Magazine

Elijah Millegan

Dune and The Lord of the Rings

The preference for Frank Herbert's Dune over J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is, admittedly, a matter of literary temperament as much as critical judgment. Both are monumental achievements, both have exercised enormous influence upon modern imaginative literature, and both possess the kind of mythic gravitas that has secured them a permanent place in the cultural imagination. Yet for many readers, Dune stands as the more intellectually formidable, psychologically intricate, and philosophically resonant work. Where Tolkien offers a vast and luminous mythology rooted in moral clarity, Herbert constructs a far more unstable, ambiguous, and disquieting universe, one that does not merely enchant the reader, but interrogates him. If The Lord of the Rings is a cathedral, noble and harmonious in its design, then Dune is a labyrinthine citadel of prophecy, politics, ecology, and power. It does not simply tell a grand story; it anatomizes civilization itself.

One of the most compelling reasons that Dune may be considered superior is its astonishing intellectual density. Tolkien's achievement is primarily mythopoeic: he created a secondary world of extraordinary linguistic, historical, and cultural coherence. Middle-earth feels ancient because Tolkien endowed it with genealogies, languages, songs, and legends that suggest immense temporal depth. Yet the purpose of this intricate architecture is largely atmospheric and moral. The world exists to support an epic struggle between good and evil, humility and domination, loyalty and treachery. Herbert, by contrast, constructs a fictional universe whose very mechanisms demand sustained intellectual engagement. In Dune, religion, imperialism, resource scarcity, messianism, genetics, economics, environmental adaptation, and political manipulation are not decorative background elements; they are the substance of the narrative. The novel asks its reader not merely to observe a world, but to understand its systems.

This systemic sophistication gives Dune an urgency that feels uncannily modern. Tolkien's work, for all its magnificence, is nostalgic in orientation. It mourns diminishment, industrial desecration, and the fading of older forms of nobility. Its emotional power derives in part from its elegiac sensibility, from the sense that beauty is passing out of the world. Herbert's imagination moves in the opposite direction. He is not lamenting what has been lost so much as examining what human beings become under pressure: under ecological pressure, political pressure, historical pressure, and metaphysical pressure. Dune therefore feels less like a remembrance of a vanished age and more like a speculative diagnosis of humanity's future. It is not merely immersive; it is analytical. It compels reflection on charisma, fanaticism, empire, and survival in ways that remain disturbingly relevant.

Another point in Herbert's favor is his treatment of power. Tolkien understands power primarily as temptation and corruption, embodied most memorably in the One Ring. This is morally potent and symbolically elegant, but it is also comparatively singular. Power in The Lord of the Rings is often metaphysical and ethical: a force that seduces, deforms, and destroys moral integrity. In Dune, however, power is diffuse, institutional, hereditary, performative, economic, religious, and ecological all at once. The Padishah Emperor, the Great Houses, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Fremen, and the CHOAM corporation all participate in overlapping structures of influence and control. No one possesses uncomplicated sovereignty; everyone is entangled in networks of dependence and coercion. This makes Herbert's political imagination feel immeasurably more nuanced. He understands that domination is seldom exercised by one obvious evil object or one singular dark lord. It is embedded in bureaucracies, myths, bloodlines, markets, and collective belief.

This complexity also enriches Herbert's central protagonist. Frodo Baggins is a memorable and moving character, admirable in his endurance, vulnerability, and sacrificial burden. Yet he is not especially complex in an intellectual or strategic sense; his greatness lies in moral persistence. Paul Atreides, by contrast, is one of the most fascinating protagonists in speculative fiction precisely because he is not allowed the consolations of innocence. He is at once heir, exile, mystic, tactician, symbol, and catastrophe. He does not merely carry history; he becomes a mechanism through which history accelerates into violence. His ascent is inseparable from foreknowledge, manipulation, and dread. Herbert's refusal to present Paul as a straightforward hero is one of the great strengths of Dune. The reader is invited to admire him, fear him, pity him, and mistrust him simultaneously. This moral and psychological ambivalence gives the novel an extraordinary depth. Tolkien's heroes are often noble because they resist power; Herbert's are tragic because they cannot disentangle themselves from it.

The prose style of the two authors also reveals an important distinction. Tolkien writes with stately beauty, and at his best he achieves a sonorous, archaic grandeur of immense charm. His cadences can be liturgical; his landscapes often shimmer with mythic radiance. Yet this elevated register can also become ceremonious, even inert, especially for readers less enamored of prolonged description or antiquarian texture. Herbert's prose is less conventionally beautiful, but it is more tensile, compressed, and idea-laden. It possesses a severity that suits his subject matter. He writes as though every conversation conceals multiple stratagems, every ritual encodes political meaning, and every phrase may participate in a larger design. This creates a peculiar intensity. The language in Dune does not simply describe; it insinuates. It often feels as though the book is thinking in real time.

Perhaps the most decisive advantage of Dune, however, lies in its philosophical ambition. The Lord of the Rings is undergirded by a profound moral vision, shaped by Tolkien's Catholic imagination and his reverence for courage, mercy, and providence. But its metaphysics are essentially stable. Good and evil are meaningfully distinguishable, and despite sorrow and devastation, the moral architecture of the universe remains intelligible. Herbert offers no such reassurance. Dune is a novel of epistemological instability. It asks whether prescience is a gift or a prison, whether messiahs save or destroy, whether human beings ever govern history or merely submit to forces they dimly apprehend. It distrusts heroes, distrusts institutions, distrusts certainty itself. The result is a work of fiction that does not comfort the reader with moral resolution, but rather unsettles him with paradox.

Herbert's ecological imagination is another arena in which Dune surpasses Tolkien. Tolkien loves landscape with deep feeling; his forests, rivers, mountains, and fields are charged with memory and sanctity. Nature in his work is beloved, sometimes personified, often threatened. Yet Herbert treats ecology not sentimentally but scientifically and civilizationally. Arrakis is not simply a setting; it is an organismic totality, a harsh environmental logic that shapes religion, warfare, culture, economy, and consciousness. The Fremen are who they are because of water discipline, desert adaptation, and the rituals of scarcity. Spice is not merely a magical substance; it is the pivot on which empire turns, a resource around which all structures of exploitation and dependency are organized. Herbert understands that environment is not scenery. It is destiny, constraint, and political fact. This gives Dune a degree of material seriousness rare in epic fiction.

It is also difficult to ignore the extraordinary originality of Herbert's synthesis. Tolkien perfected and, in many respects, codified the grammar of modern fantasy. His influence is so immense that it can be difficult to separate the originality of his work from the familiarity of its descendants. But Herbert's achievement feels stranger, riskier, and less easily assimilated. He fused far-future science fiction with feudal politics, Islamic and Middle Eastern resonances, Zen-inflected introspection, systems theory, and anti-colonial subtext into something genuinely singular. Dune does not merely refine an inherited mode; it invents a new imaginative vocabulary. Its world is not comforting in its recognizability. It is alien, ceremonial, and severe, and that very strangeness contributes to its power.

None of this is to deny the magnificence of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's work possesses emotional purity, mythic splendor, and a sincerity that can feel almost sacramental. Its friendship, pathos, and sense of loss have moved generations of readers, and rightly so. But for those who seek a work that is more intellectually challenging, more politically sophisticated, more morally ambiguous, and more philosophically audacious, Dune offers a richer feast. Tolkien gives us an epic of endurance against darkness. Herbert gives us an epic of civilization under the pressure of its own beliefs, appetites, and delusions. Tolkien reassures us that humility may resist corruption; Herbert warns us that even salvation can become a machinery of ruin.

In the final reckoning, Dune may be said to surpass The Lord of the Rings not because it is warmer, lovelier, or more spiritually consoling, but because it is more difficult, more searching, and more dangerous. It does not merely transport the reader to another world; it returns him to this one with sharpened suspicion toward prophecy, empire, hero-worship, and certainty. It is a novel that expands after one has finished it, growing more unsettling as its implications unfold in the mind. The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece of mythic recovery. Dune is a masterpiece of intellectual provocation. And for readers who prize complexity over comfort, ambiguity over assurance, and inquiry over reverence, Herbert's desert epic stands not just as an alternative to Tolkien's legendarium, but as its more penetrating and formidable counterpart.

Joey Maillet

Of the Good Life of Man

"In the awareness of the eternal question: 'why?' The person must be able to direct that self-awareness and painful yearning to something higher than himself. To God. Who became flesh and suffered as we do," (Monk Damascene Christensen). When faced with the world and the 'life' it offers and the soul's personhood is awakened for the first time, 'I am' is found not to be a sufficient answer to 'why I am.' The irony detected in this reflection is acute. For God, the very reason for why and who by we are, identifies himself by these very words. The source and summit of the real is marked by the same words we use to discern ourselves. The purpose for the person is not found in the person. Those who look to themselves for meaning and ignore the miracle of their own existence are lukewarm. They neither fear nor hate God but simply don't bother to think of Him. It is these of whom Christ says, "Because you are neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth," (Rev 3:16).

In the heat or chill of the world to which the soul is oriented, the person experiences this spiritual temperature as love. Either they love God and are filled with the fire of the Spirt, or they freeze in the dark vacuum of Nihilism, refusing to be warmed through the grace by which they exist. These are the ends of life that are not lukewarm. What kind of life are they? The frozen world of Nihilism ends in a dark tragedy while the soul oriented towards God finds its summit in death, rather than its doom. Looking forward to death, as Gandalf puts it: "Just another path, one that we all must take," the Christian's world faces an entirely different direction than the death fearing worldly man, who believes in nothing beyond his own senses. One life is that of joy, the other of fear. Many such examples of lives lived in these contradictory worlds can be seen in the great tale of human literature. In which a man portrays a projection of a world through a character. Each individual acts as he believes. As he views the world. From the actions of these characters, we discern their perceived reality and from their death, know if their life was good or bad, comedic, or tragic. The truth of life is that uttered by Monk Damascene in the opening of this oration. Three great works of literature that demonstrate the reality of his claim are "A Good Man is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor, "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and "Leisure: The Basis of Culture," by Josef Pieper.

"'It's no real pleasure in life,' spoke the Misfit." These last words in A Good Man is Hard to Find unveil the meaning of the whole text. Nihilism. It is in opposition to all that is Good because it denies that even Good exists. As a transcendental of being, denying good quickly becomes the denial of beauty, truth, the minds that behold them, and even existence itself. The resulting paradox of nothingness envelopes the entirety of the human soul. "For the soul cannot deny its own existence," (Justin Marler). Nothing, by its very nature, cannot exist. It is the lack of existence. So, to say nothing is the only thing, is absurd. So turns the soul. Without any meaning or even certainty of the actual, the soul's despair corrupts itself. If it is not purified of this evil, then the downward spiral of insanity overwhelms. Absurdity is no longer absurd because all is one in nothing. The confusion and pain from not only the unsatisfaction of the longing for more, but from the cold killing of the conscience envelopes the soul. Any action is like another as they are all equally nonexistent. The unlivable conditions the soul in this state result in the Misfit of Flannery O'Connor. A man so awash with pain that he denies the existence of pleasure as a whole and who has no issues with committing any evil action because nothing truly matters. The Misfit is an escaped convict who had killed a vehicle of people before coming upon the characters of the story, a family of five and their grandmother. After killing them and taking their belongings, he utters his infamous statement as a rejection of the pleasure his psychopathic companions get from murder. He is unfazed by his brutality and the only thing to shake his sense of acting like murder is normal, is the name of Jesus, who he says, "thrown everything off balance." He knows Jesus as he was a Gospel singer once, but with his current state of affairs, he knows that Jesus is the one man who can offer a solution, as He is the only man who defied death. This is why the Misfit's life is a tragedy. Because he knows Christ but orients himself toward nothingness and falsity because it's easier for him to ignore the pain and lack of purpose than to take responsibility for his actions which he says he "forget what I done." His life is a tragedy because it will have a tragic end: death in a prison or even death row separated from Christ. The Good Man in this story is indeed hard to find because he never speaks a word. Jesus Christ, asking of the Misfit through the Grandmother to accept the truth he denies and take the advice of Monk Damascene: "direct that self-awareness and painful yearning to something higher than himself. To God." The God who conquered the death that haunts the Misfit every day of his being. To make suffering redemptive and death glory is something the Misfit cannot accept because these agents have wounded him too dearly. For the Misfit, "Life is Pain," should be acknowledged as a universal truth of how miserable and meaningless life is. However, in the real, God has made pain a good and a great means for meaning and reaching it. For it was by God's "stripes we were healed," (Is 53:5).

Struggling to find meaning without literally anything is the great trope of Nihilism. Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov possesses this same dilemma. Denying the warming grace of God in the frozen land of Russia and the problem of evil, Ivan watches on as his crazed brother Dimitri kills their father Fyodor Pavlovich over a woman that loves neither of them, and his brother Alyosha live a heroic lay monastic life that lies on the opposite side of reality from Ivan. The famous poem The Grand Inquisitor is uttered as part of a longer dissertation by Ivan while he attempts to explain his excuse for disbelief to Alyosha, all the while demonstrating that without belief in Christ, life is unlivable. It is from this part of the much larger The Brothers Karamazov that will be discussed in this oration and all citations pertaining to that text come from book 5, chapter 5, of it. Ivan chiefly considers three things he considers to be evil. Pain, Suffering, and Freedom, and the relationship between them that he considers to be a mark against Christ. He writes: "There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship." Ivan recognizes the caricature of man to yearn toward the higher and how when removed from that higher will make one for himself either in an idol, himself, or despair at nothing like the Misfit. The only thing lacking from Ivan's assessment is perfection in pain. That through the pain of the human soul longing for perfection, we find perfection in the only thing that is perfect. God. As Aquinas writes, "God is the first principle... and therefore most perfect," (Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Q4, Article 1). Man seeks for something to ground himself and his experience in. A first principle that by its nature must be undeniable and good, so that it may hold everything else that is good up. This task is only accomplished by God and when perfection is sought of something material, it is natural that this leads to chaos of mind and intense disappointment. The atheist is disappointed in life because he has killed life's purpose and knows not what to do now. This explains Ivan's character. He sees his pain as evil and thus loses sight of the perfect in it. Through Christ's pain on the cross, all were redeemed to be perfect once again, if only they take the cross of pain and follow Christ.

This is the greatest fault of Ivan, who sees this freedom as evil and an enemy of greater good. He fails to understand that without this freedom there comes no virtue or love at all. "That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves." Ivan is thoroughly convinced that in man's seeking perfection, there is a conflict with the world. This is indeed true, like many Russian philosophers of his time Ivan recognizes the problems and questions of importance but fails to answer them correctly. Ivan believes that either man is fed, or he is free. He reasons as if this were a completely exclusive disjunction. Having rejected Christ because Christ choose "Man does not live by bread alone," (Lk 4:4). He fails to properly analyze this response from Christ. Ivan reasons that this shows that God values man's freedom over his material wellbeing. What it really shows is that Ivan missed the second half of Christ's response. "... but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God," (Mt 4:4). God values man's soul more than his flesh for the flesh fades and is nourished by mere bread, while the soul is nourished by spiritual bread, which is Christ Himself. What Christ means by not living by bread alone lies in man, not bread, like Ivan would have us believe. Man is a body soul composite. He longs for the spiritual because he is not meant for this world. "The world is the ship, not thy home," according to St. Therese of Lisieux. The soul of man must be nurtured by God so that upon the death of its body it may enjoy the perfect freedom that is the love of God. Ivan's fundamental assumption that man cannot be free and be fed is false also. For in Christ all men are one body. "Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and were all made to drink of one Spirit," (1Cor 12:13). By Christ men do share bread, every Sunday at the very least. It is only in Christ that peace is possible, and that man may be saved. In Peter's words: "Peace to all of you that are in Christ," (1 Peter 5:14). Pain and suffering will never cease to be because they are good, and the great way of salvation came by them. The only hope for the world Ivan desires is in Christ and rejecting Christ he kills the good the world needs. "At last, in this Death, there is perfect peace," (Justin Marler). The ironic tragedy of killing the very good you seek is at the heart of Ivan Fyodorovich. His meaning, centered at man's well-being, will ultimately fail, perhaps even sooner than the Misfits for man will destroy himself before even nothing ceases to be.

Accepting Christ is the cornerstone to the Good Life. With this as the center, how then shall man make his life? Christ says in Mark 8:34 that "Any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." To take up the cross of painful reality and bear it proudly as the sign of victory. As a quality, this is the virtue of Humility. As an action, seeing things as they truly are and making life one contemplation of the Good is defined by Josef Pieper as Leisure. Leisure is as one of those Greek words that holds so much meaning that it cannot be translated except as a concept. Leisure is "the receptive attitude of mind" (Josef Pieper), actively passive, simply beholding reality as it really is. Experience Simplicitor. "The steeping of oneself in the whole of creation," (Ibid). It must be understood that this is the Good Life. Labor for Christ and loving intensely all that he has made as good, simply because it is good, recognizing the good through leisure. A Christ centered life of humble leisure, taking all as a gift from God, for indeed it is. Even pain and suffering, perceived by the gentile as evils, are redeemed to the greatest opportunities for leisure and the pursuit of holiness, which is simply the Good Life. Again, to take the painful yearning for perfection and orient it by leisure, to God, who is the source and summit of the real beheld by leisure. He suffered and died as we do. By this we know that perfection is not only possible, but certain for the soul that enjoys eternal leisure, the beatific vision. It is in this final everlasting vision that the life of the soul is found to be a comedy.

Leisure lived out is not only humbling, it is fulfilling. "There is a certain happiness to leisure," (Ibid). The happiness one receives from the reception of the totality of creation and creation's infinite maker into one's own soul is beyond this world. This supernatural happiness is lived out in the good life. This perpetuation, this habit of leisure is a virtue. Joy. To be joyful is to be filled with whole simultaneous grandeur that is the beauty of the glory of God. To experience the good manifested by the fulfilling of man's purpose, which causes the greatest happiness, in the glory of the victory of the cross, this is to be joyful. This is to live the life of true leisure. "The glory of God is man fully alive," (St. Irenaeus). In our joy, in our leisure, and even in our pain, we may participate in the glory of God. We may be fully alive, in our triumphs and even our sufferings. Being most fully alive, man finds himself at peace. This peace is not the absence of conflict, but it is the right relationship between him and God, and him and his brother. Here he finds that all is right and at peace together.

When men come together to be fully alive they form cultures. Thus, it is said that leisure is the basis of culture, as it is culture's natural end and goal. Being fully alive with one's brothers cannot be a static leisure, wrapped up in a library, but instead it is active. As it has embraced being itself in its most dignified sense, it embraces all of being's perfections. To leisure is also then to have a good perceived in leisure and thus to have truth and beauty. Thus, also as action is a transcendental, the good life, the life of leisure, is most active. But it does not act out of fear or of necessity, but of love. For as God eternally acts in gracing the world with being, so to the good life seeks to imitate it with its best effort to match with its love, the infinitely greater love of the Father. This active imitation of love is art. This art not only consists of paintings and sculptures which raise the mind to leisure, but more importantly and intrinsically, virtue, the habits that imitate the transcendent reality that is Our Lord Jesus Christ. Imitating Christ is the art of virtue.

Ivan might disagree with all this talk. "Couldst Thou ever for a moment imagine that men would have the same strength to resist such a temptation?" Is it possible that the masses of mankind, weak and frail, mount to this appeal and live? "Love thy neighbor as thy self," (Mark 12:31), is too difficult for these corrupt wretches. The cross is too much for them to bear. On the contrary Ivan, it is written: "My yoke is easy and my burden light," (Mt 11:28-30). Christ himself aids all who take up their cross. He is the one that makes the burden light. All we must do is ask for it. Thus, he says, "Ask and you shall receive," (Mt 7:8; 21:22; Lk 11:10). Never shall Christ leave us to carry our burden ourselves, for perseverance is a hard thing. "Remembrance of God is pain of heart endured in the spirit of devotion," (St. Mark the Ascetic). And "No one achieved anything without pain of heart," (Elders Barsanuphius and John). No man ever did anything for his salvation without first having to persevere through the pain of denying the passions, and by this remember God, who grants him his salvation. God is timeless and because of this, Christ tells us saying: "I am with you always, even to the end of the age," (Mt 28:20). That age being all time until the world draws to a close and the struggle against sin ends and the soul passes on to the reward promised it by Christ. For God will guide the soul through all his ever-present pain until the age is united with him in the eternal. Indeed, mankind is weak, but God's mercy overcomes our frailty. The irony of Ivan's objection is almost too obvious. For God created man in his image (Gen 1:26). Made in the likeness of the omnipotent and sharing in His grace, man does have the strength to resist temptation, but only through God. Again, showing Ivan's lack of understanding of Christ's gift to the world on the cross. His solution to the eternal question.

It is essential for the Good Life that Christ redeems death through the cross. That God works in the irony of death giving life. For as Justin Marler writes: "... Must seek unto Death the ultimate in Truth if it is to accomplish that which it first set out to do." If death was not redeemed, then to seek the Good unto death would be impossible. Then destroying the love of Truth and annihilating what it seeks to do to man. Give him the Good Life. The life that is God. "God became man so that man may become God," (St. Athanasius). God's solution to the eternal question is himself. Man finds himself in God, because he is like God, made in His image, and is meant to have Him as the eternal answer to the longing for the eternal he finds beneath himself and beneath all men. For death must be redeemed that we may seek unto it to find the ultimate Truth residing in it. For salvation came from death. Death on a cross. By this death, God shares man's fate so that man may share God's and finally see that...

Beneath the brittle surface of the material, the vain, self-absorbed, clinging love of the world, beneath the maddening longing of the passions, that only obscures what lies below, there is a silently flowing river. A river of compassion, bowels of mercy, a feeling of other people's pain. The image of God present in Man's soul. The source of the yearning for the eternal. This river of love flows into a vast, vast ocean of sadness. Mankind and the world. Although it is a sadness, one enters it willingly, for there is such a tenderness in its pain. And at last, in this sadness, there is perfect freedom. For there is true leisure only in recognizing the sadness which Christ comes to cure. "This is the love that never dies: a proof of immortality. This is the pain that the crucified one embraced willingly, sharing our pain. This is the cross he asks us to bear. This is the death he asks us to die. And at last, in this death, there is perfect peace," (Justin Marler). The Good Life. A Comedy.

Brady Commerford

The Hope of Ferndath, Chapter One: The Watchtower

It was a bleak winter. The snow fell profusely on the frozen ground as the wind was groaning throughout the forest, weaving between the tree branches. The overcast sky told the mood of the day in January, and the mood of the two Icewings, beautiful blue humanoid birds. They were brothers who had survived the worst of the century - the worst of the history, rather - and were travelling, needing to know more.

The two Icewings were both injured, but they had fought the battle that had to be fought. Their bravery exceeded all others in the army of the broken nation, and it was encouraged by their other dearest brother Akphoro. Yet they did not know where he was, or if he was even alive; they themselves had a hard time believing they were alive.

As the day drew on they kept traveling, a glimmer of hope still in the eyes of the younger brother. This was Sephoro, the most cunning of all Icewings. He, however, was incredibly injured, and could barely walk. Enscoph, the oldest of the three siblings, had always been there to help, and now he helped Sephoro take the most important steps in the entire history of the world of Ferndath.

Finally they rested at a stump in the unknown depths of the forest. The taiga trees gave them no cover from the unrelenting ice which pummeled down from the gray sky, nor did it ease the wind. But they were glad to be resting.

Sephoro laid back on the tree stump as Enscoph undid the bandage that was on Sephoro's leg. The blue and white feathers around it were covered in dry blood, and the wound which cut deep was still bleeding a bit. Seeing it he said, "This must be infected. We need to find the old Watchtower if you are going to live."

Sephoro answered painfully, "Trust me. We will survive this."

Even though his younger brother tried to convince him of safety for Icewings, Enscoph still seemed to be ever-turning to despair. "I - I'm sorry, Sephoro. Even if we do survive this, we are the only Icewings left. It would only be a matter of time before our entire race would come to an end. What would we do? Share our wisdom to more creatures? The last time we did that our kind was betrayed. They gave us nothing for what we gave their minds - nothing, Sephoro. We might as well stay here and die together."

Sephoro became angered at this. "Never give up hope! I sense something else out there... a kind creature, out beyond Ferndath, one that no Icewing had ever met before... a kind of human... deathless and wiser than we are... they are like the Orymnans themselves who created this world! They will help us."

"Stop that babbling. You are no seer and cannot predict what is out there. There is no such thing as that."

"Yes, there is. I sense it."

Enscoph said to himself, "I knew it. Sephoro's dying... he's losing his wits..." but he was wrong.

Sephoro turned his gaze southward. He heard something familiar to him in the thick underbrush. But Enscoph seemed to hear something else. The warrior deep in his soul and heart awakened again, and picking up a long stick from off the ground he called out, "any human who dares come against I, Captain Enscoph, shall taste my wrath and the sweetness of death!"

And out from the underbrush came hope.

Sephoro sat up in an instant. He could not believe the things he was seeing. "Chaliphis?" He asked himself aloud as if it were a dream.

Chaliphis ran to him and the two hugged. Enscoph threw the stick towards the forest in embarrassment. Sephoro and Chaliphis began to cry as they embraced each other. Chaliphis said through tears, "My husband, I never thought I would see you again! I thought you were doomed once you had taken your sword again with your soldiers and set off into Ferendu, that cursed kingdom."

"Enscoph thought nobody else was out there either... I kept hope in my heart and you in my mind," said Sephoro, wincing as he stood up with pain.

"Yeah, that's not true. I definitely didn't think Sephoro and I were the last Icewings and that our race was doomed to die. It's not true," said Enscoph, trying to act believable.

Chaliphis laughed, "you've never been that positive."

Renée Mazelin

Emeric, Chapter One

Emeric was a very unhappy, sour boy. He had a fair face, perpetually scrunched up into a scowl, and anytime anyone tried to offer him anything, he threw a fit because these anythings were not perfect enough for him; more often than not, he sent his mother away crying. Emeric must have been spoiled or royal or rich or even famous in order to display this sort of entitlement. Only sadly, Emeric was just another village boy with all the other things the village boys had and with double the good rearing. His parents had no idea where they had gone wrong, and, seeing as the boy still had no friends and was going on twelve years of age, they had decided it was time to make a change.

"Listen here, young man. I will not tolerate these fits any longer. You're working your poor mother to death. You'll stop it this instant, or we'll send you away!" His father had upbraided him.

Emeric had taken a deep breath and spluttered "I should always have my way. I'm a prince, you know! I shall rule the world one day, and you'll see. Everyone shall give me what I want then, so they should get used to giving me what I want now!"

Emeric's father had smacked the lad upside the head for attitude and gone to ask Emeric's mother where all the babbling about princes had started. She hadn't known.

So, they'd brought out their savings to send him to a boarding school that would shape him up well. The school was quite expensive, being about a lord's city, but the whole village had wanted Emeric gone and thus happily chipped in to send him there.

Consequently, a few weeks past Midsummer, Emeric's bag was packed, a lunch made, and he was off on his way to school.

Emeric had only gone to this particular lord's city once before. Separating the town from the pine woods were the thin, crumbly outer walls. The stone keep (whose walls were similarly made) was strangely constructed - extremely tall with lots of towers poking out at odd angles. The base was much smaller than the rest of it, causing it to tilt. It made Emeric think the lord, lady, and servants must perpetually feel as if they were about to fall.

As Emeric walked into the city, he saw fortune tellers at their balls, knights patrolling the streets, and blacksmiths banging on their anvils. As Emeric contemplated buying some produce from a plump lady, out of an alley popped a young girl in grey rags that were too long at the sleeves. Her hair was incredibly messy, and Emeric recoiled. She flew past him, darting between two carts, and following her came three young men. Emeric's eyes widened. He must have been near the edge of the town, by the forest! The lads wore the very recognizable, mutedly patterned clothes of the Forest Dwellers - blues, reds, and browns - but the most important and attention-grabbing item of clothing was one lad's green cloak that flew out behind him as he ran by, smacking Emeric in the face. It marked the young man as a tribe leader. Emeric jumped aside before the other two's clothes hit him, and watched as the youths went after the girl.

Emeric wondered how they got into the walls and why they were chasing her. She looked about his age, and he didn't think a young beggar could do that much damage to a kingdom of savages (as were the Forest Dwellers). Shrugging, and not wanting to get chased himself, Emeric hurried back into the center of the city to find the courtyard in front of the church, which would be near the school. He spotted a tall building with a bell tower and made his way towards it.

After reaching the courtyard and glancing about, Emeric paused. There was no school. He looked around once more, and, finding nothing, went into the church to find directions. "Hello?" he called, pushing the elaborate wooden door ajar. A person stood inside, who seemed to be getting up from prayer.

"Ey?" he said.

"Help me find the East Owl Pines boarding school. I was told it was near the church, but I don't see a school anywhere."

The man frowned. "I've lived here me whole life. I ain't never heard of any such school. I'm a delivery man, right-o; I know every street of this city. Lad, this school you're rattling on about doesn't exist."

Becket Curtin

Zephyr's Journey: A Tale of Discovery and Danger

It was coming again, and Zephyr was finally ready for it. The Traveling Temple came full circle in its visitation of the majority of the lands in the Plain of Skies but once every two years, and for those in the Listing Lands, it was a momentous occasion. For the entirety of its week-long stay, it strengthened the Heart Stone that steadied the floating islands and mitigated their gradual, alternating tilting. Once again would come the merchants and the traders, hawking their goods. Once again would come the sightseers and storytellers, here to give and receive tales. The Festival of The Arrival would bring to the Listing Lands both the stability of remission from their wobbling and the chaos of the arrival of a hundred discordant personalities from a hundred different walks of life.

This year, though, seemed far more important than those before. At least for Zephyr, that is. He was finally old enough, and had saved up enough, to travel with the temple and seek his fortune, the way the story tellers told in their tales. He would see the world. He would look for wealth and renown. He also had a less well-known ambition. His grandmother and her ancestors on his mother's side had been from the Roaming Isles, and he hoped that by going there he might awaken a hereditary talent. He had kept this dream from his parents lest they mock him as others had done. Even the stonekeeper, custodian of the ancient magic that kept the islands from tipping over, oft considered the wisest person in the land, had scoffed.

"Preposterous! Yes, magical talents do indeed flow more often through the mother's side, true, but talentless have been born not uncommonly from mothers of great renown, and your grandmother had but weak talent. You are right, it is possible for you to have her talent, but even if you did it would be most likely the weaker, or the same at best. Having exceptional talent would be beyond reasonable possibility. The world is an incredibly dangerous place. Live here, and let your children have talent as the land shapes you and them."

Zephyr was dead set, however, and would not be dissuaded. It was a belief repeated by many who voyaged telling tales that all had some talent, though it be weak, and just needed to be found. Thus he was encouraged in his scheme. But things were often not as simple as they appeared.

"What do you mean it's not enough!" Zephyr cried.

"I am sorry," said the secondary lodging official. "Prices have near doubled since last cycle. With the amount of people wanting to come, you're lucky it's not higher. I know this is important for you personally, but it's not as if you will die if you don't come, and others can pay a lot more. This is the best price you're gonna get. You want to go two stops, to reach the Shifting Lands and their shipyard. That cash won't get you to the next stop at the Rotating Isle."

"Very well," said Zephyr, outwardly resigned, but inwardly as determined as ever.

It wasn't getting into the temple that was the hard part. Everyone was granted free entry to the temple during the day for the duration of its stay - the difficulty was finding a place to stay at night. Owners of housing charged absurd prices, so even a cot in a common space for a one stop trip cost more than many could afford. The only alternative would be sleeping in the public walkways, but the guards always made sure that everyone was in their proper housing for two hours before the Temple left. In addition, they patrolled the walkways every night for an hour after curfew at sundown. No, the key was not getting on, but staying on.

Zephyr had waited until two days before departure. Soon enough to not have to pay too high reservation fees, but not too late that all the space would be filled or the prices rise too high as space disappeared. Now that he realized his predicament, however, he needed an alternative on short notice. Furthermore, it had to be unexpected. If he was to sneak aboard, he would need originality. The most obvious methods were certainly already protected against. Incoming goods were searched, as were the roofs of buildings, as were all the nooks and crannies where a stowaway might hide. There was one place, however, that he believed no one had been brave or foolish enough to try: the underside of the island.

So, three hours before departure, he entered the temple with a knapsack containing a grapple, a tetherable platform, and food and water for the first leg of the trip. Zephyr had made some - so he supposed - subtle inquiries. Apparently, it took the guards an hour to make the rounds of the Temple, but as he did not know where they began, he had assumed he would have but a short window of time to grapple down, position himself, go back up to retrieve the rest of his supplies, return down, and unhook the grapple, all without being noticed. Zephyr paced through the Temple and its outbuildings and walkways looking for an out of the way place with access to the under sky to hook his grapple.

This was an unexpected kink in his plan. He had not counted on the guards beginning their check so near to his location. So, with all possible haste, he gathered all his supplies, even those he had planned on bringing on the second go, and almost fell down the whole line. Zephyr was at the end of his rope, and barely holding on. He was relieved that he had packed light, but this was already harder than he had anticipated. He wrapped the tethered rope around his left hand and tied it together, letting himself hang by the arm. Reaching the first bag on his back with his right hand, he fastened the first tether to the underside of the island that the temple rested upon, then the second as far apart as he could reach. He strung a line between them and pulled himself over it, then fastened the other two hooks and a line between. Zephyr leaned on the two lines and unfastened his left hand, which was beginning to hurt. He attached the net to the tethers and secured his provisions. He turned to shake the grapple down, and looked straight into the eyes of a guard looking over the railing.