Aether Beasts Novels & Stories

"Leo... what on earth was that?" Leo’s silver fur stood completely on end. His usually playful, mischievous eyes had become deadly serious, reflecting the ominous crimson sky. *Fenrir.* Aiden swallowed hard, his throat dry. "The Beast of the Eclipse." "Can Dad beat him?" Leo hesitated, his ears twitching as the distant thundering approached. Then, he answered with brutal honesty. *I don't know, Aiden.* Outside the eastern gates, the very earth began to tremble violently. Towering pines snapped like fragile twigs under an immense weight. A thick, suffocating wall of black mist rolled aggressively through Blackthorn Forest, swallowing the terrain and snuffing out the light in its path.

"Through the mist." The fog parted. And there it was. The Aether Spire wasn't a building. It was call impossibility. A massive shard of obsidian rock, floating inverted in the sky, tethered to the ground by massive chains of glowing energy. Beneath it, a plateau of white stone sat suspended over a chasm of endless blue fog. It was majestic. It was terrifying. But they weren't the only ones there. "Halt!" Ethan commanded, raising his fist. The army stopped, the sound of five thousand boots crunching on snow ceasing instantly.

"It’s like the whole planet is one massive Sun Stone." We were met by the Star Seeders’ Council, led by a being named Aethel. Aethel did not have a solid lupine form like ours; they were a creature of "viscous light," their body a shifting, semi-transparent indigo that held the faint, shimmering outlines of silver veins. When Aethel spoke, the sound was not a voice but a direct, melodic projection that vibrated through the ship’s quartz plating.

The next few days passed by in a blur, with Dorian and I meeting up nearly every night and exploring a new piece of the Fafner Palace as well as getting the announcement of the next challenge. On the first night we agreed to meet in front of The All Mothers statue that was at the center of a grand fountain behind the Central Palace. I had gotten there before him and turned to look at the Goddess while I waited. She was in a flowing gown that looked like a river of stone with a crown of flowers and stars in her eyes. On her right shoulder was a small dragon with lavender eyes and its tail wrapped around the All Mothers neck. Another small little dragon with teal eyes was encircling her left a

“No. I’m not sure. The reason why I didn’t attend the auction was that Moses warned me about it.” “Moses Braddson?” Of course, like Terzo said, the Krosses and Braddsons shared the same common ground. The Kross Industries and the Hover were working together on the biggest project in history. “He warned me about the Beavers’ involvement in the trafficking ring that there’s gonna be a set of women to be sold at the auction. Your Italian mafia friend would be there. So I thought you’d like to save lives.” “You should have warned me first.” I sighed deeply, staring at him, but I felt like there was more to this story, and he hadn’t told me everything.

It was hard to believe they existed in another realm—a world that might be wholly different from my own. “Some say the ancient beasts depicting good and evil sprung from the waters themselves, but that isn’t the truth.” She tsked, “The beasts are older than this world. They’re older than every world. The ether is their mingled blood from eons of fighting. It’s infused with the very source of all magic. Incredible, isn’t it?” At a loss for words, I could do nothing more than blink at her. Orion, however, was full of questions. He spouted them off in quick succession, bobbing his head whenever Ismene gifted him an answer.

“Being a werewolf does not make you immortal because when you infect a human and transform him into a werewolf, he will age and surely dies, and so the ‘hosts’ dies too.” I rub the back of my neck, wondering when he said that? “You remember?” He raised a brow at me, and I gave him a shrug. “I don’t but go on.” “It just means to say that Aether didn’t die because someone kills him, he die because his human dies.” I gave him an ‘ooh’ sound in response. “and so I think that’s possibly why Aether disappeared.” “You believed that he had a family? You don’t believe Neneuis?”

[AZTEC] "Yeah, we are,” Sandra responded, her angry tone disappearing as she looked at the alpha that had claimed her. "Let’s get on with it then, shall we?” Alpha Aztec said to Alpha Denver who was already waiting for him in the fight ring. Aztec was quick to put on his equipment, before he joined his friend in the ring. It was quite sad how they had gotten to this point, but then it wasn't like they could go back in time, now, would they?

Energy pulsed and wavered into the space between us. “I will find your sister and see if she is worth saving,” I let him know. Beckham convulsed and then suddenly went still. The darkness retreated dragging with it a phantom of dim dark shapeless light, as it returned to my feet and deposited it there, immobile. I turned to Wyatt, “The first installment of our vow,” I said. The Beast growled in approval from within the confines of Wyatt’s body, his skin bristled as he pushed back with the urge to shift.