The Mine

There was no power to be found in dreams not sought through action. Dreams fed on action to gain their strength. That was why his dreams had died. He had starved them.

Rishka's life seems predetermined. The son of a miner in Tarlynn, he will become a miner in Tarlynn. He will age before his time, harvesting the coal that powers Salinor's empire, descending each day on the same rickety platform that carried his father and grandfather into the same dark mine.

Elysia is the daughter of ranchers, the closest thing to a wealthy family that Tarlynn can boast. Her friendship with Rishka is permitted when both are children, when it manifests as hunting trips for squirrels and partridges, when the idea of love seems a far-off concept.

But as the years roll by and Rishka and Elysia inspire in each other a dream of something more than Tarlynn, something grander than the village they were born in, a life of magic and adventure in the wide world of myths and songs, the pressures of class and duty and the soul-crushing cost of labor drive a wedge between them. Their dreams of running off with the circus or the army or of carving their own path into the wild fade. Their carefully gathered maps are put away.

Then the unthinkable happens. The wider world comes crashing into Tarlynn in the form of monstrous creatures from the distant past. In the wake of their coming, everything changes.