Zaree Muna would follow her brother Tasis anywhere, but she never imagined that path to lead where it has. After Tasis and his familiar fall under a magical sleep from which no one can wake them, she and her party prepare to face the mad king of Archai without him. They don’t expect the journey to lead to the Maker herself, who predicts three deaths will occur as the battle to save their world from Archai and a jealous god nears. Two of those deaths will be loved ones, and if things go wrong, the third death could spell the end of everything.
But no one ever accused Zaree of being a coward, and as she and the others go into battle to save what Tasis has rebuilt, she is ready to laugh in the face of death. The thousand-year wait is over, and none of them will accept anything less than triumph.

***
Yldost placed one of their diminutive claws atop Firea’s hand and looked up at her adoringly. “[The Maker] would like you. You understand. I hope you meet her someday.”
“Don’t we all meet her someday?” Jorget asked wryly.
Yldost gave him a confused look. “I do not understand.”
“He’s talking about death,” Zaree told them. “The assumption is that [the Maker] would also handle death.”
Yldost gave a small snort. “Oh, no. [The Maker] creates. Her twin guides the creations to the next life with love and compassion when the time comes.”
“What does happen after we die?” Jorget asked.
The dragon looked at him, head cocked to the side, one eye ridge raised in what could only be amusement. “I’m sorry, but you will have to wait and find out for yourself.”
“Another rule?” Zaree guessed as Jorget muttered something about the unfairness of it all.
“Of course,” Yldost said. “If you knew what awaited you, it would spoil all of [Death’s] fun.”
“You know, I’ve noticed that your family has an odd definition of the word fun,” Jorget pointed out grumpily.
Yldost snickered as they moved back to their plate and took another bite of their breakfast. “No,” they finally said. “I’m quite certain it’s you. Because it’s very likely that dragons invented fun.”

Once upon a time (the early 1990s), before the dawn of the internet as we know it, there was a BBS (that's "Bulletin Board System", and we had to use actual phone lines to dial into them via modem) in which I ran a role-playing group set in a mages' guild. My character's name was Trivintaie, and she was a redheaded mage with a penchant for mischief.
 
Yes, she was THAT Triv. The same Triv that starts off the whole Mages' Guild Trilogy.
 
When I decided to revive her and write the trilogy, I knew I couldn't make her the main character. Her time had passed, and too many other people had taken part in creating her guild for it to really be mine. So I set the trilogy a thousand years in the future and gave her world a new hero.
 
What I didn't expect was that I'd pack it with such a diverse set of characters, most of which reflecting some part of the rainbow. It was completely unintentional, but once I realized it was happening, I was thrilled. One of my goals was to give young adults—and adults not quite so young—characters that maybe they could identify with in a way they might not have been able to before.
 
So I'd like to introduce you all to some of the new characters in the second book of the trilogy, Magic Wept.

But before that, I wanted to let you all know that there is indeed a giveaway. I will be randomly generating three winners on September 30th, all of whom will receive a plush purple cat (because nothing says magic like a K'yerin plushie—Tasis' familiar is just full of himself enough to agree with that sentiment) and an ebook copy of Magic Wept. You can enter the giveaway HERE!

And now, on to the characters!

Gisik isn’t seen much in Magic Wept, but he’s definitely talked about. While we already have an antagonist in the form of the mad king of Archai, Gisik, if we want to put it in gamer terms, is the boss. He’s the big bad guy. And while he doesn’t represent a portion of the rainbow like so many of the other characters, he does represent evil in the ultimate good-versus-evil scenario.

Gisik is a dragon. The other dragons seem to want to do good things and be good to people. Gisik…well, not so much for him.

This doesn’t make him less important than the good guys. He is in fact just as important, if only because his twisted personality gives the rest of their world a scale in which to measure against. There’s long been a question on whether we would know what ‘good’ actually was if we didn’t have ‘evil’ to show us the opposite side of the coin.

I’ll admit it. There’s something really liberating about writing an evil, twisted character.

And with that disturbing thought, let’s move on to the excerpt.