.
Meanwhile, Queen Sotol amasses more and more power, manipulating the Kabal into letting her join their inner circle, then manipulating them further into bestowing powerful void magic upon her when Mandi’s sabotage against their plans becomes too much for them to handle. She even meets secretly with the gods, playing both sides against one another as she moves forward with her own nefarious plans. All the while, Tigera stays by her side, overseeing the magic that is causing Spirea to grow within the Queen, asserting herself more and more as time passes.
The rebellion, Alder’s sickness, Privet’s paralysis, and the accelerating rise of the seas prove to be too much for Athel. She collapses, her heart unable to go on in the face of so much darkness and sadness. Their tiny force, barely a tenth of what they had planned to attack with, doesn’t seem to stand a chance against the defenses of the Monolith.
Digging deep down, Athel pulls together the courage to try one final time, even though her heart is all but breaking. She leads the invasion force against the Monolith. Even when Queen Sotol manipulates the gods themselves into opposing the invasion, she is still able to find a way to carry on.
The battle against Boeth is the largest battle to occur in millennia. Through Athel’s brilliant leadership, they are able to fight their way to the Monolith itself, though many thousands of people are killed in the assault, including many of Athel’s friends.
When they finally break inside, they discover the horrible truth. The Monolith is empty, and Queen Sotol has led them into a trap. As the remaining men and women of the invasion force are betrayed by the people of Madaringa and captured, Athel’s mighty heart finally crumbles. She is carried limply from the field, escaping with only a handful of people, through a portal that leads to Privet’s mountain manor.
Now our story concludes…
Prologue
(2,305 years ago)
Little Dev’in was roused from his sleep amid loud noises. Cracks like thunder, hisses like snakes. In the fog of his slumber he couldn’t begin to guess what they were, but one thing was for sure. They were getting closer.
“Honey, wake up!” came a frantic voice. Dev’in’s form uncurled from the shape of a rock he had been comfortably slumbering in, taking on the shape of a small child.
“Honey, I need you to come with me,” his mother gasped, looking around in panic.
People were screaming everywhere. There were strange lights coming from beyond the woods. A red glow he had never seen before and a strange, acrid smell in the air.
Dev’in tried to focus, but his tiny body felt sluggish. “I’m tired, mama.”
There was a sound like great stones falling, and the ground shook. Many of the nearby trees and rocks became people and began running from something.
Dev’in felt scared. He didn’t understand what was happening.
“Come on, honey,” she insisted, grabbing his hand and running.
There were more sounds behind them, like the roar of animals, but metallic somehow. It was like nothing he had ever heard. Those with the talent to do so became birds and flew overhead, their shrill chirps drowned out by the shaking of the earth.
The sky was completely black. Even the starlight was gone. Fathers screamed, trying to help the old and the sick. Mothers wept, looking for their little ones amid the chaos.
“Mama, what’s happening?” Dev’in asked, gripping her hand tightly. She was running so fast he nearly stumbled with every step.
His mother closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears. She didn’t answer.
Up ahead were the peaceful shores, where the waves lapped against the white sands. Just yesterday, Dev’in had been playing there with his friend Mariss. Now, the beach was filled with terrified shape shifters, taking on aquatic forms to swim away as fast as they could.
“Honey, I need you to become a fish. Do you remember how?” his mother asked frantically.
“Fish are hard,” he stammered, feeling unsure.
His Mother’s breathing was heavy; her eyes jittered. “You can do it, honey, just remember like we practiced.”
Dev’in concentrated hard, his little legs fusing together into a tail, his arms becoming fins, gills opening along his neck as his torso become long and streamlined.
“Good boy.”
His mother did the same, and they flopped into the waters to swim away. Even after they had swum deep below the surface, little Dev’in could still hear the screams of the changelings on the beach.
“I don’t understand, what’s happening?”
Chapter One
The rain fell heavily on the stately Ronesian manor, the scowling mountains surrounding the dale occasionally illuminated by flashes of lighting. The entire estate was crawling with soldiers, overturning beds, emptying drawers, and tossing the contents through broken windows. In the dark, it seemed as if the building were vomiting its contents onto the grass.
Frantic handlers led their tracking wolves, barely restraining their hunger as they scoured the grounds, searching for the scent trails of their quarry, but their efforts were spoiled by the thick downpour.
Special constables gathered around the pit in the front lawn, where a Nallorn tree had planted then later uprooted itself, casting all manner of tracking spells and divinations in the hope of finding their prey. There was a mania in their words, a smothered panic, as if every second hastened their own personal demise.
The front of the manor had been completely torn away, making bare for all to see the spoliation taking place within. Cheetah-spotted constables pocketed anything of value. Silverware, goblets, even a mounted set of barra antlers from the wall. As the end of the world approached, there was still time for some good old-fashioned looting.
Some distance away, at the edge of the capital, a dark figure hooded in black bore the rain assaulting on him as he watched through his spyglass the manor above.
Collapsing the device, he jumped down off the aqueduct and scampered into the city. The streets were nearly deserted, only dim rays of lantern lights escaped through cracks and seams of the houses as citizens huddled within. Pictures and posters written in dozens of languages were everywhere, drooping and dampening in the rain; hastily strung across the turquoise canals, but still unmistakable in their description and depiction of one perso
n. A young woman with fair skin and auburn red hair, her elegantly pointed Wysterian ears sticking out from beneath her braids.
Athel Forsythia, the most wanted person in the history of the world.
The hooded figure ducked down an alleyway to avoid a group of soldiers splashing down the thoroughfare. There, he found the alley barely safer. A group of citizens, carrying torches and ropes, surrounded the entrance to a cobblers’ shop; the men throwing their shoulders into the creaking doors as the women yelled angrily in their scratchy feline language. The door broke off its hinges, and the family inside screamed as the mob poured in.
As the hooded figure drew near, a young girl with red hair was pulled from within, kicking and screaming in terror.
“Please, leave my daughter be,” the elderly cobbler pleaded as he ran out into the rain, his wife sobbing in the doorway. “She’s not the one you’re looking for, she’s just a girl.”
“We can’t take that chance,” one of the larger men responded in common, stepping forward as the girl was bound. “The Wysterian must be delivered to the Stone Council. If she isn’t, the whole world will be consumed by the seas.”
The old man couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Have you all gone mad?” He looked around, and found a familiar face. “Errits, you’ve known me for years. You’ve eaten at my table. You know my daughter; tell them she’s not the one they’re looking for.”
Errits dropped his ears and looked away, ashamed at what he was a part of.
“She’s not Wysterian,” a voice stated boldly.
The mob and the cobbler family turned to face the hooded figure, water dripping off their enraged faces.
Ryin removed his hood, revealing his dusty brown hair.
“And what would you know about it, stranger?” the leader of the mob hissed.
Calmly, Ryin stepped forward towards the bound girl. She recoiled with a yelp at his approach, but he held out his tattooed arms and bade her to stay calm. Carefully, he reached out and tucked her red locks back, revealing her perfectly round ears.
“See? She is obviously Nayzerian,” Ryin explained carefully. “If you turn her into the Stone Council, you’ll just be wasting their time and make it harder to find the real Wysterian.”
The leader turned to the cobbler, his feline eyes glowing in the dark. “And just what is a Nayzerian doing in Ronesia?” he snapped with equal parts anger and embarrassment.
“Her home was destroyed in the war,” the old man explained. “We took her in as one of our own.”
Reluctantly, the mob removed the girl’s bonds, and she stumbled back to the cobbler and his wife. They fell on one another and wept in the rain.
“And where do you hail from, foreigner?” the leader demanded as he turned back, but found only wet cobblestone where Ryin had been.
The mob looked around in surprise, but could find no trace of the stranger.
* * *
As the seas had spilled over the Endras hills, a new shoreline had been created on the western peninsula of Ronesia. Formerly fertile farmlands and towns were now abandoned for fear of their proximity to the acidic seawater, which advanced daily. Stacks of children’s building blocks lay half built with no one to finish them. Laundry hung on clotheslines, flapping limply in the caustic breeze. Food sat spoiling on plates, the knives and forks still planted where their owners had dropped everything to evacuate. There was no life anywhere, not even the whisper of memories.
It was a land frozen in time. Not a place, but more like a melancholy portrait of a place.
As Ryin scampered past an abandoned shrine to Chert, he found what he was looking for. A small caravan of dark Tomani gypsy wagons arrayed in a circle, hiding beneath the form of a drooping Nallorn tree.
He heard what sounded like a bird chirping, but he had been with them long enough to know better. The lookouts had spotted him several miles out, and had alerted the caravan. Now that he was close enough to be recognized, they signaled to the others that all was safe.
Children emerged and began playing with toys they had scavenged, blissfully unaware of the broiling death that thirsted for them just a few hundred yards to the west. Even from here, Ryin could hear the thirsty hiss of the sea.
The fire at the center of the wagon circle was rekindled, and music began to play again. Women danced and men clapped. To Ryin, it all seemed so inappropriately out of place.
As he walked up, Captain Evere stepped out of the colorful tents to greet him, along with Czamani, the Koma of the caravan.
“How are things, lad?”
“It’s bad,” Ryin admitted. “They’re rounding up any girls that so much as match Athel’s general description.”
“They’re scared,” Czamani observed. “In times of crisis, the yadji devour one another, instead of banding together. It has always been so.”
“They’re scared? I’m scared,” Ryin quipped. “What are we going to do?”
Captain Evere looked up at Deutzia’s limp form as she towered over the caravan. “I don’t know lad. I’m not sure what we can do.”
Ryin looked up at the sickly Nallorn tree. “How’s she doing?”
“Not well. Talliun said it hurts the trees to uproot themselves, and little Deutzia has been uprooted several times recently.”
Ryin looked at her towering form. “Not so little anymore.”
Captain Evere placed his fist in his palm, and recited the way of the traveler to the Koma. “Jsia ryman kamfe aviso rot ui. You honor our ways by taking me in with my companions. I can’t thank you enough. If it weren’t for your shelter, the authorities would surely have found us by now.”
Czamani held up his hand. “All who share Tomani blood are worthy of shelter from yadji eyes.”
Captain Evere nodded and looked out into the stormy skies. With a big strong hand, he scratched at his grey mutton chops.
Czamani stepped in closer. “You know you cannot stay here.”
“Aye,” Evere said sadly. “It’s only a matter of time before they scour the abandoned districts. Queen Sotol knew what she was doing when she offered to save the world if they captured Athel for her. There is no place we can go now, no safe harbor, no sheltered port. We have no means to go anywhere, and once we got there, we would be hunted just as fiercely as we are here.”
“Speaking of which, how is your companion? The one they are looking for. I have not seen her since you came to us.”
Evere and Ryin looked at each other sadly.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
* * *
Privet hated being carried, but what else could he do? It took Talliun and three of the gypsy men to lift him out of bed and set him down into a busted chair with some caster wheels cobbled to the legs. By reaching out and grabbing furniture with his arms, he could kind of wobble and pull himself about. It wasn’t great, but it was the best they could manage at the moment.
“I’m really not sure what I can do,” Privet mentioned, picking up his limp knee and setting it into the stirrup so his foot wouldn’t get pulled beneath the wheels.
“I can’t get Athel to eat,” Talliun mentioned, strapping his other foot in place. “She’s refusing water, too. If we can’t get some nourishment in her soon, she won’t make it.”
Privet took a moment and struggled with his own trauma. Even through his bandages, he could still feel the deep stings of the seed bullets hitting him in the back as he threw himself on top of Athel to save her life. But, that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the injuries he could no longer feel. His lower body just hung there, like a weight attached to his torso. It honestly didn’t feel like it was part of his body anymore. He felt like half a person. He could look down and see it, he could remember being able to use it, but nothing happened. In a weird way, it was like his lower body was now made of hair. Part of him, alive, attached to him, but imm
obile and unfeeling and heavy.
Privet could feel the anger rising up again in his chest. There were so many things he would never do again. He would never walk along a summer’s path, the cool sand between his toes. He would never feel the wind as he ran through tall grass. He would never place his child’s feet on his own, holding his fingers and teaching him to walk.
So many things, so numerous that they felt like an avalanche. Each one infinitely bitter, yet so numerous that they all became lost in one another, becoming a torrent that beat down on him. It was unstoppable, unconquerable, and irresistible. He looked out at spending the rest of his life being carried and fed like a child, sitting in a corner, a burden to everyone, a shameful parasite, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
He felt like screaming. He felt like screaming all day and all night. It infuriated him and embarrassed him at the same time. He fought back his emotions, but they came on anyway. Then the panting began, and he became scared. He tried to calm himself down, but his breathing became more and more labored. He could feel his lungs fading away, the burning giving way to numbness. He began to panic. He was drowning, drowning above water.
Talliun sensed his distress and placed her bronze hand atop his to steady him. Privet forced himself to exhale slowly, but the sound came out raspy and wooden. It sounded as terrible as he felt. After a few more breaths, he could feel the control returning to his lungs, and he nodded in thanks.
“Are you up for this?” she asked, surprisingly delicate for her.
Privet nodded, even though he didn’t really believe it. It was nice to be needed, nice to be of use, even if it would only be for a few minutes. “I’ll see what I can do for her.”
Privet looked up at his former captain. “And thank you.”
She looked him over. “For what?”
Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains Page 2
