Seen from high above, Johnis’s world was mostly pale desert sand. No oceans, no islands, no continents. Canyons and valleys were filled with sand and rock, not trees or ponds.

But if one looked closely, he would find seven forests, each roughly a day’s walk across. And at the center of each forest, a green lake. And around each lake, a large village inhabited by the Forest Dwellers. Each forest was simply designated by its position relative to the Middle Forest. Thomas’s Forest.

The Middle Forest village—which was more of a city than a village, judging by size alone—was built in large circles with the lake at the center, the lake that contained the powerful cleansing waters they all depended on for their health. Flowering vines blossomed on most of the wood houses—a garden splashed in reds and blues and yellows.

Bathing in the lake once each day kept the Forest Dwellers’ skin free of the painful, scaly disease that turned the Horde gray. Miss a day of bathing and the pain would begin at the joints, spreading outward.

Miss two days and the skin would begin to crack.

Miss three days and you were pretty much a Scab, one of the Horde, covered from head to foot in the flaking disease. Worse, your mind would succumb to the delusion the Horde had regarding the dangers of water.

The lake, first found by Thomas Hunter, was Elyon’s gift to them, an escape from the evil that had latched itself onto the Scabs. Each evening the village celebrated the Great Romance at the lake’s shores at what was called the Gathering. There they danced and sang of Elyon’s love, retelling the legends of a time only thirteen years earlier when they could breathe the intoxicating waters and laugh with Elyon himself if they so desired.

According to the legends, before the disease had come, large white bats with furry bodies—known as Roush—had guarded their paradise. Back then, the evil black Shataiki vampire bats were confined to the Black Forest, behind a green river they could not cross.

But the river had been crossed by a human, and the Shataiki had been set free to ravage the land. The evil once confined to the Black Forest now clung to the skin and minds of all who refused to follow the single escape that Elyon had left them all. Seven lakes in seven forests.

This all according to legend, of course.

But since that day, not one Roush had been seen. Not a single Shataiki vampire bat. Well over a million Horde now waged war on a hundred thousand followers of Elyon. Because of legend.