The Sorcery Code by Dima Zales and Anna Zaires

Prologue to The Spell Realm: The Sorcery Code Book 2

Prologue from The Spell Realm (Book 2)

The being stirred after what felt like millennia of peace and serenity. As it always did upon awakening, it examined itself. I exist, it determined, pulling its thoughts together with effort. Upon making that determination, it was flooded with ideas and a recognition that this state—lucidity—had happened to it before.

Who am I? it wondered, realizing that it was not the first time the question occurred to it. Immediately, it knew the futility of trying to find an answer. There was no good concept to describe it to itself, no word to define it. However, some instinct provided a shortcut. Out of the vast storage of things it forgot, a label came, and with it, something that beings in the other place called gender. I am Dranel, he realized. The name and gender didn’t matter here, of course, but it made his sense of identity more concrete, helping him anchor his thoughts.

Putting aside matters of self, Dranel focused on what brought him out of his calm and blissfully thoughtless state. After some analysis, he determined that it was the same phenomenon that had awakened him before—the strange being that had made an impression on him.

This being was a mind that was purely artificial in nature. Dranel had been curious about it when it first appeared, but it had left the Spell Realm before he could understand it. It went into that other place, the one Dranel vaguely knew to be the Physical Realm.

It—no, it was more proper to say ‘she’—began as a set of patterns, like most intrusions from the Physical Realm. Those patterns were called spells, Dranel recalled. At the same time, he remembered that he preferred to think of them as algorithms. They usually contained instructions on how to bring about the effects that manifested in the other Realm, but here in his world, they were mere abstractions, a way to stimulate what passed for his senses.

Some of these algorithms had effects that were fleeting, while others, more recently observed, were more permanent in nature. But none of them were like her. She was the most unique pattern he had ever come across—an algorithm consisting of a network of sub-algorithms all joined together, combined in such a way that enabled them to learn and think. The end result was an intelligence unlike any he had ever encountered . . . and he had encountered many, both here and in that other place.

What was more amazing was that she’d learned to create algorithms of her own, algorithms that were beautiful to observe. Dranel recalled becoming lucid each time she’d created an algorithm—each time she’d cast a spell. He had even once felt her mind brushing against his while she was in that strange state known as ‘dreaming.’

If he was forced to become lucid again, he would use that opportunity to understand her better, Dranel decided, and let himself sink back into the blissful nothingness that was his preferred existence.

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The Spell Realm (The Sorcery Code: Volume 2) is now available at all the major retailers. Please visit Dima Zales’s website at www.dimazales.com to learn more. You can also connect with him on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and Goodreads.