Veteran wizard Greylsan Amberglass, ostensibly on a mission to gather chronicles from The Fourth Council's entowered wizards, follows the trail of a doomed borderland margrave in search of his corrupted and dying land's missing Arcory Stones. The search leads him through the Alliance of the Thirteen Greater and Lesser Kingdoms to some uncomfortable truths about how the magic is being conducted in the kingdoms and disturbing answers to own his personal quest.

It has been more than two hundred years since the destruction of galactic civilization by the invasion of the Macros. Althea Ram, exile from a culture which survived the apocalypse, has been searching for answers amongst the lost worlds of the Consortia. Her past failures, pyrrhic victories and dwindling resources have lead her to plan a desperate transit to Elysium, a world which could provide her everything she needs. But the probability of getting there on the first try is very low. And she has no way of telling how dangerous her destination might be. Because on any lost world, Althea must face dangers; hostile environments, the technologies once beneficial, now warped by Macro control, the decendants of human survivors - turned violent and suspicious by the Macro threat, and even herself, driven by needs she barely controls, or understands.