The land of Mirinnial is ruled not by mortal beings but by a spirit that speaks in the voice of the dying. All writing about such a being is forbidden within the bounds of Mirinnial, and so this writing comes from my recollection. In the heart of the city of Mir, a black temple stands, its devotion given over to the spirit Kor’Alskiliath, the one that holds dominion over the land, the one that flits in the space between life and death.

  I was given an invitation into the inner chambers, where those from throughout the city bring their near dead so that the dictates of their ghastly god can be heard in the voices of the departing. As I walked between the beds of those near the veil, a woman reached out to me, her grip like iron on my shirt sleeve. Blood pooled in her chest, an accident with a knife slowly claiming her life despite the best ministrations of the clergy. She stared at me with terrible, black eyes.

  “The shadow will catch notice,” she said. “Millenia have they lain asleep, but woken them we have. Pulling kin from history, we are betrayed by the hubris of the divine. Their folly, forced or not, attracts ancient ire from the deep. Flee this world; it will be subsumed.” Then, she was gone, dead eyes staring up at my face, the faint trace of words echoing from cold lips. I fled the city that night, her words chasing me all the while. I hope that writing them down will banish them from my thoughts, but it is a wan hope.

  -Atherinon, Taker of Secrets

  I sputter. Heavy grains flow over my face and mouth, my gasp for air pulling them down my throat. A book slaps onto the floor next to me as I struggle in my seat. I fall out of my plush chair, the ground cold, and rub the black sand off my face. Without even thinking about it, the black sand pulls away from me, slithers out of my nose and throat with a tickle, floats off the floor, the upholstery of my chair, and that fabric of my clothes, collecting in a black orb floating overhead. It tastes like…well, nothing really.

  My eyes sting. Reality takes a few seconds to begin catching back up with me. It isn’t until I see the book on the ground next to my foot that I piece it all together, Arithmetic and Celestial Motion. Despite knowing that there is nothing on my tongue, phantom sensations of grain make me want to spit as I climb back into the chair, snatching up the book once again. I must have fallen asleep reading this. Yes, I’ve forced a habit of reading through these stuffy tomes each night, but they are so boring that I have been idly playing with the sand as I read to keep my mind focused.

  Groaning, I toss the book onto my table. It lands next to two different texts on the history of the Empire, written in droll long-hand from the perspective of some of the most boring people I can imagine, and a text on local deific myths. For once, I wish someone would just tell me the information outright, not hide it among the recountings of their lives or what they thought of the architecture at the time.

  The ball of black sand buzzes overhead, a hive of tiny particles swirling together, attempting to settle into something solid, but always losing cohesion. It wants to be solid, but it is so brittle in its structures. I check my mana, over half gone. Controlling the sands idly doesn’t require too much power from me, but it does require power.

  I cast my hand to the side, sending the mass of sand back into its heavy chest. Walking down the table, the space I have dedicated to replicating the inner layer of my previous armor stands as a mess. I can remake the lining perfectly in sketch, but doing so with any medium is far more difficult. Besides, there was no mana remaining in the armor when I found it, so the purpose of the intricate patterns is a mystery to me. All enchantment is, at its core, an interplay between different types of mana. My eyes roam over my open journal, the interweave of the original armor broken down into parts. It took me more than a week of trying to recreate the entire design to see them, the individual patterns within the whole. Maybe I should focus on just those.

  “I knew you would be here.” I turn to the voice, finding Jess standing at the top of the stairs, arms folded. “You’re turning bookish.”

  “I only have a few books,” I say, pointing to those scattered on the table. She indicates the bookcases lining one wall of my vault with her head, mostly still empty, but filling up. “Not too many.”

  “We’re going out,” she says.

  “Out where?”

  “Out. Come on, Charlene, I am not going to let you waste away the day inside, not today.”

  “I don’t waste any days,” I say, already heading for the stairs. “And I go outside every day to practice flying.”

  “Is that what you call it? Seems more like falling to me.”

  “Only sometimes.” The air outside of my vault is different, warmer maybe, more alive. It hits me like a wave when I step out. “I think I might enjoy a night out,” I say. “Where should we go?”

  “Where do you want to go?” Jess asks.

  I shrug. “The shower.”

  “Then?”

  “I don’t know. You know this city better than I do, the night part of it anyway. You pick.”

  She looks at me, confused for some reason. “You should pick.”

  “Why?”

  “Charlene,” she says, as if trying to explain something to a child, “today is your birthday.”

  “Oh.” I try to remember what day it is and find that I have no idea. “Are you sure?”

  Jess rolls her eyes and starts bundling me toward the shower room. “Yes, I am sure. Make yourself presentable. Tonight, we are going to have fun and celebrate.”

  She takes me out on the town, shows me places that I never would have suspected to exist in this city on a wall. We stop at a cafe dedicated to selling different kinds of cakes, every flavor in the world that you might like, all delicious and fluffy. Dovik and Jor’Mari join us as we head to a second place to eat, a great big building in the upper third, all porcelain walls and stuffy clothes. Luckily enough, I have spent enough time crawling through the shops of the upper third to have a nice enough dress to get in the doors, classic black, made of ruffles and lacy silk. I pull Jess aside before we go in, giving her a dress that I found in her size a few days ago. She wears only two different things recently, almost nothing aside from belts and straps to hold her adventuring supplies in place, or a big, baggy shirt beneath all the straps and belts. How have I not taken her to find a real wardrobe yet?

  The meal is delicious, worth the stuffy atmosphere and the side-long glances I catch every now and again from other customers. Jor’Mari is loud, Dovik snide, and Jess a fountain of fun and energy; I can’t help but enjoy myself. To my shock, the place sells monster meat on their menu, and the way the Glassrider steak almost melts on my tongue, the salty spice of its flavoring, the lingering hint of a peach in the rain that my new magical sense picks up, makes it almost orgasmic to me. I can’t keep a smile off my face.

  Then we are off, sliding down ropes, or gliding in my case, toward the bustling streets of the middle third, where Jess assures me all the best bars are. The idea of a tavern’s moldy front-space are driven from my mind as we step inside the first, just a red door set into a blank wall. Sound blasts me, small white stones attached to the corners of the room blaring music down from the rafters, a band on a small stage in the corner playing out their hearts, belting their rage, toward a writhing audience and a large black stone. Jess pulls me away from the boys after leaving our drink order with them, showing me the dancing that she has been gushing about night after night. So strange, there is no set to it, no orderliness, just a chaotic jumble of limbs out on the floor, where you might as easily knock into someone else as step on your own foot.

  There is something to it, and despite not knowing what to do with myself, Jess has a way of pouring her own enthusiasm into me. The noise of the bar becomes music on the floor, a wave of sound pressing down on me from all around. I copy my friend, she is a blade dancer after all, but then I find my own rhythm, my own fun out on the floor. This body is still new to me, my feet kick farther than I have known, my hands reach further when I spin, but my grin feels more natural than ever, my laugh more my own.

  We drink on the floor when the boys return, and I find this city dancing evolves with each new song the musicians trot out. Never before have I seen Dovik so out of place, his eyes darting around to look at everyone else and what they are doing, his head bobbing as he tries to drink his sherry with an air of control. Jess latches onto his stuffiness, grabbing him by the arm and forcing him to the middle of the floor, where she leads, and he can do nothing else but follow. Jor’Mari is at home in the dance as soon as he comes, his arms wide and his movements large, forcing others away without a care. We share time in the music, a perfect and uncaring time, where yesterday and tomorrow are concepts impossible to consider.

  Jess decides at some point the bar is dead and drags us away to another. We pass the night that way, hopping from one place to another, tasting their atmosphere and their alcohol, feeling the rhythm of them. Only after leaving the fifth place, one whose sole room was bathed in a harsh red light, that I first begin to feel the tingle of liquor on my fingertips. It is gone by the time we make the climb back to the upper third, out final stop for the night. The kiss of drunkenness seems denied to me anymore, allowing me to admit openly how awful the taste of most liquor is.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  We settle down for the night at some place that might rightfully be called a tavern in the upper third, a wooden structure of two stories. In any town, I imagine that it would put almost all other buildings to shame, but here in Grim, it is a quaint little thing. I can tell that it is a good place from the fact that two men are passed out at a table as we stumble in, drool dripping from their chins and onto a table cluttered with amber bottles. We find a table in the far corner, put in an order for more drinks, and relax from the climb.

  “Eighteen,” Dovik says, looking over at me. “That’s a big one in Grim, don’t know about your folksy customs.”

  “Fifteen is generally the big one,” I say. I look at my friends, see their general state of tipsiness and tiredness, and can’t help but wonder if my high recovery attribute is more of a curse than a boon. It isn’t, but there are some downsides it looks like. “Eighteen is when people start talking behind your back about how you don’t have a husband yet.”

  “So, you’re an old maid now?” Jor’Mari asks, the only other one in the group that seems mostly put together.

  “A young maid,” I say. “How old are you, lecher?”

  “Lecher?” Jor’Mari feigns hurt. “Twenty, now. Still young for a man; we have that kind of way about us. And you, my friend?”

  “Nineteen,” Dovik says. “Odd, that not being the youngest by far for once. Most groups that I find myself in usually have me being the youngest by a few decades. Jess?”

  She groans, leaning back in her chair with her head on the bar across the back of it. Out of all of us, she has enjoyed her drink the most and enjoyed the dancing the most as well. “You humans get weird when I talk about it.”

  “I find they get weird about a great many things,” Jor’Mari says.

  “Why would I get weird?” I ask her.

  “Hells if I know,” she says.

  “Well, now I have to know.” Dovik leans forward in his seat. “We’re all friends here.”

  Jess picks her head up, snatching her cup of beer from the table and sipping at it. “Promise not to be weird then.”

  “I promise,” I say. “Though, what you and I consider weird might be a bit different.”

  “I promise not to be anything,” Dovik says.

  Jess cuts her eyes toward Jor’Mari, sitting in the corner of the table, his silk robe partly open; he wears yellow and green songbirds on a deep blue tonight. “I’m not human,” he says to her.

  “Shouldn’t be a hard promise to make then.”

  He shrugs. “Fine, I won’t be weird. Whatever that means.”

  “Good.” Jess kicks back again, taking her cup and swirling it. “I’m fourteen.”

  A spray of beer splashes across the table as Dovik spits out his drink. He coughs and hacks, beating on his own chest with a fist. “That…while I’m drinking…”

  “I knew you would be weird about it,” Jess says, pointing at him. “I’ll have you know that among my people, I would be older than any of you.”

  “I’ve always thought that about you,” I say, patting Jess’ leg. “I thought you were older than me for sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I thought so too.” Jor’Mari scratches his chin. “Guess that makes me the elder here. That’s no good.”

  “Tonight, has been fun.” I fall back in my own chair, sipping at the beer, finding it better than most drinks I’ve stomached tonight. “I want all of your birthdays. We should do this again.” Then a thought strikes me. “Does anyone have the time; it might not even be my birthday anymore.”

  “What!?” Jess falls forward, the front legs of her chair slapping against the ground. “We have to do gifts before the night ends.”

  “Gifts?”

  Jess leans forward, slapping Dovik’s arm as the man has just barely gotten his coughing under control. He nods at her, rolling his hand over, a box appearing on the table in front of him. Seems he has a storage ring of his own. She snatches the box before I can get a look inside, holding it to her chest and fishing around inside. A chain of silver is pulled out between her red fingers, a glinting charm dangling from the end, catching the candlelight. She sets the piece in my palm, the fine chain a beauty on its own, the charm dangling from the silver a square of metal more precious than silver, platinum. There is a tiny emerald set into the charm, a single letter written on the metal beneath that I can see through the lens of green, though I do not know what it means.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say, turning it this way and that in the light, enjoying the sparkle. “Is this really for me?”

  “We are sisters now,” Jess says, pulling a necklace out from the neck of her dress, identical to my new one except that it bears a ruby rather than an emerald. “An exchange of Shikke runes is not usually set into jewelry, but I know you like pretty things.”

  “I do,” I say, quickly fastening the chain around my neck, enjoying the cold of the metal against my skin. “Thank you, little sister.”

  She points at me, horrified. “You promised not to be weird.”

  “I don’t see how that was weird.”

  She huffs, turning back to the box she holds, taking a deep breath. I feel like there is a shift in our corner of the room, the two boys at the table looking serious for a moment, though they try their best not to let it show. Jess lets out a long exhale and pulls from the box a book, simple and colored green, the edges flaking with age. She hands it to me.

  I need to open the front cover to get any hint at the contents. The inside inscription reads, A True History of Humanity’s Crusade, and I feel my breath catch for an instant. I knew this story or knew a version of it that the church taught me as a child. How much will this simple book turn everything I know on its head?

  When I look back at Jess, I see a tear in her eye. “Thank you,” I say, can’t think of anything else to say.

  “It was Samielle’s idea,” she says, her words hitching. “I told him about what you told me in the tower, and he said it wasn’t right, said that everyone needs to know their history. Things are different where he was from.” She presses her long-fingered nails to her lips. “He wanted to share that with you, wanted it so bad.” Jess stands from the table, a tear falling down her cheek. “I’m sorry. I need to go.”

  I catch her hand before she can get away, and I feel wetness in my own eyes. “Don’t go, please.”

  She looks back at me, trying to smile but not quite managing it. There is the pain on her face that I have caught glimpses of before, and it about breaks my heart to see.

  “I’m sorry…I…” She tries.

  “We will go get more drinks.” Dovik is beside her then, a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Take a bit of air. Get everything sorted.”

  Jess pulls her hand out of mine, stepping back into the room, Dovik letting her lean against him as he walks at her pace. When I see her shoulders shake, the way her hand grabs tightly to his sleeve, it is like an arrow through my gut. I am out the door before I realize that I am moving. Something solid sits on top of my lungs, a weight that I can’t bear; I can’t find my breath.

  A rail marks the end of the platform in front of me, a metal barrier that I cling to with shaking hands, needing it to keep me up right. The moon peeks from behind the shifting clouds overhead, the stars in the sky made dim by the lights of the city. I shudder in a gasp of air, feeling so small, so weak, so terrible, and I know that I should feel this way.

  “So, you did know.” Jor’Mari is there, standing beside me. He leans on the rail, looking out and down at the city forming steps beneath us like a staircase. For all his act of nonchalance, there is a tension in his eyes.

  My legs finally give out from under me, knees clacking hard on the stone. The coolness of the railing against my forehead grounds me. “I killed him,” I mutter, the first time I have ever said the words aloud. “I killed Samielle. I killed my friend.” The weight on my chest is so terrible; it squeezes me so tight. “How can I be alive? I don’t deserve it.”

  “Come on,” he says, pulling me to my feet. I don’t fight him; I don’t have the strength to do that. “Not here. You don’t want them hearing, do you?”

  The terror I feel at that thought, of Jess hearing my confession of murder, at the pain I will find in her eyes when she knows, sets my feet to moving. Jor’Mari practically carries me away, down the street of the platform, toward a large building of green glass, impossible to see into. He snaps the lock on the doors with a twist of his wrist, pushing them open, a soft light spilling out onto the street. They click closed behind us, and for a moment the pain pressing down on me is forgotten as I see the expanse in front of us. Trees, twenty-six, stand around a circle of grass. Their leaves are a mix of colors, some green, others purple, red, or even blue.

  “I’ve wanted to show you this place,” Jor’Mari says, leading me out into the middle of the clearing. “I found it while you were gone, and it reminded me of what you told me about your home. Growing up amid the trees, picking fruits. I thought it might remind you of your home too.” He holds a fruit out to me, and it does somewhat look like a pear. I take it with trembling fingers, feeling the soft flesh, the rough texture of good things grown from good earth.

  But the beauty cannot keep my misery pressed away for long. My breaths become short, strained, and I stare around at the beautiful copse around me, emotions tearing me in all different directions. I fall, but Jor’Mari catches me before I hit the ground, setting me gently in the grass. I try to cover my face but find myself pressing the strange pear to my brow, looking like an idiot as I sit in the grass. The tears slip freely away now, rolling down my face, leaving salty trails to drip from my lips.

  “It’s all so wrong,” I say. I don’t even know where the words come from.

  “I know,” Jor’Mari says, sitting beside me.

  “He was so good. He was good.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m evil, aren’t I? I murdered my friend.”

  “No,” he says. He makes me look at him, makes me hear his words. “You are not evil, Charlene. What was done to you is evil. What was done to him is evil. You did not murder him, that thing did.”

  I want to refute him, to rage against him like he was me and inflict all the pain that I deserve on him, but my mind is gone from me. Like the weak girl that I know I really am, I cling to him, shaking as the tears fall away. He bundles me in his big arms, holding me tight, stroking my hair as I shake against his chest, keeping all my shattered pieces from falling apart. Jor’Mari allows me to be weak, something I haven’t allowed myself in so long. I need it.

  If you happen to be enjoying the story so far, you can support it by leaving a review, rating, following, or favoriting. Ratings help this story immensely. I have recently launched a for those that want to read ahead or support this work directly. Also, I have a fully released fantasy novel out for anyone that wants to read some more of my work.

  Have a magical day!

  Read ahead and get unique side-stories on

  Amazon: Kindle Edition:

  Apple Books:

  Barnes & Noble: