Can you tell me a little about The Arcane Rifts?
Mislav (the berserker) and Ludmila in particular (their names stood out lol)
Ahhh, the Arcane Rifts, my golden child--
I--I mean--
The story I give an appropriate amount of love and attention to! 🥰 (or so I say because I think the extra attention I give it is deserved because it's the golden child--)
The Arcane Rifts
I've since included the blurb and other information in my Writeblr Intro if you want more generic information! Sorry I've taken so long to respond to this, haha. I'm going to continue forward here assuming you've read it, but I'm probably going to restate a lot of information here anyway!
The Arcane Rifts is a high fantasy, action, mystery story with hints of horror! It primarily follows its two MCs, Gene and Tazin, as they struggle to live on their own as Socially Othered kids.
Gene is physically disabled--he was born with a twisted and too-short leg that makes it difficult for him to walk. In-story, he uses a cane and eventually gets a foot lift that helps level out his walking. Though it doesn't perfectly fit, the best actual medical condition I can find for him is clubfoot!
Adding to his social-othering, Gene is also autistic (though it "doesn't exist" in Glavnran) and originally from another country, though it's unknown which one in-story. He was found in the woods on the outskirts of Kavo (a town within Glavnran) a year prior to the events of the story, and has barely gotten a grasp of the local language in the time before the story starts.
Tazin is the secondary MC and another kid only two years Gene's senior. He's ethnically Jhandan (Fantasy!Indian), and discriminated against by the majority Glavni (primarily white, Fantasy!Slavic) people despite being born and raised in Glavnran.
(Context: Glavnran is under the thumb of the Jhandan Empire and has had a history of both war and exploitation by Jhandar. This has led to the hatred of the Glavni people toward anything Jhandan--however. I do not say this as in to say the discrimination Jhandan people face is fair, understandable, or reasonable--just that it's the origin of the tensions. Tazin is a literal 9-year-old, though, and obviously just gets handed that hatred because of the color of his skin... and a minor accent.)
There's Asks on both Gene and Tazin and you asked about other characters, so I'll hold off on giving more info about them in particular, but!
The Arcane Rifts focuses on the two boys meeting, deciding to work together to survive on the streets, and accidentally getting way in over their heads as they accidentally draw the attention of both the cops and the local gang.
The main plots focus on the children, the khonitva, and Kavo's chief of police--Nikolai--investigating the boys on top of some magical stuff going on in the background.
It's a dense story, but I promise you it's worth it!!! Or, it will be whenever the current version has more than 5 chapters available read...
Mislav Baran
My beautiful babi boy and definitely not Gene's later boyfriend.
So, bad news: while he appears a bit in Book 1, Mislav isn't a main character there. He only becomes a MC in Book 2, after... spoilers! happen! 😙👌 In order to answer your questions, though, I will be giving away mild spoilers! 🥰
First, an introduction: Mislav (the berserker) is, surprise surprise, a berserker! Let me actually grab a snippet straight from tAR for this!
What Damaris didn’t know was that Mislav was a berserker, which meant he was stronger than any normal kid. Especially when he got angry.
Being a berserker meant more than getting stronger with anger, though. It boosted all of his physical abilities and his senses. To top it all off, he healed from injuries more quickly.
So imagine what it was like when he got angry.
Although he’d show off his strength sometimes, Mislav hated that he was a berserker. Not only was it his own curse, gifted to him by Zhrizn—Glavnran’s evil god of nature—after he’d orchestrated the deaths of Mislav's family, but the people of Kavo hated berserkers. They said they were wild, destructive creatures that did nothing but hurt and kill.
Woah, so there's a lot to unpack there, haha. 🤭
But before I do... let me give you the next two lines from Gene('s narration).
Those were the reasons why Gene never told Mislav what he thought of a berserker’s abilities.
They made for a perfect weapon of war.
Wait, wtf, a kid thought that??? Aaaaaanyway! We're talking about Mislav, not Gene! 😉🤭
Yeah, a berserker's abilities are perfectly suited for combat and recovering from it. However, at the beginning of the story, Mislav is just nine. Y'know--nine years old. He's not seeing any combat or war!
(Y'know... besides the whole "Adilzhan killed his entire family somewhat in front of him" thing. Oh, wait, right. That.)
So, Adilzhan. He's an avatar of Zhrizn (aka does his bidding), and it was presumably on Zhrizn's orders that he killed Mislav's family.
And then... stopped.
To spare Mislav? What's so special about him? Who knows! Me. I do.
Regardless, after sparing him, Adilzhan half took him in. Yeah. Took him in. After slaughtering his entire family and burning down the farm Mislav grew up on. That certainly won't be causing any sort of weird complexes in the poor kid growing up.
Despite their, ah, rough introduction, Adilzhan has been a shockingly generous "parental" figure to Mislav. Rather than forcing Mislav to live with him, Adilzhan sent him to the local orphanage and gives him anything the orphanage can't. Then, he's even ignored Mislav's uh... well.
Blatant attempts to "get revenge".
To be completely transparent: "berserker"-ness has turned (perhaps unsurprisingly) into an accidental allegory for anger issues--especially in the poor, traumatized Mislav.
So what does a kid with severe anger issues accentuated with a curse that actively tries to make them worse do when their family's murderer is constantly trying to be nice to them? Well, lash out, of course!
For example, by the beginning of book 2 Mislav would/will have:
destroyed a bunch of Adilzhan's stuff... several times.
straight-up ambushed/attacked Adilzhan (though only twice!! And only in the first several months of knowing him!!!... because he quickly learned it wouldn't get him anywhere--)
kicked/headbutted him while Adilzhan tried treating his (Mislav's) injuries
purposely sabotaged Adilzhan in moments of danger/stress, leading to Adilzhan getting injured when he otherwise wouldn't have gotten!
And yet, shockingly, Adilzhan never would've lashed out at the kid. Worst he would've done is put Mislav in the magical equivalent of "time out" while he took care of whatever problems the kid made.
By the beginning of book 2, when Mislav is 15, he's mostly moved past the state of constantly lashing out at Adilzhan. Like, sure--he hates him. Always will! But he's learned that, despite the past... Adilzhan is genuinely looking out for him. And was kinda a halfway decent parental-ish figure?
And, oh boy. Does he hate that. And understandably so!
But he's come to accept it.
Oh, Right, That Was Background Info.
So Book 2 Mislav! While Gene and Tazin were busy being criminals together on the streets, Mislav spent his time being raised halfway between the orphanage and Adilzhan himself. However, like all of the kids in Kavo's orphanage, he got kicked out at the age of thirteen (yeah, it's messed up, but tbh that's just how bad Kavo is).
So did he move in with Adilzhan at long last?
Hell no!
Mislav joined a gang, the yuertel!
Wait, what???
Yeah! Don't worry about it, it's all good. Anyway!
One thing I didn't mention earlier about the "berserker curse" is that it does more than just enhance the individual's physical capabilities and senses--it also will slowly corrupt their physical appearance as they tap into its power.
Which... that was another reason that Mislav toned down his anger with Adilzhan. Allowing himself to stew in it made it more and more likely that he'd act on it... and acting on it advanced the curse's control over him. And if you don't remember, the people of Kavo really don't like berserkers.
So, for most of his life (since the deaths of his family), Mislav has been doing his best to bottle up every single negative emotion he feels and avoiding people to keep them from figuring out the Truth. Aaaaand, y'know, self-sacrifice like hell. Because, surely, if bad actions accelerate the curse, then being a good person will de-cellerate it, right?
Yeah. He wishes. Literally.
Ludmila Morozov
So, Ludmila!
She first appears only at the very end of the first book, but Ludmila is actually a super important character to the series! She becomes a major character starting book 2, and is a main character in book 3!
Ludmila is an ice mage--or vykolt as the Glavni people call them--though you wouldn't be able to tell considering her fierce personality, haha. (Well, actually, she's incredibly icy, too, but.)
While Gene and Tazin were busy spending the first book of tAR in the khonitva and getting themselves on Kavo's Most Wanted list, Ludmila spent her time in Damaris's orphanage, getting evicted as she turned "of age", and joining/becoming the leader of the yuertel!
Oh, yeah, so the yuertel...
Ludmila didn't start the gang, and in fact got an actual job assisting the lumberjacks (and -jills) after first being kicked out of the orphanage. She only quit after an incident disillusioned her from Kavo's police- and work-force at large. Afterward, she was informed of the yuertel's existence by her childhood friend--Rada--and joined them when she couldn't find another job she was okay with working.
When she first joined, the yuertel was a ragtag bunch of kids with no idea what they were doing. After she joined--... well, they were still a ragtag bunch of kids with no idea what they were doing! But their previous leader saw her compassion for the others and stepped down to let her lead instead. Y'know, with his guidance, considering he was just a little better with people than her, but she was around a lot more than him and could do more for them than he could.
The yuertel isn't what you'd first think of when the word "gang" comes to mind. While they get up to criminal activity, they minimize collateral damage when and where they can, because hurting others isn't Ludmila's goal. They just need to do what they do to survive--malice and wanton destruction was the khonitva's thing, not hers. Though if a stray icicle hit Nikolai or a member of the khonitva over the head, she wouldn't complain.
While Ludmila wants the world to be a better place, all she sees is more ways to make it worse... or to work for those she feels sit idly by, allowing for things to get worse while sitting on their hands. So, instead, she carved out her own corner where she takes care of the people she cares about while nobody else pays them any mind.
Point is, she's a bit of a hypocrite.
Kavo--and, in fact, Glavnran in general--is a terrible place. It's full of crime, discrimination, ableism, and so many -phobias that it's ridiculous. She realized there was nothing she could do about it, so she sought to help her friends float by if nothing else. But she's a little ignorant of the fact she's guilty of the very same thing she hates in Nikolai and the rest of the police force.
Complacency.
At least... she is before book 3. But that's spoiler territory. 😉
A little more background info: Ludmila got sent to the orphanage after the murder of her mother. (Which, I so want to write a short story where Nikolai and Adilzhan investigate the murder buddy-cop style, Nikolai hating and suspecting Adilzhan of it all the while...)
Her mother, Tosha, was a fellow vykolt and actually was an avatar of Ertzat, the Glavni psychopomp god of ice, winter, death, and other associated things! They were distantly related to Gennadi (the un-elected mayor), and that combined with her priestess status meant the two were decently well-off before Tosha's death. Ludmila was close childhood friends with Rada even before then, and their parents' deaths occurring at approximately the same time led to them ending up at the orphanage together.
Idk what else I can say about her without getting into spoilers, haha...
I love Ludmila! Despite her hypocrisy, I'd say she's genuinely a good person stuck in a miserable circumstance like a lot of my characters tbh. She's a massive "sister friend" angsty type, and absolutely CANNOT get along with Tazin after the duo joins because of them both being stubborn af, haha. They're two bulls locking horns!
(And, beautifully, are a fire/ice rivalry, haha.)
I've seriously had this half-done in my drafts since publishing my Writeblr intro... I'm incredibly disappointed in myself.
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