It's been a while since I shared a Wednesday WIPpet (a snippet of my Work in Progress), so now that I've settled into my new website, I thought I'd give you a good first look at Fire of the Sorceress, Book 1 of the Immortal Sorceress novella, coming your way in early 2024.
I hope you enjoy!
(Disclaimer: This is not the final version and likely contains errors and typos. Very subject to change)
From Chapter 1
I pulled fire into my leather-clad palms and shot a ball of flame at the fleeing harpy as she ducked beneath the hydro wires and veered towards the trees.
“Damn screeching vulture,” I muttered as I tore after her, melting a path through the knee-deep Canadian February snow.
She disappeared among the thick evergreens along a hiking trails in Bridal Veil Falls, and I sprinted in the direction she’d gone.
If she’d been smarter and kept to herself, I would have left her to go about her business, but she’d cleared more than a few wolves from the area, attacked at least one group of hunters, and frightened away most of our birds.
A menace to the community, and now a pain in my ass.
For that reason alone I wanted to set her tail feathers on fire.
She thought she was being sneaky, blending into the dead branches and evergreen needles, but she stood out clear as day to my trained eye.
As I passed under the boughs where the harpy was oh-so-stealthily lurking, I rested my hand on the trunk of the tree. Heat surged under my palm, crept underneath my elbow-length, fingerless gloves, contained by the runes etched into the leather. But instead of pressing my fire outwards, I reversed the magic and drew it into myself, warming my blood, my bones, my flesh, until I was as warm and toasty as if I stood under a blistering July sun.
The tree, on the other hand, may as well have passed a harsh winter by an ice field instead of a cozy season guarded by its deciduous neighbours. Frost crept in laced patterns up the trunk into the branches, and the leaves had turned to white crystal.
The harpy, standing out amid the ice with her ratty black-brown feathers and wrinkled grey face, glared down at me, her hands frozen to the perch beneath her. Ice crawled over her fingers and up her wrists, over her feet, and around her ankles. Frost sparkled on her heavy wings. She bared her pointed teeth and hissed at me before projecting a red-yellow blob of spit that landed next to my left boot.
I crossed my arms and stared up at her, undaunted by her fury. “I did ask nicely.”
“Why couldn’t you let me be, sorceress?”
She spat the term as though it were a dirty word, and, to be fair, to her it kind of was considering I’d hunted her across the island and trapped her in a tree when all she wanted was to continue her life of murder and mayhem.
Which, of course, answered her question.
“I’ve heard of you.” Her raspy voice vibrated in my ears and grated down my spine. “The once-mighty warrior, feared the world over for her feats in keeping magical creatures in their place. The wind tells us you’ve lost your drive. It’s been years since you cared enough to hunt. So why not let me go?”
The harpy’s taunting left a bitter film in my mouth, and not because she was wrong.
On the contrary, the bitch was speaking the truth.
A few centuries ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The moment she ate her first hunter, I would have turned her into Fried Harpy and my freezer would have been stocked for months.
Not actually. Harpy meat was stringy and disgusting. Not recommended.
She would, however, have been dead. A single blast of fire from my well-trained fingertips, and none of this running around through the muck.
But I wasn’t the sorceress I used to be. Life had worn me down like water smooths rocks in a river, leaving me filled with so much blah even the people around me lost motivation. I’d gone from being able to summon infernos and creating lightning storms to being lucky if I could get my fireballs to hit their targets before they fizzled out.
Despite that, here I was, tracking this oversized chicken to ensure my community remained safe, and if she wasn’t about to respect the lengths I was still willing to go, that was her mistake.
“Fine,” she said when she realized I wasn’t about to back down. “I’ll leave your territory and hunt elsewhere. Will that satisfy you?”
She asked the question as though she hadn’t royally pissed me off. Back in the day, she never would have dared. Her feathers would have been aquiver with terror.
It was time to remind her who I was.
“Nope.”
Don't want to wait until the new year for more Kat? If you haven't yet, you can grab Fury of the Sorceress, an Immortal Sorceress novella, absolutely free! This novella takes place between books 1 and 2, but is a great introduction to the series and the characters you'll soon get to know.
1 comment
Absolutely love this. I’m in. Harpy meat was stringy and disgusting. Stellar draft.