All The Shades in Between Series - Ice & Embers - Part One

Prologue

The battle began on a stormy morning on a spit of land that no kingdom claimed. It was a barren wasteland of an archipelago at the northernmost tip of Praxya called the Shadow Islands. Thunder boomed across the misty land, while forks of lightning and cold raindrops struck the ground where the two armies collided. The end result of this day would be the annihilation of either her world or the enemy.

It was one world against another, one civilization against another. 

One might expect such devastation to take days, even weeks, but with such powerful magick and deadly skill on both sides, it only took hours. The piercing clash of sword on sword, the heart-wrenching cry of soldiers as they fell, the stinging smoke of burning fires, and the stench of death assaulted the senses nearly as much as the shocking sight of what one being could do to another given the right motivation. 

In the valley, where the ground ran red and black with blood from the Praxyans and The Others, severed limbs, disemboweled bodies, and burnt corpses of friend and foe stretched for miles. 

By the time the last echo of war sounded, tens of thousands would be dead, two worlds irrevocably changed for an eternity. The threads of fate that had been woven long ago were ripped to shreds as easily as the enemy’s blades tearing through the Praxyan army.

It was a hopeless effort they were told when they mounted the defense against The Others. The enemies from another world, long-forgotten by even the Makers, had shown up one day with the swiftness and intensity of a summer storm. The Praxyan armies were far outnumbered, and the enemy’s occupation of the Shadow Islands was so complete that it had been difficult to even find a defensive space that the Praxyans could hold in order to portal their armies there for the great battle.

But they had found one...thanks to The Seven who protected and ruled over this world. 

No one knew why The Others had come, why they invaded their world with such deadly ferocity. Was it for their land’s resources or were they just a warring group of people bent on conquering other worlds for the glory of it? Did they view Praxya and its people as a threat to their own? Could they be bought with gold and promises or was it only death that would satisfy them?

Unfortunately, there were no answers for the Praxyans. 

Not even The Makers knew the answers because they had not Made these beings. They, who Made every other world in the galaxy, could only guess at how The Others had come into being. It left a gaping chasm of unanswered questions that could provide much needed insight into the motivations of their enemy and the Praxyan path to victory.

The Seers, whom The Seven usually consulted, were blinded by the strange race that looked to make their world, and every other world in the galaxy it seemed, a charnel house. Without Sight, the Seers could only guess that the eradication of Praxya would be swift and brutal. They could offer no advice, no strategy, no glimpse of the future.

They had been rendered useless for the first time in the history of their kind.

But hope, and lack of choices in the face of complete extermination, made the Praxyan armies fight with a deadly resolve and vigor. That, coupled with the magick of The Seven and the other magickal races, had evened the odds so that when the last of The Others fell then it would be a Praxyan victory. 

But...as was usually the case...before there was victory, there was pain, suffering, sacrifice, and death. 

As she lay there, her body going cold, the coppery scent of her own blood filling her nostrils as it pooled around her, she could only be grateful that she had fought well and ensured their world’s survival. 

As she cut every single tie that held her to this world, she thought of all that she had experienced, all the happiness that had been gifted to her in her nearly one thousand years on this earth.

The memories brought a small smile to her face even as cold tears slid down her pale cheeks. 

She had meditated in the silvery light of the two moons, had swam in the frothy waves of the Fairuza Sea, and had played in the snowy mountains of Orestes.

She had loved, she had lived. What more could she possibly have left to experience? She'd known a magickal existence and now it was time for it to end. Far sooner than perhaps she had anticipated but she couldn't find it in herself to regret it.

As her vision tunneled into the black, she took a ragged breath and greeted death with open arms.