For An Uncertain Future

Three short stories from the universe of For Love of Their Children

By: Jason Dias

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Three stories of epic fantasy, each in their way grim and bloody. Set in a world of shapeshifting jaguars and bronze-age slavemasters, of chimeric monsters hardly worse than the princes that hunt them, of degradation and decadence, these stories tell of people striving to avoid the crushing feet of destiny, or to become kings and gods. Writing For Love of Their Children was an obsessive pursuit. I wrote nine thousand words a day. I spent every free moment contemplating the story. The characters were more real to me than my family. That first novel in the series brought a world to life both on paper and inside my head. There was not room in the story to show you the mysterious forests of Lurk, or the northlands of Sorub with their forge-towns and animistic spirits. What I missed most was the chance to show where the most troubling of the characters came from. King Ynn’s apparently psychopathic behavior towards his own children is a paradoxical love I understand. I hope it troubles the reader, nags at her, but I also want to give Ynn a chance to defend himself. No villain is only a villain. We are all the heroes of our own stories. The dreadful things he does go to serve a higher purpose. In To Honor His Teachings, we get a glimpse of that purpose, as well as some of the inner workings of Hitaian politics. Mithodroxes flits in and out of the story, driven by some otherworldly knowledge. She has alien motives. She can hardly explain them. But she came from somewhere. She was a child once. In To Spare Her the Guilt, we see how her slip out of the world and into the embrace of her alien god affected her family, and we get to see her last human choice. It is her shadow that forever after falls over the other characters. And then we have Zilda, equally driven. For Love of Their Children hints at her antecedents. In To Bring the World Order, we see how she arrived at her first command and what was at stake. In the jungles of Lurk, it becomes clear what drives her to the standoff at the Starfall that changes the fates of everyone there. The universe of Because of Her Shadow is grim and violent and also full of a paradoxical hope. Please enjoy these offerings.