Bringing a Dark Fantasy World to Life

A dark fantasy world where residents are dying from hunger. They’re desperate to devour the energy in Darkness. They’ll even destroy their own world to do it.

…

No animals greeted Hayan as he strolled. Branches didn’t bend to welcome him. Everything was still as if his forest died standing up. Leaves glowed purple but it was a pale shade. The tree across from him was dark. Withered, dull-colored leaves rained down on him each time the wind blew.

He pressed his hand to the dead tree. E’Sully was crying.

“You’re not a prison are you,” he said.

The glowing tree shuddered.

Times like these, when he was connected to the land, Haylan couldn’t see it as a monster determined to punish them for some unknown crime.

(From Creators of Darkness)

The energy in darkness can make a landscape straight out of a nightmare or something truly beautiful and fantastical. One of the reasons I had a lot of fun building the magic system in The Merging Worlds series. Darkness’ energy, ironically, doesn’t make everything ugly. Certain plants and animals that feed off the energy glow pretty vibrant colors. Generally, landscapes with a lot of negative emotions turn the plants and animals ugly. But, for the most part, how the energy transforms the land is random.

In the Creators of Darkness, I explored the origins of darkness’ energy. This book is a collection of Merging World side-stories, 2 of which explore the ancestors of characters from the main story.

Just for fun, I’m adding some artwork to the ebook.

Here’s one made by Ryky. I tweaked it a bit to fit one of the stories.