The Glyst?

From To the Dead City, Book One of the Glyst Saga

“Less than one hundred years ago, there used to be magic across the land, and people called it the Glyst. There were healers and seers. There were those who could make fire in the palm of their hand and those that could talk to the beasts. There were those that could fly and those that could walk through walls. It was, according to all the stories, a wondrous time, when the Great Cities were built and the Big Roads were carved through the forests and hillsides, as a plowshare cuts through the soft soil of a generous field. This time in our history is known as the Abundance, because there was an abundance of Glyst and an abundance of all things because of the Glyst. Every town and village had its Glyster, sometimes more than one. A village Glyster might be able to heal a sick cow or encourage a crop to grow or hold back a frost. Glysting was a currency between villages. The Glyster of one village might mend the broken limb of another village’s Jarl, and in return their Glyster would see that the harvest was good in the other village.

“The most proficient users of the Glyst—the Maradyns as they were known—gathered in the Great Cities. There were schools there, clusters of huge spiraling towers, where Glysters could be taught to control their talent, improve it, and become Maradyns.

“The cities were where the Cwalee first appeared, stepping out from holes torn in the very air. It is said they were tall and thin and white, with too many joints in their limbs. Their heads were long and fleshless, and where a mouth should be were tentacles as of the squid that can be netted at Brim. These tentacles could grow to any length it seemed and with them they drained the Glyst from the Maradyns, drained the Glyst and the life. Those without the Glyst who stood in their way were dispatched as easily as you or I might dispatch an insect. And soon there were no Maradyns left and the Great Cities were as tombs.

“And then the Cwalee came for the Glysters, in the towns and the villages. And soon there were no Glysters and no Glyst. The time that followed is called the Want, because it was a time of paucity and lack, a difficult time, though there are some that called it the Calend, which means ‘opportunity’ or ‘beginning’ in the old tongue.”