I have lots of ideas coming into the New Year. Some of them have made it onto the page. Others are still swimming around in my head. Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing the bits and pieces that have been written. This week: the intro to a prequel for The World Between.

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               She walked among the dark, frozen rocks. Her breath puffed in a cloud before her, as the fire inside her cooled to mist with each exhale. She glanced behind her, gazing above. The great watchtower hung in the sky over the waste where she walked. She sneered, turning away. She stepped onwards, putting The Great Maker and the others who has ascended from her thoughts. She would find a way to leave this place, to ascend. She needed help, and she had a plan.

               She was near the place where the water lapped against the pebbled beach. The glassy surface reflected all the starlight, the souls swimming above her. She gazed outward, to where the water met the horizon. Both were dark, barely distinguishable from one another. She squinted, sending her thoughts forward, to feel the beating hum of the mortals who had plunged through that water into the world The Great Maker had crafted. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the rhythm of their blood. She was filled with fire, and they were filled with water. The water they had passed through mingled with the fire from whence they had come. It ran red when it spilled. Red, like her.

               She smiled, savoring the coppery tang of it. She rose to the surface of herself again and squatted at the water’s edge. She dipped her hand into the water, drug it through the timid surf. Icy. Not what she had expected.

                 “Are you thinking of descending?” The voice from behind her was like the cold ash of a pyre, thick with decay and sorrow.

She pulled her fingers from the water, brushed them across the woven starlight that had spun her gown. Her fingers hissed as the water burned away. She didn’t turn to meet her paramour. He was darkness made flesh. She could never see him fully. “We agreed, didn’t we?”

The sound of his displeasure was a stench-filled wheeze of death. “What do you gain by going?”

Now she did turn, her eyes red, the flames inside her rising. She was a chaotic swirl of rationales, each as desperate as it was foolproof. “You go,” she hissed. “Why shouldn’t I?”

The Dark One considered her, and she could sense his fuming. The emptiness where his eyes should be flashed yellow for just a moment before he calmed. He lifted his bone like fingers, brushed them against her cheek. They sizzled, the smoke acrid, stinging the back of her throat. She licked her teeth before sucking in the smell of it. She blew the stink of his smoldering back towards him.

“I like you here, where you are safe from them,” he said, his words hushed.

In truth, she was afraid of descending through the water. She wondered what would happen to her fire if she plunged through the pool. She was made of fire and light. What would the water and ice do to her? She tried to smile at The Dark One. His face was hidden from her. He was unwinding his form.

“Why do you go?” she asked.

The darkness that was her lover rolled, unfolded, congealed. She saw the impression of his features again, before he dissolved around her, enveloping her. She felt his presence moving through her, his memories floating into her. She watched as the mortals cowered before him, ran from him, wailed in fear as his approach. She relished the sounds of their screaming as he consumed them.

His voice was inside her thoughts. “I am powerful there,” he breathed against her cheek.

“I could be like that,” she said, her lust for power overcoming her. She wet her lips. “Take me with you.”

He swirled into form in front of her. “No,” he said. “Stay here. Here, we can join and ascend.”

She looked up at the watchtower, where The Great Maker kept watch over everything. She was not powerful enough to ascend the stairs to reach it. She needed The Dark One’s power in addition to her own.

She sighed. “When you finish your games, I’ll be waiting,” she said.

The Dark One smiled, then collapsed into a roll of smoke. He hovered over the water before he plunged into the icy depths that would take him to where the souls had fallen.

Down, through the water, into The Great Maker’s world.