The Elder's Curse by Andrew Walbrown (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📕

practice range. Bookshelves aligned the walls, filled to the brim with all sorts of magical scrolls and instruction manuals. This was appropriate for a magical academy, and in other circumstances, I would have perused them. However, for my mission, they were completely useless to me.

“Is there a section regarding myths, tales, or anything of that nature?” I asked, hoping to browse such a section and leave before the dust suffocated me.

Raharz nodded. “There are some books that have no magical value, kept here since time immemorial. Come, I will show you.”

Though I tried to temper my excitement, my stomach was filled with butterflies. Had I truly found the next volumes of the series, or had I sailed completely around the continent only to find a bunch of unrelated books? If the answer was the former, then surely my search was aided by some divine intervention, because I do not believe in a thing called “luck.”

“Ah, here they are,” Raharz said as we reached the shelf with the books. They were ancient, with no decoration or title from what I could see. Raharz retrieved three books and brought them to a table nearby, blowing the dust off the tomes before opening the first page. “It is in a language similar to ours, but older. Here, have a look.”

My heartbeat increased tenfold, my hands began to shake. With as much care as I could muster, I pulled the first book close to me and looked at the opening page. I read a few words before skipping about twenty pages, disappointed to find I was reading about different species of birds. The second book was equally useless, although its pages were filled with countless cooking recipes instead of rudimentary sketches of parrots and flamingoes. What little excitement I had felt in the beginning was quickly extinguished by my findings, or lack thereof.

I carelessly opened the last tome Raharz brought me, expecting to find nothing of value. On the first page, I immediately noticed the words were from a language I did not speak, though the alphabet was the same as my own. “Master Raharz, what language is this?”

The old Mwai peered at the first page. “Oh, how peculiar. It is written in Old Yawani, but transcribed in our modern alphabet.”

“Can you translate it?” I asked.

Raharz shook his head. “Some words are the same, but unfortunately my knowledge of Old Yawani is very limited. However, I believe there are a few scholars within our hallowed halls that can. Stay here, I will send for them.”

As the Master of Scrolls summoned one of his underlings, I returned my attention to the book on the table. I started reading aloud, speaking just above a whisper, curious if my pronunciation of their language was correct. I read two entire paragraphs until a specific word stopped me cold, its sudden appearance striking me so hard I could not breathe.

That word was Ulam.

THOUGHTS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing The Elder’s Curse was quite the journey. I began writing it almost immediately after finishing the first draft of the previous book, The Mad Raven’s Tale, having taken maybe a week off in between both works. It was originally titled Ashes of the West and was going to be about three times the length it is now, but luckily I realized that was insanity and stopped when Amantius and Ulam returned to Yawan instead of continuing with the events that will appear in the next book.

Because I took so much time between writing The Elder’s Curse and its first edit, initially I forgot a large portion of what actually happened in the story. Also, by the time I finalized The Mad Raven’s Tale, I had changed so many things about the series that a lot of The Elder’s Curse no longer really applied. So if you’re wondering, yes, the first edit of this book was a nightmare because not only did I have to do the usual editing, but I also had to reread multiple parts of The Mad Raven’s Tale to make sure everything was consistent. This is the price you pay when your writing style can be classified as, “fly by the seat of your pants.”

There were some themes and elements that I knew I wanted for this book. I wanted it to largely take place in a desert, and because of that the Alakuum was born. I wanted there to be more magic in this volume as well, since there was so little in The Mad Raven’s Tale. The big hurdle there was figuring out a magic system that worked for me, because I didn’t want to get six or seven books into this series and go, “Oh crap, there’s no set system here.” I also wanted to add more female characters, and not just as background pieces, but with major roles as well. I realized after writing The Mad Raven’s Tale that, aside from Morganna, there really aren’t any other female characters of any significance in the first book.

Most importantly, however, I knew I wanted two anthropomorphic animal races living in the Ashlands of the Alakuum. The Mwai were easy enough because catlike humanoids are fairly common in works of fantasy, such as the Khajiit in the Elder Scrolls video game series or the Tabaxi in Dungeons and Dragons, and they have been around for millennia. The ancient Egyptians, for example, worshipped the goddesses Bastet and Sekhmet, both of whom had feline heads. And since Yawan is a desert city at the delta of a river, and it has a colossal obelisk with hieroglyphics carved into its surface, it only made sense to populate half the city with a catlike race.

The Kalikkis, on the other hand, are a completely different story. It took me a long time to settle on Yawan’s other race. At one time, the Kalikkis were going to be dog-people, much in the same vein as the Egyptian god Anubis. Then I thought about crocodile-people because of the river but scrapped that idea quickly. Rabbit-people