Magic Eclipse: A Dragon Born Novel

Chapter 1: Dark Days

Sera rose to her feet, brushing dry dirt from her leather jacket. The building hadn't been in good shape before she'd gone inside, and that explosion sure hadn't helped with its structural integrity. Thick dust snowed down from the ceiling, replacing the dirt she'd just removed from her clothing.

"Great," she muttered, brushing it off again.

A loud ominous groan answered her protest. Sera stared up into the rafters. There weren't any monsters up there. She'd done a full magic sweep before entering the building. She hadn't felt anything then, and she didn't feel anything now either. That meant it was just the good old collapsing building scenario.

She'd had to deal with her fair share of those in the six years since the Magic Council had come to San Francisco, bringing their Crusade against the Dragon Born with them. The city had been pleasant before then, peaceful but for a few monsters here and there, nothing Sera and the city's other mercenaries couldn't handle.

Before the dark days had come to her city, Sera had heard about the war, about the Crusaders, but it had all felt so distant. So unreal. Until they were here, they and their campaign of death. Their ultimate goal was the extermination of every Dragon Born mage in the world-and they weren't wasting any time getting to it.

Maybe the Crusaders had been the one to plant the magic bomb in this building. They'd been setting boobytraps like that lately. They knew the Dragon Born came to this area. Maybe they even knew why. Sera looked around for the delivery she'd come to pick up from one of her suppliers-a box of healing medicine-but she didn't see it anyway. It had probably been buried in the explosion. She'd have to dig through the dust and debris to find it.

The question was where to begin. The place looked awful, even by post-apocalyptic San Francisco standards. The plaster had broken off the walls, exposing the splintered wood beams below. The floor was littered with the remnants of the walls-and whatever had come down from the ceiling. And the magic...yuck. It tasted like someone had mixed hell and earth together inside of a blender and dialed it up to the highest setting-forgetting to put the lid on, so it splashed and spewed in every direction, drenching the world in a cocktail of chaos.

This wasn't like any magic bomb Sera had ever seen. The Crusaders must be developing new ones. As though they didn't already have everything on their side in this war.

Sera continued her sweep of the building, pausing when her gaze snagged on the sight on an unconscious woman on the floor. Her long red hair feathered either side of her pale face. God, she looked young. She couldn't have been much older than twenty. So what was she doing sleeping inside an old building in the city's Forsaken District?

And what was she wearing? A yellow and pink sundress? The dress's colors were too bright, its style too carefree, as though it belonged to a different time. To a more peaceful era. It sure didn't look like it had come from anywhere around here. It was pristine except for a few fresh smudges of dirt, probably made when the explosion had thrown her to the ground.

Sera hadn't worn a dress in years, not since the war had come to San Francisco-and along with it, the monsters. Bright colors were a death sentence here. All the beastly nasties were attracted to their vibrant sheen. And pastels allowed Crusader patrols to pick you off from a distance. To survive, you had to blend into the shadows.

Sera looked from the girl's yellow dress to her own dark outfit. Where had this girl come from? No one had been inside of this building when Sera had probed it with her magic before entering. Before the explosion. This was weird.

Magic shifted outside. Someone was out there. Three someones. They'd done their best to mask their movements, but they couldn't hide the pulse of their magic-or the effect it had on all the magic around them, like ripples on a lake. The ripples always gave them away.