A Ritual of War

Ta’al awaited Muburak for many hours. The sun rose and set once in that time. Shortly after dusk, when darkness had fallen completely upon the city and the patr...

Vafala had avoided telling anyone what had happened to her in that alleyway. She avoided bringing up the subject of her route to and from school, which she had ...

The following morning Furia, Mekmet, and Walif left the camp and followed the tracks of Haroun, Rashed, and Kartesh. This time they took the horses and went a d...

The great desert was vast, and for all he could see for miles was ever shifting sand dunes. The great river flowed ever southwards, down into Ansai. Ansai was b...

It was an especially warm day when Vafala Allenmorde finally left her home to go to class at the academy. It had been two weeks of unplanned vacation and she wa...

An hour later Furia poked her head out of the tent to find that Mekmet wasn’t lurking around it. Good, he would only get in the way of her plan. He would try to...

Kanpeki and the other cities of the Ansai had fallen. The people that remained either submitted, resisted, or fled. They scattered like leaves on the wind, thei...

Two days later Vafala found herself waiting for her friends to arrive impatiently. Ever since she got up she felt like the next moment would bring the first kno...

The desert was unforgiving. In the two years since her home city had been ravaged the train of refugees following Kartesh had grown many times its original size...

Several weeks went by while Ta’al gathered his army. The meager village exploded in size as more and more demons came through the gateway that Melisandre had pa...

Vafala had embraced her studies at the academy. She and her friends cleaved together through the rigors of coursework. Mathematics was difficult for Vafala, but...

Several days of travel had brought the family closer to the city. They were camped on the side of the river across from it. The city wasn’t anything lik...

When Ta’al had taken complete control over Nobumasa he learned everything the apprentice knew. All of his memories, everything he was ever taught, became access...