Here’s a short excerpt from Wakefire! Full text below the cut.
“You broke into one of our detainee’s cells last night,” Risky said. She leaned back in her chair. “Why?”
Khatien shrugged one shoulder. “I wanted to know about the Augs here. I saw two already and I wondered if there were more.”
Ror forced himself to relax before his jaw could clench. Khatien was going to make everything harder, wasn’t he?
Risky leaned forward. “Okay, but what does that matter to you?” Genuine curiosity flavored her voice. “They’re just criminals being processed here before trial and imprisonment. They have nothing to do with you or the mission.” She looked like she believed it. Ror’s throat tightened. He understood Seris’s caution, but it didn’t seem right to leave Risky in the dark about the wrongs going on under her nose.
Anger hardened Khatien’s face, making him look older than he was. “I’m an Aug. I did nothing wrong, yet I’m here. How many of them is that true for, too?”
Risky shook her head, her expression earnest as she responded. “We’re different from Augs. We have active power, a gift—a blessing—from the dragons. And you’re here to bring them back! It’s your birthright! Before we brought you here, did you ever in a million years think that you—not some distant descendant—would be the one bringing dragons back into the world?”
The passion in her voice was volatile. The sinking feeling in Ror’s gut clarified into recognition: Risky didn’t want to be lumped in with Augs, and there was a reason for that. Moreover, Seris was right. This mission was everything to her, bordering on obsession.
“I didn’t imagine that, no,” Khatien signed, his expression carefully neutral. “But I’ve heard about Augs who disappear into the SIA’s belly, and my mother died because of you. And then you basically kidnapped me from school and threatened to fake my death, so I hope you understand why I would want to figure some things out for myself.”
Now that my second revision pass is done, I made a word cloud from my manuscript! I’ve always found these really neat. Plus you get an idea of what words you overuse. For example, it appears I use looked, back, and know a lot.
I have a page for this trilogy built into my blog theme, but it occurred to me that I should probably have it as a blog post as well, so here we are! Here’s a little bit about the world and primary cast of my Counterparts Trilogy. The first book, Wakefire, is complete but in alpha reading phase, and I’ve begun writing book two. :)
On the continent of Deos, people could once do magic, just as the people on other continents still can. Some myths say that the gods were disappointed in their people and so took their magic away; others say the gods fought and destroyed each other, taking their magic with them. Regardless, magic remains in nature, so there is still hope.
Both of the countries on Deos have a history of trying to skirt the gods’ judgment and regain their power, but only in the southern country of Ryesh does the government still actively run programs experimenting with ways of imbuing its people with magic. Their most successful project created the Ivory, the top field agents in their Security and Intelligence Agency; by implanting the bones of the extinct dragons under the agents’ skin, they are granted powers of energy manipulation.
But supplies of the bone of a long-extinct magical creature dwindle over time, and the government despaired at the thought of losing their elite Ivory – until the Vaistraka were discovered. A bloodline of people with an inherited magic granted to their ancestors by the dragons themselves, and with a myth passed word-of-mouth through the generations: there remains a clutch of dragon eggs in hibernation, waiting for the Vaistraka to bring them back when it is safe for them to take flight again.
Ror is a young government agent whose promotion to the elite inner circle of the Security and Intelligence Agency coincides with the need for his knowledge of sign language. The government needs Khatien, a young Deaf man directly descended from the very first Vaistraka, to bring the dragons back into the world, and now Ror is Khatien’s handler and interpreter.
Ror and his team leader, Risky, bring Khatien into the SIA and tell him that his mother died trying to bring the dragons back, and now they need Khatien to take her place. The worst day of Khatien’s life so far is also the first step toward Ror realizing what fucked up lengths the SIA will go to in order to achieve their goals.
primary cast
rorik “ror” fierti, 21; playby: buakaw banchamek
Ror is the middle sibling in his family, and at 9 years younger than his brother he has always felt a little stuck in Feodor’s shadow. Their father, after all, is Chief General of the Ryeshi military, and Feodor is on track to follow in his footsteps. Ror decided to forge his own path by rekindling the family tradition of serving in the Ivory, which were once the elite guards of the biumvirate but are now the top field agents in the Security and Intelligence Agency. He achieved this goal, becoming the second youngest field agent to earn his Ivory in the agency’s history (after Nariska Pitral).
Still, he’s considered very green and was only placed on his current, high priority mission because of his knowledge of sign language, which he learned as a child before his younger sister’s hearing was constructed overseas. He feels great pressure to prove himself on this mission, and he’s worried that others think he’s been thrown in beyond his depth.
As he gets to know Khatien, the Deaf young man he’s tasked with translating for during the mission, he can’t help but begin questioning “truths” he’s taken for granted in his role as an Ivory agent.
khatien ysilt vaistraka, 17; playby: ronald epps with jaden smith’s frame
Khatien was born profoundly deaf, like his father, and Vaistraka, like his mother and younger brother. As a Deaf young man of Josulid ancestry, he faced challenging obstacles just growing up, but with a supportive family and good school opportunities, he has never felt that the obstacles were insurmountable. Even keeping his Vaistraka heritage secret has not felt like a terribly heavy burden.
Being Vaistraka means that he has a family magic gifted to his ancestors by the dragons, a species of magical creatures who were hunted to extinction at first because of their ability to amplify magic, and eventually because it was discovered that their remains could be used to grant energy generation powers to humans. As Vaistraka, Khatien has similar powers — weaker than those the dragons displayed themselves, but stronger than those granted to humans through dragon remains.
Additionally, Khatien is a direct descendant of Liam Vaistraka, and so a part of the bloodline entrusted with a vial of dragon blood and the task to one day wake a hidden clutch of dragon eggs. As the eldest sibling, Khatien knew he would one day inherit the vial of blood from his mother, but he expected it to be when he was an adult starting a family of his own… not when his mother was called away unexpectedly for a suspicious “business trip.”
After several days away, his mother stopped messaging. Then strangers picked Khatien up from school claiming to have news about her. At the SIA headquarters, Khatien learns that his mother died on a mission to awaken the dragon eggs, and now the government expects Khatien to take her place.
nariska “risky” pitral, 24; playby: chanel iman
Nariska was the youngest SIA agent to ever receive the bone implants and become Ivory. Though young, she is a trusted agent and tasked with command of the mission to reawaken the lost dragons. She has very personal stake in making sure the dragon eggs are recovered and revived. The fact that she was raised by the director of the SIA from the time she was ten years old plays no small part in her central role in the agency, but Khatien will come to learn that there’s more to it than even that.
