Caina meets Nadia
The free newsletter bonus for CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL will be a short novel where Nadia meets Caina.
Over the last few years, people have asked me to write a crossover where Nadia Moran meets Caina Amalas.
I’ve always resisted doing it, because I’ve never really cared for crossovers. Also, I couldn’t figure out a way to write it. Like, does Caina fall through a magic portal or a wormhole or something and land in Nadia’s world? Something like that always seems contrived and forced.
Then I thought about Sherlock Holmes. The original Holmes stories were set in the 1880s and the 1890s of London (with occasional jaunts into the countryside), but other writers since have set Holmes stories at different times and places. The Basil Rathbone movies about Holmes, for instance, were set in the 1940s. Recently the BBC made a series about a tech-savvy Sherlock Holmes who lived in 21st century London and dealt with modern crimes like cyber heists and terrorism. There’s a version of Sherlock Holmes who solves mysteries in the 22nd century, and another who has battled the cosmic monsters of HP Lovecraft’s mythos.
Thinking along those lines, what if Caina was born and grew up and lived in Nadia’s world? What if Nadia met a version of Caina who lived on Earth?
What would happen when the two of them met?
Time to find out!
The book will be called CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING, and newsletter subscribers will get it for free when CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL comes out in August.
-JM
Cool!
It’d be easy enough to do such a crossover inside of continuity – Nadia would get there (wherever “there” is) via the Shadowlands, presumably beyond Earth’s Umbra, and Caina through the Netherworld, which are probably more or less the same thing by different names.
“There” would probably be either a third planet, or a specific location/demense inside the Shadowlands/Netherworld.
That is, rather than one going to the other’s homeworld, they meet in the middle.
As for why/how they’re there, Nadia would probably be there on a job for her boss/or something/someone she encountered during a job is responsible, and Caina … she’s got the shard of power from Samnirdamnus, and all the other magical scars/markers she’s picked up, and sorcerers have had a history of making foolish and unwise decisions, so probably either an artifact she’s trying to deal with or an interrupted ritual would be the immediate/proximal cause.
Alternatively, someone botched the heck out of a summoning ritual or something along those lines – or maybe the summoning went horribly right instead.
The bigger problem would be their mutual paranoia and Caina’s issues with magic-users – that is, how to get them to work together with it seeming forced, I think. Also, the language barrier.
I couldn’t think of a solution to those problems that didn’t seem forced (or, worse, contrived) which is why I went with a version of Caina native to the CLOAK GAMES world.
……….omg. That sounds like it could be terribly awesome or awesomely terrible. There will be no middle ground. If it’s Batman vs Superman I might actually cry JM.
Fortunately, I’ve never seen Batman vs Superman. 🙂