Here's the first of several samples of my newly-published novel Choosing the Players!

 

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THE SPIRIT WARRIORS

Book 1: Choosing the Players

By Ryk E. Spoor

 

Prologue: Witness to the End

Zarathan: 500,000 years ago

"Should I be leaving?" Khoros said, looking somewhat up at his host.

"Oh, pfft," the gigantic Toad said airily. "It's been quieter down in the great City for a week now. Don't know what got into those Sauran's heads, but I'm sure they're all feeling silly about their ideas of rebellion. Rebellion against what? Their parents, the Dragons?" Blackwart made a rude noise. "The real problem with Elbon Nomicon and his brood is that they spoil their children."

Khoros chuckled. "Your … lack of care for the solemnity of the Dragon Gods is noted, and notable." He pushed his black hair – just now growing a bit too long in the front – away from his face, reached over and grabbed up a tankard. "And admittedly welcome, when the other gods are so hard to reach."

The God of the Toads gave his own chuckle, a thunderously deep sound from a cavernous throat. "Oh, I'm hard to reach when I want to be, but you're fun to talk to, Korrie."

"Korrie is also a bit disrespectful. You're speaking to the First Master of the Teralandavhi of Atlantaea itself!" Khoros suspected his smile ruined any attempt to look dignified and serious.

"So sorry, Learned Master Korrie." The long tongue snapped out and snatched a huge grizzyk beetle from the air. "How's the family, by the way?"

"Aerinne's on the diplomatic mission to Thovia – a planet that's just emerged into the galaxy, and being courted by the Ptial, as well. She'll be back soon, I'm sure, but that's why I'll have to be heading home tomorrow; can't leave Earanthin to mind the whole house by himself. He's got swordsmanship to practice for the grand celebration, after all. Beallare's been accepted to train for the Eternal Guard, so she's too busy to help much. Shirene is –"

An invisible shockwave ripped through the still air – silent, intangible, but carrying with it the weight of darkness immeasurable. The sunlight was just as bright, yet seemed somehow dimmed, weaker, and the birds fell silent, the bees muted their hum. For a moment, the world was shocked to silence.

"What…"

Blackwart slowly rose, golden eyes narrowing in disbelief. "Ohhh, that is very bad."

"What is very bad?"

"I see beyond the horizon, far away, in the wasteland of the first great shame, a tower blacker than night," the Toad-God said. "The Black City has come to Zarathan."

"By the King and Queen…" Khoros was stunned. He knew the theory by which even so massive and mystical a city could be brought to superposition with the living world, but to do it? "And the Black Star himself then gazes from his throne upon the world itself?"

Blackwart's eyes narrowed still further; Khoros sensed the godspower at work, seeking truths that would be hidden even from a wizard as powerful as he. "I sensed him – for a moment. But that sense faded. He has left the city, mere instants after bringing it here."

"That makes no sen–"

This shockwave was not immaterial. A great roar and thunder, the passage of something too immense to grasp, black-red, flaming ebon and scarlet, radiating malice and anger and, Khoros thought, an aching sorrow beyond human understanding. But after that monstrous form came another, equally incomprehensible in vastness, this one shining crystal that cast forth fragments of light in all the colors of the rainbow, a shout of courage and hope, touched too with a sadness quiet yet ocean-deep.

The trees of the Forest Sea bowed at the wind of their passing – and Khoros knew, with disbelieving awe and the beginning of true horror, that only the essential magic of both made it possible that anything beneath them was left intact. "That – that was the Dragon-God himself! But the other…?"

Blackwart the Great raised himself to his full height, and the power of the gods rose about him like a cloak; there was no longer any of the playful indolent about the Toad-God, only a grim determination. "An abomination of Kerlamion. He has made one of the Great Dragons into something of the Hells, the Hells of Kerlamion's design. Khoros, I see the design now, with eyes that seek the vision of the Overworld. It was Kerlamion who was behind this from the first, speaking poison to the Saurans, perhaps in the guise of the others, perhaps through agents, and the same to Syrcal, to make of him an answer to Elbon Nomicon himself."

Khoros gripped his own staff, a simple affair of twined white-and-black wood, ornamented here and there with thyrium, gold, and silver. "I will return home, then; surely the Eternal King and Eternal Queen will send aid." He smiled wryly. "Even a demon-drake such as that will find the warships of Atlantaea no easy target."

Instead of a quick assent, his words made Blackwart stiffen. "But he would know that," Blackwart said quietly, a new dread instilled into every word. "He would know that Atlantaea would never stand idle when the Great Dragons and Zarathanton were in peril, allies as they have been for ages, tens of thousands of years."

The horror exploded through Khoros. "And he surely would be here, leading his creation's assault on the Dragon God and his Fifteen, unless –"

"Unless he had another target, another job that only he could do," finished Blackwart. "Go! Go swiftly, but prepared, my friend, for I feel something else, something obscene that looms just beyond my sight!"

Khoros sprinted from the clearing, down a green-shaded path, hearing the consternation of the other Toads of Pondsparkle and their Sauran and human allies as they, too, realized that a war of terrible powers had begun. The gold and violet mantle of his Mastery belled out behind him, and his magic rose, gave him the speed of thunder itself to cross the six miles between him and the World-Gate in as many breaths.

With a shock, he realized something was wrong with the Gate itself; instead of the blue-green shimmer of the ocean and the high platform of the Teralandavhi, the seven-sided arch seethed with fragments of broken scenes and nauseating, twisting light of dead-gray and venomous green. Even as he stared, the gray was spreading, the green flickering, the hints of distant locales dissolving.

"No!" he shouted, and jabbed his staff into the center of the World-Gate.

The way between worlds should have opened as easily as the well-oiled hinges of the door to his own home. Instead, it resisted, a whining, shuddering force unlike anything he had ever encountered. A vague image came to him, all the more terrifying for its indistinctness, an image of some monstrous fate befalling his family, his wife, his five children, and he gave an inarticulate cry, drew on the forces of the world around him, the power of the World of Magic itself, and drove his will against the churning, grinding vortex.

The power ran from him like water from a cracked glass, and had he not the Forest Sea to draw upon he would have been empty and worse in the first second. But even the abominable, impersonal hunger of the warped World-Gate was not – quite – a match for the energies of nature and the will of Konstantin Khoros. For an instant, the whirl and churn stabilized, showed a cloud-shadowed and tumbled landscape, and Khoros leapt through, feeling the Gate break as he did.

A sharp projection caught his foot and he tumbled across broken pourstone and glass, rolled upright to find himself in the wreckage of a huge building. For a long moment he could not imagine where he had arrived, for there was nothing familiar in the crumpled, smoking wreckage, no shape or outline he could call from memory. Even the sky above was alien, seething black clouds lit by eldritch flashes.

But then he saw, leaning at a sharp angle, still stuck in an unbroken portion of roof, a great silver spire with the three flags – for the Eternal Rulers, for Atlantaea, for the Teralandavhi.

Khoros realized he had frozen, staring at the ruins for long moments of disbelief. Not two days before he had left this very spot, in the center of the university of learning, and now…

Aerinne. The children!

He scrambled up the highest slab of wreckage, seeking a vantage point, finding his magic wavering, as nearly uncontrollable as it had been when he was first apprenticed. What is happening? I have to get home! I must go now!

He reached the crest, hauling his seven-foot frame to the broken peak with main strength, staff now slung across his back, and stood, to gain his bearings. But once more he froze, unable to grasp what he saw.

Even fallen, this piece of the Teralandavhi stood more than a hundred and fifty feet above the rubble-strewn streets below; he could see across fifteen miles of the greatest city of the Empire – which meant the greatest city in all the Galaxy.

And all he saw was destruction.

The central Tower still stood – but flashes of gold and blood-red that blasted out from the windows at its peak showed that battle was joined even there, in the very home of the Eternal King and Queen; Khoros could sense that it was the Queen herself that did battle, against some terrible enemy he did not recognize. Screams and shouts echoed from all directions. The streets were littered with the shattered hulks of skyships, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them – and with the broken, twisted bodies of those who had themselves plummeted from the sky when magic no longer served them.

Against the black-swirling clouds rose a vast shape of darker black, a darkness that took in light and gave back nothing, save only the cold blue-white glow of eyes of atomic flame: Kerlamion, the King of All Hells, now in a form that loomed a thousand feet over the burning city. Demons of all sizes, shapes, and features ran, crawled, flew, and oozed through the shattered streets, and Khoros felt the very essence of magic flickering, twisting, warping.

Too late! Oh, Torline and Niaadea, I'm too late! The horror was almost too much to bear. While he had been sitting and chatting cheerfully with the old Toad-God, Kerlamion's forces had sealed the Gates, preventing escape, removing any chance for the alarm to reach Zarathan. He had been wasting time with jests and snacks while his home, his life, had been being wiped away!

With the great Tower's light and the few still-standing buildings, he could see exactly where and how he stood; the Teralandavhi had been so broken he had gotten turned around, but now he could make out the lines of streets and buildings – and there! There, his home, within its little border of green, and it was still standing, not yet afire, walls not yet broken!

Heart pounding painfully, he reached out, caught at the very essence of reality, controlled the bucking, uncertain power, forced it once more into the shape of his will and need, and cast himself across no-distance and not-time to stand now but a hundred yards from home.

A gangling, vicious form of a demon, a thyrialog, barred his way – but the creature's mystical Scintillae were weak and flickering. Whatever happens with magic, even they are not immune!

Fighting another human might have been nearly unthinkable to him, but this was an inhuman monster, one of the worst of demons. Khoros did not slacken his pace, but whipped his staff from his back and swung in a single motion.

The thyrialog sent its Scintilla of Fire to shield it, and warped essence struck the magic bound into the staff; the two exploded, sending Khoros skidding across shattered pavement. But the feedback through its own magic was far worse for the demon, who screamed and collapsed. Rolling to his feet, Khoros sprinted for home, stamping one heavy boot hard onto the thing's head as he did.

The front door was open – broken in. No, no, please, by the King and Queen, no…

Perhaps they had been out. Surely Aerinne was not back yet…

Oh, no, by the Gods. If the skyships had fallen to ruin, if his own magic had become nigh-uncontrollable… what must have happened to the starships?

A small part of him wanted to insist that it wasn't that bad, that surely these terrible, inexplicable effects must be limited to the capital city, surely no farther than a few hundred miles. But a terrible, aching certainty had taken hold of him, an undefinable but growing understanding of what the King of All Hells was trying to do here.

He skidded through the doorway, nearly tripping over a body. It's a demon. A demon, not one of…

In the room just beyond, he found them, and read the way of their passing. Young Loryn, already skilled with the twin-blades at thirteen, had fallen with one of his vya-shadu through the chest of his killer, a squat, piglike demon. Beallare had taken three before they passed inside the range of her killing fire. Shirene had done well for herself too, the last demon's neck broken by her bare hands. Ailda, smaller and the most skilled with magic, had fallen faster, his magic failing him when he needed it most; and Earanthin's great blade was broken, shattered at last after taking its own toll of those that had invaded their home.

He sank to his knees, sobbing, shaking now one and the other, searching for signs of life that had long since departed, as the city burned around him.

The ground itself shuddered and rippled, bringing him to his feet. The battle is not over. He sensed something else, a gathering of magic such as he had never imagined, evil and implacable, an enchantment of such might that even Khoros could not grasp how it was even possible.

It was not the only force at work; Khoros suddenly sensed two others, familiar presences: Idannus, his student and the greatest prodigy of magic Khoros had ever met, scarce older than his fallen Loryn, and Yurimekistos, fellow Master of the Teralandavhi, only ten years younger than himself.

The younger was gathering magic to him in a stupendous swirl, the power only a prodigy such as Idannus could hope to control and that only one so young would dare attempt. The older… was at the door.

Khoros stepped to the hallway, desperate for a friendly, or even merely familiar, living face in this sea of death. Yuri had been moody – moreso of recent – but even the grim teacher of the magics of death and the ways of the Hells would be more welcome than demons.

But Yurimekistos' face was ghastly to behold, so drained of blood that his mahogany skin was tinged with gray. He stumbled drunkenly, eyes wide and staring, and his hands shook. It took a moment for him to see the movement before him, and another to recognize Khoros.

The other Master froze, stepped back; then he swallowed and spoke, his voice a rusty, gasping whisper. "Khoros."

"Yuri! By the Dragon God, Yuri, what has happened here?"

A laugh was torn from the other, an ugly cackle that broke into a sob. "I happened, Khoros. Gods and the King curse me, I happened."

A cold, cold fear touched his heart, spread through his whole being like frost across a glass. "What are you saying, Yuri?"

"They lied," he whispered again, eyes no longer entirely focused. "I just wanted… a change, to not be like this… Even my students, they didn't like death magic, did not want to learn the ways of gates to the nether realms, no one does, except me, but why?"

"Yuri…?"

"It was just supposed to be a demonstration!" he screamed. "Show them how it worked! I was … I wasn't going to actually leave it open, they just…"

Khoros stared at the other, a colleague, once – he had thought – a friend, and now he knew he had not even approached the limits of horror. "You opened the barriers?"

"Just one!"

Anger began to rise, bringing a welcome, searing warmth that burned away horror and loss. "You fool."

"Shut up!" Yuri rounded on him, eyes now blazing, face flushing darker. "You wouldn't know, everyone loved your work! No one turned away from you learning what you did! You never –"

Khoros lunged, caught up the smaller man, smashed him against the doorframe, then dragged him in, throwing him into the charnel room beyond. "Loved? See what you have done to what was loved?"

Yurimekistos' gaze flicked from one still form to the next, eyes growing wider with unbelieving shock; he scrambled backwards with a cry, staring at the bodies, then back to Khoros. "I… I…"

The rage carried Khoros forward. "Traitor and murderer! You have served Kerlamion, and I hope you find yourself well-paid in this!"

"It's not my… I didn't mean –"

Through his teeth, Khoros growled, "You didn't mean for my family to be slaughtered? I am sure. It's not your fault the Teralandavhi lies shattered and burning, the work of fifty thousand years gone in moments? You didn't mean to bring the ships falling from the skies?"

In a paroxysm of fury, he swept aside the other's shaky attempt at a defense and hurled him through the glass doors beyond. "How can it matter what you meant? You have dealt with demons, with the King of All Hells, and you were one of us, Yurimekistos, one of the Masters of the Teralandavhi – the Master who knew the ways of the demons that live beneath the rule of Kerlamion!"

"They tricked me! It's not –"

"Silence!" Disbelief and loss and anger warred within Khoros. He felt broken within, weary and sorrowful and furious at once. "Enough, Yuri. Enough. You knew better. I know not what words were used to snare you, to convince you to make bargains you knew had to be traps. And to be honest – I cannot bring myself to care. You have betrayed Atlantaea. Even if the King and Queen save her, it will be ten thousand years before she recovers."

Wrath rose icy cold within him, and he pointed at Yurimekistos; the other mage shrank back. Despite the abrupt, surging chaos of the powers, he found the magics once more in his grasp, and lightning and fire played across his fists. Power to blast Yuri to ashes, to less than ashes, and his hands, his whole body vibrated with the urge to do so.

But staring at the broken, anguished face of the sole other survivor of the Teralandavhi, he found he could not… quite… do it. He could not kill another human being, not one he had known for so many years, not one helpless and horror-filled before him.

But his fury required a release; his children's bodies demanded justice – a justice that, in the end, might be worse than death, but even as he thought that, his will and power shifted, became a living malediction. "Accursed you are, accursed you shall be, Yurimekistos, traitor, false friend, until the day you are ended, or the day you face yourself and see the bitter truths of all you have been and done. Go, betrayer, self-deciever! Go into the ruins you have made, and pray that your end comes swiftly!"

Yuri staggered to his feet, fighting against the twining threads of magic Khoros had called down in his rage, and ran off, screaming his fury and self-pity.

A different surge of magic, even as the earth shuddered anew, and Khoros saw a brilliant golden spark standing before the ebon outline of Kerlamion. Idannus' light lashed out, and instead of being consumed, it struck the towering King of All Hells. Khoros stared in amazement as the prodigy of the Teralandavhi sent his gold-flaming energy out again, and a third time, ripping across the darkness of a living void and making Kerlamion cry out in fury and pain, making the King of All Hells stagger backwards.

But then the Seventh Tower exploded, and Kerlamion braced himself, focused his power. Idannus' next salvo splashed harmlessly and was consumed in pure black energy, and a stroke of the Demon King's immense blade shattered all but the last of Idannus' shields; a momentary flicker of magical vision showed the boy, black hair streaming in the wind to frame a grim if handsome face atop a lanky frame even taller than Khoros, hand white-knuckled on the crooked staff as his other hand was flung wide, artist's fingers painting walls with sorcery and will.

Khoros ran towards his last apprentice, knowing he was too far, and that even were the two of them together, there was not a chance, not a single chance in all the realms of the gods that they could withstand the power of a living black star.

But Idannus' expression shifted, awareness of doom transmuted to last-minute inspiration. He flung out his arms, and the magic detonated from him, echoing across the entirety of the falling city and beyond. Even as the magic reached him, Khoros could barely grasp what it was that the desperate youth had attempted, even as he found himself cast out, out, away from the Fall of Atlantaea –

He came to, aware of cold and damp. Mist swirled through thick-boled pine trees, the scent filled with a melancholy that echoed his loss. It was quiet, save for the wind and the occasional flutter of bird wings, and, once, the distant howl of a dog or wolf. It came to him, at last, that he was truly alone, and memory of the fallen children returned, with the overflow of tears, and he allowed himself to cry, to let the pain and loss be at least temporarily assuaged by catharsis.

After some time, he forced himself to his feet and looked around. A few lights glinted in the slowly-darkening twilight, hinting at a distant village at the end of the trail he stood on. To his right, as he faced the village, the trail continued towards what might be a castle half-hidden in the mist. To the left, there were hints of a small game-trail but no other signs of habitation.

He flicked his hand, called forth a sphere of light. It was easy, with little sign of any oddity. I am back on Zarathan, then, or one of its associated realms.

Khoros considered, for a moment, taking himself back to Atlantaea, but he shook his head. He could finally recognize what Kerlamion had been attempting, and with the uncounted deaths as the city fell, the King of All Hells must have succeeded. Earth was cut off from magic, and there would be no help from the stars, for with magic cut off all of the devices of Atlantaea would fail. A million worlds and more had fallen in a single day.

But WHY?

That question loomed immense, demanding his attention, even here in a chill, unknown forest. Atlantaea had stood, shining and strong, for a hundred thousand years. The Saurans and their Dragon forebears, too, had laid the first stones of Zarathanton in the same age as that of Atlantaea's birth. The two civilizations had worked together for, now, over fifty thousand years.

In all that time, Kerlamion had paid them scant attention; the politics of the Hells were enough to occupy him and his, as he wrestled first to claim and then to keep the throne from his brother, Erherveria, or others who aspired to rulership.

Something had changed. Something – or, perhaps, someone – had convinced Kerlamion to destroy Atlantaea, as… what? Not targets for wealth and power, Kerlamion would hardly care about that. And surely Kerlamion knew the power of the Eternal King was nothing to be ignored.

No, the only thing that made sense was that Kerlamion had become convinced that both civilizations were a threat to him. And while, perhaps, that would have ultimately been true, ultimately lay far off in the future, even from the point of view of the King of All Hells or a Dragon God.

Khoros nodded, fitting pieces together with cold rationality, picking up hints and clues that had been heard over the past dozen years. Some being or force had arranged for Kerlamion to become suspicious or fearful of Atlantaea and the Saurans, had perhaps even specifically manipulated the way in which events had unfolded.

His anger welled up again, and he saw once more the faces of his dead children, the burning of his city, the crumbled ruins of the Teralandavhi, and he welcomed that anger. But instead of burning to rage, he cooled the anger, made it into determination, poured that into his heart, filling it with nothing but purpose.

Someone had set in motion the events that destroyed everything he had loved. Kerlamion had sealed away magic from the sister world. And Khoros… Khoros was still alive, somewhere distant, yet with his magics still at his command.

Someone was going to pay. Khoros knew this would not be easy. At the moment, he had not the faintest idea who Someone was. It would have to be a being of surpassing power, subtlety, and guile, someone who could either pass unnoticed even while influencing others, or who could disguise themselves as appropriate advisors – or both. The power and skill needed to successfully do this so as to leave Kerlamion – in his own realm – not an inkling that he was being manipulated? Staggering.

Khoros, however, thought he had one advantage: he knew there was a Someone. He could not, of course, prove it – it was more than half-guesswork and instinct – but just the knowledge itself would give him the ability to view every event from that vantage point.

Finding that Someone would be a monumental task; Khoros would have to winnow through all the possible candidates, from demons to gods to mages and monsters, and – without tipping his hand – determine which of all of them had to be Someone. And even once located… well, any of the candidates would be formidable beyond easy imagining.

But there was also another task to be done, another enemy to deal with, and this one he knew: Kerlamion.

The King of All Hells might have been manipulated into destroying Atlantaea and the Saurans, but Khoros suspected the precise method of annihilation had been completely Kerlamion's vision and choice. And, Khoros admitted, it was absolutely brilliant. No one would have believed it possible, but anyone who knew it was possible to seal magic away from Earth would have realized that it would, at a single stroke, destroy Atlantaea. There would be no need for a war that spanned a million worlds and warships uncounted; just a single, vicious strike at the heart.

Yes, the Great Seal that Kerlamion had put in place had to be removed. And given the brilliance and elegance with which the King of All Hells had removed both Atlantaea and the Sauran Realms, the undoing of his achievements demanded a certain elegance of its own, a particular symmetry.

It, too, would take time. Thousands of years of time. Perhaps more. But one particular symmetry Khoros was determined to enforce, a personal one, a strike of which, he knew, his beloved Aerinne would have fiercely approved.

Kerlamion had taken away their five children.

Five children, then, would take away all he had achieved.