msoprose
Author's Note - "Sacred Arrow" (English Translation)
Sacred Arrow is the third novel in my anthro cycle, written in Russian 2021-2025. If you enjoy anthro lions, lionesses, or felines generally, this may be for you. The setting blends the late Roman Empire with the Middle Ages and faint touches of the Enlightenment. The cycle centers on the Ashai-Keetrah, a mystical priestess order in the Suung Empire. Sacred Arrow follows the Messengers - rare lionesses within the Ashai-Keetrah who practice the Craft: sending Messages through dreams across any distance.
The footnotes, absent from the Russian original and added here for context (mostly established in the cycle's first novel), feature two voices - S. and Z. - who argue with each other and occasionally with the text itself. Treat them as interpretive companions, not reference material. The translation is my own and attempts to preserve the syntactic and semantic structures of the Russian original; the prose is dense by design.
I'd recommend reading it as a PDF - link on my personal website in my profile (it's free).
Plot synopsis (opening):
Mauna, a young patrician lioness and Messenger acolyte, has trained for years in the sacred Craft but struggles with its core skill: Messaging. Despite her noble lineage and dedication, she can't master the dreamwalking techniques required for full Messenger status. Her mentors are losing patience, and whispers suggest she's destined to become a Pre-Messenger - a support role marking her as a failure.
As a last resort (or perhaps abandonment), Mauna is sent for "praxis" with Vaalu-Amaya, an eccentric Messenger living in the Empire's remote northwestern corner. Amaya is everything Mauna didn't expect: crude, unorthodox, dismissive of tradition, and still reeling from the recent massacre of her entire household. Yet Amaya possesses something extraordinary - and that's where things begin.