Author: James D. Mills

THREE You have been robbed. Of something. You didn’t know. Could be taken. Syr Arthur Cain (-13 to 35) “Awakening,” published Year 36. I — A conversation, somewhere far away. The Kaza’dur left a gross power vacuum in their wake. In the years following your knighthood, you rose through the ranks of Valentine Aristocracy. Valencia was no longer a humble fortress, subservient to a crumbling empire. The Kaldean capital, the Great City of Baltaire, fell the instant the invasion began. Once the Lord Governor Vidoq perished of dysentery, Syr Laszlo Balderas the First put a crown upon his head and declared…

TWO In our darkest hour We trudged through the sands. Beneath clear, open sky We boiled in our armor. My horse collapsed at my feet And I was thankful. Her suffering was great Existence tortured. I did not give her a name If I had, I would not have remembered. Unknown author “March to Idraan,” found on a soldier’s body, Year 31. I — On a thoroughfare in Monrovia The Vale Betwixt, first layer of Pandemonium There had been no time to think; she could only run. Kateryna had no desire to think. Thinking meant reflection, and what she had…

ONE Tonight, we have lost our god! I asked my sister where the god went, And she did not know. “Poof!” she said, “Gone in a cloud of smoke!” And I asked, “What of dearest grandmother? What of her?” But sister only shrugged. “We are alone now,” she said, “No one helms the ferry.” The river has flooded with silver And no one helms the ferry. We are alone now. And so I left my home In desperate search for my god. But still, I did not find her. I found only gray carrion fields, Glowing red by brutal light…

Year 398, during the first Wystran rebellion We made camp in the Kaldkrik, a moldering bog just beyond the borders of the Golden City. The march was merciless and brutal; we’d lost three hundred men crossing our own lands. We knew the risks. We knew the land. We were tired of the southerners laying claim to our home, weary of the Valentines telling us how to be—we’re Wystrans. We know how to be. So we assembled and followed the infallible Queen Collantz over the deadly chain across the Wyse. The motherland is ours, but her winds care not for whom…