The Second Realm

The Separatists are defeated. The First Realm is saved. But the fear that brought war remains, now focussed on Rel. Given one last chance to prove himself, he sets out to capture the last fleeing Separatist, the Clearseer Soan. But Soan's Gift is the equal of his own, and if Rel fails, no-one else is strong enough. And if he succeeds, he must still face his own reckoning among the Gifted.

The Separatist invasion of the First Realm has begun. Leading her makeshift army to fight them, Pevan has never seen so many Wildren in one place at once. Her troops are undertrained and inexperienced. Keshnu is the only Gift-Giver who can be spared to join her. And Rel is still missing, long overdue to return from his time-travelling adventure with the secret weapon he promised.

Traveling to the future has not provided the answers Rel was looking for. Rejecting the unthinkable cost of Fate's plan, he turns to the one person he has always been able to trust. But Dora has been reshaped by three centuries among the Threekin, and even she can only offer Rel lessons that are hard to swallow.

Rel travels into the future believing he will finally unlock the secrets of Fate's plan. Before he can confront Fate, though, he must adjust to a new time; a time of complex electrical devices, strange architecture and the half-human, half-Wilder Threekin. And when the truth about Fate does emerge, the hope he offers may come at too high a price.

The Separatists have finally launched their attack on the First Realm. In Vessit, Atla raises the alarm, and discovers that Pevan has special plans for him. She sends him to the Court with a desperate appeal to the Gift-Givers for help, but the journey will force him to confront every fear he has about his relationship with his Gift - and what the Gift-Givers' plan for humanity might be.

Touring the South to raise an army of Gifted, Pevan can't hide from Chag's questions about their relationship. But, far from the front lines of the cold war against the Second Realm, a terrible corruption has taken root among the Gifted. A trap has been laid for Pevan and Chag that will push them closer than ever before - or leave them to fall apart once and for all.

The once-backwater fishing town of Vessit has become the epicentre of the First Realm's growing crisis. Only Pevan has the experience to turn the town's defenders into an army matched to the Separatist threat. To Vessit's Gifted, though, Pevan stands for everything that has brought destruction to their doorsteps, and before she can face the Separatists, she'll have to master her allies' hostility.

The Gifted of Vessit have no reason to love Chag Van Raighan, so when the last of his friends leaves the town, they waste no time locking him up. But Vessit will be at the centre of the coming war with the Separatists, and every Gift, no matter how minor, will be needed in the town's defense.

The only way to defeat the Separatists requires Rel to follow Rissad and Taslin into the future. He trusts neither the Gatemaker nor the Gift-Giver, but he's out of options. Before he confronts the perilous crossing through the Lost Realm, though, Thia drops a bombshell that gives him every reason to return safely - if he can return at all.

Before his mistakes almost destroyed the First Realm, Rel helped Rissad Van Raighan escape the Gift-Givers. Now Rissad is back, claiming to have been to the future and learned of how to save the First Realm once and for all. But Rel's own ability to see the future is blinkered. He can't check if Rissad's telling the truth - or if Rissad might be the one blocking him...

Atla has come home, but Vessit is a town still reeling from disastrous Realmquakes and the reappearance of the man blamed for them; Rissad Van Raighan. Rissad claims extraordinary new powers and knowledge, but no-one can tell if he can be trusted. Worse, Rissad has somehow learned Atla's deepest secret: his experience in the Second Realm has left him and his Gift irrevocably changed.

Pevan's desperate plan to rescue her brother from the Separatists has succeeded, but at high cost. Now alienated from both First and Second Realms, the Gifteds' only hope is to free Taslin, held prisoner in the human town of Ilbertin. But Ilbertin has its own Gifted defenders, and if it comes to a fight, Pevan and Rel will be outlawed forever.

Against all the odds, Pevan's rescue has succeeded in recovering Rel and Atla from the Separatists' captivity. With the Second Realm in chaos, though, it falls to Atla to Guide them back to safety. Surrounded by feral Wildren and hounded by Separatists, still shaken from his earlier failures, Atla must step up to the level of full Gifted, or the whole First Realm will be at the Separatists' mercy.

Rel is in the hands of the Separatists. Pevan has committed herself to rescuing him, in spite of orders not to. With only Chag to help her, she must make her way through the treacherous Second Realm to the Separatists' lair and find some way to defeat its powerful guards on their home ground.

The Separatists have abducted Taslin from the heart of the Gift-Givers' fortress. Pevan is sceptical of Rel's rash plan to get her back, but she only has Chag to back her up. And Chag confesses to a whole new crime: giving the Separatists the ability to read the future. Pevan will have to choose whether to give the thief a second chance, or write off Taslin for dead.

Rel's trial is over. The Gift-Givers have forgiven his part in the disaster at Vessit. But the trial's aftermath brings revelations which will send Rel and Pevan into the secret depths of the Court, places so dangerous that even their closest allies among the Children of the Wild might kill them instantly and without warning.

The Separatists have breached the Court of the Gift-Givers and disrupted Rel's trial, but Pevan still doesn't trust them - and she definitely doesn't believe they're there to help her. At Chag's insistence, a private meeting is called, but the confrontation may call Chag's loyalties into question too.

Pevan's rescue mission finally arrives at the Court of the Children of the Wild, where the Gift-Givers are about to put Rel on trial for almost destroying the First Realm. Chag, distracted by the mixed messages Pevan's sending him, needs Rel to stay true to their Separatist masters, but the Clearseer may have other ideas, and Taslin is determined to see Chag face his own reckoning.

Atla's training was far from complete when he was recruited by Pevan to help her rescue her brother. Now he's got to find a safe route through the Second Realm to the Court of the Children of the Wild, and along for the trip is Chag Van Raighan, still the most wanted man in the First Realm.

To the people of Vessit, Pevan's brother is a pariah, responsible for the Realmquake that ruined their town. Dozens are dead, hundreds injured, but Rel is the only one who might have an idea what happened. To find him, Pevan will have to face the hostility of the townsfolk and somehow recruit a Guide for a journey to the Second Realm...

Rel's actions at Vessit trapped Dora in the Abyss, left Keshnu comatose, and shook the entire First Realm. Now, to make amends, he must face the Court of the Children of the Wild. Taslin, the Wilder who was Dora's closest friend and Keshnu's foremost student, is his only guide. And the Sherim that they must cross to leave the First Realm behind has been damaged beyond recognition...

With the help of Pevan and Van Raighan, Rel has escaped the clutches of the Gift-Givers. Convinced that Keshnu is about to destroy the Second Realm, Rel persuades his rescuers to stay in Vessit with him and keep watch. When a new Realmquake hits, Rel's fears seem to have been borne out, but if he interferes, he knows Taslin will be waiting for him.

The First Realm is starting to shake itself apart under the strain of the Second. Dora's new powers offer some hope to stabilise it, but she can't hold the world together and keep tabs on Rel at the same time. And the Clearseer is about to find a new and dangerous ally...

Dora and Wolpan have managed to save Thia from the perils of the Second Realm, but they have no idea what Dora did to manage it. Whatever it was, it's left the nearby Sherim unstable and dangerous. Keshnu comes to the rescue, but his attempt to help Dora gain control of her growing powers misfires badly, and seeds an utterly unthinkable consequence.

Rel's actions on arrival in Vessit landed him in prison. Dora must deal with the fallout from his arrest while suffering the uncontrollable, chaotic effects of her Second Gift. When one of Vessit's Gifted becomes stranded in the Second Realm, Dora takes the opportunity to leave her problems behind and help with the rescue. But nothing is ever so simple in the Second Realm.