Mistbound

  The world was on the verge of total collapse. Mana was running dry. The Mist encroached ever stronger, day by day. A decade of research had failed to make a difference.

  With less than a year before humanity’s demise, Maeryn led her friends Frankie and Dan to steal an airship and traverse Zephyria. The goal: consolidate Geovan and Zephyrian research, and then study the Mist up close until they either found answers or died.

  Along the way, Maeryn made new friends: Terrance, a self-fashioned rogue and the last scion of the Nightshade family; Peter, a talented steam engineer and airship designer; and Ernesto, a novice necromancer devoted to his deceased master.

  Their journey took them from one flying city to another as they discovered the Mist’s true nature: necromantic-aligned mana, generated by the Undead. From there, their goal evolved to countering the Mist by creating its opposite: holy-aligned mana.

  Maeryn’s team fought their way through assassins, necromancers and political schemes as they uncovered answers that put them against the Zephyrian Research Council. Ultimately, however, Maeryn and her friends emerged triumphant, and they successfully created both holy magic and an enchantment powered by it that would purify the Mist, cleansing it into nonharmful mana.

  They had successfully bought their world time, but the Undead still walked the surface, and humanity would need to hunt them down.

  Mistwarped

  The discovery that mana was still depleting despite their best efforts sent Maeryn to collect her friends and venture forth once more, this time walking the surface of the planet. Joined by the Geovan cartographer Veronica, they cleared the mana above Geova, and then set their sights on the nearby Brennan Forest. There, Maeryn, Terrance and Ernesto fought their way through endless swarms of Undead and Mistwarped spiders, ultimately facing off against their queen: the wraith of a drow necromantically bound to an arachnid host, creating an abomination that Maeryn termed a Drider. The battle was hard won, with Maeryn’s last-ditch gambit of Body Enhancement: Flame leaving her on the verge of death.

  Head Elder Alric organized a collaboration between Zephyria and Geova, creating the new surface settlement Siltwind. Siltwind served as a staging point for Maeryn and her crew, allowing them to explore the ruins of the ancient human civilization as they purified the Mist. However, the Mad Prince—the elven ruler who conquered his neighbors with the Undead—was still a threat. His Ninth Legion encountered one of the cleared ruins, and followed the Mist-free path back to human civilization.

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  In the ensuing battle, Maeryn and her friends—including the new hunter-slash-holy-mage Jacob—fought valiantly, but the Legion Commander Heron Hartford proved too strong to take down by conventional means. Worse, he kept resurrecting his soldiers as wraiths. To survive, Maeryn committed an act of heresy: the raising of her dead comrades as Undead. Their power turned the tide of battle, and Hartford was finally defeated. Perturbed, the Geovan Elders locked Maeryn away in her home with the mandate of attuning to holy magic.

  Mistrusted

  Jacob, who had taken over for Maeryn, found his efforts to be slow and inefficient. After a conversation with Maeryn, he summarily quit to go on a pilgrimage to spread holy magic, forcing the Elders to release her early. However, her time incarcerated in her home had left its marks upon her and her relationships with Dan and Frankie. Further, Maeryn’s parents had mysteriously vanished without a trace.

  Recollecting her team, Maeryn discovered that Terrance and Ernesto had been quite busy in her absence: they’d created a holy order of warriors on Zephyr, the Order of Solaris. With a handful in tow, Maeryn returned to Siltwind to resume the mission, making up with Frankie during a late-night heart-to-heart. Terrance, who had secretly listened in, took upon himself the mission of finding Maeryn’s parents without informing her.

  The team’s adventures continued with them encountering dragonkin in the forest. Despite a language gap, they were able to communicate well enough to be guided to the dragonkin home in Skonelk. There, Altiui Ooble—a teenage dragonkin saboteur with a gift for language—was assigned by the High Shamans to travel with Maeryn and assist her in her journey.

  Changing tactics, they traveled to Korinth, the ancient dwarven capital, in search of technology. They found little, but were ambushed by the reincarnated Heron Hartford out for revenge. Maeryn, still traumatized, incinerated him before they moved on. In the castle at the heart of Korinth, they encountered the dwarven royal family and attendants having endured the centuries as Undead. Dwarven King Garn led them to the mana well beneath the capital, and Dan realized that necromantic enchantments were responsible for polluting the mana well, directly contributing to the mana depletion.

  Returning to Geova, Maeryn demanded answers from Terrance before reporting their findings to the Geovan Elders and confronting the ones responsible for her parents’ disappearance. In the process, she nearly raised human Undead once more, only to be talked down by Jacob.

  Jacob accompanied her back to the site where they’d fought the Ninth Legion, and Maeryn summoned the spirits of those she’d raised as Undead. Finding absolution, she finally attuned to holy magic… only to learn that she’d lost her fire magic.

  However, the mission to end the Mist and save the world was not something that could be put off. And so her journey continued.