ANIMARA: Reckoning of the Shards

James Bell Jr

ANIMARA: Reckoning of the Shards — an audio anime from Watah Kik As Anime. A thousand years after the Core shattered, its pieces are waking up. In Sector 09, thief Skunk Rogue and the Smoke Court run one impossible heist against the Council that starves their city — while something ancient hums beneath the streets. Season 1: 12 episodes. Written and created by James Bell Jr.

Episodes

  1. 2d ago

    Ep. 10 — Hour of the Platypus

    "The empty chair just gave an order."The first strike comes out of the water. Platypus Assassin has found Chameleon in the flood-dark of the Venom Alleyways — with eleven kids crouched behind him in a half-flooded loading dock, counting to a thousand. The Assassin's spurs are faster than illusions, and he says the line that ends the game: "You can hide your skin. You cannot hide your breathing." When a spur nicks Pip's arm and a thin line of purple starts spreading under the skin, Chameleon — illusionist, traitor, the thief who sold the shard — does the one thing nobody expected. His skin turns all one color, a flat furious red, and he puts his own body between the blades and the children.At the city wall, the shard's carriers face a hundred troopers and an Enforcer who has read too much truth to obey. Snow Leopard's bow is drawn. Bat Huntress counts forty bats in the dark behind her. And Doberman looks down at his baton, thinks about a bounty that should have said "alive" — and closes his eyes. "I'll look away for ten seconds. If anyone passes through this gate in that time, I won't see it. Count." In the highest room of the Council Spire, three Councilors sit at a round table beside a fourth chair that holds no one, and a calm voice comes out of its glowing speaking tube: "Begin." Under Sector 09, the Siphon they've kept warm for fifteen days roars to life — and in the Ossuary Level, five hundred feet down, the Crow Acolytes rise as the carvings blaze gold. What happens to a city when every light in it turns white at once?In this episode:• The dock fight — mirages against the Assassin who never misses• Pip is poisoned, and Chameleon chooses a side with his body• Ten seconds at the gate: the Enforcer who looked away, then reported it straight-faced• The Siphon wakes — "The Heart is home. The Keeper comes"ANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  2. 4d ago

    Ep. 9 — Ossuary Level

    "The Fourth Seat is not a person. It's a position. And it never died.""Take your hands off the cables, child." Three strangers are standing in Raccoon's boiler room — a nine-tailed fox, a lynx in a wizard's hat, and a coyote eating his sandwich — and they haven't come to fight. They've come about the Hum. Kitsune has seen what Raccoon does when he works, and it isn't code: he pulls the signal out of the sky and bends reality into a machine's shape, and the shard is speaking through his network, using him as a mouth. It says one word: Open. Under the city sits a vault older than the Neon Grid itself, and the shard wants to go home to it. Whether opening that door would heal the world or finish breaking it, nobody in the room can say.Six hundred feet below, Gravk stands in Shaft Four in front of a wall that has cracked open — and behind the stone is a black staircase going down, its walls carved with hundreds of crows, and fresh tracks in the dust coming up. Then the ceiling gives way, and the big badger miner holds a falling mountain on his back until the last of his crew clears the shaft. In the Council's deepest archive, Doberman reads the founding charter by lantern light, past an archivist who has guarded the shelves for sixty years: three Seats were given to the ruling houses, and the Fourth was reserved for the Keeper of the Core — who would answer to no one, and be known by no one. At a closed auction in the Shadow Market, the reward on the shard just doubled. And on the road to the city wall, the shard's carriers find the gate blocked, the troopers waiting — and one Enforcer standing alone in the middle of the road. What does a man do when the law he's served his whole life turns out to be the crime?In this episode:• The confrontation in the boiler room — the shard has a mouth, and its name is Raccoon• The staircase under Shaft Four: carved crows, fresh tracks, and a miner who holds the mountain• The founding charter, read aloud — the Keeper of the Core and the chair that never died• Three hundred thousand marks, doubled — and Doberman, waiting at the gateANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  3. Nov 6

    Ep. 8 — The Healing Water

    "The Necromancer has a name. The man hunting him is his brother."The Sunken Mire never sleeps — it rots. Kitsune Mystic walks it alone, nine tails lit with blue foxfire, following the dead who've been getting loud. The bone-wraith that comes out of the fog is ten feet tall with a crow's skull and fossil wings, and her fire passes straight through its ribs. Its claw doesn't miss. Black veins of tomb-ash spread up her arm, and the only thing that can wash them out is clean water from the Inkspring — a spring beneath the Neon Grid, at the end of a canal wired with a hundred of the Assassin's traps.Axolotl Healer can hold the poison for a few hours. Capybara Druid can raise hands of mud out of the swamp. Between them they carry a dying mystic down a black canal where every wire, pressure plate and poison needle was set by Platypus himself — and Axolotl reads each one the only way he can: by listening. "The water is nervous. It remembers who set them." In the water beneath them, two small eyes open and watch them pass — and close again. The canal ends at a hidden archive, where Octopus Artist paints on six scrolls at once and Crow Ink steps out of the shadows, and a family secret a thousand years deep finally gets said out loud: the Necromancer's name is Valdric. He is Ink's brother. Ink sealed the vaults himself to keep him buried — and someone has unsealed them. When the wraith crashes through the window, its scattered bones land on the library table in the shape of a message. What do the dead want with the vault beneath the Grid?In this episode:• The bone-wraith in the Mire — and tomb-ash in Kitsune's blood• The canal of traps, read one by one by a healer who listens to water• Platypus watches from the black water — "Not tonight"• Crow Ink, the hidden archive, and the name ValdricANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  4. Nov 4

    Ep. 7 — The Sand and the Flame

    "The end of the world was not an accident. Four people sat at a table — and drilled."Sand shouldn't fall upward. In the Solis Rift desert, it is — golden grains drifting past two travelers' faces and rising into a copper sky. Lynx Chronomancer's hourglass is running backward: the Hourglass of the First Era is ringing, something that woke up is pulling time out of shape, and the pyramid ahead sits right on the thread. Beside him, Coyote Trickster — lava cracks glowing up his arms, burn marks on his sneakers — swears the shortcut was supposed to be fun. He didn't promise it was safe.Inside, the pyramid resets every ten minutes. A bell tolls, the hallway folds back to the start, and everything they did is undone. Lynx's way fails. Coyote's way fails. Freezing time fails, because the pyramid keeps its own. It takes seven loops of arguing — you're too slow, you're too fast, you overthink everything — before Lynx remembers what the old texts said: the lock takes two keys at once. Time and fire. Together, or never. On loop ten, frozen sand becomes a bridge and a flaming fist touches the keyhole — and beyond the door, the Hourglass shows Lynx the truth the whole season turns on: the First Era, four people at a table, a drill the size of a house spinning into a glowing heart, and the sky above them turning to glass. Elsewhere, Chameleon walks into a safehouse carrying a stolen kill-list with a child's name marked priority — and in Raccoon's boiler room, the Hum inside the cables resolves, for the first time, into a single word. What does the shard want opened?In this episode:• The looping pyramid — ten minutes, reset, and two partners who can't stand each other• Two keys at once: the chronomancer's time and the trickster's fire• The vision of the First Era — the Great Resonance was done on purpose• The kill-list comes home, the Hum learns to speak, and Kitsune Mystic remembers the day the sky brokeANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  5. Oct 30

    Ep. 6 — Echoes of the Sky

    "Two lights are answering each other. One of them is buried under a city."The blizzard came six hours early, and in the Frostfang village sick house, fourteen children are shaking with fever — the oldest is nine. The courier was due at sunrise with the antidote. It's almost midnight, and below the village, in Mist-Gorge Ravine, a ring of snow has turned to glowing glass with a wounded bird at its center and five bone-masked Crow Acolytes standing around it, waiting. Snow Leopard Ranger goes out into the storm alone, with her bow and her pale blue scarf, to find out why.She drives the acolytes off with frost arrows, crosses the humming glass, and carries Hummingbird and the medicine home on her back. The antidote works — by the fifth hour, the oldest boy opens his eyes and asks for soup. But the shard stayed in the ravine, and its light follows her like a dog watching its owner leave. Far to the northeast, in a palace of living ice, the Frost King's daughter Yuki watches her mirror lake ripple for the first time in a hundred winters: a ring of glass in the snow, a white light — and far south, a second light, buried deep under a city of neon. Two lights, answering each other. Then Stormclaw lands at the village gate with forty armed eagles and an order that reads recover the relic at any cost — and "silence her if she resists." He grants the village until dawn. And in the fresh snow outside the north gate, something has left a line of huge clawed tracks, circling the whole village once — still warm. What is walking around Frostfang in the dark?In this episode:• The rescue at Mist-Gorge — frost arrows against the Crow Acolytes• Fourteen children, three glass bottles, and a courier who "didn't fail"• Yuki and the mirror lake: the second light under the Neon Grid• Stormclaw's ultimatum — the shard by dawn, or the village answers for itANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  6. Oct 28

    Ep. 5 — Glitch in the System

    "The Enforcer read the ledger. Then he opened the cell door."The door came down at midnight. Pip stayed behind in the cellar — somebody had to, in case Skunk came home — and when the troopers came through it, the smoke that has been waking in his paws answered all at once. It poured out of him like a river through a broken dam, and it didn't stop. Now the eleven-year-old sits in a gray room in the police tower, ribs showing through his shirt, thin threads of smoke still curling toward the Enforcer's armor, while his own face looks down from a screen on the wall: DEAD OR ALIVE.Doberman came to interrogate a thief. Then Raccoon — riding the corrupted file still lodged in the Enforcer's eye screen — unlocks the ledger from the inside, and the truth pours across Doberman's vision. Grain shipments diverted from the lower city, eleven thousand tons at a time. Earthquake reports edited to read "routine venting." Digging budgets for the Ossuary Level, approved. And one page dated eleven days before the vault was ever robbed: Sweep Protocol: Lantern Hour — his own lockdown, written for him in advance, signed at the bottom in a stranger's hand: Approved. The Fourth Seat. While the Enforcer's world cracks open, a platypus rises from the canal under the Venom Alleyways and accepts a contract sealed with an empty chair: every member of the Smoke Court, no survivors — and Chameleon, of all thieves, lifts the folder off him in the rain. What does a contract on eleven children do to the man who sold the shard — and what does the Enforcer do with a prisoner he's no longer sure is a criminal?In this episode:• Pip's smoke erupts — and the cellar raid that takes him• The interrogation: "You took Old Barnaby's cart. He sells bread. He doesn't have anybody"• The ledger decrypts inside Doberman's eye — the Fourth Seat has been moving him for years• Platypus Assassin takes the contract, and Chameleon steals it back off himANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  7. Oct 23

    Ep. 4 — Shadows Over Canopy

    "Someone rewrote the bounty. Three words. It wasn't him."The sky above the Canopy is a wall of wet iron, and Hummingbird Courier is flying for her life through it. Commander Stormclaw and his Sky Patrol hunt her glider through the storm, lightning spear raised — but the iron box on her belt isn't reacting to the lightning. It's calling it. Five miles to Mist-Gorge Pass. A crate of Frostfang antidote on her chest, and a village that dies at sunrise if she lands.Four thousand feet below, in a city gone black, Skunk Rogue walks through flooded streets past the only things still glowing: the Council's wanted walls. Her face. Her white stripe. And red letters she can't stop reading — TREASON. 10,000 MARKS. DEAD OR ALIVE. In the police tower, Doberman reads the same wall across the street and goes still. He never wrote those words. He said "breathing, if she's smart enough to let me" — and somewhere between his office and that wall, somebody changed three words. When the Council tower asks if the ledger has been processed, the most obedient man in the Neon Grid does something he has never done: he lies. Above the market towers, Bat Huntress and the Night Clan tear into Stormclaw's squad to buy the courier her sky — and at the pass, from the cliffs, a single bone dart tipped in tomb-ash finds a wing. Who fired it — and why does everyone in the storm blame someone else?In this episode:• The sky chase — Stormclaw's patrol against one courier and a box that calls the storm• The edited bounty: DEAD OR ALIVE, in letters Doberman never wrote• The Night Clan takes the sky — sound against lightning• The shot from Mist-Gorge Pass, and two commanders drawing on each other over who's guiltyANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  8. Oct 20

    Ep. 3 — Rain Over Neon

    "He planned for twelve."The rooftop fight is over in seconds, and Doberman walks away with the ledger drive in his gauntlet. Skunk escapes into the Venom Alleyways — but the drive is gone, her shoulder is cracked, and somewhere behind her an old brass photograph is drying. Below the rain, in Shaft Four, Gravk the miner is telling his foreman the truth nobody wants filed: the bedrock is singing, three tremors in two hours, pulsing like a heart from the Ossuary Level. Vane writes "routine gas venting" and extends his shift. The Council needs iron for the new barrier wall.Meanwhile the shard is burning its thief alive. Chameleon's skin won't hold a color — it flashes yellow, turquoise, bare pink with every pulse, and his hands lock around the box like a warm hand is holding his. So he sells it. In the back room of the Crimson Lantern Tea House, the Broker pays fifty thousand marks in Council gold for "raw primal glass," on behalf of a client nobody is allowed to name — "Order is just a story told by the people who own the lamps." The box goes north in the grip of Hummingbird Courier, the fastest flier in the city, whose fee is a crate of medicine for her dying village in Frostfang. Every glider in the sky has been grounded by law. Stormclaw's patrol is watching the clouds. And in the rafters above the dock, unseen, a bone-masked Crow Acolyte loads a single dart tipped in gray tomb-ash — and waits for the mountain pass. Then the shard pulses, and a ring of white light rolls out across the Neon Grid, and two million people sit down in the dark.In this episode:• Doberman takes the ledger — and Skunk's face goes to every police board in the city: ten thousand marks• Gravk vs. Vane: "Gas doesn't pulse like a heart"• The Broker's bargain — fifty thousand marks, and a client with no name• Hummingbird takes the sky with the shard on her belt and medicine on her chestANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  9. Oct 16

    Ep. 2 — Rust Key

    "The vault's real treasure won't let go of the hand that stole it."Eleven seconds. Hyena's glowing green acid pours slow over the blue locks of a door the Armadillo Guild built to survive a siege — "Steel remembers what rust forgets" — and at nine seconds, the seam splits. Skunk is inside the Council's vault. But something is wrong: the district's power came back on schedule, and the vault's didn't. Down in his boiler room, Raccoon watches a black hole in his map where the vault's power should be. Something in there is drinking the electricity — and its signal rises and falls like breathing.She came for the ledger drive, and she takes it from a cabinet sealed with a mark she's never seen: a table with four chairs, one of them empty. But at the end of the aisle, in a lead-lined box, lies the other prize — a jagged, pale shard of the Primal Core, pulsing like a heartbeat. It kills Chameleon's camouflage on sight. It drinks the vault's power. And when his hand closes around it, it will not let go. Far below, the Crow Acolytes feel the Ossuary wake for the first time in a thousand years. In a dark cellar, young Pip's shadow comes loose from the floor and rises as smoke. And up in the vault's ceiling, an old brass camera that runs on no power at all swings open — and takes Skunk's picture. She has the ledger. She has eleven seconds of head start. Why is someone waiting for her on the roof?In this episode:• The acid and the door — nine seconds that crack the best vault in the Neon Grid• The seal of the empty chair, and the ledger that could feed a revolution• The shard up close: warm, patient, and holding on• The Heart wakes below the city — and Pip's smoke wakes with itANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  10. Oct 14

    Ep. 1 — The Smoke Court

    "The heart is waking — and the thieves are already at the gate."A thousand years ago, the Core — the power at the center of the world — shattered, and its pieces went to sleep. Tonight, high in the Moon-Spires of the Celestial Canopy, the Luna Moth Oracle dreams the sky breaking all over again: one piece that freezes, one that rusts, and one that sings a low hum you can feel in your bones. Three hundred miles south, in rain-drowned Sector 09 of the Neon Grid, that hum is already rising through the streets.Skunk Rogue leads the Smoke Court, a thief crew that steals — but never for itself. The Council's secret ledger could prove who's been starving the thirty thousand people sealed inside Sector 09, and tonight there's a way in: every forty-five minutes the district's power resets, and the vault's defenses go blind for exactly eleven seconds. Chameleon wants more than the ledger — there's a glowing relic in a lead box, and he means to take his fifty percent. Below the streets, miner Gravk presses his hand to the rock and feels something under the Ossuary Level pulsing like a heartbeat. And on the main street, Doberman Enforcer launches Sweep Protocol: Lantern Hour, locking the whole sector down. What wakes up when the countdown hits zero?In this episode:• The Oracle's dream — the sky of dark glass, and the three falling pieces of the Primal Core• Skunk, Raccoon Hacker and Pip — the Smoke Court, and the medicine run that starts it all• Chameleon's bargain: the ledger for the revolution, the relic for his retirement• Doberman's lockdown, Gravk's heartbeat in the rock — and eleven seconds of total blackANIMARA: Legacy of the Elemental Beasts — Reckoning of the Shards. Season 1 of the original audio anime by James Bell Jr, from Watah Kik As Anime. Talking-animal kingdoms, elemental shards of the shattered Primal Core, and a conspiracy hiding in one empty chair. New episodes Wednesdays and Fridays. New here? Start with Episode 1: The Smoke Court.📖 Read Season 1 in print — ANIMARA Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVSPVGJ · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVXW6X5🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824131362 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/zlpe3ddz · iHeartFollow ANIMARA so the next episode finds you.

  • 10 Episodes

About

ANIMARA: Reckoning of the Shards — an audio anime from Watah Kik As Anime. A thousand years after the Core shattered, its pieces are waking up. In Sector 09, thief Skunk Rogue and the Smoke Court run one impossible heist against the Council that starves their city — while something ancient hums beneath the streets. Season 1: 12 episodes. Written and created by James Bell Jr.

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