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A look at Bruce Jamison's new LitRPG series: Dead Again
Just over a year ago I found myself working abroad in Türkiye. Away from family and a bit of time on my hands, I had room for a few extra hobbies.
It was toward the end of COVID and traveling still hadn’t completely opened. My job, working out, and studying the Turkish language only kept me busy for so long. I wanted something better to do with my time than streaming and playing video games, so one Saturday morning I grabbed a cup of coffee, fired up my laptop, and started typing.
Before that day I’d never thought about creative writing, but the words just started to flow. Hours turned into days—then into months—as taking the stories from my head and putting them into words became my new favorite activity.
I always feel strange when I tell people that I just decided to start writing one day out of the blue, but that’s what happened, and that’s the first thing I learned about writing:
It doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you’re writing something.
Take the thoughts in your head and make them tangible. Whether it’s a notebook and pen, a typewriter, a voice recorder, or, in my case, a laptop, only you can get the story out of your head and make it real.
It doesn’t have to be coherent, and it definitely doesn’t have to be perfect, but the more you write, the easier it is to keep up the process. If found that one of my favorite things to do was wake up early and read whatever whiskey-induced things I had come up with the night before. Some of them were genius or hilarious, but most were garbage. However, as the days ran on, the sporadic concepts started to meld together into something resembling a story.
I let a few of my friends read it, and they gave me the encouragement to see it through to the end.
Finally, as I got on the plane to come home to my friends and family, I typed the final scene. I had done it. I had written a book. It wasn’t pretty, but in 80K words, I had created a fantasy world like the ones from J.R.R. Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander that I had worn the pages off as a child.
That was the easy part. When I started writing, I had no intention of ever publishing, but since it was done, I wondered if anyone else would enjoy reading it. There was a problem, though. If I wanted to get my book out there, I would have to get it published, but that concept was as foreign to me as Türkiye was when I first arrived.
With a lack of knowledge, I did what any good millennial would do… I turned to Google. For weeks, I read through every blog, website, and anything else that offered advice on getting my work out there. The more I learned, the more I realized I was unprepared to take on the task myself. Thousands of dollars on several different types of editing, working through social media to develop a following, and competing with thousands of other authors just in the fantasy genre were just a few of the daunting tasks before me.
I needed help, and that’s where I learned my second lesson:
Put yourself out there as much and as often as you can.
I don’t remember how many agents and publishers I reached out to, but I know it was a lot. It took a bit of digging, but the internet had no shortage of agencies accepting submissions.
Most didn’t respond back. A hand-full gave a simple thanks-but-no-thanks. Even a few foreign publishers seemed interested, but I wasn’t ready to navigate those waters.
When I had just about given up hope and started looking into self-publishing, my current publisher, Nef House, asked for the full manuscript. I was beyond excited and within a week, they read my story and came back with a suggestion: We like the book, but have you thought about making it a LitRPG? For those who don’t know, LitRPG stands for Literary Role-Playing Game.
I had read a few LitRPGs and as an avid D&D player, I was familiar with the concept, though completely re-writing my novel was not something I was prepared for. However, the more I thought about it, the more what I had created seemed like it was begging for the RPG elements to be added in.
I realized that if I was writing a story that I wanted other people to read, I needed my book to realize its full potential.
Don’t be afraid of major changes—take the opportunity to make your story better.
I resolved myself to make the book as enjoyable for the reader as possible, so I hunkered down and spent two months changing my novel into a LitRPG. I proudly submitted my updates and started working on books two and three, but the process was far from complete.
Remember when I said I was an amateur author that had never considered creative writing? That was painfully obvious when I got back my line edits. I thought I was at least a somewhat decent writer, but it seemed like every single line had something wrong with it. My spelling, grammar, and punctuation were terrible, but those were the easy pieces to fix. Some of the feedback pointed out major loopholes. Other parts of my book that I thought were crucial actually took more away from the story than they added.
Based on that feedback, here’s the fourth thing I learned:
It’s an incremental process. Embrace the criticism and grow.
I had never had someone take so much time to help me hone a skill—and believe me, writing is a skill. As an engineer, technical writing came easy to me; it’s complicated, but linear and direct. Creative writing is a different monster all together. Character development, engaging dialog, and simply putting the fantasy world in your head into writing are all complicated aspects on their own. Keeping them consistent through an entire novel was a huge weak point for me. However, I learned more in a month fixing those line edits than I had through grade school and multiple college degrees.
My publisher worked with me to turn my book into something that I can be proud to share with the world. I’m now two months out from my release and couldn’t be more excited to have my story out there.
As of this writing, I’m powering through the first drafts of books two and three, and I’ve started writing two separate books in the Sci-Fi and Urban Fantasy genres. I still wake up every day excited to put the thoughts in my head into my laptop and inch my way toward another release.
Bruce Jamison is a debut author with Nef House Publishing with his first release: No Sun Under the Mountain, Dead Again: Book 1. You can reach him at brucejamisonbooks@gmail.com
Henry already died once. Does he really need to do it again?
Now he's a skeleton with a stat sheet, skills, and an insatiable desire to kill humans. Lurking in the very depths of his bleached skull, some remnant of his old self still remains—and it wants to break free just as badly as Henry wants to figure out how he's a skeleton in the first place.
And Henry isn't the only one. Other skeletons are gaining sentience all over Jallfoss. Is there any way back? Any way to break the curse that holds all of Jallfoss in its icy grip?
More humans are coming, and if Henry doesn't learn how to keep himself alive, none of it will matter.
Origins of LitRPG
LitRPG, short for Literary Role-Playing Game, is a genre of fiction that combines elements of role-playing games and science fiction or fantasy literature. These books typically follow the journey of a character who finds themselves trapped within a virtual reality game world, and must navigate challenges and level up their skills to progress through the game.
The roots of LitRPG can be traced back to the 1980s, with the emergence of the first online multiplayer games such as MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MUSHs (Multi-User Shared Hallucinations). These games allowed players to immerse themselves in virtual worlds and interact with other players in real-time. As online gaming evolved, so too did the idea of stories set within virtual worlds.
The first book widely considered to be LitRPG is "Only Sense Online," a Japanese light novel series by Aloha Zachou, which was published in 2012. The series tells the story of a young girl named Yun, who logs into a virtual reality MMORPG game to escape the stresses of real life. The success of "Only Sense Online" paved the way for other LitRPG series to follow.
One of the most popular LitRPG series in recent years is "The Gam3" by Cosimo Yap, published in 2015. The series follows the journey of Alan, a gamer who is recruited by an alien race to fight in a virtual reality game that will determine the fate of Earth.
Since then, the popularity of LitRPG has continued to grow, with countless authors exploring the possibilities of virtual worlds and gaming mechanics in their writing. Some of the most successful LitRPG series include "The Land" by Aleron Kong, "Awaken Online" by Travis Bagwell, and "Ascend Online" by Luke Chmilenko.
LitRPG books have also sparked a renewed interest in tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, as well as online gaming communities. Many LitRPG authors are themselves avid gamers, and the genre has become a way to bridge the gap between literature and gaming.
In conclusion, the history of LitRPG books can be traced back to the emergence of online gaming communities in the 1980s. Today, the genre continues to grow in popularity, offering readers a unique and immersive way to experience virtual worlds and gaming mechanics through literature.
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Forsaken Talents: A Ruined World - Chapter 1 Teaser!
Chapter 1
So much work to do. So much to accomplish. So much… to conquer.
Vic barely registered as a flicker in my transformed mind. I’d set my thoughts to more profound ventures than simple revenge. Lady Kalma has given me visions of the world to come—of death and destruction on a scale that no mortal was truly capable of comprehending—and those visions now drive my footsteps and guides my squid-like arms. But still, Vic will die. I will give him the glorious gift of true death just the same. And the sand in his small hourglass has already run dangerously low.
I stood amidst a legion of undead minions. We were several miles outside Echelon, on the other side of the city from my necropolis, and things were steadily going according to plan.
We knew the last remnants of survivors would either flee or try to mount a resistance. Most of them fled Echelon’s walls before we arrived, but they are of no concern to me now. For the moment, my focus is honed in on Elyk. The crazed murderer wore my armor and wielded Infernum. He was a whirlwind of fire, steel, and death, slowly creeping toward outer limits of my vision. The battle had only barely begun, but already the field of corpses left in Elyk’s wake was wide and deep.
I watched the harvester with a smile of admiration like a father pleased by the performance of his beloved son. And I was. Everything Elyk had become was because of me. Not only did I give him an incredible set of equipment, but I had given him a home and a life. If I hadn’t taken him under my dark wings, he would be either dead already or fleeing Echelon right now.
I thought of Helvegen. I… I didn’t love her. No, I do not believe what we had was ever love. Perhaps we had approximated the notion of love, but we never attained it. Now we have something else. A rivalry? Perhaps. I’m not sure, and I didn’t think to ask her where we stood as her blood dripped from my tentacle arm to the floor next to my bed.
But she’s here. I felt it in my bones.
“Elyk is about to break through,” Xia said quietly, interrupting my silent thoughts for the first time in some hours.
I nodded. “Almost to the core,” I replied.
The harvester, leading over a hundred verdantly augmented undead, was pushing toward the resurrection beacon outside Echelon. It controlled the souls of all those who died on the entire continent, bringing them back in fresh bodies and seeing them go on their way. The whole concept was disgusting—an afront to Lady Kalma and her sisters of death. I was eager to bring it all to an end.
I hadn’t given the defenders much time to prepare before marching my soulless army to their doorstep. We’d moved in less than a day, but still they were at least partially entrenched. In the end, the defenders of Echelon, their barricades and bulwarks, would all be inconsequential. Echelon was the easy city to conquer. My citadel was right next door, and we gave them little time to prepare. But the other cities… they would be difficult to capture. They would have time. And they would know exactly what was coming.
Just then Elyk broke through the line of defenders, and what had begun as a pitched battle with clearly drawn line devolved into a chaotic rout. Those brave souls defending the beacon knew their time was up. My zombies flooded through their ranks, and within moments I could no longer tell where my troops ended and the defenders began.
“We need to move closer,” I told my lieutenants. “I want a better view.”
My cadre of elite players and NPCs began the slow march toward the front lines. I didn’t want to enter the fray myself, but I wanted to see what the resurrection hub looked like. I needed to know it exactly, and know what kind of area or building it was kept in, so I could easily find all the others spread throughout Wonder.
We neared the cacophony of the front lines, stepping over ruined bodies and shattered undead, and something struck me as impossible.
Somehow, my soldiers were losing.
They had broken through the defenders’ lines, but they weren’t gaining any more ground. In fact, they were losing it. I stood maybe thirty or forty paces from the action, and I struggled to find Elyk among the chaos. He was badly wounded—it looked like a spear was lodged in his shoulder through his breastplate. His helmet was missing as well.
“Sir… what do we do?” Xia asked. She sounded scared. And the warlock never sounded scared.
I had to think for a moment. If I called for a retreat, we could regroup, reassess the defenders, and then make a new assault with better planning and more information. But that would give my enemies just as much time to do the same, and if our surprise attack failed then so would a planned attack.
“Tell the zombies to pull back. Bring Elyk here as well. We’ll retreat, but only for a moment. Then I’ll lead the charge,” I commanded.
Xia obeyed my orders at once. She called the zombies, bringing back what few of them were left intact, and soon enough I saw Elyk staggering toward me. The harvester was bloody and haggard, using Infernum as a cane to support his body weight.
As soon as he was close enough to be heard, he started yelling at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
I was instantly taken aback. The man looked like he was on the verge of death, and he questioned my order for retreat? “We’re losing too many!” I yelled back. The answer was obvious. How could he not see it? “We have to regroup. We’ll make another push!”
Elyk shook his head. “We almost have them! Send the zombies back in! You’re letting them escape and respawn!”
I shook my head. Something didn’t make sense.
Elyk took another few steps closer to me, and his appearance instantly changed. He stood upright, his helmet returned to his head, and he now held Infernum in a steady grip. And he wasn’t impaled by a spear. He was fine. More than fine. Covered in gore, yes, but none of it was his.
“What the hell?” I struggled to wrap my mind around what was happening.
Elyk continued to berate me. “Send them back! Every second of delay is going to cost us more zombies. They’re respawning back there, and most of them are fleeing now. We won’t be able to catch them all.”
He was right. “Back through the lines!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “Kill them all!”
“What’s happening?” Xia asked at my side. She had readied a ball of magic between her hands, but she let it dissipate as our zombies began turning back toward the breach in the bulwarks.
Elyk readjusted his grip on Infernum’s hilt and charged. When he cleared the first two destroyed barricades, his appearance instantly reverted back to what I had seen before. He was battered and bloodied, barely clinging to life. I charged along behind him. When I was close to him once more—shoving zombies aside to make my way through the rotten, disgusting swarm—I could see him as he truly was.
Finally, it dawned on me.
Helvegen was somewhere on the other side. The painter was using her immense skill to change what I saw.
“Fuck. That’s not good,” I said to no one in particular.
“What is it, master?” Xia asked.
“Hel is painting the battlefield. She’s making it look like we’re losing. But we aren’t. We’re fucking slaughtering them all!”
I caught sight of a defender struggling to breathe through a broken jaw. He was leaking blood from a dozen or more gashes and gouges, but he was still alive. I went to him, towering above him on the ground, and wrapped my tentacle fingers around his bloody neck. I hoisted him up to my eye level so I could capture his entire attention.
“Where is Helvegen? Tell me where she is, and I’ll let you live,” I said evenly.
The man only looked terrified. His mouth moved slowly, though no words came out. He was too wounded and shellshocked to be of any use.
I crushed his esophagus in my hand and tossed him over the earthworks toward the rest of my army. After the battle, he would be converted into a mindless undead to swell my ranks.
I kept pushing forward with my soldiers. Elyk was deep in the thick of the battle ahead of me, cleaving left and right with impunity. Half of his strikes were so powerful they blasted apart two or three others in a single stroke. And he wasn’t always hitting our enemies. Zombies who got too close to him were torn to ribbons just the same as the defenders. So be it.
We reached the end of the hastily built bulwarks, and what resistance we had been facing trickled down to nearly nothing. Everyone who was still alive was running. At the end of the barricades and earthworks stood a stone and mortar building about two stories tall. It had no door, but rather each of the four walls were completely open between the pillars supporting the roof. In the center, a red orb slowly oscillated about four or five above the ground. It dripped a pinkish liquid that looked like watered down blood or thin paint.
Our zombies spread out around the stone pergola in a defensive formation, Elyk standing next to the orb with a sheen of blood reflecting from his armor.
“We have it,” the harvester said.
I watched the rotating orb with fascination. It shimmered and shined, dancing in the strong light of the day, and it captivated my attention.
“How do we destroy it?” Xia asked.
“One good hit should do it,” Elyk responded. He readied Infernum above his head like a lumberjack about to split a piece of wood. I had no doubt the legendary sword could rend the orb in half, but another plan began forming in my head.
A buzzing sound rang out from the orb, short and punctuated, and I held up a hand to stop Elyk’s movement. Everyone waited in a silence. A few seconds later, a shimmer obscured a man-sized patch of air right next to the orb. Then the man himself appeared. He was tall, perhaps in his late twenties, and the name floating above his head was George.
Something about witnessing a resurrection within the game gave me pause. In a way, it was beautiful. But at the same time, I hated everything it meant and everything it could do. Resurrection was not the will of Lady Kalma.
George blinked and held a hand to his eyes against the light. He was only level eleven. His class showed him as a crossbowman, but based on his clothing I guessed his stats and abilities were designed more for economics or crafting than combat. The man didn’t speak. He only stood with his hand to the sun and watched, his entire body trembling with fear.
Another vibration jolted out of the orb. Seconds later, the man I had killed and thrown beyond the bulwarks reconstituted in front of my eyes.
I looked to a handful of the nearest zombies. “Push the orb,” I commanded them.
They obeyed my order at once, lining up shoulder to should and reaching their foul hands to the orb. They touched it, then began to push, and the orb moved, though not much.
“More,” I said, pointing to another pair of zombies that looked a bit stronger than the first set. They had thick vines wrapping around their arms and legs, and they hadn’t been nearly as damaged during the battle as some of the others. They joined the first four, and the six of them pushed the orb with all their strength.
Finally, the orb snapped out of place. It jolted to the side like someone had cut a taught string balancing it in place. At once, the color of the orb faded to a dull grey. It lost its luster. Though it still hovered above the ground, it looked like a plain ball of metal or maybe painted wood. Everything about it that had made the orb so captivating was gone.
George shifted nervously from one foot to the other.
The other man, his name was printed in an alphabet I couldn’t recognize or pronounce, looked like he was about to bolt. His eyes were glued to a space between a pair of zombies, and he had all the weight on the balls of his feet. He was so close to running that he was nearly falling over. Honestly, he looked ridiculous. Escape was impossible.
“We need to run a test,” I said to the nervous man. “You understand, right?”
I rammed my pointed tentacles through his chest before he could respond. He gagged, sputtering blood and random gasps of air from his ruptured lungs. I spread out my fingers inside his chest, and he stopped squirming. George looked like he was going to piss himself. I shook the corpse from my arm and waited.
“Well?” Elyk said after a moment.
The orb was silent.
“I think we got it,” I said. I turned to the zombie moving crew and commanded them to push the orb all the way back to Undercroft Citadel. They started maneuvering the orb back through the bulwarks toward the breach and out of sight.
That left only George. He still hadn’t said a word.
I fixed the man with my eyes. “Well? What’s it going to be?” I asked him. Truth be told, he probably wasn’t useful enough to bother saving. He would serve my cause better as a mindless slave. Someone I would never have to worry about again.
George took a moment to gather his wits. “I’m… I’m George,” he said quietly.
“I know that much,” I said with a laugh. “But what’s going to happen to you, George? Are you useful to me? Are you going to beg for your life and come back to my citadel to serve me? Or am I going to kill you here and then drag your corpse back to my necromancer to serve me that way?”
George nodded, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. “I’ll go with you, I suppose.”
“But what makes you useful? Why do I need to save your life?” I demanded.
He thought for a moment. “I’m not very strong. I can make crossbows, but I’m not a great fighter.”
“Well at least you’re honest,” I replied. “Anything else?”
“Back… back home I was a professor. I never played the game much. Always working.”
He was becoming less and less useful every time he spoke. Unless he taught courses in bomb making or military strategy, I was going to kill him. “What did you teach, George?” I asked.
Finally, he managed to look me in the eye. “Classical philosophy. Mostly to freshman and sophomores. I only got my doctorate two years ago.”
“Like Plato and shit?” I never cared much for ancient books and their confusing prose. In the game, I cared for it even less.
George looked back to his feet. “Not Plato,” he said. “Xenophon and Diogenes. And some Eastern writers, but not many.”
“Fucking useless,” I muttered. I made my arms into something of a sledgehammer in front of me and swung hard for the man’s chest. His bones caved inward beneath the strength of my limbs, and he collapsed to the ground with his back against one of the four stone pillars supporting the roof of the pergola. I stepped in front of him and slammed his chest again. Crushed between my combined fists and the stone pillar, he died without a sound. I waited again for the telltale humming and vibrating of the resurrection module, but none came.
We won. True death was back, at least in part of Wonder. The part that mattered most.
“Alright, back to Undercroft. Everyone will be fleeing to the other cities and their resurrection hubs. I highly doubt we’ll see anyone else trying to resist on the entire continent.” I looked at Elyk, his smile as broad as my own. “We have a lot of work to do.”
New cover art REVEALED!
Hey fans!
Right out of the gate, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who has helped make Forsaken Talents a truly amazing success. The series is my new best-seller, something I never expected, and that’s AWESOME!
And we have some new cover art for book 3!
Cover art by J Caleb Clark of JCalebDesign.com
Let me know what you think in the comments! Also, I’m uploading the wide art without typesetting so you can download it for a background if you like. Enjoy!
I think the new art calls for a contest of sorts. I have a ton of references to metal bands and songs that I love in the Forsaken Talents series. The first person to correctly identify at least 2 metal references in the first 2 books will win a special prize! Shoot me an email with your answer.
A Dark Path—Coming Soon!
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Art has arrived!
This is just a pre-finished sample, but you can enjoy it nonetheless.
Killstreak: Heavy Armor Excerpt!
Chapter 1
“What do you think?” Estelle held the half-eaten remnants of a peach tart on the end of her fork. She smiled, a strand of her wavy hair dislodging from her ear to dangle in front of her eye. She tucked it back into place with a soft giggle, then popped the last half of the tart into her mouth, savoring the flavor for a few moments.
“It isn’t bad,” Kadorax replied honestly. He snatched another tart, a cherry one, from Estelle’s plate. “I used to eat sweets like these all the time at the office, back on Earth. We’d have donuts almost every single day in the break room.”
Estelle reached across the small table to squeeze his upper arm. “Not here,” she said.
Kadorax flexed under her grip. He toyed with the idea of activating a talent, perhaps something to enhance his reflexes or his Strength, but he knew he didn’t need to. The cords of iron-like muscle beneath his skin were impressive enough as they were. As a level thirty-eight assassin, he’d trained for years to turn his body into the toned machine of war that it was.
“What was your favorite food back home?” he asked.
Estelle thought for a moment as she pushed an errant wisp of pale yellow cream from the side of her lips into her mouth. “I traveled to New York City once when I was a girl. There were so many new foods, things I’d never had before, but the one I remember most—”
“Cheesecake?” Kadorax interrupted, vividly remembering the taste of New York cheesecake filling his mouth.
“Hot dogs,” Estelle corrected with a laugh. “I know it’s stupid, but I loved the street hot dogs from the vendors. The smells, the sounds of the city, they all combined into those hotdogs. I know I was just a little girl, but that’s what I remember the best.”
“Of all the foods in New York, you liked the hot dogs the best?” Finishing the last cherry tart, Kadorax waved his empty ale mug toward the waiter.
“What was your favorite food?” she asked him, her eyes narrowing with a devilish grin.
Kadorax had to think a moment before answering. “Maybe ice cream, but mostly because no one in Agglor has come up with it yet.”
“Oh, come on,” Estelle playfully scoffed. “You sound like a child. Ice cream?”
The waiter stopped by and refilled Kadorax mug from a large pitcher wrapped in a scarlet cloth. They weren’t in one of Agglor’s better restaurants, nothing like one of the fine establishments on the upper tiers of Kingsgate where the nobility were served by hordes of attendants and paid their bills in gold, but it wasn’t a lowly sort of place either. Kadorax nodded to the waiter and took a long drink, enjoying the thick, warm ale as it coursed down his throat.
“Well, if I have to pick something else, perhaps my favorite would be cold beer. Really cold. I don’t mind the warm stuff here, but I’ll buy a thousand kegs for the first man in Agglor to invent refrigeration.” He took another long swig before setting the now half-full mug on the table. Across from his drink, Estelle had a dainty glass—real, clear glass—with a few ounces of sweet white wine left in the bottom.
“Now you sound like a drunken college boy,” she countered.
Kadorax sighed. He had a few pieces of seared fish still left on his plate, though they had gone cold as the conversation had progressed, and he no longer had any temptation to finish his meal. “Well, if I have to pick something more to your liking, Estelle, then a warm, juicy steak it is.”
She smiled, nodding her head. “That’s more like it,” she said. “Though you can get steaks here at almost any inn or tavern, so it doesn’t really count.”
“Not like back home,” Kadorax went on. “Sure, there are a few places in Kingsgate where you can get beef that isn’t cooked beyond recognition, but it still doesn’t compare. And for the record, I think I’d still take a pitcher of ice cold beer over a steak, if I could.”
Estelle finished the last of her wine and leaned back in her chair. “You boys are all the same,” she purred over the rim of her glass.
“How many have you dated?” Kadorax chanced to ask. The beautiful woman’s facial expression hid everything. She was inscrutable, her emotions as masked as any of Kadorax’s Blackened Blades out on a job.
Waving her index finger back and forth in front of her eyes, Estelle looked away toward the corners of the room. “I’ve told you before, my love, that I’m not interested in talking about those things.” She stood from her chair, rubbing a sore spot on her back. “Come, let us talk… more privately… upstairs, shall we?”
Kadorax fetched a small handful of silver from his pocket and set the stack down neatly at the edge of the table. It was more than the meal had been worth by far, but he didn’t particularly care. Estelle brought out his magnanimous side, assuming he actually had one—or maybe that was just what he liked to tell himself. The enchanted dagger at his side served as a constant reminder of his grim business on Agglor.
Estelle led him to the staircase, then reached behind her to take Kadorax’s hand.
“Not yet,” the assassin said, tugging her back. “I can’t go up yet.”
When she frowned, Kadorax shifted his eyes to the man in the lobby of the inn he’d been hired to escort. Estelle didn’t know the nature of Kadorax’s contract, but she understood the less-than-subtle gesture for what it meant. She turned to continue up the stairs, offering him a sly wink and pulling ever so slightly at the edge of her dress to give Kadorax a tantalizing hint of a view as she ascended. “Don’t be too long.”
Trying hard not to blush, Kadorax clenched a fist at his side to take his mind from the dark places Estelle had so effortless lured it. He made his way through the grid of tables to the bar situated across the room and took the stool all the way at the left end so he could casually turn, keeping his eye on his mark as long as he needed to.
The man under Kadorax’s protection was seated at a large circular table toward the center of the room, dining and conversing with two other diplomats whose names Kadorax did not know, nor would he have given them much thought had he ever learned them.
Not wanting to give himself away too blatantly—though it would not matter; all the traveling nobility of Agglor hired protection in some form or another—Kadorax ordered another mug of ale and began to sip at it casually.
The other diplomats’ guards were similarly posted for the evening not too far away across the restaurant. There were three of them, all well trained and older than Kadorax, veterans by the looks of their scars, though not a single one was higher level than the assassin. As the evening droned onward, Kadorax’s armed counterparts behaved in much the same way as he did. They languidly sipped ale, kept their eyes firmly locked on their mark and the door, and no more than one of them at a time ever went out to piss.
The diplomat was agonizingly slow in concluding his business. Hours passed, and Kadorax’s ale remained roughly half full until deep into the night. Finally, gracelessly, the diplomat moved his considerable bulk from his chair. The wood beneath his mass creaked in protest, and then the diplomat was standing and shaking hands, exchanging the final pleasantries of the night with his equally distinguished and rotund guests.
Kadorax waited only a few moments before tossing a copper piece to the bartender and following his mark up the stairs to a long hallway containing a dozen doors all leading to secure rooms. The diplomat was in the seventh room, and he had left the door slightly ajar.
Silently, Kadorax stepped inside and offered a gracious bow. The diplomat was already busy at work unfastening the buttons of his waistcoat, and the garment appeared thankful for the relief. In truth, Kadorax wasn’t sure how the thread had been strong enough to survive the night’s meal without bursting apart. “You are well, my lord?” the assassin asked.
“Bah, my damned feet hurt, my head’s awash with wine, and there’s a fucking piece of gristle stuck between two of my teeth,” the older man announced as he continued to wrestle with his finery, casting the expensive articles to the ground without a hint of care for their value. The entire ensemble, intricately embroidered with gold thread at the sleeves and collar, with still more gold patterned into the back of both the shirt and coat as well, probably cost just as much gold as the entire inn where the man was staying.
Kadorax bit one of the knuckles of his right hand to keep from laughing as the diplomat. “Well, I’m not sure I can help with any of that,” he said, turning back for the hallway. “I’ll be sleeping outside your door, my lord. Any noise before dawn, and I’ll be at your side without hesitation.”
The diplomat returned a meek smile as he collapsed down on the room’s large mattress. “I’ll trudge lightly if I happen to wake before sunrise,” he muttered.
Kadorax was almost out of the room when he remembered to check the window. The single square of glass to the right of the bed wasn’t large enough for a man to sneak through, but it would offer a view of the bed, albeit at a rather extreme angle, for a deft crossbowman to take a shot should the glass be broken. Kadorax inspected it carefully, activating Detect Trap: Rank 5 just to be sure.
Having found nothing out of the ordinary, Kadorax pulled open the door. “Sleep well, my lord. Just call out, and I’ll come rushing.”
“Yes, yes,” the portly man said as he waved him off. His eyes were already closed, and Kadorax suspected the wine was getting to his head a little more than the diplomat had let on.
Once more in the hallway, Kadorax paced to the end of the rooms, stopping at each door to listen for any unusual activity. He liked the way the floorboards creaked under the blue carpet at his feet. Loud floors meant tougher jobs for his ilk, though he didn’t expect any trouble in the first place. The job was a routine one: escort an aging, miserable, overweight diplomat from one city to the next while ensuring no one with a blade came within a dozen feet of him. Kadorax had, as a matter more of principal than anything else, stopped accepting such contracts back when he was only level twenty. Unless a fair amount of combat was expected, the experience yield would simply be too low to excite his interest.
But Estelle had insisted. She had tired of living her life in the bleak halls of Darkarrow, and the escort quest was the only contract with a bit of travel on the board when she had made her plea to Kadorax for a bit of a journey.
When he was confident there were no overt threats lingering behind the other doors of the inn, Kadorax let himself relax a little as he sat down outside the diplomat’s door, his back against cool wood. He scrolled through his list of abilities until he found the several talents he had taken relating to guarding and vigilance, then activated Peerless Resolve: Rank 3. The ability would last twelve hours, allowing him to stay alert—albeit not entirely awake until he earned more ranks—ready to spring into action at the briefest indication of trouble.
Estelle was behind the fourth door to Kadorax’s right, and he positioned himself, dagger in hand behind his back, with his head facing in her direction. He wasn’t worried for her safety since she had no enemies, but he longed to be in her bed. The wooden wall and thin carpet would wreak havoc on his back. He knew he’d awake sore and still tired, not to mention more than a little lonely. Having Estelle so close and yet so far out of reach tugged painfully on his heartstrings. Though he sometimes hated to admit it, Kadorax had fallen in love with her.
With thoughts of Estelle, her body framed in an enticing silk gown—a deep teal, sleeveless dress Kadorax had spent a month’s worth of contracts to purchase—fluttering through his head, the assassin closed his eyes.
*****
Hours after midnight, in the deep, black of pre-dawn, Estelle eased open her door. The hinges had been recently oiled, and they only made small, insignificant sounds as they moved. Walking on her toes, she crept quietly down the hall toward Kadorax’s sleeping form. The man was hunched over, his chin resting against his chest, his dark hair hanging down in unkempt strands on his forehead.
She was lightly clothed, wearing a light nightgown woven from simple cotton that barely fell down far enough to cover even an inch of her upper thighs. Stealing a glance down the other direction of the hallway to ensure no embarrassing encounters with other patrons, she padded along the edge of the carpet where it met the wall. A devious, lusty smile crossed her face when she reached Kadorax without him waking. Mercifully, the floorboards at the edge of the hallway hadn’t made a single noise under her diminutive weight, and her own breathing had been easily lost under the loud snoring coming from the room directly across from Kadorax.
Estelle held her breath as she reached a hand out to Kadorax’s shoulder. She pulled back her touch less than an inch from his shirt. Her loose gown had drifted forward as she’d leaned down, and part of her plan involved Kadorax’s gaze being filled with the most pleasant view she could offer when he awoke. She straightened her back and pulled the gown down, fitting it tight to her breasts. She leaned in once more, confident that her appearance offered no doubt as to her carnal desire, and gently shook the man awake.”
“I—”
Kadorax’s dagger was buried to the hilt in her chest.
Killstreak Book One: Respawn - An Excerpt
Killstreak Book One: Respawn
Chapter 1
“What do you think?” Lord Kadorax Darkarrow whispered to his sole companion, a thin half-serpent with a scaly head and flat ears.
The bipedal snake-man’s gaze darted around nervously as his tongue licked the air. There were torches on the walls, but most of them had already sputtered out. Ahead, down a stone ledge slick with old moss, a ring of robed humanoid figures stood around an altar. “Five against two,” Syzak hissed. “And none of them are above your level, my lord, not even close.”
Kadorax nodded. “Good. Which one is the strongest?”
Syzak scrutinized the ring of priests once more, using his Detect Strength ability to read their stat sheets. “There,” he pointed with one of his three green fingers, “the one on the left is two levels higher than the others. That one is their leader.”
Again, Kadorax nodded. He was characteristically silent, taking every precaution to hide his presence as thoroughly as he could. As the head of the Blackened Blades, he valued stealth and secrecy above all else.
“Shall I take the leader first, my lord?” Syzak asked. He held a small crystal wand between the three fingers of his left hand, clearly eager to cast a spell and begin the fight.
For a moment, Kadorax called his own stat sheet to his vision, flicking his eyes downward to scroll through the myriad of spells and abilities he had mastered over the last decade. He had spent years training both his mind and body, and now he was the highest-level assassin-mystic hybrid in the entire realm of Agglor. Ever weary of traps, he focused his vision on the Discover Magic spell and viewed the proper casting procedure from his ability sheet. It had been years since he had needed the spell, and it wasn’t one he kept lodged in his brain for quick use.
Kadorax silently mouthed the words to the mundane incantation, having long ago earned the Silent Casting talent, and two areas of his vision lit up with brilliant, translucent color. The first had been expected. The humanoid leader—he still wasn’t positive what the priests actually were—showed a heavy aura of red magic encasing his form, likely a protective ward of some sort. The second area of magic came from a large circular rune inscribed on the wall behind the altar, and Kadorax didn’t know what it meant.
“Can you disable the leader?” the assassin whispered so faintly he could barely be heard.
“Of course,” Syzak answered with a smile.
Kadorax held up a hand. “He has a red aura around him, probably Stone Skin or Magic Armor, perhaps of a rank we have not seen before. Can you break it?”
Syzak’s serpentine eyes inspected the humanoid once more, but only for a few seconds. “I have Strip Enchantment, though it is a costly spell,” he said.
Handing the snake-man a silver shard of reflective metal, Kadorax nodded. “No chances,” he breathed. While most of the spells in Agglor could be cast by having them unlocked and either reading or knowing their incantational phrases, certain extremely powerful abilities required specific components which were sometimes incredibly difficult to obtain.
Kadorax’s Discover Magic casting was about to expire, so he flashed a quick successions of rudimentary hand signals to his companion, and then shimmied over the edge to begin his descent down the nearly sheer rock surface of the temple’s interior wall. His gloves, black silk constructions known as Cat Paws, silently gripped the flat surface beneath his fingers with all the strength of a well-muscled panther. On the temple’s floor, Kadorax melted into the shadows. The place smelled musty and damp, and the flagstones making up the ground were wet with stale rainwater.
Above the assassin’s head, a partially concealed flicker of purple light emanated from Syzak’s wand, shooting across the temple with blinding speed. The magical glob struck the leader in the chest, and Kadorax saw the humanoid’s red aura fade just seconds before his Discover Magic spell wore off, unable to be cast again for several hours.
Kadorax sprinted forward on leather boots as silent as the grave. He reached behind his back and grasped the bone handle of a dagger hidden in a sheath under his cloak. The bone was frigid in his grasp, ice cold even through his gloves, and the blade was so dark it actually dripped a steady stream of viscous shadows onto the stone ground between his strides.
He took the first robed priest in the back before any of them even noticed Kadorax among their ranks. The priest let out a muffled shriek as he crumpled to the ground. When his robe fluttered to the side Kadorax finally saw the head of a jackal underneath, its teeth bared.
Dogheads, Kadorax mused, using the derogatory term for the race. He had killed scores of the jackal-headed beasts throughout the years, and he’d never regret a single strike of his blade.
Another bolt of purple magic sailed over Kadorax toward the doghead leader, catching the jackal fully in the chest. At once, a rigid shell of stone grew up from the temple floor to encase the beast, locking it in place in a dark, constricting prison that was as terrifying as it was effective.
Kadorax didn’t waste any time. He spun from target to target, whirling his black blade between the two nearest living enemies and rending them to bloodied bits.
While his compatriots were dying, the final jackal had run a few steps backward and drawn a small crossbow from underneath his dark robe. The weapon clicked and thrummed, and the steel bolt held in its track sprang forward.
Kadorax quickly whispered the words to Shield Maw, and a fiery dragon’s head sprang to life in front of his body to consume the incoming missile. He didn’t need to use such flashy magic—his Expert Reflexes would have easily moved him out of the way quickly enough to dodge the bolt—but he hated doghead scum. He wanted the remaining jackal to fear him, to contemplate its own death before he gutted it, and the dramatic spell certainly did the trick.
The jackal only spent a few heartbeats trying to reload its crossbow before it gave up and turned to run. Kadorax chased after it, clearing the distance almost instantly and sinking his dagger into the fur-covered doghead. The creature shuddered, but it did not die. It slumped to the ground and mewled, its bounty of experience points flashing in yellow just above its head. Kadorax stepped over, letting the congealed shadows surrounding his blade drip onto the doghead’s chest. The shadows themselves were harmless, but the psychological impact they had on a dying foe was certainly palpable.
“P—”
Kadorax stomped down on the creature’s throat, silencing it before it could speak a single intelligible syllable.
With a faint rumble, the experience Kadorax gained from the swift battle sifted into his body, adding to his already staggering total. He brought up his sheet again to check his progress toward the next level, but he knew more or less what it would be. The jackals hadn’t been worth much. He was still more than fifty percent away from level seventy-three. His next talent, Exceptional Void Strike – Execution: Rank 7, was still frustratingly far away. He would have to kill hundreds of dogheads to even make a dent in the total.
Then a rumbling from behind snapped Kadorax’s thoughts back to the present, and he dismissed his stat sheet with a thought. The leader was still alive, and he was finally breaking free of Syzak’s stone prison.
Seeing his eviscerated companions, the jackal’s eyes went wide, but he was still quick on his hairy feet. The jackal rolled left behind the stone altar, drawing a slender sword from his robe and rolling his wrist with practiced ease. Kadorax had never learned the Detect Strength ability, but he could tell the jackal leader was far beyond the mere underlings lying dead around the altar. Repeating the words to his most frequently used spell, Kadorax felt the familiar rush of adrenaline brought on by Slaughtering Surge filling his veins. He sprang forward with lightning speed, twirling his lightless dagger downward for a quick killing blow, and met the jackal’s adept parry with a ring of steel.
Flurry of Strikes pumped through Kadorax body, moving his right arm as quickly as it could physically go, putting on a dazzling display of violence made possible only by the assassin’s maxed out Agility stat. Shockingly, the jackal matched his relentless pace.
The jackal leader ducked his shoulder and used a talent, Armor Break by the look of the yellow sheen on his weapon, charging forward with power akin to a stone giant fueling his legs.
Kadorax staggered backward. It was the first time in over two years his Strength had been matched, and the sheer surprise of it broke his concentration for a split second. The jackal was relentless. The creature’s slender blade came in from every angle, slashing at Kadorax’s face over and over again.
Growling with sadistic pleasure born from a true challenge, Kadorax summoned his character sheet to the corner of his vision and searched for Pull from the Void, repeating the order of the required words several times in his mind before attempting to cast the spell. When he finally let it loose, a shadowy hand of pure magic erupted from his chest and sailed toward the hidden ledge where Syzak waited. The small snake-man latched onto the hand and rode it back down, flinging a rapid barrage of lightning and fire from his wand all the while.
Some of Syzak’s magical bolts managed to hit their target, but the jackal leader wasn’t particularly fazed. His red aura returned, now visible without magically enhanced vision, and it absorbed the energy of the magical assault almost fully. Kadorax had never seen the defensive enchantment before, and he had seen almost everything, or so he had thought.
Working quickly as he cast, Syzak brought forth a Wall of Frost in the narrow gap between Kadorax’s boots and the jackal’s furry paws. The shaman augmented the spell with another talent activation, one Kadorax had only seen him use a few times, and the wall that erupted from the ground reached far over either combatant’s head. Kadorax scampered backward to catch his breath and scour his character sheet for an answer.
“He’s fast,” Syzak hissed, keeping his wand ready and a spell at the front of his mind.
Kadorax didn’t waste his breath on a response. The jackal was quicker than any opponent he had fought before, and he needed something unexpected, something obscure, to turn the tide.
“The wall will not hold much longer,” Syzak said. “Should we flee?”
“Eldritch Fire!” Kadorax yelled as he completed the spell. A burst of blueish-black flame licked out from the end of his dagger toward the ice wall. A quick activation of Perfect Timing let him flawlessly judge the expiration of Syzak’s conjuring. Snapping his wrist forward, a burst of black fire cascaded through the falling, dissipating ice, and fully engulfed the howling jackal.
Kadorax lunged forward with his blade, shielding his eyes from the painful mixture of fire and ice raining down on his shoulders. At rank ten, the highest available to any spell, Kadorax’s Eldritch Fire was nothing short of a cataclysmic conflagration—and it worked. The jackal only avoided part of the blast with his Improved Reflexes. His mangy hair danced with flames, and the jackal howled as he spun through the temple, slapping at the licking flames in vain.
“Coup de Grâce!” Kadorax yelled, activating his Assassin’s Superior Talent with a brilliant flourish. His blade danced in his hands, flinging thick globs of shadow to every corner of the room, and the burning jackal could only offer a meager attempt at a parry. In a blur of speed, Kadorax appeared to the jackal’s left, then his right, and finally he was behind the beast with his black dagger held high above the creature’s spine. He drove it downward with all his strength.
The jackal leader’s experience flashed in yellow above his head as he died. The formidable foe had been worth just over three thousand experience, and that brought Kadorax noticeably closer to level seventy-three, though he was still roughly thirty-five percent from leveling again.
Sweat poured down Kadorax’s head. Next to him, Syzak tucked his wand back into his belt. “Where’s the loot?” the snake-man asked. He nudged the jackal leader’s corpse with his boot, pushing aside the front of the robe to inspect the body for treasure. He found nothing.
“Use Detect Hidden, Syzak,” Kadorax panted, thoroughly exhausted. Part of why he had risen to be Agglor’s highest-level assassin had been his choice of battles. He never fought more than one heavy encounter in a day, and he preferred to only test himself once a week if he could, being as frugal as possible with his rewards specifically to allow himself the most meaningful respites. Due to his style, he hadn’t taken many of the endurance-related talents, so he had no way of reducing his recovery time with magic.
Syzak uttered the words to the simple spell. “Oh, shit,” he said almost at once.
Kadorax skipped backward on the balls of his feet, dagger at the ready and chest heaving from exertion, scanning the temple for some new threat he had not seen.
“The inscription,” Syzak explained, pointing to the magical symbols behind the altar. “There’s a door. The jackals were summoning something, not imprisoning it…”
As if on cue, the wall behind the altar shook forcefully. Something was breaking through it with heavy fists. Something massive and beyond powerful. Something unknown. Something.
“Lord Kadorax, I feel it unwise to remain here,” Syzak implored, his serpentine eyes full of terror.
“We haven’t gotten any loot yet,” Kadorax growled. He scanned through his list of abilities, quickly reorganizing them so that his unused spells and talents appeared at the top of his character sheet. “Whatever it is, it’s guarding the treasure. We stay.”
A few bricks fell out of the wall, and Syzak glimpsed something dark—and enormous—pounding away at the stone on the other side. “Kad! We can come back later!” he screamed. The snake-man turned to run, but Kadorax caught him by the arm.
“We’ve defeated worse,” Kadorax reminded him.
“Have we?”
The wall crumbled inward.
A giant, horned head emerged from the rubble, quickly followed by four muscled arms, each the size of tree trunks. The thing roared, and then it wrenched the rest of its body free, coming to its full height in the high-ceilinged temple.
Lord Kadorax Darkarrow felt his heart catch in his chest. He had fought dragons on several occasions and lived to tell the tales, but those encounters had always been with dozens of other high-level adventurers. With only a single shaman at his side, powerful as they were together, he knew he was outclassed.
The beast, whatever it truly was, stood over twenty feet tall. Its skin looked like rock, but it flowed and moved with such ease that Kadorax knew it was organic—some sort of hardened carapace—and its head was covered in a circular pattern of bulging black eyes that reminded the assassin of a scorpion. It had four arms, each vaguely humanoid and rippling with muscle beneath its thick armor, though it did not wield any weapons in the traditional sense.
“W-what is it?” Kadorax stammered. He tried to access the dungeon boss’ character sheet, but all he saw was a series of question marks highlighted in deep crimson floating near the top of his vision.
Before either hero could speak, the boss reared its hideous head. “I am your undoing!” it announced with all the strength of a world-ending earthquake.
Kadorax flew through his list of abilities to find the one that would take him and Syzak farthest from the temple in the least amount of time. “Teleport!” he yelled, grabbing his companion with both arms to ensure they traveled together.
Nothing happened.
The four-armed beast laughed, its voice so loud the Kadorax had to cover his ears to keep the pain at bay.
“Teleport!” the assassin tried again. Still, his feet remained firmly planted on the temple’s stone floor.
“Shadow Step!”
Nothing.
“Fade!”
Nothing.
Kadorax flew through his list of mystic abilities, searching for something that might work in the boss encounter. He settled on Smoke Leap, a low-level ability designed to vault him upward and forward by about thirty feet while leaving behind a decoy made of smoke, but the ability did not function properly. Something blocked it.
“You cannot run, puny human,” the massive boss taunted. “No one can escape their own grave.”
Kadorax had encountered enemies in the past with similar magic-preventing abilities. Typically, the dampening field was generated by an enchanted ring or amulet worn by the user, but the towering beast featured nothing of the sort.
“Slaughtering Surge!” Kadorax finally yelled, bringing a fresh wave of adrenaline to his arms and legs.
Syzak summoned forth a shell of protective energy around the assassin, and then a burst of brilliant light shot from the snake-man’s wand. The spell landed on the boss’ head, but it did not have the intended effect of blinding the creature. In fact, it didn’t appear to have any effect whatsoever.
When Kadorax reached the horned beast, it was ready for him. Arm after heavy arm came hammering down into the temple floor like boulders dislodged in a landslide. Each strike was enough to turn Kadorax into dust, and his Expert Reflexes were all that kept him alive. Swerving between the arms, the assassin brought his dripping blade of shadows in with all the strength he had left in his body, slashing furiously at the creature’s exoskeleton covering its segmented right leg.
Kadorax’s blade clicked loudly off the boss’ armor. From his position between the beast’s legs, he could just barely see into the room from where the horned thing had emerged, and it was full to the ceiling with treasure—more than the assassin had ever seen before. Piles of glittering gold shone in the torchlight, and iron-banded chests were stacked in neat rows as far in as he could see.
Breaking his greed-fueled reverie, a huge hand swept Kadorax up from the ground, crushing all the air from his lungs. On the ground, Syzak used every ounce of obscure arcane knowledge he had to rain blow after blow on the creature, though none of them had any visible effect. Even spells like Void Prison, an incredibly high-level magical assault designed to immobilize even the most magic-immune foes, simply did not succeed.
The boss brought Kadorax up to its huge maw. “I am your undoing, human!” it yelled. Its breath smelled rotten and old, like the beast had been chained in its prison for hundreds of years with nothing but dead adventurers to fill its belly.
Kadorax saw a hint of yellow coming down from the top of his vision. It was his experience total—the amount the boss was about to claim for itself. “I’ll see you at the spawn, my friend,” the assassin called to Syzak, his voice shaking.
The snake-man nodded. “In the next life,” he answered. “In the next life…”
Laughing all the while, the dungeon boss squeezed. It didn’t need to activate any ability, and it didn’t even bother to watch. In an instant, Kadorax’s chest caved in on his organs, squishing the life from his body like a bug caught beneath the hoof of a horse.