We are two weeks away from launch and the finale of the SoulMist series. As a special treat, here are the first two chapters to tide you over to launch day.

Chapter 1 – Kiara – Oblivion Gate, Eidolon

Kiara drifted through the silent halls of the Oblivion Gate unable to ignore the impression that she wasn’t alone. Flickers caught the corner of her eye, but when she looked, no one was there.

Not knowing what else to do and still trying to adjust to her new reality, Kiara concentrated on exploring the empty chambers. They were breathtakingly beautiful. A green glow illuminated the high ceilings and washed over the smooth stone walls. Elegant reliefs decorated the corners and columns lining the doorways, leading into darkened alcoves and concealed spaces.

Arched doorways led off in a maze of corridors and passages. It would be easy to get lost, though she wasn’t concerned; it wasn’t as if she would starve to death. She was already dead. She shivered as a chill flashed through her at the thought. It was weird how she still felt things, even though her body didn’t exist and she was an ephemeral mist floating above the shiny floors. She was disappointed to see that she didn’t even have a reflection.

The only time she seemed to have any substance was when she was with Mav. Something about him helped to anchor her, but then he always had. Mav was the one person who had believed in her and her abilities without question. He had never treated her like a child but always as an equal, as someone he trusted.

Kiara straightened her shoulders. Even in death, he had made her his Gate Wraith. He had given her purpose at a time when her world had been shattered. He had been there for her, and she wouldn’t let him down.

Continuing down the corridor, she gasped as a majestic room opened before her. At one end, a grand staircase rose in an elegant curve, splitting into two branches halfway. It was a gorgeous room and completely empty. She wasn’t sure what furnishings would suit such a picturesque room.

Choosing the darkened doorways beneath the stairs, she ventured deeper into the halls. She was surprised to find a spotless kitchen, its storerooms filled with various types of fresh produce. Someone was cooking for people who ate, though there was no sign of them. Where had they gone? And who were they?

Leaving the kitchen, she found more stairs, utilitarian in nature, that led down into darkness. Kiara floated down the steps and along corridors until she entered another large space and halted with a gasp. Green flames flared in the torches on the walls and lit a complex matrix of metalwork, cogs, pulleys, and chains. Her gaze followed the linkages, and she revelled in the complexity, delved into the chains and the joints, and winced at the signs of rust and neglect.

Why had such complicated machinery been allowed to become so atrophied? She paused. What was it supposed to do? Was this the Gate?  Or part of it? Whatever it was, it had not been used in decades. Was there another way into Oblivion? Where had all the soulless gone in the meantime?

She frowned and traced the links, following the pattern, and saw the result. The wall was supposed to slide open, though the wheels were rusted solid and wouldn’t move any time soon.

There had been a container of grease in the kitchen. She headed back down the corridors, eyeing the torches that flared and died as she passed. Was someone watching her? How did they know she was here?

At the first attempt of picking up the pot, her hand passed right through it. She hissed her breath out. She was here for a reason, and that reason was to look after the Oblivion Gate. “I’m here to help you, blast it,” she muttered and tried again. This time, her fingers seemed to brush against the pot as they passed through it, and something inside her quickened.

“I’m a Gate Wraith,” she said and concentrated on the clay vessel.

“What…is a Gate Wraith?” The deep voice grated on her ears, rough and fractured.

Kiara stiffened. Peering around, she said, “The one who will grease these wheels if I can pick up this stupid pot.”

“Why do you need to grease my wheels?”

“Because they are rusted.”

“Why do you care?” The voice was slow and dejected.

“Why do I care?” Kiara twisted, searching for whoever was speaking, but she couldn’t see anyone. “That’s complex machinery. You have to look after it. How could you allow it to get into such a state?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice. Who is responsible for maintaining it? Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

Kiara spun again, peering into the shadows. “Who are you? Where are you?”

“Why does it matter?” The voice faded as if the speaker were leaving.

“It matters because Mav asked me to help maintain the Oblivion Gate. He asked me to be his Gate Wraith, and I said yes.”

“Mav?”

“Yes, Mav. Deus Demavrian.” She stared at the pot and scowled. “If I am dead, how do I make myself more solid?”

“You are dead?”

Kiara rolled her eyes. “Duh! Can’t you tell? I’m a ghost. A spirit. Not real.”

The chuckle was raspy as if the person weren’t used to being amused. “You look real to me.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the Oblivion Gate.”

Kiara froze. “The Oblivion Gate?” she whispered.

“Yes. And you look solid to me.”

“I do?”

“Yes. Why are you here? You are not like the others who roam my halls.”

“I told you. Mav asked me to be his Gate Wraith. He wants me to look after you.”

“Why?”

Kiara scowled at the ceiling. “Why? Because you are the Gate! The soulless pass through you. Mav will help you look after the people of Eidolon.”

Silence. After an extended pause in which Kiara thought the Gate might have withdrawn, he said, “Kaenera is the Gate Keeper, and he doesn’t care about anyone except himself.”

“Not anymore. Mav defeated him.”

“He what?”

“Mav defeated him. Kaenera isn’t dead, as far as I know, but he lost all his power, and Mav inherited it. Mav’s a really good guy. He’s an Archdeus, no, a Deus now, though he doesn’t have a soul. He’s been living in Eidolon for years. Mav needs to become the Gate Keeper, however that works.”

“A new Gate Keeper?”

“Mmm.” Kiara focused on the pot again and placed her hands on either side of it.

“You have to believe you can pick it up. It’s all in the power of the mind.” The Gate snorted. “You haven’t got much else left to work with!”

“Believe in myself. Mav believes in me, and so should I.” Kiara tightened her grip and nudged the pot away from her. She exhaled, concentrated, and tried again. She picked the pot up. “Yes!”

“What are you going to do with that?” the Gate inquired. His voice had grown smoother the more he spoke and now vibrated with a deep timbre. Kiara thought it was a nice voice.

“Which bit hurts the most? We’ll begin there.”

“Start with the wheels. They really ache.”

Kiara returned to the complex wall of machinery and, kneeling on the floor, rubbed grease around the joints. “Who else is here?” she asked after a while. “I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Few stay. Kaenera’s people come and go. Dybbuks usually.”

“How do dybbuks differ from wraiths?”

“Dybbuks are the soulless who died and whom Kaenera bound to him, refusing to allow them to pass on. Wraiths are those who died but chose to stay here.”

“Are there many wraiths?”

“A few. Kaenera was never interested. He always ignored us.”

“I don’t understand. How can Kaenera ignore you? He was the Gate Keeper. How did he pass the soulless through you?”

“He didn’t. That’s why most of my mechanisms are seized. I’ve only managed to keep the small gate open.”

“The small gate?”

“The one I assume you tried to go through.”

“The one with the flowers?”

Another moment of silence. “Flowers?”

“Yes. The trellis had green vines and pink flowers.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It did when I was there.”

“That’s not possible.”

Kiara shrugged and continued working. “Do you want to see if you can rotate the wheels so I can reach other bits?”

A deep groan echoed through the hall, but the wheels didn’t move. Kiara wedged her shoulder against the bracket and tried to rock the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. “Let me add some more grease,” she said, panting heavily.

It wasn’t until she was slapping on more gloop that she realised she had been able to brace against the structure. It had been solid, and so had she. She smiled as she worked. They tried again, but the mechanism was seized tight.

“Do you have any tools? Wire brushes? Looseners? Spanners? Oil?”

“There’s an old box in the sub-basement. I’m not sure what’s in it.”

“Can’t hurt to look,” Kiara replied. “Show me the way.”

Chapter 2 – Solanji – Eidolon

Solanji stared out over brackish heath and scowled at the layer of mist suffocating the land of Eidolon. Beneath the murky gloom, the fields extended in all directions, surrounding the small homestead. Rubbing her hands down her leather trousers, she was glad she had changed out of the golden robes Mav had found for her. He insisted she had every right to wear the garb of an archangel, heartsworn as she was to him and a SoulBreather to boot. No one with any sense would try to say different.

Since Mav’s ascension to Deus, she knew they were both adapting to the changes. He had many new powers he had yet to learn to control, and she was sure she had gained some in the backlash. Her ability to “read” soulmist had sharpened. In fact, if she concentrated, she didn’t have to touch the soulmist at all. It was almost as if she could read minds.

Something else to talk to Mav about. Was this her innate skill or one she was gaining from him via their bonding? She thought it might be due to Mav’s new status as a god.

She was torn between staying in Eidolon to comfort her little brother and going to Puronia to support her heartsworn. Demavrian, the man she loved and had exchanged oaths with, was more important, or so said her brother, Brennan. But she’d heard the quaver in his voice as he’d said it and saw how he’d lifted his chin in an effort to appear nonchalant.

Her brother needed time and support to recover from being soul-stripped and banished to Eidolon. Time to recover from the harrowing experience he suffered when he had tried to escape from the slave camp with some other kids and seen one of them, Bailey, nearly strangled to death while trying to help him. Bailey had died, according to Mav, but Mav had managed to resuscitate him and bring him back. Solanji shivered. Bren still had nightmares about it, which was the reason she was here with Bren and not with Mav. But Mav had suffered some life-changing events himself, and she should be with him.

Brennan was still skittish and uncertain after his ordeal. Understandably clingy, seeing as he had been abducted from his family and home, he was still adjusting to losing his soul and recovering from the hardship of being sent to a slave camp. He was only nine, and if she were being honest, he was coping reasonably well. The company of ten or so other children his age who had also been incarcerated and worked almost to death had helped to keep him occupied.

The presence of an enormous dragon had also helped to distract him from brooding on his recent experiences. Said dragon was currently rolling about in the dust like a frolicking, oversized vemlow pup, her iridescent scales gleaming in the dull light.

Vemlow’s, or vems as they were often called, roamed the forests in packs. Occasionally, a pup would be abandoned, and if you were patient enough, they could be trained to help guard the livestock. On rare occasions they became domesticated and could be very loyal companions.

Xylvin’s rider, Ryvalin, a stocky woman with a very dry sense of humour, threw her hands up in the air and stalked off, complaining about dragons who could never stay clean. An excitable group of youngsters who were fast losing any fear of the beast were slowly moving closer, their eyes huge and voices high as they argued about who would touch her first.

Solanji shook her head and smiled at them, knowing Xylvin would never harm any of them.

She grimaced. Her visit with Mav to see her mother and explain what had happened to Brennan hadn’t gone so well. Relief that her son was alive had been replaced with anger at his treatment, and then she had been overwhelmed by the news that Solanji had married a god, that she was the only SoulBreather in existence and had a dragon familiar. Maybe she had dumped too much information on her mother at once. Mav had soothed her mother’s stressed nerves, and Solanji still wondered if he had used his persuasive powers on her even though he’d sworn he had not.

The hinges of the door squealed as it opened behind her, and she turned to face it. A young girl smiled at her as she pushed her blonde, flyaway hair out of her face. The smile didn’t reach her deep blue eyes, and her sharp face was gaunt, a result of her recent incarceration in the same slave camp as Brennan. Shandra was the eldest of all the orphans. She was calm and collected, her responsibility for the other kids giving her a certain weight that hadn’t lifted with Solanji and Ryvalin keeping her company.

Dark shadows swirled around her in place of the golden soulmist people usually had; a shadowsoul. Somehow, Mav had given his fledglings shadowsouls, the same as his. Only, he didn’t know how he had done it, another thing he needed to figure out. She wished he could give Brennan a shadowsoul; at least then, he could return to Angelicus and go home.

No. That was her job. She needed to find Brennan’s soul in all the hundreds, no, thousands of souls stored in the citadel.

“Has anyone plucked up the courage yet?” Shandra asked, gesturing at the dragon.

 “All talk so far.”

Shandra laughed, and Solanji was glad to hear it. There had been little laughter in the last week, such a contrast to her previous visits. All the children had been scarred by their experiences.

She wished her mother had agreed to come to Eidolon to see Brennan, but she had been petrified by Solanji’s golden dragon, Ellaria, and more terrified of the idea of visiting Eidolon. Solanji huffed under her breath. Ellaria was a fraction of the size of Xylvin and not at all threatening.

The soulless couldn’t survive in Angelicus for more than twenty-four turns of the timepiece. Only those with soulmist could live in Angelicus—another reason why she should be in Puronia. She should be searching the citadel for Brennan’s soul so she could return it to him and he could go home.

Rubbing her face, she joined Shandra at the bench on the veranda. “How are you doing?” she asked as she sat.

“Fine,” Shandra said as she always did.

“Ryvalin or I could take you to the citadel to see the others if you wanted.”

“I can’t leave the little ones.”

Solanji thought it was time she did. She and Mav had found a new house mother to care for the orphans—an older couple, grey haired and comfortable. They had never been able to have their own children, but they showered affection on the youngsters, and after a month, the children began to respond. The kids shouldn’t be the responsibility of a girl barely seventeen.

“They need a bit of stability for a while, something they know,” Shandra said as if reading her mind. “Too many changes at once would upset them.”

“You must miss Kerris, Muntra, and Bailey,” Solanji said, naming the other fledglings currently in Puronia.

“Of course I do. But I know they are safe with Mav.” Shandra’s lip trembled, and Solanji knew it was because of Kiara, the one member of their little family they had lost in the slave compound. Kiara had died in an explosion she had set that went wrong, and now she was a wraith lingering in the halls of the Oblivion Gate. Mav said she was his Gate Wraith, and she would help him look after the Oblivion Gate. Solanji wasn’t quite sure whether she believed him. She didn’t think the fledglings believed Kiara was still in the Gate, either, They never spoke of her.

A squeal of laughter made her look over her shoulder. The kids had brought buckets of water from the stream and were now washing the dragon. Well, the bits they could reach, such as her very long tail and her snout, which was lying flat on the ground.

Xylvin’s eyes were half-lidded, and she rumbled with pleasure as the children scrubbed. Solanji spotted her brother scratching Xylvin’s eye ridge, and she smiled. His face wore a peaceful expression as he leaned against her. He looked tiny beside the dragon, and Solanji’s stomach fluttered at how vulnerable he seemed next to the dragon’s bulk. Her vision misted, and she hurriedly blinked back tears. She had nearly lost him. “Now, that is not a sight you see every day,” she said.

“They will miss her when she leaves.”

“They’ll have the chickens and goats to look after,” Solanji replied.

Shandra huffed. “No comparison.”

Solanji chuckled.

Mrs Bridges came out of the house with a hessian bag and a bowl in her hands. “There you are. Would you mind shelling these beans for me?” Her gaze landed on the dragon, and she paled. “Why are those children near that beast?”

“Xylvin is harmless.” Solanji said. “The kids are having fun.”

Mrs Bridges shuddered. “It’s unnatural. It will be better for all of us when they leave.” She shoved the bag at Shandra, placed the bowl on the table, and shuffled back into the house, muttering under her breath.

Shandra watched her go and then sighed. “Maybe it is time for new beginnings,” she said as she emptied the sack on the table and began shucking beans.

Solanji leaned forward to help, but she was interrupted as her familiar, Ellaria, appeared beside her. Ellaria was a glowing golden dragon who made the veranda creak as she landed on the wooden boards with a soft thud. She was daintier than Xylvin, more ethereal, with softer spines and flowing tendrils, and a fraction of the size, but she still had a considerable weight to her.

“Mav needs us,” Ellaria said without any preamble through their mind link.

She stood and glanced over at her brother. He was still engrossed in the dragon, but Xylvin had raised her eyelids and was watching Solanji and Ellaria. “Tell Brennan I’ll be back soon,” Solanji said, and Ellaria must have reassured Xylvin because the immense dragon closed her eyes again. Ellaria draped herself around Solanji and they disappeared.

Shandra blinked at the empty veranda, shook her head, and then continued shelling the beans.

Preorder OblivionGate here.