Heather of Heather Bay: Eoss Trilogy, #0

By Lena Chere

This story is the prequel to the Eoss trilogy. It is about a servitor mare that a chaos magician creates, the resourceful Heather, and the magician's grand vision of life and magic as a chessboard. The chaos Goddess Eris is one of the characters.

Three young flatmates seek help from the servitors, and we see them through Heather's eyes as they grapple with the threat of being homeless. Heather learns and grows, and comes to realise what kind of life she wants. She is the first in a line of similar entities and the Eoss Trilogy recounts the adventures of her successors Eoss and Clexa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frond
• Release date: Feb 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215161470

Lena Chere

I’m Lena Chere and I have lived for many years in southern England with my small family. I study occult and pagan subjects and write occult fantasy fiction. I enjoy taking part in events with the local writer’s group and outdoor festivities like concerts, fireworks and food markets. My stories are about the Spirit world, astral travel, chaos magic, magicians, portals and dreams.I like to be anonymous, so I write under two pen names. Candy Ray and Lena Chere. The Lena Chere books are The Eoss Trilogy.Part 1 Platara Mountain.The first instalment is about shamanism and chaos magic, and a primitive parallel world. The main character is a teenage girl, so it has a young adult flavour. It was published by Austin Macauley, so you would have to buy it from them. You can find it on Smashwords here:www.smashwords.com/books/view/890472.Part 2 Mount Clexa.This one is told in the first person by Clexa, the daughter of the horse goddess Eos. It explores the subjects of magical curses, Enochian magic and the realms which are known as the Enochian aethyrs. Published by me, and free.Part 3 Silver Manes.This time the themes are Kabbalah and Solomonic magic, archetypal symbolism and familiars. Published by me, and free.All three are stand-alone stories, and there is no need to read them in order.Coming soon: Heather of Heather Bay, prequel to the Eoss Trilogy.

Book preview

Prologue

This book is the prequel to the Eoss Trilogy.

I finished writing it in 2023.

From The Blog of Balor

Twenty-three is the number of Eris. The chaos number! It represents entropy, the forces of disorder and increasing randomness in sequences, which is another way of saying chaos.

Those who pay attention to this number start to see it everywhere, leaping out at them. Whatever calculation they do, the total comes out as twenty- three. It’s even in our genes: human beings have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes.

The twenty-third day of the month is the best time to make petitions and offerings to Eris. She was venerated as a Goddess in ancient Greece, and also today by chaos magicians and Discordians. Her symbol is the golden apple of discord marked "kallisti," to the fairest, which was awarded to Aphrodite by Paris. This was what led to the Trojan War.

First comes chaos, disorder and randomness, and then comes a new order. Without the forces of chaos, the force of twenty-three, everything in our world would stagnate.

Chapter 1 Heather Bay

The magician sat before his laptop, his face and shoulders almost hidden by his abundant black, curly hair and a wild beard. He was writing the first instalment of The Blog of Balor.

I have named myself after my ancestor Balor, the hero of the giant race of ancient Ireland known as the Fomorians.

The Irish myths tell us that when Partholon, the first invader of Ireland landed, three hundred years after the Flood, the Fomorians were already there. How did they arrive there, and from where? It is not known. But it is significant that the Flood is mentioned, because some of those who lived in the time before the Flood were known as giants. Likewise, the characters that come earliest in time in the Greek myths and the Norse myths were also called giants.

The giants in Greece were overthrown and succeeded by the Olympian pantheon. The giants in Scandinavia were overthrown and succeeded by the Norse pantheon. The giants in Ireland, the Fomorians, were overthrown and succeeded by the Tuatha de Danann, the people of Dana.

I have taken the name of Balor, and I have not been overthrown, nor have I been succeeded. I believe I am the greatest magician in Ireland today- a bold claim, I know, but I am hoping to prove it.

I ask the ravens as they pick worms from the peat, are you descended from the Noah’s Ark raven? and they reply, we are the Morrigan’s. No records have survived from the time of Balor, only a cycle of myths.

Balor was said to have a poisonous eye. He kept the eye closed when he was with his kin and opened it to destroy his enemies. I understand this well. My evil eye is legendary, and I have always been a sorcerer much feared. I can also relate to keeping the eye closed when I am with my kin, as my many friends will testify.

I sit here now in solitude, in my humble home which overlooks a beautiful bay. I like to think of it as the place where my Fomorian ancestors first landed. From here I am about to launch my career as a techno -mage, anonymous and powerful on the internet. I will not say where I live, for I value my privacy. If you think you know the place, come stand outside the window and risk my poison eye.

HEATHER THE SERVITOR horse had been brought to Heather Bay by the Black King, the Black Knight and the Black Bishop. She had been taken there to be broken in.

Tis a fine day to be training a racehorse, to be sure! cried the Irish ticket seller, as they passed through Heather Bay station. He had ‘the sight,’ as his old mama called it, and could see the astral beings.

Oh, she’s no racehorse, replied the Black Bishop. She is going to be a servant. Or should I say, a servitor? She is the prototype, and her creator’s next project will be Eoss. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s that chaos magic time-bending again.

The ticket-seller looked puzzled and did not reply. The Black King and the Black Knight exchanged glances and smirked. They were all for this being a playful, fun assignment. After all, they had begun as simple servitors themselves, very similar to their new horse, and had only now evolved into ‘the terrible three’ or ‘the three musket ears’ or whatever name their creator fancied for them at the time.

In chaos magic, a servitor is an artificial familiar created by a magician to serve some magical purpose. In time, and through contact with multiple human beings, the servitor evolves into an egregore and then possibly into a minor god. While it is still a servitor, it needs an energy source to survive. There is disagreement amongst chaos magicians as to whether the servitor acquires a soul, and if so, when the soul appears. But by the end of the process, it is alive-unless the magician destroys it. It is rather like a golem.

The three chess pieces preferred wherever possible to be informal, with occasional forays into an educational address when they took on the role of teachers. The Black Bishop had similar tastes to the magician who had made them for he loved studying abstract ideas, and he was usually the one to give esoteric teachings, in keeping with his ecclesiastical title.

The Black King was their leader, so naturally he was designated as the chessboard king. He had less to