Blessed: A Maeval Tacnal Novel

By Shaya N. Basnett

In a world filled with magic where Gods and Goddesses walk amongst the mortals who worship them, a war is brewing—a war between the Divine that started centuries ago. Unable to fight in the Divine Realms, they've enlisted their followers to fight for them. And to certain mortals they've even bestowed their own powers.

These mortals, known as the Blessed, walk a lonely path, balancing the awesome and cruel powers of the Gods and the vulnerability of their human sides. They are immortal unless their God or Goddess sponsor abandons them or they are killed by another Blessed.

One of these Blessed, a veteran from the first war, is gathering other young Blessed to her. Her plan? Create a bond between them all so they can vanquish the God bent on bringing destruction to their world once and for all. Under her tutelage, her students will be the turning point of their world. They start to their destinies struggling with their powers and their place in their world. But will they be the salvation or the destruction? Only time will tell, for they are . . .

The Brethren.

Neilina – a Blessed who once conquered a God, she has lived a solitary existence since the first war ended. Now once again she will face a foe from her past that could be her undoing. But this time, she won't be fighting alone.

Adeline – the only daughter of a warrior king, she is a healer and prophet. But her powers weigh heavy on her and the darkness promises sweet reprieve—will her bond to her Brethren keep her strong?

Aubrey – a young girl with a mysterious past she can't remember. She wants to be a knight in the Holy War, but she'll need to discover her past if she's to help save their future.

Mathilde – the Crown Princess of the nomadic tribes, she's got to right an ancient wrong if she wants to help her people. Her powers of the wild and animals makes her a strong card for whoever earns her loyalty in the coming war.

Niall – the bastard waif of a nobleman of a distant kingdom, he's not who everyone thinks he is. Behind his laughing persona is the power of the cosmos. He's got a lot to prove.

Selene – the exiled Princess, cast away by her magic-fearing father. She's got a lot to prove and isn't afraid of a fight. Her loyalty is unquestionable but she feeds off of her emotions. Her powers are barely in check: she could be the wildfire that burns friend and foe out.

Eibhlin – with humble beginnings, her stunning beauty enchants every man who meets her. But when a young-love romance goes wrong, bitterness rules her heart and only time will tell if she turns to her Brethren for comfort or if she'll cast them aside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Apr 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228841623

Shaya N. Basnett

Born and raised in Northern Alberta, Shaya's passions have always been in her imagination, her horses and video games. What was once a short story became something more for her and now she can't wait to share it with you. Shaya now writes when not working at her job as a receptionist at a vet clinic. She lives alone with her two horses, two cats and two guinea pigs.

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Blessed

A Maeval Tacnal Novel

Shaya N. Basnett

Blessed

Copyright © 2021 by Shaya N. Basnett

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-4161-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-4160-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-4162-3 (eBook)

Contents

A Brief History of Maeval Tacnal

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

The Blessed

The Gods

Geography & Characters

Dedications

Mom - you are the strongest woman I know. Everything I am is because you made me that way.

A Brief History of Maeval Tacnal

On a world not completely unlike ours there was magic.

This world had many different continents, each with their own belief systems and cultures as lands were meant to do. On this planet, there was one big difference between our world and it. It still contained magic. It was raw and vital, and it was created by Gods and Goddesses.

This world was called Maeval Tacnal. On this world was a large continent that was split into three land masses, Aitrula. It was a great and vast land mass made of many different types of landscapes, lots of different people each with their own ideals and ideologies. Really it was no different from any of the other worlds that existed in the many universes. There was a north and south Aitrula and an outlaying kingdom to the west called the Isles. No one knew what was to the west of Aitrula past the Isles, but rumours said the end of their world and the beginning of the Gods’ realm was to the West. To the East lay many other lands each to be explored in their own time.

What truly made this world more special than the world we might be used too, was the magic and the Gods. This magic was not hidden away or very subtle, it was strong in the environment and within certain people. And in the Gods, each was powerful in their own way, as all Gods could be, but these ones were highly involved in the mortals lives, especially in the coming days for a God was only as strong as their mortals triumphs and they needed those triumphs to be strong.

Some mortals who were Chosen by the Gods to be their Champions were called the Godsblessed, though why you would call them that is really an odd thing. They were immortal, unless released by their God or killed by another Blessed. Even Gods and Goddesses couldn’t slay Blessed. The Creators of their world, the Mother of All Beings and the Father of the Universe had long forbidden their children to kill mortals as well as each other. Most Blessed were born into the world but some were chosen as young children. To birth such a child would usually kill the mother for the power of the divine is a hard thing for a mortal body to contain.

As it was there had not been such a creation in over a millennium, as there was no need. There was peace and no need for a God or Goddess to create such a weapon. For well Blessed could be the salvation of a God or Goddess, they could also be their undoing. It was a gamble to create so no one did it lightly.

For a Blessed had all the powers of mortals and Divine – and none of the rules.

__

Hundreds of years before the current age of Maeval Tacnal, where our story begins, there was the Great War.

This war completely restructured the lands of North and South Aitrula. Aitrula was claimed to be the mortal home of the Gods and Goddesses before they went to the divine realms. It was where the magic was strongest. The war was fought between the children of the original Creators. After the birth of their children, they retired to their own peace. The Father went silent and self-isolated, the Mother of All Beings fled out of the divine realms to search for happiness in the world she created.

Many Gods and Goddesses oversaw the many different functions within this world. There was the God of Cunning. The Mother who needed no other name as she was the Goddess of motherhood, fertility and vengeance. There was the God of Death, the Virgin Goddess, the Sea God and so on. Then there was the birth of the youngest God. Jealous of the other’s powers, he hatched a plan to become the King of the Gods and kill off his family. To begin, he began to preach his own religion to his followers.

To make you understand how foreign his religion was to those of Aitrula, one first had to understand the people. Men and women were of equal rights, women were warriors and men could be caregivers. Men could love men and women could love women. In this world, all was possible, and one only needed to be fueled by their own ambition to succeed. Royalty not in line to their thrones could marry local nobility or higher peasant class. Queens could lead by themselves and have their own illegitimate children lead their countries. It was a world in which chaos reigned supreme. People believed their own opinions but, in the chaos, came the harmony for all were respected for their opinions and choices. Neighbours could listen to neighbours and debate but there was no cost for not agreeing.

It was beautiful. As chaos could only be, beautiful in the wildness that it inspired.

The One God didn’t like this. He didn’t like his fellow Gods getting worshipped. He hated chaos and preferred structure. So, he began to slowly change his followers.

Only men could be his Priests and women who followed his teachings were not allowed to be warriors, they had to be mothers and care for their children. Men went to work and ruled the household with an iron fist. Over many centuries, women began to give up their rights and the men as well – for they were told to work and not to think. The followers became his sheep and then, his flock. No one argued, all blindly followed his teachings. And in this simplicity, chaos died.

I know what you are thinking. To go from complete freedom to complete control – it’s madness, who would agree to it? No woman would go from making her own choices to willingly following another’s orders without thought. However, freedom comes with its own headaches and this God was a devious one indeed. It began slowly over many generations, a puzzle piece by a puzzle piece. And because it was so slow, even the Gods and Goddesses didn’t pay heed. Slowly he gained more followers and that was how the divine get their powers. And finally, when he was ready, He shed his old name and donned the simple name he knew would make his plans clear to his brothers and sisters. He became the One God.

Only a single God had watched this puzzle slowly begin to formulate and he figured it out a half a century before the others. This of course, was the very God of Cunning. Although he cursed himself for being slow to the game, he sped to catch up. And so, they began their chess match of sorts.

Slowly the One-God followers began to try to silence their neighbours and scorn their women warriors. Queens were browbeat down to a humble position below the Kings. Wars began to scatter the mortal lands. And then the One-God did something no one had done for centuries – he made a human his Blessed.

To make a Blessed takes a lot of power from a God. It can kill a weaker human and Gods can be weak for upwards of a century. The One-God chose a simple human male, a soldier, a man baited from his simple life turn to the darkness and strict life. When the human went back to the women in his life and propose that they abandon their faiths and follow the teachings of the One-God, well…they did not react very well.

The Blessed man barely escaped with his body intact from their rage and fled to his God’s side and began to direct his armies.

The One-God in his many millenniums of living hadn’t learned one thing – be wary of a woman scorned. It became his original downfall. For when the man abandoned his family and began the Great War, Kingdoms tumbled and the previously chaos harmony was jeopardized. The One-God began to prematurely celebrate his potential victory.

However, the Cunning One had yet to utilize an important part of his plan.

The War had jeopardized the safety of the forgotten family. And when the Cunning appeared to the woman at the head of this family in their war-riddled country, he had an offer she couldn’t refuse. Protection for the family in any war to come in exchange for her eternal servitude. Like any good family member, she agreed.

And so, when the Cunning One put all his power into a woman pained by abandonment. And she hunted out the old Blessed. Ones who had laid dormant for centuries. With her cunning, the battle savvy that came from her bond to the Cunning One. And slowly she beat down the success of the One-God.

Battle by battle, the Kingdoms were recovered, and the darkness was being beat down. It wasn’t quite enough though as the One-God gave his Blessed a divine weapon to turn the tides once again. It was going to be the ends of days.

To be safe she hunted out the Forgotten Goddess who possessed her own divine weapon that could kill and banish Gods and Goddesses. And she bargained with this old Goddess who was forgotten in her exile – an exile no mortal remembered why she had been sentenced to it. And for some reason this Goddess gave the Blessed her gift, her power – the God-Killer along with a dark omen.

A final battle was had on the very south-west corner of the Northern Continent. A battle between the Gods and their Blessed. It was so brutal that it cleared that land of all the animals, people and foliage on it. And it ended with the members of that family face to face, each with their own divine weapon. With brutal precision the woman used all her powers from the Cunning One and the powers she had got from the Forgotten Goddess to smite her family member and weaken the One-God. And with all her bitterness she cast the One-God to the furthest reaches of their galaxy in exile. She sealed him to the dark planet though as she did, he screamed he would return.

Then the war was over, but life didn’t go to how it was.

She never returned to her family; she was too changed in her struggle with divinity. Instead, she used her powers to heal the land they had battled on and built a large Manor House where she settled as the Lady of the Manor, facing to the sea and always watching the far dark planet. Slowly a village was built outside her walls and although her lands had been a part of two kingdoms, they never tried to take her land from her. Legends were started about her as she settled into her recluse.

In the aftermath of the war the old ways never fully returned. Although the One-God’s followers were quiet and worshipped in private, the worship of the old Gods and Goddesses was tainted. Women never ruled again without a man, other then the one kingdom of the Heartlands. Women warriors became a thing of the past for most kingdoms. And no more Blessed were made.

Depending on where you lived in Aitrula decided what kind of God or Goddess you would worship and whether or not magic was acceptable in society. Depending on who the ruler of a Kingdom was, decided if their people were allowed to use magic. Some places merely frowned upon the use of magic, some full accepted and encouraged their supernaturally inclined. And other more rural, superstitious Kingdoms their magically inclined hide and if found were horribly tortured and killed.

It became the Blank Age, where the Gods and Goddesses were silent. Some believed they were dead for they weren’t heard of for centuries. The Blessed left alive went into exile and the divine were silent. Magic wielders became fewer and fewer in between and people lost their way.

One day the Lady of the Manor woke one day from a prophetic dream. In her dream the One-God was returned, the world was burning, and she was warned – the power of seven could stop this. But without those seven, life would be lost.

So, she began to prepare for the others and wait for them to appear, her village became busy again and slowly she began to prepare for his Second Coming – and the death it would bring.

And that is where our story begins…

Chapter 1

In the non-magically accepting Isles Kingdom, witches were burnt alive at the stake or drowned to death – depending on which island of the kingdom you were on. The royal family had always hated magic. As a result, anyone who practiced magic on the Isles was killed. The entire kingdom held this idea, mostly because they very rarely traveled outside the Isles, foreigners were generally not welcomed in the many little islands so more and more backwards ideas that were never changed by different people and different ideals. They were a poor Kingdom, all they had of value was the Isle Pearls, a string of these pearls held a greater value then gold or diamonds. However, Pearls were rare to find.

Sixty years before the beginning of our story, King Zahir the Second came into power. He built up the Isles navy and began to raid the mainland with a vigor that hadn’t been seen in years. He even had the Northern Kings worried about protecting their shores and they were the most ruthless kings of Aitrula.

Through strategic planning and cunning, King Zahir even arranged for his eldest son Eshek to be betrothed to a Princess from the Kingdom of Dalla whose borders were on the south side of the Salt River.

Princess Rosabelle was the first time that the Isles royalty had married outside their own nobility in centuries. She was picked mostly because came a large dowry, even though King Zahir had to swear that he would no longer raid Dalla as part of the betrothal contract. He desperately needed the coin that came with Rosabelle so he could build more ships and raid more. He wanted to explore the rest of the world.

From the second Eshek seen his bride step from the ship he was smitten. With captivating violet eyes and vibrant red hair and a sweetness that had so besotted all that knew her, Rosabelle was beloved to all that met her.

Eshek and Rosabelle weren’t married a year before she had a healthy son named after Zahir after his grandfather. Rosabelle produced three sons in four years, each strong and healthy.

Now that domestic issues at home were cared for, the King planned to begin adventuring after the winter months. However, with the death of the winter weather came his own death. His age had finally caught up to him and chest pains caused him to be bedridden for a few months up until the birth of Eshek and Rosabelle’s fourth son, Vlatos came the death of the King. In the summer solstice Eshek and Rosabelle were crowned King and Queen of the Isles.

While King Zahir had been a talented military leader, his heir was not. With King Eshek coming into power, the economy fell for this king cared only for ale, wenching and raiding. Whatever he managed to come back with from raids was often not enough to feed all his people, but he didn’t care. His brother, Prince Coran herded him to raid like someone would lead a dumb ox.

And as the years passed and the economy began to crash, Queen Rosabelle gave her King three more healthy sons within five years. Her last child was her most difficult birth, a girl they named Selene. After the birth of her daughter, her eighth child in nine years, the midwives had advised King Eshek to leave his wife alone. Eshek had grown to love his wife in a twisted drunken way. She was an obedient wife and patient mother to their many children. So, he willingly left his wife alone and staggered through many peasant girls. And all the local gentry approved of how Queen Rosabelle gracefully looked the other way at her husband’s indiscretions. Though they’d be shocked to know that the Queen was so relieved to be left by her husband, and that the castle staff were made of women that would willingly sleep with the King to keep him from his wife.

The Queen had kept her distance from the other nobility of the Isles Kingdom, as she had spent most of her time birthing heirs for the throne. She was respected by the nobles; they just didn’t know her well. Those who did know her knew her to be sweet, caring and sympathetic to the plight of the Islers.

The years passed until, finally Prince Zahir was of an age to be betrothed. His uncles picked a proper princess from another southern seafaring Kingdom, the Kingdom of Draylla. She was a sister to the next King. She was two years younger than Zahir. The betrothed was ironed out when he was seventeen. It was arranged that Princess Abygael would come to the Isles in the following spring when she would be sixteen and the marriage celebrated then.

Well they waited for the spring, Rosabelle had the castles completely remodelled. This was to make room for what she expected to be a multitude of grandchildren, as her three oldest sons were all betrothed.

Zahir’s betrothed arrived on a sunny day, rare for the early spring. Rosabelle insisted that all the family be waiting for the Princess. At thirty-five years of age, the Queen was still a beautiful woman. Strings and strings of pearls decked her frame. She wore a thick wool for she was always cold from the bleak weather. A large gold crown sat on her head and her hair was piled up around it. Right now, she was observing her husband with concern. His clothes were stained and his crown crooked. His eyes were red, and he swayed lightly in spot. Only his brothers held him up steady between them. She sighed internally and took out a handkerchief stepping to him she wiped his face the best she could.

My king could you not have stayed away from the ale last night? She asked him and he grinned at her like a large overgrown child.

Celebrating the betrothal my dear. It’s not every day that your eldest gets ready to whelp a new generation.

Eshek slurred at her and Rosabelle shook her head at him and waved her brother-in-law to his side where she took his spot. They waited as the large ship holding the Ambassador, his wife and the Princess and her entourage. Rosabelle supported her husband, allowing him to rest on her as they waited for the plank to be lowered.

Rosabelle’s first view of her future daughter-in-law made her pleased. Escorted on the arm of the Ambassador was a girl of average height. She had no blemishes of any kind on her face but had a plump full figure. Her hair was long and covered in a veil. Her skin was pale cream and her eyes green. She looked nervous as she bowed before the King and Queen.

The Ambassador bowed before Prince Coran a few feet away before they both turned.

King Eshek and Queen Rosabelle this is Ambassador Johan, his wife the Lady Kaisa. They have come to witness the marriage of our Prince Zahir to Princess Abygael. Prince Coran gave the introductions and Ambassador Johan drew the Princess forward.

She sank into a deep curtsy first to the King and Queen and then a blush stained her eyes as her betrothed stepped forward. A cold young man, Zahir was a smart man and he bowed over the hand of his bride and kissed it gently.

Princess Abygael, your miniature doesn’t do you even a bit of justice. You are outstanding. He vowed over her hand with a smile that sent a deeper blush to her cheeks. She went to move away but he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and