A 12-year-old thief. A fireproof shopkeeper. A card magician. A mysterious old man.
Twenty years before our story begins, a scroll was created by none other than Grand Mage Athael. He called it the Ng Ey, and it was famously blank. Indecipherable. That is, until young master-of-disguise Kellyn happened upon it and saw something.
- - - - - - - -
As he turned the multicolored case in his hands, he spotted the label, which simply read, 'for young eyes only'. His brow furrowed. He opened the case and spread the paper on the pedestal, and his eyes narrowed further. The text, while still written in gold and composed of incomprehensible words, was arranged into paragraphs. It began with a small header followed by a comma, and there was a name signed at the bottom that he couldn't quite make out.
Kellyn shifted his hand and noticed a second sheet of paper behind the first. This one used varying shades of gold ink, from lighter yellow to almost brown. Given the boxy, graphical nature of this sheet's contents, it seemed to be a map, but its markings were still in the mage language.
"Theaza!" a muffled voice snapped, seemingly from below. Kellyn jumped. "Don't touch that!" He peered around the pedestal and noticed a loose scroll wedged into the floorboards, but nothing more.
Time was of the essence. He stuffed the scroll back into its case, satcheled it, and hurried out of the room. The sound of ricocheting water crashed back into the foreground, and he started to run.
- - - - - - - -
Remember to comment and vote for the chapters you enjoy! Any and all feedback is appreciated.
Join my Discord server here: https://discord.gg/nQPP7xNvjC
This is a novella-type story, so don't be alarmed if the chapters are short.
Cover image by @khyrsed on Discord.
***WINNER of the "BREATHTAKING: A FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION!"
"You are a secret kept from the world, but not from me." So begins the peculiar message found slipped under a bedroom door on the morning of May first.
Theo is the heir to a powerful dictatorship. The number of people allowed to know he exists is few. He has spent his entire life walled up in the Tower, the looming stone monolith from which his father rules over the Land.
Merryn is the daughter of political prisoners. She's known who Theo is longer than he would think possible, and she is taking a great risk contacting him via handwritten notes in order to convince him he deserves more than the fate his father has designed for him.
She has one month to exchange daily messages with him, to answer his questions and open his eyes to the realities of a world he has never been allowed to see. A revolution is coming to the Land at the end of the month, and if Merryn's notes fail to get their point across, Theo may never live to see the sunrise on June first.
A/N: The following letters were originally published each day from May 1st-31st, 2014. As you will see,Theo is allowed to write down a question for Merryn each evening, but you, the reader, won't see these within the body of the story. It may or may not be obvious from Merryn's response what Theo is asking. Part of the fun is guessing what his questions might be, but if you really want to know what they are, a list of those questions is at the end of the story.
This story is a re-imagining of Rapunzel.
Now, without further ado-I believe a young heir is about to unfold a slip of paper found on the tile floor near his door... Let's see what it says!