Metamor City

Enter a gritty urban landscape of mages and vampires, faeries and telepaths, where street-level spies steal arcane artifacts from power-hungry sorcerers and holy warriors stalk demons through the shadowy depths of 1,000-foot-high towers... Thirteen hundred years ago, the conquering wizard Nasoj cast three great spells on the people of Metamor Keep. Fueled by the power of the dark gods, these spells would irrevocably change the castle's defenders in body and soul, rendering them helpless against his advancing armies. Things did not work out as he hoped. The spells were countered, but only partially. They wove together with the castle's own magic, becoming a curse that blanketed the entire valley. But Nasoj's forces were driven back, and the Keep's heroic inhabitants learned to take pride in the new forms the curse had given them: a mark of how deeply the dark wizard feared them. Now, the world sits on the cusp of the 21st century, and things have changed more than anyone could have dreamed. Buildings the size of mountains rise above the valley floor. People walk and skimmers drive on suspended walkways hundreds of meters in the air. Magic and technology work hand-in-hand to do the impossible. Majestrix Kyia, the spirit of the ancient Keep, now rules with peace and justice over an Empire that covers half a continent. But there is always darkness, even in a place as bright as Metamor City. The rich grow ever richer, while the poor struggle in the hardscrabble world of The Street, surrounded by menacing gangs armed with guns, knives, and unlicensed magic. Vampires control a shadow government that feeds the city's illicit hungers, while a mysterious collective of psychics pursues their own inscrutable ends. It is a world on the knife's edge between order and chaos, creation and destruction. It is a world in need of heroes.

When the Gods walk the Earth, the whole world feels their footsteps... For countless centuries, the Gods of Heaven and the Gods of Shadow struggled for control over the hearts and minds of the mortal races. They inspired religions, started wars, sponsored rulers, and even traveled to the material plane to sire children. A treaty between them set the limits of their interference in mortal affairs, and the enchanted castle of Metamor Keep was their accorded neutral ground. Thirteen hundred years ago, the treaty was shattered. Lord Kammoloth, the King of Heaven, had fathered the Starchild, Merai hin'Dana: a half-mortal girl with the power to steal the divine essence of the gods themselves. But rather than fulfill her prophesied destiny and destroy the Gods of Shadow, Merai rejected both sides of the Pantheon, stealing their power and casting them to earth. To ensure that this power would never be abused, Merai then gave it to Lady Kyia, the spirit of Metamor Keep, to protect the mortal inhabitants she was sworn to serve. Today, Metamor has become a huge and prosperous city, and Kyia rules a vast empire with wisdom and justice. But the gods still walk the earth, pursuing their own agendas, wooing and manipulating mortals to serve their own ends. These are their stories.

A MISSING HEIRESS. AN UNSEEN KILLER. A SHAMEFUL SECRET. AND A DETECTIVE RUNNING OUT OF TIME... Lt. Kathryn Kitaen, a detective of Magic Affairs for the Metamor City Police Department, is not having her best day. An unidentified man in her precinct has been burned to death by unknown magic. A powerful wizard has erased the evidence from the crime scene. The commander of a powerful paramilitary organization wants to pick a fight over jurisdiction. And to top it all off, the Empire's top spymaster wants her to find his missing daughter: a spoiled and decadent heiress who's infamous for sparking scandal and controversy wherever she goes. Together with her partner, the Elven life-mage David Silverleaf, Kate must expose a conspiracy of silence in the highest ranks of the Empire's nobility: a web of lies that has already claimed one life, and threatens to take more. To get to the truth - to protect the city she loves - Kate will have to unravel a mystery that has baffled the Empire for a generation...a mystery that began in a magic-filled jungle on the other side of the world....

Jon Tunstall is an apprentice to the wizard Artax, the owner of the wandering magic shop SPELLS 4 U. In the midst of the bustling Winter Solstice shopping season, Jon's routine is interrupted by the arrival of Esmeralda, a beautiful and powerful wizard. Esme and Artax have a tumultuous history together, but Esme hopes she can convince the elder wizard to help her with an important personal problem. Caught between two temperamental and headstrong wizards, it might be Jon who holds the solution to Esme's difficulties-and to the rift that has grown between them.