Prologue
VILLAGE OF VILESC, LYRISCU, THE GREAT FIRE WARS
Near midnight, a wailing was heard from the edge of the enchanted forest by a young Mora returning from a hunt.
The smoke rising from the horizon was not right. It billowed luminescent in the moonlight, a sickly blue with a shimmer of silver.
“Zemavapti,” Roh whispered. Dragonfire.
Roh mounted her horse in a single bound, digging her heels into her flanks as the roaring sounds of a burning village tore through the night.
The Daemyn blood that ran through her veins made it sound as if the screams were inside her own head. Thoughts of her mother and sister raced faster than the wind whipping hair from her chestnut braid. If the smoke was already lifting into the sky, she knew it was too late. Tears raced across her cheeks, burying themselves in her hairline, and she did something she had never done before.
She prayed to the fallen gods. The Umbren, the Lumen, The Mar Xana, The Lost Ones. But the gods did not answer.
By the time the sun crept up over the Uriash mountains, all that was left was the stench of death, commanded by a Tyrant Prince. Smoke and promises hung in the air around a small group of survivors that stood at the edge of the wood.
The wail of a baby tucked in Roh’s cloak, her skin blistered and burned, was as sharp as the first ray of light that hit the devastated meadow. The once vibrant spring flowers shrivelled and turned black at their feet.
Roh gently touched her little sister’s cheek, magic flowing from the blood-stained marks on her knuckles. She did not know how to heal the girl. She would need the Thaumatist for that, but he had exhausted his magic stores in the battle. Thoughts of what she had lost stung her eyes. She could, for a moment, use her own version of magic to take the pain away. Add Scarlet's pain to her own until they were safe to rest.
She sang to the child, stroking her cheek. A searing agony tore at her fingertips as her baby sister fell asleep in her arms.
Watching the small creature, her mother’s dying words seared into her soul. Protect her. Keep her safe. Don’t ever let him find you. The pure desperation in the words made Roh swear to it, and a deep determination settled in her heart that night to protect the weak. Beyond Scarlet.
As the darkness of the forest swallowed them up, Roh vowed vengeance on the crown and anyone under its corrupt power.
***
Legends of Lyriscu is a gender-bent vampire Robin Hood story steeped in Romanian and Balkan lore with a dash of My-Little-Pony-Inspired dragons. Stay with me, I promise it will make sense.
An outlawed Mora (living vampire) takes vengeance on a corrupt system that tries to vanquish all magic from the continent, but when the magic comes from the land itself, her only hope of success is to find the rest of her kind and ally with the banished dragons who were once guardians of the gods.
ART BY @EOH_ARTS