Another Way to Hope

A fantasy adventure told by its hungriest critic.

In dark times, you hope for shiny heroes. Silent in the deep for centuries, we have drowned in your stories, your great man theories of history and your dark lord theories of evil. We extend a tentacle to bring you another way. A true-enough story from another world, it begins in the form you crave: a party of heroes on an adventure.

Leana doesn't have a death wish. Sure, she uses forbidden magic for illusion pranks. But death may be coming for everyone soon, the way the monster crisis keeps accelerating. In the meantime, why not make a few terrified refugee kids smile?

Twice a refugee herself, she's found a new home in a city that's really trying-free libraries, an elected council, and perfect cheese bread-and friends she'd do anything for, except the one thing they want her to do: live in fear.

All her life, she's heard the old stories about people like her. Every atrocity is another reason wizards were hunted down, and perhaps deserved to be. But she pieces together another story that was lost, or erased. A discipline of curiosity that once held the monsters back. Maybe it could again, if people would trust it. And if humanity could be trusted with it.

Clue by clue and siege by siege, she and her friends grow strong enough to matter. And to be noticed.