If you have not yet read “All Of Us Monsters,” I highly recommend that you STOP NOW! Major spoilers ahead!

If you have finished book one, please enjoy the working prologue of book two in the Essence of Magic series.

Prologue: Kathiria

My world was dark. 

It was a dichotomy of hot and cold, confinement and freedom. I was utterly exposed and totally trapped, unaware of why or how, my knowledge reduced to dust as I floated aimlessly in a state of in-between. It could have been minutes, it could have been months, but my body was undone. I was a disembodied spectre, a spirit, a forgotten memory lost to the wind. It was queerly torturous, eerily blissful…

And it ended without warning.

Light and sound and tactile sensation slammed into me all at once, returning with a sharp surge of pain as my re-stitched body crashed into a surface hard and unforgiving. I groaned, then swallowed, registering how rusty my vocal chords were from lack of use. And something wet was trickling down my skin. 

Was that… rain? 

With great effort I peeled my eyes open, the lids like sandpaper. I was outside, and the dark of night surrounded me; a fact I thanked the great spirits for, since the intensity of sunlight would surely have had my touchy senses reeling. I looked up, seeking the orienting sight of the moon and stars above, but they were concealed by a thick layer of leaking clouds. 

I felt behind me, my fingers sliding over the jagged rock pressed against my back. Squinting through the dark and droplets, I deduced that I was in a landscape of similar craggly boulders, outlined by massive summits with points like knives that jutted into the sky. A sea of sloping, stony foundation, as far as the eye could see. I shivered viciously, unsure if the root cause was adrenaline, fear, chill, or confusion. Where was I? 

And who was I?

I wrapped my arms around my legs, strings of long, wet blonde hair tangling in my shriveled fingers. Hazy, partial memories flashed across my memory. The feel of smooth serpentine scales, the whoosh of an overpowering wind, the crackle of breaking bark… 

A voice, deep and desperate, calling out my name. 

Instantly my heart surged in my chest, my brain evoking the shadowy form of a monstrous creature, a man but more, tall and strong and… featureless, in my scrambled memory. Want, and guilt, and a host of other emotions I couldn’t understand the source for flared, near to the point of pain. What had he called out? What was my name? Tears of frustration welled. Perhaps they overflowed, mixing with the rain drops that ran down my face, but it was impossible to tell. 

Something had happened to me, that much was clear. Something that had a direct hand in my current state of strandedness and amnesia, but I couldn’t remember what. The realization induced a horrible, bubbling anxiety in my chest, but I couldn’t allow it to paralyze me. If I wallowed here, I would freeze to death. I breathed deeply, willing myself to hone in on the most immediate of my predicaments: the elements. I needed to find shelter, and warmth. I needed to move.

Clumsily I stood, my legs like jelly. Water ran down my thighs, bringing to my attention the fact that I was completely naked. I wondered why. Yet another riddle to add to my growing list of questions, I thought dryly, but it was not the time to unpuzzle that one. 

I crossed my arms over my bare chest and re-focused by surveying my graded surroundings. Recognition, or at least some indirect trace of it, teased the edges of my consciousness as my gaze roved over the dark slopes. I squeezed my eyes shut, leaning into a cloudy visual as it formed: the outline of a colorful tapestry hanging on a stone wall, a depiction achingly familiar to my subconscious. 

A fabric map, a depiction of my world.

The Mapped World.

I thought harder, the phantasia clearing further. Rolling waves sewn in blue threads- the End Seas- decorated the bottom of the portrayal in a delineation of the Mapped World’s Southernmost border. Grass and trees and hills and rivers wound above the illustrated oceans, until finally, at the very top of the map… a mountain range. Stitched by dark gray, it stretched across the tapestry, forming a domineering Northern border. The peaks and rocks embroidered to create the range’s image were sharp, and treacherous, and dense, just like the landscape surrounding me. And there was a name sewn across them, in thick white letters. It read…

The North Mountains. 

A shot of warmth spread through me at the small success. Naming my location did nothing to help me directionally, of course, and neither did it begin to explain why I was where I was in the first place. But the triumph of recovered memory was motivating, and I took a determined but careful step forward. With my bare feet, and the extra slickness caused by the rain, the jagged terrain of the North Mountains felt especially dangerous. Just a single slip could send me tumbling down one of the many drop-offs, where I’d likely be impaled on a blade-like spike. Again I breathed deeply to stave off panic, inching myself over boulders, slippery stones, and a few intriguing black hunks that were more like glass than rock. 

Eventually I crossed into a sort of natural tunnel between two cliff faces, receiving some glorious momentary protection from the rain. At the far end of the pass, a slight glow was visible, and my insides fluttered with excitement. Could there be fire waiting at the end of the stretch? The idea of warm licking flames was nearly enough to send me into sobs of want.

My energy was fading. A horrible raw hunger had set in, and I thought of my strange stint in the in-between; that euphoric place that had somehow been both devoid of, and full of, sensation. I wondered how long I had hovered there, what strange sort of magic- because what else could it be?- had caused it. Now that my body was whole again, and able to feel the pangs of hunger, I wondered how long it had been since I had eaten. 

I swallowed and pressed on toward the light, trying to keep my toes moving, to ignore how the tingling in my limbs had stopped. Missing memory aside, my instincts knew that numbness was never a good thing. I finally emerged from the pass and came to an immediate screeching halt. The shaft had opened up on the edge of a very high cliff, a precipice that dropped farther than I dared consider. 

But it wasn’t the drop that had rendered me frozen in place. 

Below me, nestled in a bowl-like valley of rock, was a city. A network of quadrilateral grey-stone structures spidered and spread, climbing even the sides of the valley, where many had been built into the rock faces themselves. The candles in their countless windows flickered in the dark, illuminating the numerous stretches of stairs and bridges that traversed gaps in the interconnected web. It was terraced township so complex, my eyes didn’t know where to settle. 

And at the very center of it all was a grand house. Something like a manor house, but… sharper. I gawked at the structure, slightly elevated above the surrounding city, a collection of turrets as serrated as the spires of the mountains that encircled them. Carved into the railing of a great balcony circling one of those turrets, like mermaids etched into a shipmast, was an array of humanoid individuals, staring down into the city like guardians.

Or, like voyeurs. 

My stomach turned unexplainably as I studied the statues. They appeared to extend all the way around to the side of the balcony I could not see from my vantage point, a mix of male and female, lean and tall, wearing long flowing robes. Each of their individual faces was obscured by a veil… a veil that appeared to be painted red. 

Not a strong paint, though, I couldn’t help but notice. The ruby substance was made leaky by rain, the deep dark liquid dripping down their sculpted, pale-painted forms in long, oozing streaks. Each of the individuals held a single hand outstretched toward the city, palms facing out, and in the center of every hand had been carved a divot. A slash, like a deep cut in the center of their palms. That same strange red paint appeared to be spread into each of the carved gashes, and red dripped from them, like…

Like blood.

Empty, hyper-sensitive stomach roiling, I tried to shift my focus to the statues’ other attributes. Each had long hair, flowing and painted blonde. So blonde, it was almost white. I cocked my head, staring thoughtfully as I fingered my own tangled strands. As I did, I took notice of one additional feature I hadn’t before: the tips of two appendages, poking out from the tresses on either side of the statues’ heads. The tips, I realized, of pointed ears. 

Curious, I reached up to brush my own ears, finding them smooth on the ends. I frowned, but my curiosity ended before it could develop further. 

Because from behind me, in the shadows of the cliffs, a booming voice called out:

“Halt!”

This startle was a last straw. Combined with starvation and adrenaline, my already-shaky emotions cracked, and I was pushed over a ledge I didn’t know existed. Before I knew what was happening, my body was morphing and changing, but I wasn’t afraid. I felt only relief as the claws sprang forth from my paws with fervor, comfort as my limbs lengthened, consolation as my muscles expanded and rippled with power…

But, as I shifted into the form of a giant wolf, whipping around to face my unexpected assailants, something else sprang from my body. 

Something that didn’t carry with it the same level of familiarity as my fur and muzzle. 

Something new.