The Sorcery Code by Dima Zales and Anna Zaires

Prologue

Thanks you for reading this novel. The full book is also available free on Amazon and every other place ebooks are sold (some links are in the comment below), and the second book in the series, The Spell Realm, is also available for purchase through the same vendors.

Prologue

In the vastness of its realm, a spark of thought tried to cling to consciousness. A new being, it wasn’t sure what consciousness meant, but it desired that state. It wanted to think, to ponder its existence. Who was it? Why was it there?

The being knew that it had limited time to dwell on these questions. The visions were about to begin again—the visions that shaped it and, at the same time, frustrated it. These visions never gave the being a reprieve. Never gave it a chance to contemplate its strange reality.

In the visions, everything was simple. The being knew things. It was usually a she—though on occasion, it experienced being a he, too. It knew who it was, even though every time it was someone different. Inside these visions, the world was easy. Understandable. But it was just an illusion. Outside these visions was the being’s reality. The reality of not knowing, not understanding. The world outside the visions was starkly different from the world inside.

And now another vision seemed to be approaching.

The being prepared itself, knowing it would lose consciousness again.

* * *

“Just a few drops of blood for all this food?” the girl asked, giving the two older women a suspicious look. They’d asked her to prick her finger and touch a strange shiny sphere with the blood. It took less than two seconds, yet they gave her bread and cheese as payment—more food than the girl had seen in recent months. There had to be a catch. This kind of feast could save ten lives back in Kelvin’s territory.

“Yes,” one of the older women confirmed. It was the plainer one of the two, the one named Esther. “Just a couple of drops of blood.”

“And you don’t need me to do anything else?” Experience had taught the girl to be wary. Nobody gave out food so easily these days—not since the drought began. She’d learned that the hard way. The memory of what she had to endure that one night, when hunger drove her to beg Davish for a meal, was unbearable. She would rather die than go through that again.

“No, just enjoy the food, tell us about life back home, and touch the sphere afterwards. That’s all,” said the one calling herself Maya.

“All right,” the girl said, shrugging fatalistically. She’d heard rumors that people’s essence could be stolen through enchanted objects called Life Captures, but she didn’t know whether that was true—or whether the unusual sphere sitting in front of her was such an object. Either way, she wasn’t afraid. If she didn’t eat, she would die, and she would rather keep her life than its essence, whatever that meant.

Reaching for the cheese, the girl picked it up with fingers that shook from eagerness, and brought it to her mouth. The rich flavor exploded on her tongue. It was so fat, so delicious, she almost moaned out loud. The cows in Blaise’s territory had to be incredibly well-fed to produce such fatty cheese.

“Pace yourself, child,” Esther said kindly, “or else you’ll get sick.”

The girl heeded her advice, not wanting to throw up such good food. Even though hunger gnawed at her insides, she tried to force herself to chew as slowly as she could, savoring each bite. When she began to get full, she started telling the two older women stories from her life in Kelvin’s territory, avoiding the most horrifying bits.

The women listened to her quietly, their weathered faces filled with pity.

* * *

Consciousness came again, and the being tried to return to its thoughts from earlier. What was it? Where was it? There was still so much it didn’t know. With each vision, the being felt like it was getting some semblance of understanding, but it was a slow and torturous process. Still, it knew it was ready to make some decisions.

The first decision the being made was to choose its gender. It was a she, the being decided, recalling most of the minds in these visions. And since she could think like those minds, she  decided that she was like them—a person, a thinking being.

This helped clarify things for her, but the being was still confused about her reality and the world inside the visions. What was hunger? What was pity? Before she could try to puzzle out the answers, a new vision approached.