I don't believe the novel will actually be called Munera (that's the same of the overall trilogy), but I haven't come up with names yet for the individual books.
Prologue
Kutho had traveled seven days to reach the city. His journey would have been shorter if he’d taken a direct path, but previous encounters with humans had taught him caution. He avoided human-made roads, instead weaving through trees and relying on the stars and planets and his ability to sense the magic of the earth to guide him. He killed birds and picked berries and dug for roots. When he slept, it was in shifts that never lasted more than three hours—and at the first sign of humanity, whether smoke winding across the horizon or footprints in leaf litter or a row of felled trees, he turned and ran as far as he could in the opposite direction. With all those obstacles, he was lucky to have reached the city as quickly as he had.
Now he stood at its brink, gazing upon it. The humans’ city lay in a bowl-shaped basin, formerly the holy crater Simido. The dark fumes smothering the crater bottom, and the metal rails and roads slicing across it, made Kutho’s nose wrinkle in disgust. But nothing offended him more than the spire jutting from the center of the bowl, like a knife in an open wound. Before the humans had come, such structures had not existed. Kutho had to admit that he found it a little awe-inspiring. No matter how far he craned his neck, he couldn’t see where the spire ended because it vanished into the pearly pre-dawn clouds. The spire resembled a perverse crystalline tree, complete with branches radiating in every direction. Unlike an actual tree, the branches bore no fruit: instead, they were each tipped with an enormous platform laden with buildings and streets and houses. It was a wonder that the branches didn’t snap in half under the weight. No doubt magic kept them peacefully floating—human magic. Kutho had never encountered human magic before, but now he understood what the elders meant when they said that it relied on trickery and defying nature, unlike the magic of the Icim, which worked in tandem with streams and rivers and the currents of the sky.
He breathed deeply and stepped forward. He’d lucked out; this area didn’t contain any guards or checkpoints. A few hundred yards to his right, using his superior night vision, he made out the pacing figures of human guards armed with stun-sticks. Knowing humans, they probably wouldn’t notice him until he was within spans of them, but it never hurt to be cautious. He bent his knees, preparing to slide down the sides of the crater and into the city.
Just before he reached the edge, he backed off—he’d sensed...something. It quivered in his spirit lines like the heaviness in the air before a thunderstorm. But it couldn’t be a thunderstorm because the clouds were growing thinner and wispier: not storm weather.
Well, it didn’t matter. The guard was heading his direction. If he didn’t act now, he’d lose his chance entirely—and his mission would fail before it had started. He gazed at the sun rising in a haze of pink dawn, letting the early morning breeze whisper past his cheeks. Then he walked, step by cautious step, to the edge of the bowl. The earth was firm and solid and warm beneath his feet, comforting him. Even when everything else had turned upside down, the sky and earth remained the same. Would comfort him because he was Icim and he ultimately belonged to it.
Kutho threw himself forward, into the city.
Fire surged down his limbs and the air around him crackled like lightning. A strangled cry burst from his lungs. He twisted like a snared rabbit, trying to avoid the pain, but he couldn’t; it surrounded him, it was in the air itself. A thousand rough hands raking him this way and that.
Was he going to fail now? Had he come all this way, only to die?
But for Sazuk’s sake, he must live.
He must.
Chapter One: A New Contract
By the time Ren finished work, the sky was already black. What little sky that was visible through the oily haze enveloping the Bowl, anyway. She hurried through the streets, hoping that her messy short hair, tiny stature, and ragged factory uniform would dissuade unwanted attention, but one could never be sure after the sun went down in the Garment District.
Her heart pounded in time with the thud of her steps. She followed a path that had been burned in her memory since three years ago, when she’d first started working at the factory. Although she could walk it with her eyes closed, she still focused on every bend, every shadowed corner. Once, almost two years ago, she had gotten mugged on a payday. The subsequent two weeks had been the most desperate of her life; even now, the cries of her starving brothers crept into her ears if she stayed idle for too long Ever since then, Ren tensed upon every shift in the shadows, every distant scurrying sound.
Soon she would arrive home. She wasn’t looking forward to it. At home, she would have to prepare dinner and then she would have to shower and help her brothers finish their homework and put the youngest, Lepo, to bed—he was terrified of monsters—and after finally falling asleep, she would have to wake up at four next morning and repeat another sixteen-hour work day. It would be so much easier if she didn’t have to worry about Rau and Lepo, but lately they, Rau especially, had taken a direction of which she did not approve. She always told them to finish their homework before she returned, but she counted herself lucky if they’d even pulled their books out of their school bags.
Ren knew that her predicament wasn’t unusual for a young woman in the Garment District, but sometimes it felt that way. Sure, many of her coworkers were orphans as well, but few had to support siblings too young to work. They looked down on Ren for her supposed obsession with counting money, but they didn’t know what it was like to barely cover their rent, let alone buy food and clothes and other necessities for three people. It would have been much better if Rau and Lepo understood her hardship, but they were too young.
By Garment District standards, this street was relatively safe. Lined with small shops and mail offices and the district’s two tamest drinkhouses (they were frequented by old people who reminisced about the days when farms, not factories, populated Arxia’s Bowl), it could even be called neighborly. Even then, it maintained a collection of brothels and strip clubs, including the most expensive one in the district, which boasted macor women as well as humans. Ren hurried past them every time their luridly colored signs rose from the gloom ahead. A pack of rowdy young men always congregated outside them, and they enjoying throwing catcalls at anything vaguely female-looking that came near. Ren felt the same discomfort whenever she passed one of the district’s many streetwalkers—too easily, that girl in the low-cut artisilk robe could have been her. She was lucky to have been offered a factory job, even if the pay was terrible and the overseer…
Not that there was anything wrong with Demman as a person; he was known as a fair, even kind, factory owner. But he was also old and lonely, and he had never entirely lost his sex drive. About every three months he propositioned to a different girl, and now that his latest comfort woman had left him, he was desperately seeking another.
He had chosen Ren.
Ren didn’t want to admit that his offer was tantalizing: he promised raising her wages, giving her shorter hours, making sure her brothers were fed, even invited her to live in his home. How often had she longed that somebody else would take care of her? That someone would take her increasingly uncontrollable brothers off her hands, so she wouldn’t have to choose between food and fuel in the winter. So she wouldn’t have to spend hours stitching the hems of fashionable tunics that she could never afford. From what she’d gleaned from the feeds and popular literature, most sixteen-year-old girls worried about shopping and boys, not supporting their families. If Ren took up Demman’s offer, she could join their ranks.
But Demman was old and morbidly obese. Ren couldn’t even conceive of faking attraction to him. And he was fickle. His workers considered him faithful if he managed to stay with a girl for half a year. Sooner or later, Demman would tire of Ren and set her aside and she’d be left with nothing—if anything, less than what she’d had before, because her fellow workers would ostracize her. Employers didn’t approve of worker solidarity, but nothing changed the fact that workers resented those who cozied up to their bosses for money.
But then what are you going to do? Are you going to let them starve? You promised that Rau wouldn’t join you at the factory next year. You must do something. Something…
Ren’s breath unconsciously hitched as she approached Wild Side, the brothel with macor. The typical group of young men gathered outside its doors, passing a berda stick among them; purple smoke billowed from its tip. Ren recognized most of them as former classmates. They had all once been friends with her cousin Delk, before Delk had become district Munera champion.
His friends were trying to break into Munera as well, which was why some of them were accompanied by macor. Not the graceful creatures in tournament advertisements, but hulking beings: one reminded Ren of a turtle standing upright, another of a mud pit given humanoid form. Ren tried not to glare at them as she hurried past. She believed that conditions in the Bowl would greatly improve if fewer young men were infatuated with Munera and flooded its ranks in the hopes of rising to the Spire. Almost none were good enough, so they just lounged around and smoked berda and got drunk. Even those who managed to become rich remained in the district for lack of an agent, sucking up valuable land and resources into maintaining their tacky mansions.
Ren picked up her pace. Some nights she managed to avoid this group, but more often she didn’t. Hoping they wouldn’t recognize her, she kept her head down and walked fast, and sent a prayer to Avesi, the god of travelers, to grant her safe passage.
Apparently not tonight. One of the boys, Sadra, shouted, “Hey look, if it ain’t Renren!”
Ren ignored them. She walked faster, kicking up small clouds of dust behind her.
“Renren!” the hollers chased after her. “Why don’cha get a macor? Or even a boyfriend? Maybe that’d make you less uptight, what you say?”
Ignore them, that’s just the berda talking, ignore them… But Ren’s heart tightened with rage and she longed to run back to them and beat them senseless. Once, she had fought them, but that had been in primary school when they’d all been equally small. Now the shortest was a head taller than her and all were much stronger, bursting with muscles that they’d honed over years of construction work. They could hurt her in worse ways than taunting.
“I’ll be your boyfriend, Renren! Just kiddin’, maybe if you actually grew somethin’ on your chest—”
“Heey, how ‘bout coming to the tourney this weekend? Bet you’re the kind who gets off on making yourself suffer, huh?”
“Least you should come to wish Delk luck!”
Their shouts grew fainter and fainter the further she walked. She quivered with rage but she tried to think of her parents, of Mama and Papa now riding the winds with the gods. They would be proud of her. They never liked it when she or her brothers fought and they’d always looked down on the Munera hopefuls too. “Here and now, here and now,” had been Papa’s favorite phrase. And on that, Ren would focus. Not on a rage about which she could do nothing, but the present. On brothers who needed to be fed and clothed. On rent that needed to be paid.
She left the street and turned into a side alley. All streets in the Garment District were narrow, but this one was little more than a line of dirt between two rows of rickety tenement buildings. It wasn’t wide enough for Ren to spread her arms. The sudden darkness almost made her jump, even though she had expected it. At least the street was lined with old gas lanterns, though only half worked; here, the only lights came from windows scattered across the buildings’ dark edifices.
Ren gripped the front of her tunic and clung to the straps of her bag with her other hand. Holding on to something gave her a sense of security, however small. The sour-sweet reek of garbage drifted like ghosts in the still air. She plunged forward.
Someone materialized out of the gloom in front of her. Ren jumped back, too surprised to scream.
She gazed into the eyes of a young man. He was perhaps Delk’s height, but unlike the stringy Delk he was well-built and muscled. His skin, a few shades lighter than hers, almost glowed. He looked at Ren from beneath a mop of wild golden hair, a color that she’d never seen naturally in Arxia.
Nothing astonished Ren more than his eyes. They were wide, and a vibrant golden green. And their pupils were slits, like a cat’s.
He was beautiful, inhumanly so. Thinking that sent a shiver down Ren’s spine and a blush to her face; she felt a curious mix of too hot and too cold. She tore her eyes from his toned, well-sculpted, and completely naked body.
But he also didn’t seem real. Flat and washed-out, more like a picture than a flesh-and-blood being. Ren blinked a few times, and as she did she made out a faint haziness around his edges, and she realized that he was translucent too: the alleyway was just barely visible through him.
Was he a ghost? A messenger from the gods? She didn’t know, nor did she care. Her bones ached. She just wanted to go home already…no doubt her brothers were growing impatient. Scared, even. Ren took a brave step forward.
The figure flickered like a feed image, and then he spoke. His voice echoed in Ren’s head, and she had the feeling no one but her could hear him. Or see him, for that matter.
“Why do you let them do that?”
“Excuse me?” Ren said.
“Those men. Why do you let them say those things?” The boy’s expression didn’t change, which bothered Ren. His gaze should have been at least as accusing as his words, but it wasn’t.
“I can’t,” Ren said. Pathetically, she was trying to speak to this bizarre image. “They’re so big and strong, I mean, I…”
Her voice trailed off.
“They shouldn’t say those things,” the boy said.
“Well, I agree, but—”
“They ought to respect you,” the boy went on. His eyes bored, unblinking, into hers. “You’re a shaman. They ought to respect you.”
“Hold on! What? A shaman?” said Ren. “What are you talking about?”
The boy sighed. “But you’re a human, so I don’t expect you to understand… How can a human be a shaman? I don’t understand it either.”
A thrill of dread coursed down Ren’s spine. You’re a human… He said it as if he hadn’t expected Ren to be human. Because he wasn’t human himself. Ren looked back at him, at his glowing skin and cat-like eyes and she realized it. Her mind screamed against the notion—it was insane, impossible—but everything fell into place, clicking together with perfect logic.
“You’re a macor,” she said.
“A what?” the boy said.
“What?” Ren was stumped again.
“Macor…” The boy’s tone became contemplative. “Ahh…like a makhorre? Is that what you mean? Is that what you humans call us? That’s pathetic…”
“What do you mean, shamans and mack-hor? Are you even real?” Well, that would be easy to test. She’d just have to walk through him. But even though he was obviously an image, she had the feeling that something bad would happen if she did that.
This is stupid. I just want to go home. I don’t want anything to do with Munera and macor…maybe I’m hallucinating.
“You have questions of your own to answer!” the boy said. “Why are you a shaman if you’re a human? Humans can’t be shamans.”
“I’m not a shaman! I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ren shouted, and she gathered all her bravery and charged at him.
She flew through him as easily as air. Her momentum carried her further forward than she’d planned and she fell onto her palms and knees into the dust. When she turned around, she no longer saw him. The alley was dark and silent behind her, without even a residual glow.
A hallucination, then, she thought.
How stupid of her. Ren resumed walking down the alley, a little slower now because her knees ached from the impact. As soon as she got home she was going to make sure that Rau and Lepo stopped talking about Munera altogether. It was clearly affecting her sanity.
A little ways down the alley, she made out a dark form huddled in the dirt. Ren’s eyes narrowed. A passed-out drunkard? Usually the drunks kept to the other side of the tenement, where there was a little lawn—however small and dry—on which they liked to sleep. Perhaps someone who’d gotten knocked out in a fight? Or worse…someone who had been killed.
Unconsciously, Ren breathed faster. She quickened her pace, both anticipating and dreading what she would see. For some reason, her palm started to itch like a mosquito had bitten it; Ren massaged the dry skin, wondering if the itch came from her tumble. She focused on the itch instead of the sickening turmoil inside her head and chest. Anything to ground her in the real world, instead of the world of fears and fancies.
Ren came upon the body. She gazed down at it, disbelieving.
It was a male body, naked, encrusted with half-dried blood and spotted with bruises. Huge, dark bruises forming impossible patterns. Ren had seen this pattern only once, but recognized it instantly. The telltale sign of someone who had tried to break through Arxia’s shield ward. That time, she had seen them on a man who had attempted sneaking out of the city. He’d died the instant he had hit the ward. But this person must have held on for a very long time after his failed effort: there were three districts between the edge and the Garment District.
The bruises weren’t the only injury he sported. Long, deep gashes, most of them crusted over, covered his chest, and though his muscles were hard and firm, his skin held a pallid cast, as if he was ill. And his chest…his chest was…moving? That couldn’t be right. Ren dropped to her knees in front of him, not close enough to touch, but enough so that she could see better. See the faint up and down motion of his chest. It was barely there, but still there.
He had jumped the ward, and he had survived.
Ren shuffled closer, desperate to see his face. Whoever he was, he had to be either very brave or very stupid. But strong. Infinitely strong. Was he dangerous? And why did he seem so familiar?
Ren got her answer when her gaze fell upon his face. His eyes were closed, but his curtain of tousled hair, too bright in dull shadows, said everything.
He was the macor she had hallucinated minutes ago.
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Of course comments of all sorts are welcome, but I am curious as to whether this is too raunchy, I would say, for a Young Adult novel? I know that YA novels do deal with sexuality and bad language, but the fantasy ones always seem a little cleaner than the high school ones. So I'm wondering if the characters' cursing and sexual references are too overt.
If you are so inclined, you may follow my work on the novel here: page.php?id=737.
Keep writing, cause I'll read! 
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