metacosmchronicles

[metacosmchronicles]

Did you know we have about 75k words (for my non-writers, the average novel is between 60k and 90k words, with some scifi/fantasy books getting to over 100k) on the Metacosm Chronicles codex? It's a constant work in progress (which we hope someday to actually publish as a companion to the books) but we have most of The Beginning and The History done!

Here's a snippet from The Beginning :

First there was Void.

Void is not Nothing, because Oblivion does not exist within the Creation due to its very nature.

Quite the contrast: Void is Everything, densely encapsulated, and without order. It is the basest building block of Creation: what Creation spirals out of -- like spinning thread from wefts -- and what Creation breaks back down into, after the Order unravels.

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An interesting artifact from a project we're working on.

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Temperjoke, Ascended of Chaos.

There's not much known about the Ascended of Chaos, other than that he's one of many Ascended missing in the Sixth Age. By the events of Everdark, Temperjoke has suddenly resurfaced, and has shown an unusual amount of interest in Redd and Pheonix...

(Art by N. Soleil. Stock reference for pose provided by @adorkastock)

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Redd has a reoccurring nightmare throughout Everdark, tied somehow into her trauma and mental illness:

A red sky.

Clouds boiled over the horizon, lightning flicking through and across the bellies of the heavenly formations, attracted by the immense amount of power channeled and concentrated below. The earth was naught but bare rock; it had long ago been scorched free of whatever vegetation it may have supported in a previous life.

And bodies.

So many, piled atop one another. Pieces and bits and parts and blood, as if someone had upended an anatomy book and spread the images on the ground. A forensic team’s nightmare.

In the midst of it all, a girl.

This time she looked through another’s eyes. She saw herself the way he — how had she known it was a boy? — had, so long ago.

Her conscious mind rebelled, tried to pull away, recognizing the scene. But something about it gripped her. Something wanted her to see, needed her to understand some facet of the dream that still tortured her.

The girl was merely a waif of a child, dressed only in a long, undecorated tunic. Red hair fell to her ankles in a matted mess of gore and tangles. Blood ran in rivulets from her head to her feet, spreading in all directions as though fleeing. Pushed by the waves of power radiating from her.

While Redd herself could feel nothing of the mind she currently inhabited, she recoiled. But she was trapped — chained — into this body that wasn’t her own.

The girl turned her head, met the eyes of the boy, and, through him, Redd.

Golden eyes glowed like twin suns in a cherubic, dispassionate face. Within her gaze, a straight-shot glimpse to the soul of something as old as time, second only to the Creator.

The air began to waver, distort, as the girl tilted her chin upward. This time her gaze followed, pierced into the clouds. The thunderheads in the sky parted, and attackers poured down in a wave of writhing bodies, kissed by lightning and trailing wisps of incandescent crimson. They screamed for her head, her power. She was their greatest threat. She was the first of them. And she would be the last.

Like a red sun rising over the desert, the little monster smiled.

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“It is most efficient if I guide you through the motions,” he said, his hand hovering near the one of hers that still held grip on the sword, but not quite touching. He circled her, both too close and too far away. “Can I touch you?”

The phrasing was technically formal and correct, but it could also be interpreted (she thought) completely differently.

“Sure,” she repeated, unable to manage anything else.

***

Redd and Tyrulriathula by Serena Verde [https://beacons.ai/serenaverde] based on a scene from our novel Everdark where the elven Bladesinger teaches Redd a few sword strikes, but she's not exactly paying attention...

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Chani's medium combat rig (left) and light duty rig (right). Most often, you'll find her wearing one of these two outfits. Though the base of her light duty rig is a Ranger rec-suit, it's hardly a standard one. Chani is an inventor and a tinkerer even the gnomes and dwarves are proud of (in fact, the brass-colored bracer on her right arm is a clan-gift from the Stonebreakers, who adopted her officially). The coat, armor pieces and harness in her medium combat rig are even more customized and unique to her.

I certainly wouldn't want to face her in battle -- especially not knowing that her call-sign is 'Reaper.'

(Art and design by N. Soleil.)

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A quick PSA:

We don't use algorithmically-generated content ("AI") and never will. I, N. Soleil, am our put-words-to-word-processor person (A and I work together to create the overall stories and A did most of our world-building) and designer/artist and I painted this in Procreate from an @Adorkastock reference, then used Marvelous Designer to help with cloth folds and Blender for lighting, the portal, and background. Then I animated them in After Effects. (It took months, but I'm autistic and Metacosm is one of my hyperfixations.)

Our book cover's overall design was from the amazing Lance Buckley, with the seal also being of my design but modeled and rendered by the amazing Melissa Conway.

We also have commissioned other artists for other promotional work, which you'll see eventually!

We are truly attempting (on a disabled vet's -- A. Soleil's -- disability income) to create a universe where we can uplift as many people as possible. It's absolutely a blessing for us to be able to collaborate with so many amazing creative people and we can only hope and strive to be able to continue.

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“If I stay … I’ll kill them all.”

Sixteen year old Redd is a runaway with psionic powers and PTSD.

While escaping the parents who experimented on her, Redd unwittingly opens a portal to a planet populated by the last remnant of the angelic species. Trouble follows. With nowhere else to go, she is caught up in an intergalactic conflict: the militant, space-faring Rangers and their allies must prevent the fortress Everdark, the angels' last bastion, from being overrun by evil forces.

The abuse Redd survived takes its toll in the form of nightmares, mood swings, and paranoia — but there is comfort in combat, so she joins the front line. There, she discovers that she can wield terrible power at the behest of a mysterious entity residing somewhere within her, though the transaction is not in her favor. Clinging to an often nebulous connection to shared reality, she becomes inextricably involved with more than just the battle to protect the angels.

The events of Everdark are the key to a mechanism that, with Redd and her companions as integral gears, will start a countdown. And at zero … a shift in the core of the metacosm, one written into its very code before Time began.

----

A tale of platonic love, identity, and finding agency after trauma, set in a lore-rich science fantasy universe decades in the making.

Available now on at http://metacosmchronicles.com/shop !

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Sketch of Ara!

In the Metacosm, angels (being one of the least physical species) have only a tenuous connection to the physical realm. This means they can pretty freely manipulate or alter the body they inhabit, and also that many varying types of angelic subspecies exist.

Ara is an archangel. Archangels are born with horns, but have to earn their wings and halo -- usually through acts of service or knowledge gained. This most commonly happens in early life, before the archangel is considered an adult by angelic society (which doesn't have a hard age threshold, given that these are immortals). The timeline for earning wings and halo varies, though, because the Creator's requirements for it are individualized to each angel.

Despite nearing adulthood, Ara has not earned her wings or halo.

It's not something she likes to talk about, as it's a sore subject. What could the Creator possibly expect of her that it would take this long, or is she doing something wrong?

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Battle 451

R.D.S. 52,376 FFC

“Planetary distress!”

The signal had screamed through the K-band into every Ranger vessel and every control room in ten systems. It originated from high elven outpost Ba'hari, a science facility studying ways to marry magic and technology to stabilize red giants.

Elements of the dark elven hegemony had been claiming systems in a clearly defined Ranger space, using never-before-seen battle cruisers equipped with a weapon apparently capable of firing massive blasts of dark energy through space. The vid clip accompanying the signal had given them that, but not much more.

Fleet Captain Gorian leaned against the console, staring at its readout hard enough to leave afterimages of shaped light in his vision. He rubbed his eyes, listening with half a mind to the bridge crew chattering around him; calling out coordinates, time-frames, systems status, messages from other ships. Part of him, long-trained and cybernetically-enhanced, followed and logged data points. It would have been comforting under normal circumstances, but not today.

Gorian's Mercy was lead vessel in Battlegroup 861, in transit to join and assist the high elven Lawgivers in a desperate holding action. The 861 was one of the first battlegroups outfitted with a new invention: null shielding, a quantum device powering itself by swallowing whatever was fired at it.

A jump countdown reached his ears. He tensed in preparation for the unnerving feeling; one never really did get used to the universe squeezing down to the size of a pinhead around oneself. As they came out of it, surrounded by splashes of light generated by the immense energy of the jump, Gorian was already shouting commands.

“All ships, Apocalypse formation!” He punched the comm for the weapons deck; “Fire at will!”

Near a Creator-damned year the Chosen had debated, letting the dark elves take system after system, all across one arm of this entire galaxy. It would take them decades to clean up. Only after threatening the high elves and projects, like the red giant conversion, that could be beneficial on a universal scale, had they determined that the dark elves' actions threatened the balance.

His hands tightened into fists. Once the first innocent life had been lost, that was when it had upset the balance. He understood the concept of the balance as far as “live and let live” went – if evil wanted to kill and torture each other, hey, he was fine with that. But no matter how much 'the balance' claimed it was the Creator's will, any preventable death of innocents was beyond his capability to rationalize.

He glanced at the viewscreen in time to catch the full might of the dark elf fleet bearing down on the high elven Lawgivers. Though it was more of a flotilla than a cohesive fleet, made up of thousands of sometimes mismatching and ill-maintained smaller vessels and triangular temple-ships, between sheer numbers and the new weapon, the Lawgivers were being eaten alive.

With grim horror, he watched one ship disintegrate, ripped apart in a spectacular display of destruction …

***

A ripple of pain awoke Spiraea.

More curious than alarmed, she coalesced from the state she spent most of her time in – a thin, even extension of her self across all corners of the metacosm that natural life existed. It was a sort of dream-state, thus she considered pulling her consciousness together in one spot to be an awakening.

The universe spread beneath her, waves of a pond lapping at the shore. In this place that wasn't, all things existed; things to be, that had been, that never were and never would be. Time being relative to an Ascended, she followed the line of pain in through spinning lights no more substantial than a thought. These were not her thoughts, but the Creator's.

The universe expanded around her like an explosion as she descended into it. Tiny lights became constellations, became the metaverses, became galaxies and systems, yet she felt no motion. The battle was frozen in time as she approached it, but the closer she came, the more things returned to the speed they were occurring at within the physical realm. Brief flashes of fire and detonations of kinetic impact, the awful internal rumbling accompanying the dark energy tearing through space, fighters careening around, chasing and being chased … it all made up the cacophony of action that unfolded before her. The sleek golden high elven ships beat a hasty retreat, falling back behind the incoming Rangers' forward line. The dark elves were too close, and it was too late.

Spiraea cringed at the destruction of the first ship. Souls screamed in agony as the dark energy consumed them in black flames, leaving nothing. Though in her current form she required no breath and could not cry, many years among the little lights left her wanting to gasp and shed tears.

Once a soul was destroyed, it was forever gone. However many bodies that individual had inhabited, whatever knowledge they had gained, whatever impact they may have had on the future – snuffed out in an instant. It was not easy to do so, and stood as one of the most heinous of crimes.

The Rangers poured forward as a wave. More high elven ships succumbed to the damage they had taken before the cavalry arrived, or took direct hits from the dark energy cannons. More souls shrieked into oblivion. Finally the Rangers closed around them, and the dark elves engaged them directly. Arrogance at having taken so many systems made them cocky; Spiraea could see the shift in the minds of those aboard as -- rather than tearing into the Rangers' vessels the way it had the high elves' -- the dark energy spiraled into a vortex of itself at point of contact, became a pinpoint of phased energy, and lanced into its originator. The Rangers came within firing distance and a hail of death descended upon the dark elves. The lead ships were torn to pieces by gauss cannon fire and the reflective effect of the null shields, and fear cascaded through the rest of the aggressors. They didn't put up a fight for much longer.

They turned to the last bastion of the coward; suicide tactics, driving cruisers at breakneck speeds into the Rangers' line. One dreadnought had a massive hole in one side from these attacks. Souls floated aimlessly in the dead of space like flotsam in a listless tide. Spiraea reached out to them, offering comfort and a guiding hand back to the life-stream of a nearby life-supporting planet. It brought her a moment of solace, but only that.

The Creator would not allow itself to aid its beloved creations, and so it had created the Ascended, to be its arms and hands and fingers … but she, Spiraea, was still bound to its rules. Spiraea existed as nature incarnate, and thus had no place on a battlefield. No matter the brutalities perpetrated, it was not her domain to interfere.

 As nature incarnate, Spiraea mourned the taking of any life, even if survival required it.

But, this was not survival. This was slaughter.

With the loss of a large portion of their force, the dark elves went to run, but this tactic was anticipated. A series of null bombs detonated to their rear and flanks, leaving them unable to take any further action.

Spiraea jerked with the pain of millions of lives ended at once.

An aeon-class in the far rear had been just beyond the null bombs' range. The dark elf Matron that was its captain had sacrificed every living slave aboard and poured their lives into the ship's shield to keep the Rangers at bay. Using the stolen lives, the aeon-class sped off.

Towards the wobbling red supergiant, already unstable due to the premature burning of all of its hydrogen and helium. The star that the high elves had been studying.

Spiraea tried to cry out, but she had no voice.

The Ranger ships desperately tried to catch up – failed – escape pods and portals fired in rapid succession – nearby planets were warned to run, run now! – ships winked out as they initiated jumps, but they had no time – the dark elven ship built dark energy in its core, preparing for one hell of a coup de grâce – 

A flare of light blinded even Spiraea. Blown back by the sheer energy released in the supernova and resulting catastrophic domino effect, she pulled back.

Frozen in horror, she watched the supernova, pregnant with crackling dark energy, eating a tumor into the arm of the galaxy. The howling of billions of souls devoured by nothingness overtook her in a tornado of agony. She seized as it tore at her, denied even the release of screaming. For an Ascended, there was no escape.

The aria to something worse than death faded and left her in the awful silence. She focused on the gaping hole in the galaxy, fraying at the edges with grief. Whole systems taken apart at a quantum level, their life-streams permanently shattered. Souls that weren't gone or irreparably damaged floated aimlessly with no purpose or future.

They were lucky – it would take much time and energy, but she could rescue the survivors and urge them to nearby systems with intact life-streams.

Grief metamorphosed to a terrible rage, the boiling of clouds on the horizon signaling a killer storm. Nature could be unforgiving, and its duality was reflected in her temper. A battlefield may not be her domain, but the ushering of souls was, and the dark elves had spit in her face for the final time.

***

Alarms and flashing red lights barely cut through the dense smoke filling the deck, and Fleet Captain Gorian's lungs. It burned his eyes and throat, but with the system fried, he'd had to manually eject the last few pods. He closed his eyes and sunk down against the console, coughing and praying.

Praying that they would make it, that the overloaded null shields now just barely keeping the supernova at bay would give them a window of escape … that his death would be quick. He sobbed his next cough. He didn't want to die. 

But the shields were holding. Wild hope blossomed in his chest. Maybe he could make it to the ketch. He struggled to his feet, wracked with coughing, and stumbled in the direction he thought was the door to his ready-room. The smoke cleared, as though beckoning him towards his salvation – then the ground buckled and threw him off his feet – ear-shattering metal squealing and crackling overtook his senses – then light, and pain – 

And it should have been nothing, but as his body was incinerated to ash and cosmic dust, the pain intensified to a searing agony. Dark energy hurtled past and through him at a pace that threatened to rend his soul to ash as well. He writhed in futile effort to escape it, caught in a tempest that would soon unmake him.

Then – the promised nothing.

Though curiously, sensation remained.

A warm glow enveloped him. Tentatively, bruised and tattered, he opened his senses and looked upon a beautiful elven face. She smiled.

Spiraea? He asked, awed.

Yes, child, she responded, voice like a gentle rain. Come. It is not yet your time. I have a task for you.

Movement, though no feeling of motion. The impression of breathlessness, without the need for breath. He gazed down upon the universe in its full splendor at the behest of the Ascended who still held him in her thrall, but only for a moment.

Decoalescing, Spiraea shifted her view to the idyllic dark elf homeworld. Had she a face any longer, she would have sneered. The anger within her clutched her core in a vice of single-minded, sharp focus. She would not let this be. Such evil did not deserve a world that catered to them.

She reached out to envelop the planet in her will. Processes flashed before her; the planet itself awakened in curiosity, and then alarm. But her power over Nature was complete. Poison boiled up from the depths, belching from newly-formed cracks as the earth shuddered and shifted beneath their very feet. It filled their atmosphere, swirling in great clouds that she cemented in place with a power older than magic. Quakes ruined the land, continents tipped half into boiling ocean and half thousands of feet into the air. She pulled back, grimly regarding her handiwork.

Once the ideal for humanoid survival, their home would now reject and crush those it spawned.

The white-hot vengeance in her not yet spent, she spread herself to all corners of the metacosm and swiped every dark elf soul, pulling them through space and time to be deposited on the ruined shell she had created. Caught in her rage, she smashed every dark elf ship, leaving them abandoned to their fate.

A fitting end for those who believed themselves above all others. Though the restrictions on Ascended rankled at times, she was not entirely without power. The atrocity of the acts just committed gave her leeway enough to punish, and she would take any backlash with head held high.

She felt the Creator's gaze on her, hot and piercing, but it was not forthcoming with its opinion on her tantrum and said nothing.

Gorian played silent witness to the punishment wrought upon the dark elves.

Spiraea turned to him when she was finished, her eyes burning – he feared to meet them.

Go, she said. Tell them what has befallen the dark elves. Tell your story. Do not let history be forgotten, lest it always repeat.

He blinked in sudden sunlight, her voice echoing around him.

He was standing in a white square, flanked by trees and startled passersby. And surrounded – by elves wearing organic armor and pointing bows cautiously at him – by Rangers doing the same with a variety of firearms – floating mages with grey robes but no faces under their hoods …

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Shiny 👀

https://www.metacosmchronicles.com/shop/

[metacosmchronicles]

Ty is a Bladesinger.

Bladesinger is an elven Calling, in this case the chosen of the Ascended of Law. At present, only male elves can become Bladesingers.

Bladesingers are gifted Lawblades, quantum-magical blades that appear on the Altar of Law when a new Bladesinger has been chosen. The Blade calls to its Singer and will allow no other to touch it.

However, most Lawblades don't look like Ty's.

While elves in general uphold propriety as a cultural lynchpin and pride themselves on lack of emotion in decision-making, a Bladesinger is held to this ideal with a literal blade at his throat.

If his emotions get out of control, he can spawn a quantum-and-magical fury known as a Bladestorm. It is always fatal, and often carves swaths of damage around its spawning point before taking the Bladesinger's life. Thus, Bladesingers are constantly on the lookout for any elf who threatens a Bladestorm.

Those that do (threaten a Bladestorm) become War-Bladesingers, a group that other elves revere and fear for their pure destructive power.

(Art and design by N. Soleil.)

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Height chart and body types for the main 5!

Fun fact: angels (Ara, second from the left) don't have nipples, and elves (Ty, second from the right) don't have nipples or a navel. Neither species has breasts, as neither species lactates.

While angels do gestate inside the body of a parent, they aren't breastfed (no need, due to the angels' connection to the Creator and their general lack of physicality), and elves gestate inside a special plant called a 'renewal tree' and emerge as softened, mentally and emotionally immature, but physically fully-formed adults.

Pheonix is massive, isn't he?

(Art and designs by N. Soleil)

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"Evil? What?"

Yes.

Due to ‘the balance’ being the accepted ethos of much of the upper echelon of political power in the metacosm, ‘evil’ has claimed legitimacy by way of the Creator’s will. Evil people and organizations (such as sapient traffickers, thieves, poachers, raiders, etc.) have no need to hide their activities, as they are openly the ‘balancing’ factors of the metacosm.

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The political situation in the Metacosm Chronicles is a delicate one, with the metacosm consisting of four main governing bodies.

The Universal Accord (often shortened to just 'the Accord'): a political entity consisting of every initiated non-evil species. They work closely with the Rangers to keep peace and support civilians of all shapes and origins not just in Accord space, but beyond it as well.

The Rangers: a militarized, space-faring society working closely with the Universal Accord to attempt to keep peace and protect innocents within Accord space. The mitigating factor to ‘evil,’ and, if not blatantly contemptuous of evil, then subtly so.

The Obelisk of Time and its Chosen: the Obelisk of Time (often shortened to 'the Obelisk') is a Creator artifact that claims to be the origination of laws that the sapient species should follow. It speaks through its Chosen; beings involuntarily tethered to it. The Chosen are meant to be political body to communicate the Creator’s wishes to the metacosm.

The elven Council: based in Terelath, this group of elves works closely with the Chosen and, to a lesser extent, the Rangers and Accord.

While the Rangers and Accord seek a more tangible type of peace requiring constant pushback against evil, the Council and Chosen espouse 'the balance,' an ideology stating that evil was designed by the Creator and is meant to remain in balance with non-evil — that finding this harmony is the Creator’s greatest wish of its creations.

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A lovely paperback of Everdark and an original-artwork holographic bookmark is available in our shop now!

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Chani showing off her muscles! (Art by N. Soleil)