Chronicles of Efia: Dawn of the Desert King

Prologue

The moon Amaris hung dimly in the twilight sky, singed with amber from the setting sun. Her seven month reign of renewal and fertility was drawing to an end as Jirro, the moon of reaping, confidently made his way to the frontline. Amaris allowed for the land to produce seed and the womb to open to receive life, while the earth ripened and infants took their first breath under Jirro's command. Their dance had been this way for almost a millenia, and rarely did anyone cast an eye up to take note of their systematic patterns.

But tonight, as the sun faded behind Lorfeign Hills in the kingdom of Ackerley, and Amaris began to glow in its contrast to the sodalite blue galaxy draped behind it, there crept between the formation of the two moons, a dismal black sphere. From far away, it lay flat against the firmament, but up close in the Alodian mountains where the Alodian priests watched the skies night and day, its craters were inset so deep, that its voluminous shape could not be mistaken.

It had waded in the distance for centuries like a blemish, while Amaris and Jirro entertained the sky. Few noticed it drawing nearer. Even as Amaris began to dip behind its ominous shape, the sphere silently slipped into the foreground without so much as a gasp. It eclipsed Amaris in its remaining hours of incumbency, much in the same way the shadow of the sun eclipsed each moon.

But this minor infraction was as unnoticeable as it was to detect the tiny heartbeat of a child newly conceived. This new pulse fluttered into existence as Amaris gleamed in the darkness, stopping short as the mysterious shape passed completely in front of Amaris. The interception was brief, as if it had only been a cloud floating by, and the black object slowly began to return to the background. 

The conceived life resumed beating once more, its cadence now more irregular.