The Hurricane Wars

Talasyn attends the wedding of her friend and fellow helmsman Khaede and her partner Sol. Given the continuing Hurricane Wars ravaging Sardovia, it’s challenging to find an officiant while the clerics tend to wounded soldiers. The officiant that Khaede and Sol found is an older man who fumbles through the ceremony, but Talasyn thinks Khaede and Sol’s love still makes the ceremony beautiful. Her commanding officer Darius asks if she’s next down the aisle, but Talasyn has no present hopes for romance. Darius tells her that the Amirante Ideth Vela, head of the Sardovian forces, wants to meet with her. General Bieshimma has returned from the Nenavar Dominion, a kingdom across the Eversea that claims to possess dragons and remains isolated from the conflict in Sardovia. Talasyn feels a strange connection to Nenavar that she does not understand, a yearning for something she cannot place her finger on. She also has a strange vision of a dragon’s scales.

Bieshimma’s trip to Nenavar was a failure. Though he was allowed to enter the Dominion, which is unusual, he failed to meet with their queen or obtain support for the war in Sardovia. Talasyn watches Khaede and Sol dance and wonders what a love like theirs would feel like; she worries, though, about Khaede’s pregnancy.

The Night Empire, from the region of Kesath, attacks, interrupting the wedding festivities. Talasyn hopes the Kesathese soldiers will not arrive with a stormship, which would decimate the city of Frostplum. Sol, Talasyn, and Khaede take to the skies in their wasp ships to combat the Kesathese wolf ships. The Sardovian wasp ships are powered by wind magic from the Squallfast dimension, wielded by Sardovian enchanters. The wasp ships assume a defensive formation to engage in battle. Talasyn feels magic sparking in her veins, but she remembers the Amirante’s command to keep it hidden. Talasyn’s wasp is hit, and she feels the sensation of falling toward the ground.

Talasyn dreams that she’s 15 again in the city of Hornbill’s Head, trying to escape before the arrival of a Kesathese Stormship, powered by aether hearts filled with storm magic from Emperor Gaheris’s enchanters. In the dream, Talasyn runs for her life, before she wakes up in the wreckage of her wasp. Hornbill’s Head is destroyed, along with all the Great Steppes of Sardovia, as punishment for Sardovia’s refusal to bow to the Night Empire. Talasyn knows that if Frostplum falls, the Night Empire can then move to destroy all of Sardovia’s Highlands.

Talasyn pulls herself up and realizes the Shadowforged warriors of the Emperor’s Legion are participating in the siege of Frostplum, which makes her worry that the battle will be lost. The Shadowforged can wield shadows and darkness, creating barriers that can rip people apart. Talasyn tries to fight the burning of her magic that she can feel rising as her anger toward the Night Empire surges. She remembers what the Amirante told her: Aether is the prime element, and aethermancers can wield aether in different ways, as Rainsingers, Firedancers, Shadowforged, Windcallers, Thunderstruck, Enchanters, and the rarest of them all: Lightweavers.

Talasyn is a Lightweaver, capable of wielding the Lightweave—one of several sources of magical energy emanating from alternate dimensions. Though the Amirante warned her that she would be hunted for her abilities, Talasyn uses her magic to fight against a Shadowforged soldier. Before she can use her lightforged dagger to stab the soldier, she is distracted by the arrival of the masked form of Alaric Ossinast, the heir to Emperor Gaheris’s throne. Talasyn knew she would one day face him, but she didn’t think that day would come so soon. She fights against Alaric, who is even more skilled than the fallen Shadowforged soldier. Alaric taunts her, wondering aloud when the Sardovian Allfold got a new Lightweaver.

19 years ago, in the events known as the Cataclysm, two kingdoms of the Sardovian Allfold waged war on each other: Sunstead, the kingdom of the Lightweavers, and Kesath, the kingdom of the Shadowforged. The Lighweavers killed Ozalus Ossinast, leaving his son Gaheris to become the ruler of Kesath. Gaheris defeated Sunstead and slaughtered every Lightweaver. He then declared Kesath independent from Sardovia. Kesath soon became known as the Night Empire.

Talasyn tells Alaric that his father missed one Lightweaver, then headbutts Alaric. She stabs him in the shoulder before running away.

Talasyn hears the horn to prompt her to retreat. She runs through the wreckage of the battlefield and manages to climb above the larger Sardovian ship before it retreats. She sees Khaede holding Sol’s body, a large crossbow bolt through his chest. Since no clerics are available, Talasyn says the final blessing for Sol. Talasyn begs Khaede to tell the Amirante about her pregnancy and be taken off active duty, but Khaede refuses.

Talasyn meets with Darius, the Amirante, and other higher-ranking officers. The Night Empire did not bring a stormship because of the weather and risk of avalanche in the Highlands; the Sardovian Allfold made the same choice for the same reason. The Amirante and Darius previously served in the Kesathese forces, but they defected and brought eight stormships over to the Sardovian side, a number that has dwindled to five. Darius wishes the Nenavarene Flotilla would help in the war as they did during the Cataclysm, but the stormships’ destruction of Nenavar’s forces during that conflict prompted them to isolate during the Hurricane Wars.

Now that Alaric Ossinast knows about Talasyn’s Lightweaving, she must train in earnest. Bieshimma joins the meeting and brings maps of the Nenavar Dominion, with an X marking where he saw a Light Sever during his journey. A sever is a place where energy from the aether rips into the material world, so a Light Sever would allow Talasyn to wield the Lightweave without having to summon it. Talasyn is thrilled at the idea of being able to harness raw power, but the location of the Light Sever in Nenavar gives her pause.

The Amirante decides that Talasyn will spend two weeks training before they send her alone in her wasp to the Light Sever. Talasyn hopes Alaric died from her stabbing him in the shoulder, but the Amirante reminds her that he is the most formidable Shadowforged warrior in a century, so he is surely still out there and will come to find her.

Talasyn trains in public view of the other Sardovian forces for the first time. She had to keep her power secret to avoid the Night Empire discovering her, but now they know already. She practices wielding the Lightweave to destroy regular weapons, making herself harder to kill. While she trains, she thinks about Alaric, about the silver of his eyes, about how she’s sure he could have killed her but held back. She shakes her thoughts away to train harder so that next time she can kill him. As the war continues, the Sardovian forces retreat out of the Highlands, focusing on defending the last two areas of the Allfold: the Heartlands and the Coast.

Khaede asks Talasyn what she knows about the Light Sever and about Nenavar. Talasyn does not confide in Khaede about her strange feeling of connection to Nenavar, instead reciting the basic facts about the isles (they are wealthy, they are a matriarchy, they are rumored to possess dragons, etc.). Khaede tells her about the Fisherman’s Warning, a story popular along the Coast where Khaede grew up. The legend states that every thousand years, an amethyst glow emerges from across the Eversea, from the direction of Nenavar, heralding months of rough seawater and poor fishing. Talasyn asks Khaede how she’s feeling, and she watches as Khaede’s grief becomes evident across her face. Talasyn feels strangely lucky that she doesn’t love anyone enough to feel that grief, to feel like a piece of herself is missing.

The Amirante prepares Talasyn for her journey, reminding her that she is the bright light and hope against the Night Empire’s darkness. The Amirante possesses Shadowforged power, but she hid it from the Night Empire when she served as a Kesathese helmsman. She knew the Night Empire would devour her like it seeks to devour Sardovia. Before she leaves, Talasyn sees Darius, who expresses hopelessness about the Sardovian cause, worrying Talasyn. Darius was the one to rescue Talasyn from the ruins of Hornbill’s Head when she was a teenage orphan, after the Night Empire razed the city. His fear worsens her anxiety about her journey.

Talasyn departs for Nenavar. She flies through the night to avoid detection by the Night Empire, dodging the dark light of the Shadow Severs that launch into the night, moving toward the horizon.

Alaric Ossinast knows he must kill the Lightweaver. As long as she lives, she’s a symbol for Sardovia to rally around. He’s frustrated that she still lives and that the enemies of the Night Empire have returned, so he focuses on destroying the remnants of a Light Sever that still exists in the ruins of a Lightweaver shrine in the Hinterlands, near the ruins of Sunstead. He pushes the Shadowgate against the Sever, shrinking the light pouring through. He moves on to the next part of the shrine, where even larger amounts of Sever are pouring through. His three fellow legionnaires—twin sisters Nisene and Ileis and Alaric’s close friend and training mate Sevraim—are currently combatting the Sever.

Nisene and Ileis are carefree and do not take their task seriously, which irks Alaric. They want to explode the shrine, which would bring rubble down on an entire village. They do not view the village as Kesathese but as Sardovian; Alaric reminds them that the people there have become Kesathese since their land was overtaken by the Night Empire. Alaric does not share his father’s greed for conquest, but he resents the Lightweavers because he sees them as the aggressors in the Cataclysm: He believes they started the conflict, killing his grandfather in an attempt to steal the stormships. The death of his grandfather led to his father taking power too early and becoming cruel, driving away his mother. His father physically abused Alaric after he failed to kill Talasyn, illustrating his violent and mercurial nature. Alaric found himself unwilling to kill Talasyn though he easily could have, and he doesn’t know why.

A pigeon arrives with a note for Alaric from someone within the Sardovian camp, offering information in the hope of receiving clemency. Alaric reads it and realizes that Talasyn is going to Nenavar to find the Light Sever. He takes off after her.

Talasyn makes it to Nenavar and beholds the natural beauty of the islands. She watches as a Sever appears with bright purple light, just like Khaede described. Talasyn realizes that Nenavar has access to a new type of magic, a Sever that the Night Empire and Sardovian Allfold are unaware of. On the continent, Talasyn only knows Enchanters, Lightweavers, and Shadowforged. There are plentiful Severs of green Squallfest, blue Rainspring, red Firewarren, and white Tempestroad, but Talasyn has never seen any magic with the violet hue she sees in Nenavar.

She flies high enough to avoid detection, though she sees no traces of dragons. She lands on the island where Bieshimma said she would find the Light Sever. After landing, she begins the long trek through the humid jungle to find the Sever. As she journeys, she has strange visions of a woman holding her face, promising to find her again. She also envisions a golden city. The visions make her cry for the first time in years, as she yearns for something she’s lost but cannot understand. She continues onward until she finds the Light Sever.

When she arrives at the Sever, she hears the voice of Alaric Ossinast behind her. They begin to fight, using the Lightweave and Shadowforge, and Alaric compliments the improvement in her fighting style since her training. Suddenly, both of their powers fail to work. Nenavarene troops interrupt them, using the Sailor’s Common Language to demand that they stop. The Nenavarene troops wield seemingly handheld cannons that shoot out purple light, like the magic that Talasyn saw coming from the mysterious Sever. The cannons render Alaric and Talasyn unconscious.