The world of Gaia
is in turmoil. Humans, goblins, and dwarves try to live their lives
as best they can under the rule of the sovereigns—the strange
and powerful race whose empire stretches to all corners of the
known world—but order and stability seem to be fading. The quality
of life has lessened, the strength and control of the Sovereign
Empire has weakened, and a large movement of rebels, though many
would call them terrorists, known as the Lost Seekers, are causing
waves throughout the lands.
Nowhere are these
changes felt more than the Isles, a small human province of islands,
where sixteen-year-old Carver lives with his family and best
friend, Helena, in the remote village of Verrel. During a
routine trip to the provincial capital of Caswen, Carver and Helena
suddenly find themselves in the middle of a violent conflict
between the powers of the world, and soon after find themselves
being hunted for reasons they do not understand.
Now pulled into
events they never dreamed of experiencing, Carver and Helena, along
with some close companions, are forced to fight for their lives
during a journey of hardships. Monstrous beasts, hostile
factions, and even nature itself plague their quest to find safety
and seek answers, and nothing is gained without a struggle.
However, their continued survival may be out of their control as
the powers of the world vie for dominance against one another . . .
by any means necessary.
See
Also:
Roman Empire Meets Renaissance • Contemporary Dialogue •
Struggles of a Medieval Teen
EXCERPT
“How
many times have you been to Caswen, Helena?”
Helena
looked surprised, as if she had been startled by the sudden question.
“Um … a few times, maybe like three or four. I don’t know,
why?”
“Just
curious. You seem really excited to go is all.”
“I
like going. I think it’s incredible. The huge stone wall that
surrounds the city, the sheer amount of people living inside, and the
things you can buy at the Inner Market are amazing. Like last time I
went, when my parents took me along for their business with some of
the city blacksmiths, I found that book about the invasion of the
tartaruns. Remember, the one made up of old translated journal
entries from soldiers? You can’t get that kind of stuff unless you
go to the city.”
“Yeah,
I remember. Did you ever finish reading it?”
“No.
I stopped about halfway through. I kept thinking the journal entries
would get better, but they just kept getting sadder and more
depressing. Nearly every entry was about how the tartaruns captured
another city or butchered another army. Besides, I already know how
it ended. We all learned the history of the Tartarun Invasion from
our lessons, so unless I wanted to read more firsthand accounts of
how horrible it was, there wasn’t really any point of continuing.”
“Well,
what did you expect to read?” Carver asked with a chuckle. “They
were combat diaries from people who actually fought in the war, which
we were pretty much losing for the most part until everyone signed
that treaty at the end.”
“The
Stalemate Treaty, Carver. Because both sides were stuck in a
stalemate that neither could break. And everyone didn’t just sign a
treaty all at once at the end. The goblins signed it on their own
first, and it was only the liberated colony kingdoms of Mahkoua that
broke away from the rest of the Old Goblin Empire, which was still
held by the tartaruns, and even then some of the current colony
kingdoms were left out of it.”
“Okay,
sure, whatever. But everyone did sign it in the end.”
“The
humans signed it quickly after the goblins did, yeah, but it took the
dwarves a while after that until they signed it too and left a fifth
of their lands under tartarun control. The Stalemate Treaty wasn’t
a collective choice by the northern races, Carver. The humans signing
it and leaving the dwarves on their own is a big reason why Terraland
isn’t part of the Dwarven Commonwealth anymore. Don’t you pay
attention to anything we learn at the schoolhouse?”
“I
don’t care about the details of changing kingdom borders or treaty
signing stuff. It was forever ago, anyway. Back before people started
to count the years. Who cares what happened back then?”
Helena
gave Carver a disgruntled glare. “It was somewhere close to three
hundred years ago. And people did count the years back then. The
dwarves had a calendar for who knows how many centuries during the
Lost Years, before it was reset by—” Helena stopped and rubbed
her face. “Oh, you don’t care, whatever. But it is interesting.
And it’s important to learn what happened in the past, so it
doesn’t happen again in the future—at least not the bad things.”
“Pfft,”
Carver waved his hand toward Helena as if to deflect her words back
at her face. “I don’t think we need to worry about tartaruns
attacking us, seeing as the sovereigns wiped them all out. So, we
can’t make sure it doesn’t happen again since it literally can’t
happen again,” he stated with confidence.
Helena
rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s still sad to read about it.
Hearing what happened from the history tome in class is one thing,
but reading the individual notes of people who were actually in the
war was too much. I thought the book would be like an in-depth
history tome, with facts and secrets I didn’t know, but it was just
depressing letters to loved ones and reports about defeats and
pyrrhic victories. Nothing happy at all.”
Helena
crossed her arms as if attempting to guard herself from the memory of
the pages.
A
moment of silence sprouted between the two friends as they strolled
deeper into the village, but then Carver erupted with a mocking
voice. “Oh, well, today all my friends were torn apart by
ten-foot-tall, gray-scaled monster men, but I sure do love this fresh
air. I think I’ll go carve a statue using the wood from my ruined
home. Oh, look, there’s a horde of tartaruns coming to kill me. At
least it’s a nice day.” He gave Helena a smug grin.
“Piss
off,” Helena joked, giving Carver a push. He laughed as he retained
his balance and found his place back beside Helena.
“Hey,
guys!” a young male voice called from behind them.
Carver
and Helena stopped and looked back, both of them recognizing the
voice. A teenage boy of a similar age to themselves was jogging
toward them. His cheeks and upper lip showed the faint signs of hair
growth that Carver’s lacked, and his dirty blond hair would have
hung down to his shoulders were it not tied into a thick ponytail.
Beside him, matching his speed, was a girl of similar age. She had
short hair, the same dirty blond as the boy’s, that barely passed
her ears, with bangs down to her eyebrows. They stopped a few feet
away from Carver and Helena, both of them out of breath.
“Hey,
guys, what’s going on?” Carver asked.
The
boy met Carver’s gaze with his bright-blue eyes. “Guess what we
just heard?” he said, huffing.
“What?”
Helena asked, looking from the boy to the girl, not quite sure if she
should be excited or worried.
The
boy looked over at Helena. “So, we heard you’ll both be in the
city today, delivering the tax and trading, right? Well, guess what?”
Carver
and Helena both shot the boy a look of annoyance, waiting for him to
get on with it.
“There’s
going to be sovereigns there!” the girl blurted out, stealing the
boy’s thunder.
Helena
gasped with a look of equal parts disbelief and excitement. “For
real?”
“Yeah!”
the boy said. “Our grandfather just dropped off some barrels of
fish from his fishery in Leydes—”
“For
your trip to Caswen today,” the girl butted in.
“They
know that, sis. Anyway, traders from Caswen told him a sovereign ship
has been docked in the Caswen port for the last few days!”
“We
made him tell us all the details before he took the barrels to the
stables,” the girl added with a bright smile.
At
that, Carver and Helena shot each other a look.
“I
guess we know why the barrels were late,” Carver said, voicing what
they were both thinking.
Helena
grinned, then turned her attention back to the others. “Why would
sovereigns be at Caswen? They’re not supposed to collect the tax
until it’s been sailed over to the mainland and joined with the
rest of Terraland’s taxes.”
“We
don’t know. All we know is there’s apparently a sovereign ship
there,” the girl answered.
Carver
turned once again to Helena. “Do you think we’ll see any? Actual
sovereigns, I mean?”
“I
hope so. I’ve always wanted to see one. So far, Seb is the only one
of us to have seen one, and that was years ago,” Helena said,
directing her hand toward the blue-eyed boy.
“Yeah,
but I didn’t get to see it close up, though. I already told you
guys the story after it happened. I saw a huge ship sailing by while
I was out fishing with my grandfather during a visit, and I saw one
of them standing on the deck. It was pretty far away, and all I could
see was a tall, blurry figure, but I could tell it wasn’t a human
or a dwarf, and it definitely wasn’t a goblin.”
“That’s
still better than any of us. We’ve only heard about them in our
teachings,” Helena said.
“Nina
would have seen it too if she hadn’t been sick with a fever at
home,” Sebastian said, nudging his sister with his elbow.
“I’m
glad I missed it,” Nina replied. “They sound awful from what
we’ve been told about them. Seven feet tall, always bald, with no
ears or nose, weird X-shaped bone feet with claws. I can’t imagine
having them patrolling around the village, hunting for people who
develop sorcery like we hear they do on the mainland and the bigger
towns around here. It sounds so creepy.” She shivered and gave
Sebastian a sharp glance with her matching blue eyes.
Sebastian
received Nina’s glance and chuckled. “You sound like you think
the sovereigns are going to come and take you away. They only take
people who develop sorcery, like you just said, and since sorcery
apparently only shows up in a person during the beginnings of
puberty, if they develop it at all, I think we’re all going to be
fine. The four of us are well past the point of sorcery and the power
to use magic unlocking in ourselves. Unless one of us developed
sorcery, learned how to channel it into magic, and has been hiding
it,” Sebastian finished with a jesting look toward Carver and
Helena.
Carver
threw up his hands and grinned. “Yep, you caught us! We’re secret
sorcerers. I can shoot fire from my hands, and Helena can heal wounds
with her mind.” Carver lowered his hands and nudged Helena’s
shoulder with his elbow. “She had to get good at healing herself
since I always kick her ass when we practice fighting together.”
Helena
jabbed her elbow into Carver’s arm with much more force than he had
to hers. “I’m sorry, but who knocked your ass down and pinned you
to the dirt earlier?”
“That
doesn’t count. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I
know. You don’t pay attention to anything, Carver,” Helena said
with a smile. “But anyways, I bet that’s why the sovereigns are
at Caswen right now. They’re looking for people in the city who
developed sorcery and haven’t turned themselves in.”
“Maybe.
But that seems like a weird coincidence that they’d be looking on
the same day as the taxes are supposed to be collected.”
“If
you guys see any sovereigns up close in the city, you have to tell us
about it, especially about the bone-claw feet, whatever that means,”
Sebastian said.
Carver
shrugged. “We’ll try our best, but we probably won’t see any.
We’re going to be stuck at the Outer Market all day. I seriously
doubt the sovereigns would go anywhere near there.”
Sebastian
tilted his head. “Why wouldn’t they? It’s where the taxes are
coming in from all the settlements, and they could check everyone who
shows up for sorcery—however it is they check for it.”
“If
that’s the reason then why don’t we hear about them being at the
Outer Market every year? I think they’ll only be inside the city,”
Carver said.
Helena
gave Carver a quick smack to the shoulder. “Well, then that’s
even more reason for us to do a good job. If we finish early, we can
go into the city and try to see one.”
“Maybe,”
Carver said, rubbing his shoulder.
“It’s
about time we actually saw a sovereign,” Helena continued. “We
hear about them all the time—how they wiped out the tartaruns with
their sorcery and conquered the world, making everyone learn and
speak their language as well as making us pay them these taxes once a
year, but we never see them. It’s crazy. Why do we almost never
hear of them coming to our islands? And when they do, why have we
never had one come to our village and look around for people who
develop sorcery? It’s like they don’t exist, or we don’t exist
to them.”
Sebastian
opened his mouth. “I think—"
“Hey,
Carver!” another voice called out from behind the siblings, cutting
Sebastian off.
Carver
looked up and saw that it was his father waving at him and Helena.
“You
two ready?”
“Already?”
Carver called back in confusion.
“Yep.
Helena’s parents already loaded their wagon, remember? I just had
to hitch it to the horses and get everyone else ready for the ride.
And Duncan showed up right after the two of you left. So, let’s
go.”
“Alright,
see you guys,” Carver said to Sebastian and Nina, then walked
toward his father.
“Bye,”
Helena said, following Carver.
“Bye,”
Sebastian and Nina said, waving.
“Make
sure to look out for any sovereigns!” Sebastian added.
“We
will, don’t worry,” Carver replied without turning around.
Book Links:
Publisher:
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000211886194
Amazon:
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Amazon CA:
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Author
Bio & Information:
Connor A.
Jackson is an avid fan of video games and fantasy/sci-fi stories.
Inspired by such tales, and tired of encountering stories that import
real-world politics and agendas into their narratives and
development, he finally decided to write a fantasy story of his own
in the hopes of telling a captivating tale that anyone, from any
group or walk of life, can enjoy. Connor lives in British Columbia,
Canada, with his wife.
Author Website:
https://www.chainofworlds.com/
Publisher Site:
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000211886194
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ChainOfWorlds
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ChainOfWorlds
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22692051.Connor_Jackson
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