Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart

*Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart*
Author	Aer C. S. Kiar
Language	English
Genre	Adventure, Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Supernatural, Psychological, Alternate History, Self-discovery
Published	31 October 2020
Media type	E-book
Website	reveduciel.crd.co

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Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart is the first installment in the digitally released Masks of Avalon series of adventure novels by author Aer C. S. Kiar.

Set in AD 1999, The Alloy Heart tells the story of the twin teenaged pirates named Renza and Roxa Senrâu from the fictional town of Karaköy on the Romanian Black Sea coast. A former pagan religious community, this town was industrialized with a massive small arms manufactory complex during the Romanian communist regime, setting the stage for its transition to a pirate-state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Karaköy has adopted a thalassocratic pseudo-city-state way of life following an isolationist policy. As Soviet pollution has made the atmospheric conditions of their town hazardous to breathe, residents of Karaköy have adopted an extensive ritualized use of masks both as face-protection in combat and also as an environmental filter.

The Senrâu Twins were born the daughters to Kiera Senrâu, the captain of Goetia, Karaköy’s most successful crew. Born into the pirate caste which effectively serves as Karaköy's warrior-aristocracy, they received a warrior's upbringing and, by the time of the book’s opening, their exploits as a part of Goetia have already become infamous despite their young age - having attained such monikers as 'The Dragonslayer Twins' and 'The Nightmare Incarnate'.

The story opens after Renza and Roxa have been expelled from their crew under suspicious circumstances and made to attend the fictional Monacan private all-girls school Stillwind Academy, where they meet a disfavored maverick artist named Alice Frost. The twins and Alice eventually come to befriend one another, with the twins eventually revealing that they’re pirates and beginning to allow Alice to accompany them on raids undertaken in their quest to locate their former crew.

The two volume story was released on the author’s website on Halloween, 2020, with the first of the two volumes available as a free download.

Plot[edit]

The Alloy Heart is divided into 12 sections evenly split across two volumes – 5 ‘delirium’ arcs focusing on the main characters’ pirate raids, 5 ‘dream’ arcs focusing on their nonviolent domestic life at Stillwind Academy, and introduction, and a conclusion. The delirium arcs focus on the Senrâu Twins’ exploits as pirates, presenting a stylized depiction of modern piracy, the tactics therein, and the social conditions which cultivate the practice. Their hyperviolent and ruthlessly efficient pattern to gather information, strike, and analyze the remains for information useful in locating their next target. In addition, the existence of the occult and theurgy plays a supporting role, a complex and developed system of magic and ritual based on mathematical logic and causality being developed over the course of the story. The dream arcs showcase the nonviolent stretches of the characters' journey, where their beliefs, personalities, experiences, and history are discussed and examined.

Volume I

The book opens in a flashback to the aftermath of Renza and Roxa's violent escape from the pirate-city of Karaköy after being falsely branded traitors and swearing to learn the truth. The narrative then jumps forward to focus on Alice Frost in Monaco, where she catches the twins' attention by diving into oncoming traffic to rescue a kitten. Although initially disquieted by the Senrâu Twins’ sharp bearing and laconic manner of speech, Alice finds herself developing a fascination for the curious pair. This assertion is roughly mirrored in Alice's two best friends at Stillwind Academy, Nydia and Brooke.

The twins, intrigued in turn by Alice, proceed to tell her of a recent raid of theirs to Egypt, a rescue-mission undertaken for the purpose of gaining information which could lead them to Goetia, their former crew. Told ex postfacto, the twins relay their encounter with a human-trafficking ring operated by a heretical Wahabi cult which inadvertently summoned a demon when cornered. Alice, owing to both the twins' age and the fanciful nature of the story, does not believe them. After a small dispute, the twins invite Alice to come along with them on their next expedition to France, where she observes them ruthlessly kill more of the human traffickers. Her reaction, the twins note, is aberrant - one of shock but no denial. Alice is informed by their liaison about Renza and Roxa's status as an infamous pair of child soldiers and of their moniker 'The Dragonslayer Twins', which they affirm after returning from the pâtisserie. Alice, in an attempt to re-establish normalcy, takes the twins shopping at Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and purchases a pair of street-dresses for them, which the twins (though obviously out of their comfort-zone) assent to and resume their raid afterwards. Ultimately, the French raid concludes in a chaotic five-sided battle royale where several factions run into one another. During the riot, the twins are confronted both by an unknown militarized monastic order as well as a former friend of theirs named Yaeko who unsuccessfully attempts to kill them, but survives her defeat and regroups with her shinobi master in Tokyo.

After returning to Monaco, Alice surprisingly shows no repulsion towards the twins despite having witnessed their violent lifestyle. The twins' guardian Mirek reprimands them for their impulsive raid which hurt their long-term goal, opening a café on the northern end of Monaco as a front so he can keep a closer watch on them. The twins, in a moment of despair, begin to wonder about abandoning their search for redemption in favor of open war, but the train of thought is derailed when they encounter the same kitten that Alice saved. Alice is then approached by Mirek, who tells her of the twins origins in Karaköy and their status as caste pirates. Meanwhile, the twins, while modelling their new dresses on a whim, are picked up by Nydia to accompany her on a photoshoot outside Savona, where she explains her thoughts on the philosophy of beauty and the self-entrapping nature of aristocracy. Returning to Stillwind Academy, Renza and Roxa confront Alice over her meeting with Mirek. She reveals that she's fascinated by the twins and begs them to let her continue accompanying them. Amused by this, they agree.

Their next raid takes Renza, Roxa, Mirek, and Alice to Barcelona in pursuit of the monastic order they fought in France. Alice is told more about Karaköy's pirate-state, as well as Goetia - Karaköy's premiere pirate crew to which Renza and Roxa formerly belonged - their creed of 'wickedness unto the wicked', and the twins' abrupt exile. Supported by Mirek and squired by Alice, Renza and Roxa clash several times with this monastic order, which they learned to be named the 'Leonian Knights', and are driven back. After one of these frays, Alice herself is briefly captured after accidentally inhaling a hallucinogenic incense used for ritual purposes, causing her to have a bizarre series of dreams. The twins recover her before she awakens, however, and needs to be informed about her own capture in hindsight. Using intelligence from Mirek to tactically plan a raid on the Leonian Knights' stronghold, they break the deadlock and defeat the order, learning from its archon that the human-trafficking order is a multi-part international conglomerate named Cardinal led by a man named Cyril Zitek. Roxa executes the archon anyways, despite having surrendered, and then immediately expresses surprise at her own actions. In the aftermath, a straggler of this order is picked up by Kiera, who makes her into a herald for her plan.

Back at Monaco, Renza and Roxa are visited by the faeries in a dream, who probe the twins about their growing affection for Stillwind Academy and the friends they've made there. They evade the question. Kiera, meanwhile, is revealed to be working for Cyril and reports on the twins' recent raid into Barcelona. The twins tell Alice of their failed attempts to nurture life in the world, their inability to live in the greater world because of their status as 'strigoi' (loosely the Romanian equivalent of China's heihaizi), and the story of their exile. After Renza and Roxa finish their story, they express a deep emotional wound over their wrongful exile. Alice inquires if they're unhappy with their life at Sillwind Academy, which they admit to no longer be the case. Alice then thinks of asking them to simply abandon their quest and stay with her and her friends in Monaco, but changes her mind before speaking, believing that the conditions need to be exactly right before she makes such an offer.

Volume II

In Boston, the twins follow Cardinal's trail to a human experimentation pharmaceutical lab disguised as an insane asylum. Cyril confronts the Dragonslayer Twins and explains his philosophy about the world's dire need of new leadership. Yaeko, meanwhile, locates Alice and tells her the story of how the twins and her used to live together, but they betrayed and murdered her brother. Subsequent flashbacks unveil that they did, indeed, used to have a good relationship which came crashing to an end when Yaeko's family decided to support an enemy of Goetia named Rael de Bourdinille, le Marquis d’Aumale. Meanwhile, three members of Goetia disobey orders not to confront Renza and Roxa directly, who go berserk under the emotional strain - killing two and badly wounding the third. Renza and Roxa begin to express remorse over this act almost immediately afterwards. When they confront Cyril's puppet archon, he summons a skeletal apparition termed 'the Starver'. Alice is confronted by Kiera's herald, who gives her a pass to Karaköy in the shape of their Jolly Roger, the Nine of Diamonds.

Frustrated by how the twins seem to be treating her with contempt, Alice accepts Kiera's offer and journeys to Karaköy herself to learn more of their origins. She expresses shock upon seeing the environmentally-ruined landscape and the brutality of life left by the communist regime. Kiera reveals to Alice that Karaköy is, in fact, the still-existing lost city of Thule, formed as a Phoenician religious hermitage which hybridized with local Scythian tribes and developed its own unique idolist religion after been visited by King Solomon after renouncing Elohim as a false god. She explains her religion of Ismaskya and shows Alice its key idol within a secret shrine in their village. Alice is affected by the powerful theurgy emanating from it immediately, but continues her walk with Goetia's captain regardless. After returning her to Karaköy, Kiera contacts Alice in secret through oneiromancy and gives her a clue to pass onto Mirek - the name of Cyril's last remaining archon in Cardinal.

Kiera's clue leads Renza and Roxa to Japan, where Alice splits off to meet Yaeko in secret. While pursuing Cyril, Renza and Roxa find themselves assailed by Zephyr, another member of Goetia and their former knife-fighting tutor. The three of them have a prolonged duel while, on the other side of the city, Alice and Yaeko talk out their differences. Alice points out that Yaeko's grudge against the twins is based on erroneous pretenses and that she herself is likely already aware of it. Touched by Alice's words, she accedes and gives up her hunt. The twins win their duel, but the wily Zephyr eludes them without suffering any permanent damage. Kiera, meanwhile, betrays and kills Cyril, stating that he had, in fact, been working for her rather than the other way around. The twins find him dying on the shore of Tokyo Bay and realize that Kiera has pre-empted them by severing their freshest lead.

Returning to Stillwind Academy, Alice begins delving into the occult via an independent study of the voodooist artifacts retrieved from the Americas, and her own experience in the twins' home. She has ecstatic dreams wherein she's visited by an animated form of the Ismaskyan idol and whispered to by the faeries. Meanwhile, Renza and Roxa debate amongst themselves whether they should, in fact, abandon their journey now that they've lost the trail. While working on a theurgic array in Mirek's café, Alice is surprised by Kiera, who wounds Mirek and takes Alice hostage as bait to draw her daughters back to Karaköy.

The twins, knowing that an open attack on Karaköy is very likely to result in their deaths, return to Tokyo to enlist Yaeko's help. She assents, citing a personal debt to Alice. Together, the trio of Renza, Roxa, and Yaeko enters Karaköy through a forgotten meditation-site called 'Faerie Grotto', where the faeries taunt them by dredging up specters of the dead, including Marquis Rael. Ultimately, however, they succeed in traversing the grotto and enter Karaköy. Once inside the village, they come under attack and hijack a train to escape, abandoning it while still in motion as a decoy. Yaeko splits to rescue Alice while the twins maneuver to confront their former crew. However, before they begin a battle with their crew, Kiera repeals their excommunication and surrenders, inviting them to talk with her. Yaeko, meanwhile, frees Alice. However, the artist refuses to leave until she's spoken with the Senrâu Twins and Yaeko assents. Renza and Roxa confront Kiera, who reveals that their excommunication was, in fact, a ruse intended to function as a circuit breaker on their runaway fatalistic tendencies. By befriending Alice and her schoolmates at Stillwind Academy, they've gained the hope they needed to pull themselves out of their tailspin. Kiera offers them their former position back in Goetia, however, before they can either accept or deny her, Alice reaches them and confesses her love for the Senrâu Twins (whether this is meant in either a romantic or platonic sense is deliberately left ambiguous.) They reciprocate, kiss her cheeks for the first time, and then leave her, forcing Yaeko to practically drag Alice to safety.

Back at Stillwind Academy two weeks later, Alice reflects on her adventures throughout 1999. When approached by Nydia, however, she reveals herself to be at peace and makes a quietly impassioned speech that because their adventure lives on in her heart, Renza and Roxa will forever be with her. It's at this juncture that the real Renza and Roxa appear once more, congratulating her on the good speech, but teasing that she missed her mark just slightly. The twins reveal that they've situated themselves as a sort of 'part-time pirate' and that even though they're once more a part of Goetia, they will continue attending Stillwind Academy with her. Meanwhile, back at Karaköy, Kiera reflects on the adventure, regretting what was lost, but maintaining her stance that it was necessary. She ominously states that 'she was supposed the be the next Jeanne d’Arc' and that she intended to seek eternal life for her daughters now that their internal issues have been resolved. Back at Stillwind Academy, Alice meets with Nydia to fulfill a promise she made about telling her the truth about Renza and Roxa. Giving Nydia a heavy typewritten manuscript, Alice then ends the book by reading its first line - the same line with which Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart opens, implying that she herself is the story's narrator, and that the novel is a later-refined version of the memoirs she's been recording about her adventures with the Dragonslayer Twins.

Main Characters[edit]

Alice Frost: An eccentric Genevoise artist who, despite a somewhat rocky introduction, eventually befriends the Senrâu Twins shortly after their arrival to Stillwind Academy. Alice is described a a quirky girl who yet retains a semblance of normalcy because “all her quirks seem to be balanced by her other quirks.”^[1] She becomes fascinated by the twins and eventually begins accompanying them on their raids, learning their beliefs, history, and eventually delving into the very heart of their esoteric world.

Renza and Roxa Senrâu: The twin protagonists of the story, born and raised in the fictional pirate city of Karaköy. Their life experiences have left them with strong character flaws of absurdity and fatalism which often manifest as a confrontational demeanor with almost addictive tendency towards violence. However, they are gradually shown to have a much softer side, being kind to animals and attempting to raise a litter of stray kittens in Monaco. Alice speculates that, “[The twins] might have been pretty girly if they hadn’t been born in a place where ‘not dying of disease in the street’ was synonymous with ‘shooting people in the head’.”^[2] The twins are shown to possess a highly aberrant sense of self, with a completely-shared consciousness joined by what they call a 'psionic superconductor'. Renza represents their logical ego while Roxa is their emotional id and they rotate which of them is which by exchanging a pair of belled collars. This superconductor has the side-effect of both rendering them wholly immune to theurgy but also preventing them from using it.

Kiera Senrâu: The twins' enigmatic, sharp-tongued, and viciously-cunning mother - the leader of Goetia, revered as a celebrity within Karaköy. Her unexplained decision to exile her daughters and their search for her to learn the reason for it provide the primary driving motivation behind the adventure. Shown to be cool-headed and philosophically adroit, particularly on the nature of divinity. Unlike the twins, Kiera is capable of using theurgy.

Mirek Mystriți: Renza and Roxa's guardian in exile. A former criminal fixer active in the Bucharest underworld, he's since come out of retirement to assist the Senrâu Twins with their search for their mother, yet maintains an evasive manner about his motives for doing so.

Nydia Raposo: A Cajun Stillwind Academy student who's a close friend of Alice Frost's at the beginning of the story and comes to befriend the Senrâu Twins as well. Stated to be quite beautiful, she works part-time as a model while attending school. After befriending the twins, she reveals herself to have a deeply-philosophical understanding of beauty as a concept.

Brooke Ridley: A Celtic girl who, like Nydia, is another friend of Alice and the twins from Stillwind Academy. Shown to have an insightful personality and a great love of literature and poetry, she often plays a stabilizing role to her schoolfriends.

Mitsunobu Yaeko: A half-breed yakuza daughter formerly befriended to the Senrâu Twins but has since come to deeply despise and seek vengeance against them for a perceived betrayal shortly before they parted ways.

Faeries: The ethereal trickster-spirits native to Karaköy who are stated to have had an important role in the education of Renza and Roxa. Faeries are depicted as featureless female figures made of mercury that are unable to manifest in the real world, barring special circumstances of space-time. Thus, the faeries largely communicate primarily through dreams, speaking in couplets of iambic septameter.

Worldbuilding[edit]

Set in AD 1999, many issues of the post-Soviet world are referenced throughout the book, such as the resurgence of radical Islam, the danger posed by human-trafficking to denizens of impoverished countries, and the issues of economic recovery faced by denizens of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The self-serving behavior of plutocrats in both the East and the West, along with the policies they enact, is shown to be an obstacle for the less-privileged to circumvent. The tyrannical legacy of the Soviet Union is addressed on many occasions and how most, if not all, of Goetia's crew have suffered and lost under communism.

The fictional pirate city of Karaköy is revealed to be the modern incarnation of the lost city of Thule, where a fictional pagan religion known as Ismaskya is practiced. Throughout the book, this is used as a plot device to examine elements of existing religions from the perspective of a third party. The Thulic religion of Ismaskya is a refined version of monotheistic idolist mysticism which is treated more as a guiding life-philosophy like Buddhism than its Abrahamic contemporaries. Although they possess an idol which is used as a placeholder of God, they do not view it as a god itself. God is seen as an absentee from this world and the religion is largely characterized by the search for the reason of why God deserted humanity, how to re-establish contact, and the refinement of a noble soul to present to God upon this re-establishment. Despite the forced state atheism of the Soviet Union, Ismaskya endures and is still practiced in Thule, though it is stated to be gaining a darker edge as the Thulics are being forced to adapt increasingly vicious and violent measures to survive. It's stated that the two names of 'Karaköy' and 'Thule' are comparable to those of 'Iran' and 'Persia'^[3], being merely different linguistic terms for the same entity. In acknowledgement of its contemporary economic dependence on piracy, Karaköy bears the additional underworld nom de guerre of ‘The Cinnabar Oasis’.

Black magic and occult rituals are employed throughout Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart, though mostly on a low-key system pertaining to the transfer of information. The faeries are explicitly stated to be physically powerless, reliant on illusion, deception, and information to achieve psychological effects. Demonology is an obvious exception to this, but the summoning rites are stated to take generations to prepare and last only a few minutes. Renza and Roxa are open about their feelings on the inferiority of magic compared to modern industry and technology.

Stillwind Academy is a fictitious institution often employed as a tool for the critical examination of aristocratic culture with many of the girls, despite leading relatively comfortable lifestyles, simultaneously living in fear of undesired arranged marriages and possessing little self-direction in life. The corruptive influence of money is shown here not only to have adverse effects on those preyed upon by rampant capitalism but also to ones' own family.

Themes[edit]

Balance: Horseshoe theory is exemplified throughout the book - how extremism is flawed on principle. The addiction to wealth is shown to be just as spiritually corruptive as poverty as well as how easy it is to fall into madness with too much investment in one emotion absent an opposing emotion counterweighing it.

Hope: Amongst the themes of the book are how easy it is to lose sight of oneself and the importance of dreams. Renza and Roxa are initially shown to struggle with strong feelings of absurdity and fatalism, with much of their character arc centered around overcoming this viewpoint. Alice, similarly, is shown to hold a dream which her parents disapprove of and struggles with how to internally reconcile this.

Knighthood: The knightliness of Renza and Roxa is noted on several occasions (in their resolute belief in a code of righteousness, devotion to their lord, steadfastness in battle, etc) despite being pirates. They jokingly comment that in the context of the real history of knights, the skillset employed is about the same. Alice speculates that they might internally wish the myth of knighthood were reality.

Parenthood: Many of the characters, including Alice Frost herself, are shown to have a strained relationship with their families which has shaped their lives in all manner of ways. The twins' gratitude towards their mother for what they feel was a benevolent upbringing is expressed in the form of fierce loyalty to their mother's moral code. The commitment to being a parent is revealed to be Kiera's driving factor at the end of the book - her motivation being to fix a mistake she made in her children's' nurture.

Traditionalism/Modernization Conflict: A core theme presented by the Eastern European characters is the establishment of a new way of life in the post-Soviet world. For Karaköy in particular, with its traditional means of sustenance stripped away by the Soviets, it's speculated that '[Karaköy] is just a stone’s throw away from becoming a kingdom of vampires.'^[4]

Violence: Renza and Roxa are often shown to have incredibly violent elements to their personality on their raids, however, the work is realistic in its presentation of violence as a critique of violence. The twins’ addiction to violence is, at several points, acknowledged to have been outright detrimental to their long term goals. In Japan, the decidedly-nonviolent Alice Frost achieves a greater victory through talking than the twins do through massacre. An examination of the real worth of violence is a key theme of the book.

Historical Basis and Accuracy[edit]

Although set in an alternative version of the late 20th century and researched accordingly, departures from real history are acknowledged. As quoted from the author’s website, “These fables are of a world based on reality, but not reality itself. Every reasonable effort has been made to research the real events employed as artistic reference and you can assume that most fictitious world-events of this fable align with real history unless otherwise stated. However, I acknowledge that this is a fable, not a documentary, and that artistic license is in effect.”^[5]

The Soviet Union, and communism as a whole, is generally presented in an unfavorable light and the bias against it is acknowledged for several characters, as would be typical for the average Romanian of the Ceausescu era. However, positive elements of the Soviet Union are discussed as well, such as their industrialization of formerly rural areas and implementation of Russian as a trade language.

Karaköy, the twins’ hometown, is a fictitious modern incarnation of the lost city of Thule, and its history is accordingly an invention, albeit one which is written to align with real history as much as possible. Most of the discussed events pertaining to the history of Thule did happen, such as the Teutonic Order’s Northern Crusades. However, the Thulics’ involvement therein is artistic license.

Scythian culture is shown to have played a key role in the development of Thule from its creation to the present day, with the two largest tribes which assimilated into Thulic society being the Agathyrsi and the Sarmatians several centuries apart from one another.

Thule's current heavily-industrialized-and-polluted incarnation of Karaköy is likely inspired by Soviet industrialization projects such as the Aral Sea, Karachay, and the Mir Mine.

Occult influences from ancient, renaissance, and 19th century theosophical sources are present throughout the book in such instances as the Akashic Record, faeries, absinthe, demonology, allusions to sexual magic, human sacrifice, Atlantean motifs, and Celestial script.

References[edit]

↑ Kiar, Aer C. S. Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart. Published 31/8/20. Pg 85.
↑ Kiar, Aer C. S. Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart. Published 31/8/20. Pg 339.
↑ Kiar, Aer C. S. Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart. Published 31/8/20. Pg 442.
↑ Kiar, Aer C. S. Masks of Avalon - The Alloy Heart. Published 31/8/20. Pg 603.
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External Links[edit]

The official Tales of Avalon website