Ascended
War. It’s here. The last war of mankind. The winner takes Earth as its prize.
My name is Alana Devereaux. I am an elite Cantati Forces Lieutenant from Earth’s desolate future. I was sent back through time to save your world. My mission to stop the Mutari faltered. Demons infiltrated our world when the walls between Earth and Infernus fell. Millions died in the first volleys.
The Mutari changed me on an elemental level and my new powers scare the bloody daylights out of me. Formorian Hunters are closing in on my trail with a singular goal, to enact the death warrant placed on my head by their Queen. Now I am running for my life, on a quest to discover a way to kill an immortal on a power trip, stuck between mortal enemies, and everyone else wants me dead.
Choices had consequences. Mine had.
What the hell was I? Human? Cantati? Demon?
I didn’t know. Not anymore. The game board of my life had been upended, and I was still trying to make sense of the scattered pieces.
Until yesterday, I believed I was the last of my kind. A Cantati warrior from the Earth’s desolate future sent eighty-three years into the past to stop the Mutari. The Mutari happened every few thousand years. When it did, Earth aligned with six planets in our solar system, creating a seventy-two-hour eclipse on Earth. It was also when the walls between the dimensions were at their most vulnerable and could be fully breached. While portals could be opened from time to time, they were marginal in size and couldn’t remain open for extended periods. At least, not long enough to allow an army to march through.
Drystan, lord of the dimension Infernus, had used a tiny amount of my blood. And by tiny, I mean drops that Gaelen’s bastard of a brother, Maddock, had stolen from me. Drystan used it to sever the walls between our worlds and give his armies free rein to invade our planet.
We were lucky. He didn’t have massive amounts of my blood. Which was why the human world’s existence limped on. Otherwise, we’d be hip-deep in Drystan’s demon soldiers. And I’d be dead, so it would be a moot point, for me at least.
Thousands still made it through the breeches before the energy of my lifeblood was exhausted. Which meant I failed my mission. When my father, general and commander of the Cantati Forces worldwide, sent me back through time, using a Moldevian orb and incantation devised by our Coven, my objective was to stop Drystan and keep the human race from fading into extinction.
The Mutari happened. The celestial occurrence would have transpired, there was no stopping it. But my mission to stop the walls from being breached through Drystan’s magical manipulations faltered. In spite of my best efforts, the walls between realms fell. And I discovered a horrible truth about myself. I was half demon. The nightmares that terrorized my people for decades, the ones that stole my mother from me as a child—I was one of them, or at least a part of me was. I wasn’t sure what that made me, other than some half-breed freak who didn’t know where I belonged.
Before the Mutari, I never noticed the way the air shimmered as I stared at the frozen tundra beyond the window. That each indiscriminate molecule glistened and moved, bouncing off one another. I felt ice on the other side of the glass. The tiny crystals elongated and splintered as they battled for dominance against the smoldering warmth from the fireplace. Releasing my hold on the windowsill, I cursed at the marks I left behind. Two handprints forged into the wood. Power raced unbridled in my veins, a live wire of energy more potent than anything I’d tasted. And it was inside me, growing, expanding. I fought the consuming waves with little success.
The Mutari changed me, contorted my abilities into something new. I felt stronger, had a keener sense of the elements, and noticed that the barriers normally locking my magic ability in place had been blown off their hinges.
My supercharged abilities scared the bloody shit out of me.
