TaiStormsword

Verius sighed and gazed up at the stars.  Fake stars, certainly; decorations on the train's ceiling.  They came on at night when the main lights shut off.  The rest of the cabin—his own private cabin—was dark, and through the window Verius could see the true stars shining among the dark of the night.  Reflections glittered in the waters of the ocean as the mag-lev train sped through the air, hovering a meter over its track between the massive rings that kept it afloat.     The night sky Verius could see now was so much like Earth's, with the exception of a missing moon.  He could almost imagine he was back there, with Amy and Carmen and the

PART ONE     The knocking came again, expectantly.  With a heavy sigh, Hier'Thorne stood up, massaging his tail to return the feeling to it. Even a year after his transformation, he still refused to abandon his old habits and sat in chairs like a human would, smashing his short tail beneath him.  There was another knock, and this time a call: "'Thorne, I know you're in there!"     Hier'Thorne was a Nightmare Spirit.  Attacked and wounded while he was asleep, his dream spirit had been cut off from his real body and mutated into a tall, reptilian figure with gray-green skin and thick, armadillo-like plates running from the tip of his long,

PART ONE     Evon stumbled back, his brown eyes widening with fear.  He pulled an arrow from his quiver and aimed his bow at the shaggy, grey head a mere thirty feet away.  A wolf!  He had seen them before, or their bodies at least, but never had he seen a live one, especially not so close to the village—so close to himself.  He'd heard stories, though: wolves were considered the messengers of the devil, demons incarnate, who killed brutally and mercilessly.     His aim was unsteady.  He was tall and lean, and his grip on the wooden bow was strong, but his hands shook and his heart raced.  He took another step backwards.  Fallen leaves cr

"Welcome to the Survival Maze," the man in charge told them without further ado.  "This is where you will enter the labyrinth, and remember: the first one to make it out the other side wins the prize."     The catch, of course, was whether or not anyone would make it to the other side.  The participants gathered at the entrance—there were sixteen of them; men, women, and children alike—had agreed to this challenge knowing full well that no one had yet escaped the Maze before being captured.  The real question in each of their minds was, "Will I survive the longest," for the last one to be captured walked away with a cash prize.  No one was