As with most countries that we are familiar with, there must be dark and light, elements of bad and good and Zartarbia is no exception.

You will see I have attempted to draw a map for you, in the book entitled "Zartarbian Lands & Cultures" but as I have already mentioned the lands transform and evolve without reason, so it is just to give you an idea of how it might look and of course, it is not drawn to scale – that would be impossible!)

Click Here for Map

To begin with Zartarbia was a paradise where everybody lived harmoniously.

It was created by a High Priest of Arequipa in ancient Peru. He had become sickened by the bloodthirsty influence of an evil Aztec King who ruled the lands. Along with this perfect world, he created four key elements to protect the innocence of Zartarbia. These were The Box of Reversals, The Purse of Earth Seeds, The Phial of Pure Breath and The Locket of Fire and Water (the most powerful of the items). Unfortunately he was betrayed by his assistant, who approached the King with the knowledge he had in return for great riches.

Once he discovered what had happened he buried his treacherous assistant alive (without realising he had stolen documents and the Locket of Fire and Water to give to the king as proof). As the king and his army approached, the High Priest told his family and fellow worshipers to escape to Zartarbia. They begged him to come with them but he could not as somebody had to remain to seal the gateway.

At first there were no struggles for power, no wars and crime was unheard of. It was an ancient world seeped in magic and innocence. Centuries later an explorer discovered the skeleton of the untrustworthy assistant along with the items that were accidentally buried with him. The explorer not realising the great power of the objects exchanged them with an old merchant. It was the necklace that held the pathway into this yet untouched world.

Realising the power of his discovery and he took the locket to the renowned Professor Mortensen (famous for his work on ancient civilisations) but dark forces were already aware of the existence of Zartarbia and wanted to access it for themselves.

This is where the struggle between good and evil began.

Seven deadly sins were unleashed upon the unsuspecting inhabitants of Zartarbia. It was an experiment conducted by a criminal mastermind Teufel Alma, who wanted to cultivate a monstrous army to take over the earth and as you will discover in the next book of this series, he almost succeeded..

The Seven Souls of Combatine were created to fight for good (but it is no good me revealing the entire story now). This is a complex history and like any story, it takes a while to tell. All I can tell you is that after The Great Battle, things changed forever.

It is many years later that a ten year old girl, Isabella Zophie discovers The Locket of Fire and Water in her great aunt's attic.