Dragon’s Fate
and Other Stories
Kris Austen Radcliffe
Copyright 2019 Kris Austen Radcliffe
All rights reserved.
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“Dragon’s Fate” originally appeared in the Sigils and Spells.
“Conpulsio” has appeared in multiple volumes.
“Dmitri and the Mad Monk” originally appeared in Allegories of the Tarot.
“Pop Rocks” originally appeared as part of the first edition Activation box set.
“Scent of a Dragon” originally appeared in the Fire and Fantasy.
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“Pictures of You” originally appeared in the Secrets & Sorcery Anthology.
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Published by
Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance
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Edited by Annetta Ribken
Copyedited by Terry Koch and Juli Lilly
Cover dragon illustration by Joseph Garcia
Cover to be designed by Covers by Christian
Series dragon design and art by Christina Rausch
Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew.
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are used factitiously. All representations of real locales, programs, or services are factitious accounts of the environments and services described. Any resemblances characters, places, or events have to actual people, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely unintended and coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
For requests, please e-mail: [email protected].
Second electronic edition, June 2019
version 6.7.2019
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ISBN: 978-1-939730-56-5
Contents
Dragon’s Fate
Northern Creatures
World on Fire
Author’s Notes
The Fates tell their children a story: The Fates tell their children a story:
Dragon’s Fate
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Conpulsio
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Dmitri and the Mad Monk
Dmitri and the Mad Monk
Devil’s teeth
Pop Rocks
Pop Rocks
The Shifters tell their children a story
Scent of a Dragon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
You are the world
The story continues in
I. Northern Creatures
I. Pictures of You
Pictures of You
The Worlds of
Get Free Books
About the Author
Dragon’s Fate
And Other Stories
Dragon’s Fate
Conpulsio
Dmitri and the Mad Monk
Pop Rocks
Scent of a Dragon
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By
Kris Austen Radcliffe
Northern Creatures
Plus a Bonus
NORTHERN CREATURES
Short story
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PICTURES OF YOU
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By
Kris Austen Radcliffe
World on Fire
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
The Fates
(Latin: Parcae)
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Live in bonded triads often made up of family members. Fates bond on a metallic object that embodies a context for their seeing. Prime Fates command an exceptional level of power and ability.
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Past-seer: Able to read the truth of someone’s past.
Present-seer: Able to optimize the present situation for a desired outcome.
Future-seer: Sees the most likely future.
The Burners
(Latin: Ambustae)
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Crazy, smelly ghouls who eat human flesh and who often explode when their hearts stop.
The Shifters
(Latin: Mutatae)
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Class-one Shifters, like Prime Fates, command considerable power and ability. Shifters mostly live in clans and are often exploited by Fates.
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Morphers: Able to morph their bodies within the basic human body plan.
Enthrallers: Able to control other people’s emotions through pheromone-like calling scents.
Healers: Able to heal—or unheal—with a touch.
The Dragons
(Latin: Dracae)
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Ladon and AnnaBelinda, along with their dragons, form two human-dragon dyads. Both Ladon and AnnaBelinda are former Roman military commanders, and they are often known by their respective Roman honorifics, the Dracos and the Dracas. As brother and sister, they know each other as Brother and Sister, and as Brother-Dragon and Sister-Dragon.
Author’s Notes
On the science:
You may start this series wondering why it’s classified as Science Fiction. There are dragons, psychic Fates, shapeshifters, and people-eating ghouls. How are the World on Fire stories—Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon and the new Witch of the Midnight Blade series—not Fantasy?
They adhere to Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There is no magic here, and part of the wonder for the reader of the The World on Fire universe is walking alongside the characters as they discover the true nature of their world.
That said, I tried to hew as close to real science as possible—especially in the two areas I know best, psychology and cognitive science. I hope you enjoy the results.
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On the stories in this anthology:
The five stories here offer the reader deeper understandings of several of the universe’s supporting characters:
Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus of the original Drak
i Prime at their activation during the French Middle Ages in Dragon’s Fate.
Andreas Sisto, as well as Faustus, Mira, and Ismene of the Jani Prime, in the Roman era Conpulsio.
Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov the night Rasputin died in Dmitri and the Mad Monk.
Billy Bare in the modern Pop Rocks.
And Daisy Pavlovich in Scent of a Dragon, which also introduces Nax and his son, Orel, and serves as a prologue to the upcoming second World on Fire series, Witch of the Midnight Blade.
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I hope you enjoy these stories.
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— Kris Austen Radcliffe
The Fates tell their children a story:
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You are descended from our Progenitor, a god more powerful than his namesake Janus, than Manu the Great or Shai or any of the other figments of the normals’ imaginations. You are descended from one of the true gods who walks this earth—a real man, a real god—and that is what makes you exceptional.
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When the Progenitor of Shifters tricked the first Burner to his end, your Progenitor knew her plans. When she would leave the Burner to the mountain, your Progenitor sacrificed his talisman to ensure the ghoul’s fate. And to this day, if you walk the haunted streets of Pompeii, you may tread upon the shards of his sword—and upon cost and purpose.
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So remember, my children, you are exceptional. But you must follow our Progenitor’s example: See what must be seen. Do what must be done.
Because no one is as bound by fate as the Fates themselves….
Dragon’s Fate
Southern Gaul, 538 AD…
Chapter One
Mud sucked at young Daniel’s heels and squished between his toes. He stepped carefully, attempting not to slip around inside his sandals as much as he slid on the wet ground, and continued up the path behind his brother, Timothy.
Like both his brothers, Daniel had responded to the warming spring days by dressing his sinewy frame in open clothes, footwear included. And also like his brothers, he’d found that showing more skin generated considerable attention from the village’s female population.
Perhaps boots would have been a better choice for the day. Daniel would rather not have cold heels and toenails caked in muck.
He and his brothers had not been this popular with the women last summer. All three had gained obvious height and musculature over the winter and their mother complained daily about the amount of food they consumed, but Papa and Father only grinned and ruffled their nearest son’s hair before sending them into the maw of the village.
Daniel walked the path and breathed in the morning’s cold drizzle. It tickled his nose and left a fine layer of annoyance he could not rub away. He held his arms high to protect his face from the encroaching brambles and did his best not to sneeze.
Ahead, Timothy slogged through the mud in his finest, most-inviting tunic, his hair well-trimmed and what passed as the beginnings of a beard on his chin. Timothy had demanded they both look and behave “like fine lords.” In moments such as this one, Daniel disliked being born a triplet.
Daniel’s brother said the lovely young Ingund liked his whiskers. Daniel rolled his eyes. Their brother Marcus had laughed and walked toward the barn and their work horse, leaving Daniel alone to follow Timothy into the woods.
Poor lovesick Timothy could not find the backbone to lie with a girl by himself.
“Why did you two pick today for your tryst?” Daniel slapped away a low-hanging branch. They slogged along the gently curving ridge as it descended toward a bend in the river. The waters up ahead chimed and flowed sweetly over the rocks into a sheltered pool overhung by rustling, shading trees. A ring of sturdy rocks circled the pool’s edge, all scored by the women to provide grip for safe stepping.
The place was lovely, but the rain in the air was not.
Timothy glanced over his shoulder. His face betrayed the fear-laced excitement Daniel knew his brother had felt since Ingund kissed him behind the village smithy.
She was a nice enough girl. She would make a fine wife, though probably not for Timothy.
None of the brothers would have a say in the choosing of their mates. Not Timothy. Not Marcus and definitely not Daniel. Their life was barbaric that way. When one was a Fate, a Parcae—the human embodiment of the omniscience of God—one had little say in the course of one’s life.
The brothers were, in many ways, as tightly bound to God as the priests overseeing the building of the village’s new church. But unlike the priests, Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus were born into their relationship with the Almighty. They could never walk away.
Sometimes Daniel wondered if his people’s abilities to see the past, present, and future were truly gifts. When one knows the full extent of God’s plan, why fight for an alternative you know is impossible? Their future-seeing Father often walked the world with slumped shoulders as if his ability was a disapproving lord he dared not disobey.
Poor Ingund faced a future as constrained as the brothers’—being a girl and all—though for different reasons. The boys were bound by their breed. As the stonemason’s daughter, Ingund was bound by her trade value.
Daniel sniffed. Maybe they weren’t all that different.
“Ingund and I picked today because today is the day it needs to happen.” Timothy looked as if he wanted to punch Daniel. “Father says you’re going to be the future-seer, not me. You could have helped us decide when I asked, you know.”
Daniel remembered. Why Timothy—and Marcus, too, for that matter—acted as if they were already Parcae with active seers, he did not understand. Long ago, their parents explained the sacred trust that came with taking on the power of Fate. Soon Daniel, Timothy, and Marcus would become men so powerful that walking among the normals would itself become a burden because they were born to be Aspects of God’s plan. How does one hide one’s seeing from regular people who know nothing of the future?
This is why his parents delayed. They wished their boys to live as men for as long as possible before layering yet another veil over their lives.
Though Daniel had long heard a small, still voice in the back of his mind whispering that the complexity of the past was right now, in the present, influencing the coming future—and the brothers’ activation.
Normalcy had very little, if anything, to do with the delay.
Perhaps his coming future-seer whispered to him from a distant, far-off place. Mother often joked about his inactive future-seer helping him to cheat on his studies. Her comments left a sour taste. He did not cheat. He just happened to be smarter than everyone else.
But right now as he walked this path with his inactive present-seeing brother, Daniel’s “cheating” and his coming elevation and the new, enticing cut to his muscles meant little to the nice-enough Ingund.
Daniel stopped on a less muddy spot and twirled a finger in the general direction of the bubbling pool. “Why do you need me here, brother?” Ingund was lovely but she wasn’t his girlfriend.
Timothy threw open his arms in a gesture of we talked about this. “She knows what we are.”
“What we will become,” Daniel corrected. They were not active and no amount of wishing was going to make it happen sooner. Mama, Papa, and Father controlled when and where their activation occurred, not them.
Timothy rolled his eyes but he continued to look more terrified than brother-annoyed. “She asked that you come along. Marcus too, but he’s a jackass.”
Daniel snickered. The world could not tell Daniel and Marcus apart—they deliberately worked at keeping their hair as identical as their features and they regularly exchanged clothes—but they were as different as night and day. Marcus, for all his intelligence, tended toward hidebound behaviors; he had been, by far, the brother least likely to get in trouble for “stupidity.” Daniel, though, knew how to hide his stupid cliff diving, and his stupid teaching of literacy to his friend, the priest Antonius, and his much more stupid investigations of
the Roman ruins not far from where they were right now. No one was the wiser, and Daniel looked as well-behaved as Marcus.
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