Content Warning:
This book depicts the Great Awakening, when magic first arrives on Valaralda, setting the story in motion. People are overcome with power, unable to understand what is happening to their very souls. Magic is extremely powerful. And it is not yet understood.
Content warning for domestic abuse, murder of family members, and violence directed at young children.
The Twin Fury is the ninth book in the The Metalwood Saga.
This novel delves deep into the ancient past to reveal the true origins of magic on Valaralda, exploring the arrival of the alien Twins and the brutal "Great Awakening." In the present day, the newly released Twins unleash apocalyptic devastation across the planet, forcing the scattered heroes to confront world-ending storms, shocking revelations about their own identities, and the ultimate sacrifice required to stop a pair of vengeful gods.
Synopsis
The Great Awakening
One hundred thousand years in the past, an orange light appears in the Valaraldan sky, heralding the arrival of an alien supercomputer known as Guruthos (Xyclami). Its arrival causes ordinary trees to massively mutate into Prime Trees, granting elves unprecedented magical abilities. However, this "Awakening" is chaotic and brutal. A farmer's soul accidentally splits into a "good" and "evil" half due to the magic; the evil half murders the good half, and then violently beats his wife to death in front of his young daughters, Lara (Lorelei) and Cara (Cariel). In retaliation, twelve-year-old Cara slits her father's throat.
Meanwhile, a bitter, ambitious junior professor named Aten (Orym) discovers how to use maple wood to create illusions (mistweaving), and founds the Department of Magical Research to study the phenomena.
The Imprisonment
Ten years later, the Twins—Nelenor and Velion—arrive in a metallic ship. Appearing as beautiful blond elves, they reveal they are refugees from the planet Starmist Prime. They fled an alien threat called the Xelle, sending their greatest technology, Xyclami, away to keep it safe. Xyclami connects to the biological "sparkthreads" (souls) of living things, effectively turning the planet's trees into conduits for immense power.
Aten realizes the Twins are the only ones with "superuser" access to control or disable Xyclami. Hungry for limitless power, he drugs the Twins. He recruits Lara and Cara (who possess incredibly rare gatesending and soulsundering abilities) to banish and trap the Twins' souls into Trees on the distant Seed Planets of Mar and Eryn, preventing them from turning the magic off.
Aten subsequently builds an empire in the desert as the immortal god-king Akhenaten. He constructs the Pyramid Offensive System in Nekhrumet—a massive network designed to gather millions of souls to forcefully sever the Twins' connection to Xyclami so he can claim the ultimate power for himself.
The Twins' Rampage
In the present day, Trey accidentally shatters the Key (Edrafen), unleashing the enraged Twins from their millennia-long imprisonment. Now appearing as 200-foot-tall, Anubis-headed monsters, Nelenor and Velion utterly destroy the city of Ilyrion as they search for the "Imprisoner" who trapped them.
Fleeing the destruction, Trey, Arra, and DMR Director Cresius retreat to a hidden magical facility. They are cornered by Quynn. When Trey punches Quynn, the impact triggers a massive restoration of their ancient memories. They realize they are actually two halves of the same person: the ancient elf Tarathiel, who accidentally soulsplintered himself 2,000 years ago to purge his negative traits. Quynn is the living embodiment of Tarathiel's cruelty and ambition, meaning that Quynn is effectively Trey, making Trey the biological father of Quynn's son, Rylan.
The Superuser
While fleeing on a magical leafboat, Rylan, Elanil, and Imra discover the island of Tanomar is populated by hundreds of resurrected Prime Mages—including Rylan's mother, Phoenix. The destruction of the Prison Trees in the afterlife realm of Ambarhal has released the trapped souls back into the physical world.
Rylan's immense magical sensitivity allows him to connect directly to Xyclami, bypassing the need for primewood and becoming the system's first human "superuser". The machine begins feeding him vast amounts of ancient knowledge. However, the raw, unfiltered power heavily corrupts Rylan's mind. During a romantic moment with Elanil, his magic spirals out of control; his mindmaster abilities violently overwhelm her will, and he nearly rapes her before she manages to throw up a shield, grievously wounding herself on a tree branch in the process. Horrified by his own loss of control, Rylan flees.
The Fall of New San Francisco
The Twins conjure an apocalyptic, planet-wide storm to wipe out Valaralda. Nelenor arrives at the Remnant city of Lusvunub. In a desperate bid to stop him, Shot and the underkids use the massive gravitonic engines of the United Sky Cities to maneuver the seven floating cities directly over the Twin.
They reverse the cities' Fennas Elenathon gate mechanism, firing a devastating beam of pure energy down onto Nelenor. However, the godlike Twin merely laughs and deflects the beam back into the sky. The reflected energy triggers a catastrophic chain reaction, utterly obliterating New San Francisco and killing everyone left on board. The remaining six sky cities forcefully detach and drift away from the smoking ruins.
The Soul Tree
Enraged by the loss of their city, thousands of underkids swarm Nelenor, only to be effortlessly slaughtered by the hundreds. Refusing to back down, Phoenix confronts the Twin alone, pushing her Destroyer magic to its absolute limits with her fireblade. Realizing Phoenix cannot win and is unwilling to retreat, Beam intervenes, pushing Phoenix and kicking the fireblade from her hand.
The sudden loss of the weapon causes Phoenix's raw, unfocused Destroyer magic to flood the sky. The chaotic energy inadvertently interacts with a dormant, invisible Soul Tree—one that had formed years prior when Beam's former lover, Lalban, tragically hanged herself in Lusvunub. Activated by the raw force magic, the Soul Tree manifests, turns red, and violently explodes. The blast unleashes a shrieking hurricane of trapped souls that viciously tear into Nelenor. Overwhelmed by the agonizing soul magic, the grievously wounded Twin is forced to retreat through a gate. Tragically, a stray shard of the exploding Soul Tree strikes Beam, killing her instantly.
Key Characters
- Rylan (Wind): Unlocks "superuser" access directly to the Xyclami system, gaining near-limitless power and ancient knowledge, but struggles with the corrupting influence of unfiltered magic.
- Elanil (Dance): A Prime Mage who narrowly escapes Rylan's magically-induced assault and must grapple with her complicated feelings for him.
- Phoenix (Megan): Returns from Ambarhal as a fully awakened Prime Mage. She confronts Nelenor alone, pushing her Destroyer magic to its absolute limits. When her fireblade is knocked from her hand, her unfocused chaotic magic inadvertently activates Lalban's dormant Soul Tree.
- Beam (Banzab/Angel): The Warlord of Lusvunub. She fights alongside Phoenix one last time and intervenes to save her from pushing her magic too far by kicking the fireblade away. She is tragically killed by the resulting explosion of the Soul Tree.
- Aten (Orym / Akhenaten): The true "Imprisoner." He orchestrated the Great Awakening, founded the DMR, and trapped the Twins to steal their technology.
- The Twins (Nelenor & Velion): Alien scientists from Starmist Prime who created Xyclami. Twisted by 100,000 years of imprisonment, they rampage across Valaralda as 200-foot-tall Anubis monsters.
- Tarathiel (Trey / Quynn): Reunited with his ancient memories, Trey discovers he accidentally split his soul thousands of years ago, creating Quynn as the physical embodiment of his darkest traits.
- Cara (Cariel / Selenia) & Lara (Lorelei): Two sisters whose lives were shattered by the Awakening. Cara becomes a ruthless survivor, while Lara becomes a master manipulator.
Magic and Lore Introduced
- Xyclami (Guruthos): Revealed to be an ancient, highly advanced alien operating system (version 9.35375) from Starmist Prime. It interacts with the biological "sparkthreads" (souls) of living beings, utilizing trees as conduits to alter reality, which the elves perceive as "magic".
- Superuser Access: Certain highly attuned individuals (like Rylan) can connect directly to the Xyclami system without using primewood, allowing them to manipulate the core "particles" of force magic and query the machine for information.
- Soul Trees: When a mage commits suicide using magic, their soul forms a ghostly "Soul Tree". Unlike Prime Trees which grant access to magic, Soul Trees disrupt and cancel out higher-order soul functions, creating localized dead-zones for Xyclami's power.
- Soulsplintering Permanence: It is revealed that if a mistweaver maintains a soulsplinter indefinitely, the separated aspects of their personality can develop into entirely distinct, permanent beings (as seen with Tarathiel splitting into Trey and Quynn).
- Pyramid Offensive System: Akhenaten's millennia-long project. By building pyramids on all three Prime Planets and filling them with murdered souls, he hopes to generate enough localized soul energy to forcefully override Xyclami and disconnect the Twins' administrator privileges.