The Angel Caste series - Book 2 - Angel Breath
The Story
Viv can survive the streets, but can she survive the Rynth?
Thris is gone, his exquisite body borne away by Ash and Ky. Viv fears she will never see him again but there is no way she is turning back. She continues through the Rynth, narrowly escaping murderous landscapes and worlds full of savage creatures. Her life on the streets might have been a nightmare, but at least it taught her how to run and hide and escape pursuers.
And then, when all seems lost, Thris returns. Viv is overjoyed but her happiness is short-lived. He is not the angel he was and he is not alone. Ky is with him and Ky hates Viv. The feeling is mutual, but Ky’s fear of the Rynth adds to their peril and they do not get far before they are besieged by savage creatures.
Alone again, Viv journeys on but stumbles into a war zone. Desperate to escape, she is determined to take the next rift out, wherever it leads her but then she comes upon a child, the sole survivor of a massacre.
Viv faces a horrifying choice: abandon the child or abandon the search for her mother.
As enemies close in, Viv flees with the child and when the child falls ill, Viv must take a terrible risk to save her. But in an alien, war-torn world, it is impossible to tell friend from foe.
Will Viv save the child or will the fighting cost them both their lives?
The Idea
The individual hero journeys of Viv, Thris, Ky and Ash emerge more strongly in Angel Breath. I wanted to explore how certain skills are constructive or useful in one situation but destructive and useless in another. The skills Viv develops during her life on the streets and in the gangs, and which jail her in our world of Moonsun, help her survive in the folds while Thris’s skills, as the strongest and most self-disciplined of the Dane, and as the obedient protege of a senior angel, help to destroy him.
Likewise Ky, who has similar skills to Thris, finds himself undone by fear in the Rynth, an emotion rare in Ezam. Ash's testing moves from the Blue Helixai, to the Red, and then to the White. Like his friends Thris and Ky, he is tested physically, but it is the testing of his beliefs that proves most dramatic and dangerous.
The Secondary World
Angel Breath begins with Viv in Sand Fold. This deserted fold allows Viv the freedom and safety to learn to fly. The rift out takes her to Wheel Fold that like Ezam, is highly symmetrical. It has eight valleys that fan out from a central sacred peak that is home to a lake and to the city of Ourassin/Astraal. Eight rivers flow down from the lake to feed each of the eight Vales, and each Vale contains a multitude of smaller vals (valleys) and rills (streams), which give their names to their setts (small settlements) and larger settlements. The fold is Moonsun-like (our world), with similar length days; a sun; very dull stars; but no moon.
A band of extremely dry, cold air (the Grey Fire) circles the sacred peak, set below the Leferen (a forest of brittle, close-packed trees), that only the Stonash people and urrut (elephant-sized Highland cattle) can survive; and there are areas of dangerous sliding, unstable shale (Icestone country).
The zadican (year) is divided into eight zadics: around 45 days long. The zadics are marked by, and named after, constellations that blaze each night (Fire Zadic looks like a wall of fire). The period between zadics is called the Vorash: a few days of stormy weather, absent of constellations, when the 'system' calibrates. There are also Call Zadics: brief constellations that only appear to certain individuals and call them to the sacred lake.
Viv finds herself in a Vale called Eshavale, fed by the Eshacade river. Its human inhabitants are the Eshadi. Her first taste of Wheel Fold is in the Leferen (the brittle forest), home to the Lefer: creatures that are a mix of bird/bat/human. The Lefer are sentient/intelligent.
Also in Wheel Fold (and Eshavale) are the Valen (humans); people who are mixed-blood descendants of angels/the Angellus; the Stonash (a variation on humans: short, thick-skinned, flat-faced, hooded-eyed); the Long-arms (long-armed variation of Stonash); gytars (bat-like creatures); sentient horses that are mentally linked to their riders and able to jump like cats; a variety of birds; and savage wild pig-like bears (maragh).
The Music
Metallica's - Nothing else matters captures the struggles that key Angel Caste characters endure and while the YouTube video is a tribute to Assassin's Creed, it mirrors the same desperate fight.
Deep Fantasy
According to the famous mythologist, Joseph Campbell, we must die to our old selves to become our new selves. For instance, we cannot be simultaneously a child and an adult. While this is a psychological, not physical 'death', it is never an easy process. Initiation rites are physically and psychologically painful for this reason. Afterwards, the boy is dead but the man lives (female initiation rites do the same thing but tend to use different methods).
Following the events in Moth Fold, Thris tells Ky: 'I am destroyed.' This is true. The confident Dane that left Ezam is dead (hence the tagline on the cover: 'To live, first you must die ...') In Thris's case, his death is a process.
The Principae appear to heal him physically but his memory is shattered and his strength is fragile. His mentor orders him back into the Rynth to find Viv again, and to do so, he must retrace his former route. It is the same journey but this time, he has the opportunity to make different choices. His later, sincere dealings with Viv and his disobedience of his mentor to save Ky, are signs of his new self.
Ky and Ash are in earlier stages of their journeys to their new selves. Ky is still crippled by fear and Ash still struggles with the Helixais and his plumage of ascension.
Finding the child survivor of a massacre is key to Viv's journey to her new self. Although a nearby rift provides an escape route from danger, Viv decides against abandoning the child, or to taking the child with her to another fold.
The child provides Viv with an opportunity to heal herself and to atone for the incident that jailed her. The child also teaches Viv how to give and accept unconditional love. The child, lost and alone in a violent world, is the child Viv, and in loving the child, Viv starts on the journey to forgive and accept herself.
Happy reading.