As I said in my update to the previous post, I'm going to release some excerpts from my book to give a taste of the sorts of things contained in Ashes of Silver. Don't worry, none of these are particularly spoilery (they're from early on in the book). Enjoy!
Excerpt 1:
‘They call this place Hearthstead. I was once a stranger to these lands.
I came during one of the worse summers of dragonwaste, when the dragons prey on the people because the beasts’ only threats are too few and too disinterested in human troubles to bother cleaning up their mess.'
--
Excerpt 2:
Someone rapped the door and pushed it open before Xlynx could finish painting the Rune. The intruder stepped in while taking a deep draw at a pint of beer, one hand pocketed in his waistcoat. He grinned the whole while, eyes glittering. Virol.
“Is there something you need,” Xlynx droned, “or are you pestering?”
Virol’s grin smoldered into a smirk. “Pestering, as always.”
Xlynx narrowed his eyes. “As that is the case, get out. I am occupied.”
The layabout didn’t leave. “I’d love to play historian,” he said. “Whenever I try it, though, I just end up rambling.”
“I shall be amused later. Leave.”
In a flash, Virol’s smile faded. Sometimes it would leave his mouth, but Xlynx had never seen it leave his eyes. Despite himself, Xlynx set his brush aside.
“I’ve come,” Virol said, “to tell you I’ve bought you some time.”
“Time?” Xlynx said.
Virol said, “Time to untangle snags and gather lost sheep.”
Xlynx smacked his desk. “You come in here while I am working, telling me you’ve bought me time to count SHEEP!”
Virol chuckled, and just like that the smile was back. He pulled at his beer. “I thought you liked cryptic, green-eyes.”
Xlynx stood, casting a small spell which rolled his stone chair back to become part of the wall again. He started to step around his desk, contemplating how to repay the insult.
“Oh good, you are listening,” Virol said, unmoved. “But, since I have to spell it out for you.”
He took his hand out of his pocket and held it palm up. An image of a man in black wielding a pair of knives appeared. Xlynx stifled his surprise at the spell. It was a devilishly complicated syntax. None of the mages in Hearthstead should know of this spell, let alone be capable of it, and never say this perpetually-drinking jester. But then, Virol always had a surprise up his sleeve. That was how he’d gotten into the guild in the first place.
The man was familiar to Xlynx. Marlom. The Shade. The Smith. The inner war of Dark Fire and Blank magic.
The image flickered, and suddenly it was Hinder. Xlynx had not seen that man since the Terrus hunt. A suit of armor walked beside him. Another flicker. Aera. One more—Sahl.
“You’ve only got one of them beside you,” Virol said. “They have united before, however briefly, and they need to again. But now you’re all after the same thing. Rest.
“You cannot rest, Xlynx. The world outside Hearthstead still moves. It’s time to stop treating your guild like a desk job.”
Xlynx glared at Virol, but Virol just glared right back. “Who do you think you are?”
Virol stuffed his hand back into his pocket. “Far too old, and not nearly old enough.”
--
Excerpt 3:
'For lifetimes, the Empire battered at our gates in the Umbral Valley. The Ebon sat in safety, laughing at the Endless while our warriors frustrated their might. We were reviled for this.
Our darker skin colors, our ever-green eyes, and our bone-white hair were all demonized.
Every new generation of Ebon saw a more ferocious generation of Endless pounding at our door. It only made us mock them more. For their short-sightedness. For their apish rage.
The siege of our homeland ended when the drakes came. In this time of war no drakes, Elemental or otherwise, resided on Hearthstead. They had their own land across the sea. According to some accounts, the Elemental Drakes fled their lands because they were hounded by the other drakes of that homeland—drakes that made the Elementals seem unimposing. Regardless, many Elemental Drakes migrated to Hearthstead and took up residence in the Endless Empire. It was enough of a distraction for the Endless to lessen their assault on our border. The Elemental Drakes began to work out a partnership with the Empire that may have proved mutually beneficial.
The partnership was short-lived. The Elemental Drakes were followed by their cousins the dragons. The Hydra dragged dragons into the sea, the Dracon summoned terrible storms, and the Salamanders wrestled them to the ground, but there were too many. I do not know how many is too many, but the accounts I have read indicate the sky was darkened by their numbers, and part of the scarcity of Elemental Drakes today is because of those lost trying to prevent the dragons from reaching the Endless Empire.
You may begin to detect a pattern here. I made a point of the might of the Endless to give the arrival of the dragons proper context. The Elemental Drakes fought their desperate battle because the Empire had no hope for survival.
One dragon in particular, Anbraax, led the swarm. They call him the Demon. He bested several Grand Drakes in combat to reach the Prolonged capital Vahalla. While fending off Alacrit the Grand Dracon and Vulcan the Grand Salamander, Anbraax unleashed his fiery breath on the city. It melted to the ground with most of the Prolonged in existence trapped inside. They died.
Whenever you hear the curse, “Anbraax’s breath,” be sure to remember that.
By then the Empire was already shattered. Half of it was gone. Those Prolonged who survived the pyroclast of Vahalla were scattered to the winds. Anbraax did not settle with Vahalla. He flew to Magmell and would have repeated his catastrophe there at the Persistent capital if Atlas had not emerged from beneath the earth at just theright moment. The Grand Wyrm sheltered Magmell from the blast. His hide was burned into the earth, but the Persistent capital survived, albeit buried beneath the drake who became a living mountain.
Anbraax was brought down then, by the spells of a mage named Marduk and the earth-shattering rage of Atlas’ mate, Tempus. Tempus ate Anbraax’s carcass, and the dragons scattered without their leader.
The damage was done, though. Atlas was irrevocably crippled. Tempus curled up beside him and has not moved since. They are a mountain range now. Vulcan’s mate was killed in the fighting, and the Grand Wyverns were also grievously injured. The empire that besieged my people for centuries was crushed in two days’ time.
And where were the Ebon when this occurred? We used our vast arcane knowledge to hide ourselves. Not a single Ebon warrior lost his life to dragons. You should know, too, that my people felt vindicated in this.
There is a reason I no longer live in the Umbral Valley.
If there is a day the name Hearthstead took on its bitter irony, it was that day, when one great city was melted into scrap and another was buried beneath its savior.’
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