Member-only story
Prince of Thorns
Fantasy
There were beasts — and then there were monsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. In a world so crisscrossed with magic and its after-effects, there could be some fog in the lens that made it difficult to determine who was friend or foe, predator or prey.
When it came to princes, even, the lines were blurred almost beyond recognition.
It was to this environment that a young trainee named Calla entered. In her time at the Schola, she had learned charms that would have befuddled the minds of any who sought to challenge her. But her specialty lay in transformation, though she often compared the work to craftsmanship: she could not make a creation from nothing, just as a sculptor could not make a statue without clay to shape. Her finesse came with the workings of animals — and the ways they could intersect within humanlike shapes. Some called it blasphemy, what she did, though some might have called it art of a kind in certain circles.
When Calla was traveling the land of the five kingdoms, she had been warned that magic was not welcomed in all places. But when she saved a young girl from being run over by the wheels of a carriage in Kalcerne, she was almost immediately surrounded by the townsfolk — and the red-cloaked guard of the kingdom. It was in magic-binding chains that she was taken to the dungeons of the castle…
