THE BURNING DIVIDE
STATUS: QUERYING AGENTS
...Estenn stared at the sleeping man and his once-beautiful boat on the once-beautiful river for a long while. His heart felt leaden. And though he didn't yet have the words to say so, he thought that sight explained all the world...
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The world is saved.
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Peace reigns forever. The Reverency has overthrown the tyrants of old: Kings and queens, priests and enchanters. The monsters of the world are slain. The beasts, tamed. And the Wiseman is to thank. He once led humanity to its salvation. Now, though He is gone in the flesh, disappeared into the engimatic Inner Mountain, His people keep His peace.
Dey lah. Such is the way of things.
But Estenn Eisan and Anya Ayanna, two souls who could not be more different, find themselves alone in the world. They each have slipped through the cracks, gone without regard. Anya steals from rich farmers. Not for her sake, but to keep her mother sane, a woman who would rather stare the stars, looking for answer, than see her daughter.
Estenn's parents are a mystery, barely more than a memory. The woman who adopted him, surrounded by healers but lying untended.
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Dey lah. The Wiseman foretells who will go die and who will go mad. Easier to divert a river than to gainsay the Wiseman's words.
The world, VonHomm, has been saved, but those within it have not. And for lost souls, those with truly nowhere else to go, only the Inner Mountain remains. And at its peak, so it's said, lies Wisdom.
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The Burning Divide is a psychological-fantasy novel that explores dependency, the roots of suffering, and journeys of healing against a fantastical backdrop inspired by Dante's Purgatorio. As Estenn and Anya climb the Inner Mountain, they rediscover more of their lives, and of the world, that led them there.
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WITHIN: A WORLD OF BEAUTY AND TERROR
...THE FIRST OF MY FAREWELL WISDOMS IS THIS: EVEN WHEN MY FLESH LEAVES YOU, I WILL BE WHERE ALL VALUABLE THINGS LIE. LOOK FOR ME IN THE DEEPEST PLACES, IN THE INNER MOUNTAIN...
​​Estenn and Anya awake on an island, beneath a sky with no sun. They remember little, barely more than their own names. They find others like them, men and women who washed ashore, lost and confused.
Soon, Estenn and Anya recognize the alien landscape: The Inner Mountain, the
world-within-a-world where the Wiseman disappeared to once His good works in VonHomm were complete.
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The landscapes Within the Inner Mountain are both terrifying and beautiful. Fellow pilgrims build towns, travel in caravans, hunt beasts, and ascend the Mountain one level at a time. But those who come to the Mountain are also hounded by the troubles of the world Without, their pains and fears which brought them into the Mountain in the first place.
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Each level tests the pilgrims in a new way: Soul-stealing monsters, sanity-blasting light, faceless sorcerers, and yet more beyond. But at its top, so the old stories say, Wisdom awaits those brave enough to ascend. But when the pains of the past are revealed to Estenn and Anya as they climb, will they both have the strength to climb to the top...?
WITHOUT: THE SAVED WORLD
...The prophiseers listened, heard what He said. What they heard, they told, Foretold, to the rest of the world. If the prophiseers said it would rain at noon, it would rain at noon, because the Wiseman said it would rain at noon...
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The Reverency rules VonHomm, the world Without the Inner Mountain. Neither priests nor kings, the Reverency is composed of various Orders, each who emulate the examples of the Exemplars, apostles who traveled alongside the Wiseman as He brought peace to the world.
Chief amongst these Orders are the prophiseers. Wrapped in gray, they commune with the Wiseman and receive His clairvoyant Wisdom. This, the prophiseers share with the wider world. Doubt is only a memory in VonHomm. Forecasts predict, with perfect accuracy, births, deaths, storms, murders.
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But stability has bred complacency and dependency. After nearly three centuries, the romance and adventure of life have become obsolete in the face of such certainty. After all, would you start a business, have a child, or embark on a journey when, at any time, a prophiseer might learn your efforts were destined for disaster? For most, better to be ruled by the Wiseman and the flow of the River (fate, if you like), than to live on one's own.
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Estenn and Anya, in their own way, both feel the malaise at the heart of the numbing world and, in ways healthy and destructive, search for meaning and worth...
THE TEXTURE OF LIVING
...She thought, for several good, long seconds, that this moment amongst all this green may be her first true, unalloyed, happy memory. She looked at Flower, and his smile was the picture of bliss...
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Estenn is an executioner, a knight of sorts. He protects Sebastian, a charismatic Eludicite, one who speaks directly to the Wiseman. He executes the will of Sebastian, his guardian and mentor. Only sometimes does he execute people. His path is straight and narrow and laden with nails.
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Anya walks the breadth of the world, falling in with a burner of homes, a finder of lost children, and a woman on a quest to slay monsters. Her path is winding and strange, but it leads her to the finer parts of a world apparently saved.
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Each one finds their own way through the quieting world. And, in their own way, they make their own troubles as they squirm against- dey lah- the way of things.
Yet, in the end, all their efforts spit them out into the Inner Mountain. For all their considerable strengths of will and resilience, something, or many somethings, go awry in their tangled roads...