About Crimson Winter: City of Ruby:
Reeling after the fall of the Kingdom of Taiyou, Yukari Namikoya and her remaining allies find themselves reduced to scared refugees hidden far below the earth in the Temple of Machalite. The dreaded Lady Lilyth rules in Taiyou now and threatens to bring the whole world under her dominion one piece at a time.
And what the Lady Lilyth can't control, she plans to destroy.
In a desperate bid for the survival and freedom of the various races of Crimson Winter, Yukari must seek to uncover secrets the Vile Emperor has kept hidden for a millenia and in order to do this, she has to journey to the last place she'd ever thought she'd go - the Ruby City.
Genres:
We reached
the top before the Lillem were more than halfway up the ladder. Lifting my
arms, I fired off a few more of my cyan arrows to slow them down. “We have to
find a way out of here,” I told Masaru. “I can’t hold them off forever. It’s
only a matter of time before they overwhelm us.”
“I know,” he
responded solemnly, understanding the threat, “but Yukari, how do we go back?”
Tearing my
gaze away from his in our final moments together, I looked about the room to
see if there was any hope of escape from this situation. The red haze eddied
and swirled about the room, blurring parts of the walls, the windows, the
ceiling, and even the horde of Lillem below.
Curiously,
Adel’s words came back to me as I surveyed the scene: No matter how real it
seems, it could be a hallucination or what she wants you to see.
The Lady
Lilyth – more memories flooded into my mind. The Lillem were her creatures, her
army; the Hounds, her Generals. I looked toward the Shuzhue-Hound. The Lady
Lilyth saw through her Hounds. If a person was bitten or injured by a Hound,
she could make them see or believe whatever she wanted them to, like the school
being infested with Lillem, or like I was back on Earth in Japan instead of
where I belonged.
The more I
realized this place and the horrors within it weren’t real, the more tendrils
of red fog developed to help me to see through the illusions. The red infected
everything, swirling about and through the visions my mind had created to help
Lilyth control me.
I glanced
back over at Masaru. Was he a figment of the hallucination also? Would he, too,
turn into a Hound, or a Lillem, or something else, and reveal himself to be no
more than one of her creatures?
No. The red
swirled around him but never through him, like it did everything else. He
remembered. She had tried everything to keep us from remembering each other
because together we would be strong enough to break this illusion of hers. He
had to be real.
And so was
the water in the pool below us.
In fact, the
water looked more real than anything else in this horrific dreamscape, only it
didn’t reflect the room but rather an endless desert – or Sand Lake, as Masaru
would have called it. The desert showed rocky cliffs in the distance and a pale
blue sky with not a single cloud to block the harsh light of the sun. As I
watched, the sun lowered itself to the horizon, bounced, and then began its
return journey through the sky.
Home.
“That’s it,
Masaru, look!” I directed his gaze downwards.
He looked
into the pool, but his expression remained dubious.
“We have to
go,” I insisted. “It might be the only way out of here.”
“Aye,” he
responded, “and it might kill us too.”
“I’ll keep
you safe,” I promised.
Remember
fear, Yukari. I heard Sabien’s voice in my mind and the Knight Commander’s
words stiffened my resolve. No matter how frightening taking that leap into the
unknown would be, I knew it was the right thing to do.
You can do
it, kiddo, Jeth’s voice added, reassuring me.
I felt a hand
on my shoulder offering me wordless support and I realized there was more here
in my mind than just a nightmarish dreamscape. Lilyth could use my memories
against me, but no matter how powerful she was she couldn’t control me
completely.
I was a
Chosen of Sapphiros – I had access to just as much power as she did and I had
the backing of my Knights, my friends, and my family, and I could feel all of
them here with me.
Not
wasting another minute with meaningless distractions, I summoned my power and
created wings at my back made of cyan energy in the shape of a multitude of
feathers. My cyan power glowed, obliterating the remaining images of the
dreamscape and leaving only an empty red shell in its place. Taking Masaru into
my arms, I leapt as the last of the diving board we were standing upon faded
out of existence and back into the red fog it had been created from. Together,
we dove into the reflection of the world where we belonged, leaving the false
vision of Earth Lilyth had created to trap us behind forever.
Justine Alley Dowsett is the author of over ten novels, and one of the founders of Mirror World Publishing. Her books, which she often co-writes with her sister, Murandy Damodred, range from young adult science fiction to dark fantasy/romance. She earned a BA in Drama from the University of Windsor, honed her skills as an entrepreneur by tackling video game production, and now she dedicates her time to writing, publishing, and role-playing with her friends.
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