Crisanta Knight: The Liar, The Witch, & The Wormhole

PROLOGUEPotential. Identity. Future. In the past, I believed these things were out of my control. Nowadays I wake with contentment and calm at the truth; I define all three for myself. This was an understanding that was as treasured as it had been hard won. For as long as anyone can remember, the Author has held the highest power in our land, the magical realm of Book. She selected which citizens were protagonists. If you were picked as a protagonist you attended one of the two private schools in our realm—Lady Agnue’s School for Princesses & Other Female Protagonists or Lord Channing’s School for Princes & Other Young Heroes—to train for the lead role in your future fairytale. If you were not selected you lived your life as a common character—a member of the ensemble class designed to form the masses that make the exceptional few stand out. You knew you were chosen as a protagonist if the Author created a protagonist book with your name on it (i.e., Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, and so forth). Typically, these books would begin blank and the Author would later fill in the pages with the stories of her main characters. While these stories differed, one thing every protagonist book had in common was the eventual emergence of a prologue prophecy that laid out the basis of each main character’s destiny. Main characters often waited years for their prophecies to be written. All royal children were supposed to have protagonist books, so as the daughter of Cinderella I always expected to receive one. In the twilight of my sixteenth year, it finally appeared. This triggered a series of events that would lead my friends and me on a collision course with the higher powers of our realm and to worlds beyond our imagination. I hated my prophecy the instant I heard it. It prescribed a destiny where I would become the subservient wife of the annoying —though admittedly handsome—Prince Chance Darling. My best friend Blue (younger sister of Little Red Riding Hood) loathed the prophecy she’d been given too. Hers unfavorably tied her to our good friend Jason Sharp (the younger brother of Jack from Jack & the Beanstalk). Meanwhile, our best friend SJ (daughter of Snow White) hadn’t received her prophecy yet, but she longed to prevent the Author from turning her fate into something unsavory as well. Across the forest that separated our schools, our friends who attended Lord Channing’s, the aforementioned Jason and his new roommate Daniel, had also received their prophecies. While Blue, SJ, and I may not have known the details, the boys were equally adamant about taking back their lives and challenging the Author for control of their fates. Hence our great plan to run away from school to find the Author and have her rewrite our destinies. Sigh. How quickly great plans go out the window when you find out everything you know is a lie and people start trying to kill you. After a long and arduous journey, we found the Author and learned that she didn’t actually control our fates. She was a former Fairy Godmother called Liza who was enchanted to live forever under the thumb of our realm’s Godmother Supreme, her older sister, Lena Lenore. Because of an illness she suffered from called Pure Magic Disease, Liza had the rare ability to see the future. Lena Lenore and the twenty-six ambassadors of our realm took advantage of this ability, using it to control the population by dividing it into commons and protagonists. This revelation was only the tip of the iceberg. Along the way to finding the Author, my friends and I uncovered a much darker story arc in the works. The antagonists of our realm—who were mostly confined to their own barred-off kingdom called Alderon—were planning to overthrow Book and kill all its protagonists. There were several important factors they needed to take care of on their road to achieving this goal and, lo and behold, one of them was me. As it turned out, the prophecy I’d been shown regarding Chance Darling was a fake planted by the antagonists to keep me from learning the truth. And that truth was that Liza had foreseen me as the game changer in the antagonists’ plans. I was meant to either be the key force responsible for stopping them or helping them succeed. Thanks to this prophecy the antagonists had hunted me like an animal throughout our Author quest. It was some nasty business, and I was certain that I would have died many times if it weren’t for the bravery and strength of my friends, as well as my own combative skill and cunning. I had always been looked down on at Lady Agnue’s for my fighting talent and feistiness. After all, princesses were supposed to be damsels who mastered grace, beauty, and traditional feminine charm, not kicking, punching, and weapons training. But I was grateful I’d never succumbed to the princess stereotype. It had saved me more than once. And even if it hadn’t, I was proud of the person I’d chosen to be in this life, and I was going to work hard to become an even better version of this hero-princess as time went on. Unfortunately, if I was to survive the trials ahead, I had much less time than I’d like. During the course of our antagonist dealings, my friends and I learned that the villains had other targets. Their main priority was a former Fairy Godmother named Paige Tomkins who had gone missing many years ago. We didn’t know why the antagonists wanted her, but we knew she was pivotal to their plan and was hiding in one of the Wonderlands—a collection of magical worlds that included Book and many other enchanted realms like Oz, Cloud Nine, and Neverland. More importantly, we knew that we had to find her before our enemies did. Since becoming entangled in the antagonists’ plans, Blue, SJ, Daniel, Jason, and I had accepted our roles as the few people who not only knew about the evil brewing in our realm, but who also had the ability to stop it. As such, we were going to do everything in our power to track down Paige Tomkins. Which brings us to the here and now. After our Author quest, my friends and I returned to the safety of our schools for a much-needed intermission from the larger-than-life story arcs and homicidal characters pursuing us. Winter break provided the perfect time to catch up on missed assignments and get a bit of rest—but more notably it marked the beginning of our Wonderlands research. Based on what we’d learned at school, information gleaned from a White Rabbit named Harry during our last mission, and a few conversations with Liza, we’d concluded that there were at least nine Wonderlands, including Book. Maps of other Wonderlands simply did not exist, and if we were going to have any chance at finding Paige Tomkins—and not get killed traversing these magical, unknown settings in the process—we needed to be prepared. Accordingly, our current mission was to map out the realms on our own. Regrettably, the type of information we needed about the Wonderlands was stored in the restricted sections of our schools’ libraries, making regular access tricky. However, over the last few weeks we’d managed just fine because most of the students at Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s had gone home for winter break. I didn’t mind staying at school during vacation. Our research was vital, but more than that I was comfortable here. Aside from the close relationship I had with my older brother Alex, my castle in Midveil could be as rigid and cold as the very glass it was made from. Between what I’d just gone through last semester and the many responsibilities weighing on my shoulders, I absolutely did not want to spend my time off in a place that made me feel like an ant under a microscope. Even though I’d always been a black sheep at school, Lady Agnue’s was the place where I felt most at home because it was the place where my friends were. While we were not connected by blood, our many years together at Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s—as well as our recent adventures—had bonded us into our own version of family. Alas, that sense of family and home were about to be disrupted once more. While things like schoolwork and winter break may have been normal for other students, they were no longer normal for us. Our normal was antagonists trying to capture us, monsters and magic hunters trying to kill us, and quests that tested our hearts, minds, and resolve. That normalcy was about to resume without warning, and most certainly without mercy.