If you have not yet read “All Of Us Monsters,” 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, five months after the fall of the wall

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. 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 pushed myself up higher and felt around me, my fingers sliding over a 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, white serpentine scales, the whoosh of 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, overflowing and mixing with the rain drops that ran down my face. 

Something had happened to me. 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 knew that I couldn’t allow it to paralyze me. If I wallowed, 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. 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 the longer my gaze roved over the dark slopes. My mind kicked into action, and I squeezed my eyes shut, leaning into a cloudy visual as it formed: the outline of a colorful tapestry, a depiction of The Mapped World hanging on a grey stone wall. I thought harder, willing the phantasia to clear…

And finally, mercifully, it did. The map shone in my mind like a beacon. 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 plat… 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, like the landscape surrounding me. There was a name sewn across them, in thick white letters...

I audibly gasped when it came to me, a shot of warmth spreading through me at the small success. The North Mountains. That’s where I was! While naming my location did nothing to help me directionally- or explain the why behind my being there in the first place- the triumph of recovered memory was motivating. 

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 treacherous. 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. 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. My curiosity urged me to stop for a closer look, but my survival instincts won out, spurring me to keep moving, 

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.

I knew 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. 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…  well, how long it had been since I had eaten?

I pressed on toward the light, trying to keep my toes moving, to ignore how the tingling in my limbs had stopped. Numbness couldn’t be a good thing. I finally emerged from the pass… only to come 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 itself that rendered me frozen in place. 

Below me, nestled in a bowl-like valley of rock, was a city. A network of quadrilateral 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 sat 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.

Were they guardians? Or voyeurs? My stomach turned with unexplainable unease the longer I studied the statues. They extended all the way around to the side of the balcony I could not see from my vantage point, a mix of male and female, wearing long flowing robes. Each of them held out a single hand, palms faced toward the city. Palms identically carved-in with a deep slash, each slash slathered with… 

No. That couldn’t be blood. It had to be red paint. Right?

The ruby substance splattered over their stony, sliced hands was made leaky by rain, dripping down their sculpted, pale-painted forms in long, oozing streaks. My empty, hyper-sensitive stomach roiled again, and I forced myself to shift my focus to the statues’ other attributes, taking notice of an additional feature I hadn’t before. All of the statues had pointed ears, and the tips of the appendages poked out from their cascading tresses of long, loose hair.

I had seen ears like that before… somewhere. I frowned in thought, reaching up to brush my own ears, finding them smooth on the ends. My memory flared in determination, but any fledgling recollections were cut off before they could develop further. 

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

“Halt!”

The 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, giving in to a magical, monstrous base instinct that comforted me rather than frightened me. I felt relief as white-blonde fur sprang forth, climbing my limbs like blooms on a vine, solace as claws burst from newly-formed paws. It was alleviation as my limbs lengthened with fervor, consolation when my muscles expanded, rippling with power. The transformation was a cool-dipped cloth on my forehead, soothing the fever of forgetfulness in the blink of an eye. 

Because this? This felt like coming home.

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.