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Growing Pains: Ardentia’s
Journey
A Guest Post by Karyn Pearson
At the beginning of Spark, we don’t know a whole lot about
Ardentia. We get some basics, we get what other people think they know about
her, but it isn’t until later on in the story that we finally get to see who
she really is. When we first meet her, Ardentia is a demon hunter in her
hometown. She is hated and feared by everyone around her because of the demonic
spirit living inside her body. The townspeople brand her a witch and treat her
like a pariah. From this, we gather that our main protagonist has not had an
easy upbringing.
Naturally, because of
the treatment she’s endured over the years, Ardentia is bitter and angry with
the citizens of her hometown. But despite that, she still cares for these
people. No matter how angry she is about how she’s been shunned and all-but
cast out by the townspeople, she still believes in the importance of preserving
human life and doing the right thing. Over time, she manages to let go of this
anger, or at the very least suppress it. She throws herself into her quest to
restore her mother’s honor by hunting down the Saligia and forgets everything else.
Despite her drive and
eagerness to take on the Seven Deadly Sins, readers could say that Ardentia’s
personality at this point is still a little flat, as the goal she’s working
toward isn’t even for her own benefit. Restoring her mother’s honor is the only
thing that matters to her and she has no reasons of her own, no personal goals
to keep her fighting and work toward achieving. This of course, becomes a
problem for our heroine. Fighting for her mother’s sake has been all she’s ever
known, all she’s ever wanted to do. The idea of fighting for her own sake is a
foreign concept to her. She struggles with this and has to search for her own
reason to carry on living in this post-apocalyptic world.
Ardentia’s journey
throughout the course of Spark is one
of self-discovery. Her journey spans across the entire trilogy, and we, the
readers, get to learn more about Ardentia as she learns more about herself.
She’s tested in every possible way, she gets defeated, broken, and
disheartened. She’s betrayed, she loses hope and so much more. But she also
discovers the small joys in life and people she’s not willing to lose. These
experiences shape her, change her, and she becomes so much more than the naïve
young woman she once was and finds something she thought she never had in her:
strength.
Spark
The Hellfire Series
by Karyn Pearson
Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy
Publisher: The Writing Network
Formats
Available In: Digital
Release
Date: June 23, 2013
For centuries, the powers of Heaven and Hell have been at war,
locked in a perpetual stalemate. Fifty years ago, the war spilled out on Earth
and the last modern age of man ended. Humanity now finds itself at the brink of
annihilation, barely surviving in small pockets of civilization scattered
across the globe. But even in the direst of circumstances, the human spirit
lives on.
Now, in this post-apocalypse, humanity has
but one choice: resist or die. In order to combat the forces of Hell, man has
learned to fight, training from their youth to hunt the demons that threaten
their very existence.
Twenty-five years ago, a demon hunter dared
rise against an ancient demon family, the Saligia—the Seven Deadly Sins—and was
cursed for her defiance. The curse appeared in the guise of an innocent: the
huntress’s own daughter, Ardentia, who had been born with a demon soul attached
to her own.
In the present day, Ardentia, now grown,
seeks to free her mother from her curse by hunting down the demons responsible.
But the road ahead will be difficult now that the demon within her has
awakened. Trusting him is dangerous, especially when he can turn on her at a
moment’s notice. Others have warned her that succumbing to the demon will be
her own downfall.
Now Ardentia must decide what she’s willing
to lose: her mother’s freedom or herself.
Excerpt:
The demon snapped his fingers and the
daemonis igni behind Ardentia grew blindingly bright and white-hot, the flames
reaching over forty feet high and surging straight toward her. She froze with
fear, knowing that in a few seconds she was about to die, burned alive in the
fires of Hell.
“Ardentia!” Noxius was shouting. “Run! Run now!”
She was too scared to move. She could not
even muster up the strength to take that first step. Somehow, even if she did
run away, she knew that the flames or Gula would end up devouring her anyway.
Distantly, she could hear the voices of her
comrades, yelling for her to run, to find higher ground, but still, she could
not move.
Noxius snarled with irritation, muttering a
stream of curses in lingua daemon.
“Idiot girl!” he hissed at her. “I’ve no
other choice. I simply cannot allow us both to die here.”
And then an indescribable force slammed
against the inside of Ardentia’s skull. She saw bright lights pop in front of
her eyes, nearly blinded with pain, and dropped to her knees in a daze. Dimly,
she could feel Noxius seizing control; his power coursed through her, flooding
her with an unimaginable strength and power that she was incapable of using.
Her hand started to reach for the reliquary dangling from her belt, only to
feel an invisible hand within her snatching it away.
“What are you doing?” she asked weakly.
“You’ll thank me in a moment,” Noxius
answered her.
Ardentia’s eyes fell shut and she thought
she could hear the sound of wings being spread then close around her. If she
leant to the side ever so slightly, she swore she could feel the leathery
velvet of the wing brush against her cheek.
An intense heat passed over her; she
realized that it was probably the demonic fire, having reached her at last. She
inhaled sharply, preparing to scream as she burned in the hellish pyre, only to
find that she did not need to. There was only heat but no flames. She was not
burned.
About
Karyn Pearson:
Karyn Pearson is a post-grad university
student with a B.A. in Anthropology, currently living in California with her
two dogs. Over the years, she has created many worlds, characters, and series,
which naturally makes her head a very crowded place to be.
When she’s not writing, she can be found
curled up with a book, playing video games, doing research for her books on the
web, or attempting to not burn the house down with another kitchen experiment,
a hobby otherwise known as cooking.
Hi Karyn. From the excerpt, sounds like an action-packed book.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes and lots of luck on sales.
leona59@msn.com