Dragon Approved Complete Box Set

by Ramy Vance

Alex stood back to back with Brath, flinging whatever they could get their hands on, whether it was coming from the tables or they were pulling it off their clothes.

  A gnome came running up to Alex, screaming loudly. Brath stepped to the side, pushed Alex out of the way, and decked the gnome with a heavy handful of elvish peas.

  Alex smiled at Brath. “Hey, thanks!”

  Brath shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

  Suddenly, a shrill, ear-piercing noise broke through the chaos. Everyone stopped as the door to the mess hall was flung open. Fier, Professor Choice, and Tribble all ran in.

  Fier, eyes wide with fury, surveyed the situation. “What in the nine realms is going on here?” she shouted. “Oh, by the gods, there’s no time! Every student to your rooms! NOW!”

  The students looked at each other for a moment before Fier shouted again for them to get moving. There was no time to ask questions. The cadets funneled out of the mess hall as the teachers hurried them along.

  What is going on? Alex thought.

  Chapter Ten

  As the cadets rushed toward their rooms, Alex tried her best to figure out what was going on. The instructors didn’t seem to have any time to explain. They weren’t even the ones herding the students to the rooms; that responsibility had been left to a handful of the scientists.

  Alex, Jollies, and Manny had almost reached her room when she heard a violent explosion. It was impossible to tell how far away it was, but it sounded as if a bomb had gone off in the Nest.

  Another explosion went off, this time much closer. The entire hallway shook, and specks of crystal fell from the ceiling. Are we being attacked? Alex thought as she looked around.

  Adrenaline pumped through her body. She’d never been in an actual fight, let alone something on this scale. The closest she’d gotten was the food fight she had just participated in.

  She turned to Jollies, who was flying behind them. “What’s going on?”

  Jollies flew higher to get a better look at the situation, then zipped back down to Alex and said, “I have no idea. I can’t see anything.”

  Gill, who was at their side, nonchalantly said, “It sounds like an attack.”

  “How? Isn’t the Wasp’s Nest magically hidden from everyone?”

  Gill nodded, his face grim and resolute. “Any spell can be broken if you hit it hard enough,” he replied. “Maybe someone knows what they’re doing?”

  Brath opened his door and stepped inside, leaving it open for Gill, who quickly followed. Gill waited for a moment and then called to Alex and Jollies, “You guys should stay in here. It’d be safer for us to be together.”

  Jollies zipped into the room without asking any questions. Alex and Manny followed, and Gill shut the door quietly, then walked to a corner, sat down, and folded his legs.

  The boys’ room had an entirely different personality than Jollies’ and Alex’s. To begin with, it was covered in flowers and plants Alex had never seen before. There was an altar to some god in the corner next to Gill. The other side of the room was covered in rugby posters and holographic statues of gnomes, so it was clearly Brath’s side.

  Brath climbed onto his bed and opened his book. “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said with only the slightest hint of disgust in his voice.

  Alex sat down across from Gill, still taking the room in. “Can we be attacked so easily?” she asked.

  Gill stretched his arms as he re-crossed his legs. “Definitely,” he said softly. “We are at war. It isn’t uncommon for the Dark One to attack training grounds. Easiest way to make sure no one can get new recruits or backup.”

  Jollies was still flying around, her colors shifting as if she were a buzzing rainbow. “Yeah, it happens all the time,” she agreed. “Just a few months ago, the pixie infantry’s training grounds were attacked. Completely wiped out. It could happen to anyone.”

  Alex reached toward Jollies, sensing how distraught she was. “Hey, come here,” she suggested.

  Jollies stopped in midair and flew to Alex, landed on her chest, and scooted close to her ear. Alex could hear the pixie’s teeth chattering. In an attempt to take Jollies’ mind—and her own—off what was happening, Alex pointed to the holographs near Brath’s bed. “Hey, what are those?”

  Brath’s eyes rose above the pages of his book. “Those?” he repeated. “That’s my family. It’s all I have left of them. They were in the dwarfish realm when it was taken over. That’s why I’m here. It was either this or an orphanage. I figured I couldn’t kill the Dark One from an orphanage.”

  Alex was shocked by Brath’s frankness. She knew there was a war on an intellectual level since that was the reason she was here, but she hadn’t understood how it had affected those she was training with. She wanted to kick herself for being so naïve.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said.

  Brath returned to his book. “The Dark One will be too,” he muttered.

  Alex turned her attention back to Gill, who had his HUD visor on. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Gill pulled the visor up for a second, smiling in a way that made his sharp incisors gleam. “Something I’m not supposed to be,” he said. “Pull up your HUDs and I’ll patch you through.”

  Jollies and Alex opened their HUDs, and security camera footage started to play. Alex could see the crystal corridors of the Wasp’s Nest. “What is this?” she asked.

  Gill explained, “I hacked into the system. Check this out.”

  The camera angle changed. Alex saw a group of ten orcs hacking at one of the crystal doors. When the angle changed again, different orcs set explosives before running away. “Crap, I guess we are being attacked,” she murmured.

  The angle changed again. A group of orcs was running down the hall and screaming with their swords raised. “Wait,” Gill whispered. “Is that a human poster? Zoom in.”

  The camera zoomed in—it was the poster of Chris Hemsworth as Thor. The orcs stopped in front of it, confused, entranced, or both.

  “Oh, no!” Alex exclaimed. “They’re right outside.”

  Author Notes Ramy Vance

  January 15, 2020

  At the time of this publication, New Years wasn’t too long ago. And one of the most common things that’s comes up with New Years are resolutions… But I no longer do them. I’ve found that resolutions are usually things I can’t do. Give up chocolate, exercise more, stop leaving my underwear all over the house (wait… I would never do that… Looks around guiltily.)

  That’s why I’ve traded New Years’ Resolutions for themes.

  In 2018, my theme was to live outside my comfort zone. To symbolize that, I started to wear two bright and mismatching socks every day. You see, when I was a kid, I was briefly bullied because I didn’t wear name-brand jeans. I don’t want to blow it out of proportion. It lasted a few months, and the kid leading the charge is most likely in jail now (so in the long run, I win). But it was still a sore point in my childhood and something that lingered. So wearing mismatching socks did make me uncomfortable—the operative word: did…

  I’ve been wearing them for two years and have gotten over that phobia.

  In 2019, my theme was my year of YES. One of my mentors (perhaps you’ve heard of her: Martha Carr) told me to say YES to everything. At first, I thought she was insane (I also thought about that Jim Carrey movie). But seeing her success and realizing that she probably knew some things I didn’t, I began saying YES to almost everything.

  Because of YES, I helped organize 20Books Edinburgh. It was a hell of a lot of work and stress, but in the end it was worth it. Whereas I can't say loved every minute of it, I did love that I got be part of bringing together so many talented people. (PLUS I met all of the GoneGod World authors there.)

  It also saw me doing more traveling than I have ever done in one single year. Mostly conferences and author events (with one three-day trip to Austin for an author gathering). It was an exhausting year, but so, so worth it.

  The results were inc
redible. I learned so much… Saying YES literally supercharged my year.

  Now 2020 is here and it’s time for a new theme. This year is CONSISTENCY. I will endeavor to be consistent in everything I do. That means writing, eating healthy, family time, doing the boring tasks that I hate but are good for me… And I’ll be consistent in forgiving myself should I be inconsistent, too.

  I’m looking forward to this theme. 2018 and 2019 really were supercharged years for me. 2020 will hopefully be the same.

  What was your New Years’ resolution or theme? I’d love to hear from you…

  As always, you can find me in my FB Group: House of the GoneGod Damned! Or sign up to my NL, where I promise to consistently (but not annoyingly) email you :)

  Cheers! Here’s to one hell of a 2020!

  Author Notes Michael Anderle

  January 18, 2019

  Thank you for reading this story and checking in on us in the back!

  I agree with Ramy’s themes idea.

  Last year, I had put a goal for our company to accomplish publishing four hundred (400) books. We didn’t make it (we were between three and four hundred somewhere), but more than that, the goal I set wasn’t the end goal. (Editor’s note: We published on the high side of 350)

  The end goal was to “Test Ourselves.”

  Meaning, I wanted to push our company so hard, we knew what we could accomplish and to grow our backlist, providing us a large group of stories for our fans to read. It was a “BAHG,” which is short for Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

  Otherwise known in the company as “Are you f##king kidding me?”

  In 2018, where the theme was “Let’s prepare for 2019 where we do 400 books,” we built an infrastructure towards the goal of making that happen. We put on our thinking hats and sharpened our pencils to figure out how to get to 400. What stories were we going to do? Who (exactly) were going to be doing it? How would we get 400 covers done? How many words of editing would we need to be able to accomplish?

  (The answer is a metric sh##load.)

  We went running through 2019 like a bunch of teenagers trying to catch free cash raining from the heavens. It was a lot of fun, but man oh man, was it dangerous!

  Lynne: I edited between 800k and 1.2m words per month last year, as did my co-editor. Holy schnikes! No wonder we’re tired! But we did learn a lot, mostly that we could not sustain that pace, so for me, see the theme below and substitute “the editing team” for “ourselves.”

  We broke (more) than a few things, but in the end, we survived. We are stronger, more capable, and more than that, we are wise beyond our years. (Editor’s Note. I’d say wiser. “Wise” just challenges us to come up with better, more creative errors.)

  How can I say that? Because wisdom comes with doing, and the more you do, the more wisdom you earn.

  On average (a very odd word, but the best one I can use), a publishing company will put out up to twenty-four books a year.

  Some, like Baen Books, do about seventy-two a year.

  We published four to five times Baen Books’ total and twelve times that of an average publishing company.

  So, we acquired a LOT of wisdom, pushing the company and our creativity. Some of the wounds we suffered I’m sure will heal in 2020. Some won’t.

  So as we come into 2020, we have a new theme, and it is…

  The Year of Unf##king ourselves.

  How’s THAT for a theme?

  ;-)

  Ad Aeternitatem,

  Michael Anderle

  Nest Under Seige

  Dragon Approved™ Book Four

  Chapter One

  Alex watched the orcs standing outside of the room through Gill’s holographic display. At first, she stared at the screen through Manny’s eyes, but the detail was too much. Manny saw everything. Every little hair on their chinny-chin-chin… (Seeing gave so many of the stories she knew new context.)

  She switched to her own eyes, dulling the sight through her HUD.

  She held her breath, trying to make as little noise as possible. It didn’t matter that they were all huddled in a room. It just meant that if the orcs heard them, they were all dead.

  After a few minutes, the orcs wandered away and continued on down the hall.

  Alex let out a deep sigh as she leaned back against the wall and tried to catch her breath. “How many do you think there are?” she asked after she was sure she could breathe regularly.

  Gill looked through his HUD, changing between different cameras throughout the Wasp’s Nest. “There could be hundreds,” he murmured. “There’s a lot of these guys.”

  Jollies fluttered around the room manically before finally going into a fit of hiccups and retiring to Alex’s right shoulder. “What should we do?” Jollies asked.

  Alex looked from Brath to Gill as the two young men thought the question over. Gill was the first to speak. “We should watch for a bit longer,” he suggested. “It doesn’t make sense to run out there until we know what’s going on. I mean, if we had gone out earlier, we’d be…” He ran his finger across his neck

  Alex nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you’re right. If we had gone out, we’d be dead by now. There’s no way we could have taken that many orcs.”

  “What do you mean, taken? Were you thinking about fighting them?”

  Alex shook her head. She knew this wasn’t VR anymore. This was real life, and real orcs were very capable of killing her.

  One-lifers. Guess we’re all one of those now, she thought with a heavy sigh.

  For a moment, Alex thought back to Middang3ard VR. She had been a hero there, ready to step into danger at a moment’s notice. People knew her throughout the game as someone who would not walk away from a fight.

  Yet here she was crouched in a room with a bunch of teenage boys, shaking with fear. How the mighty have fallen, she thought.

  Brath was pacing, his arms folded over his chest, his body language expressing how unhappy he was with the decision to stay and hide. “How long are we going to be doing this?” he asked.

  Gill lowered his visor and met Brath’s eyes. “It would be a mistake to go out before we have properly assessed the situation,” he reminded the other rider. “Haven’t you been paying attention to anything during our tactics lessons?”

  Brath sat down on his bed, his arms still crossed. “Yeah, I pay attention,” he muttered under his breath. “I thought the first word of that class’s name was ‘Battle.’”

  “Yeah, it is. And the second word is ‘Tactics.’ Arguably, it’s the more important word. Let me just see what else is going on for a while, all right? Then we’ll discuss what we should do.”

  Alex sat back and listened to Gill. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Who died and made these guys the bosses? she wondered. They’re not even asking for Jollies’ or my opinion.

  Brath stood back up and continued pacing. He looked like he was going to say something else but was concentrating very hard on not speaking. His face had gone red from concentration.

  Jollies, on the other hand, wasn’t trying to hide how worried she was. The color of her skin kept fluctuating between deep blue and purple.

  Alex tapped Jollies on the foot, hoping to distract her from her fear. Maybe distract herself as well. “Do all pixies change color like you?” Alex asked.

  Jollies looked up suddenly as if she had forgotten she was resting on Alex’s shoulder. “Huh? Oh, yeah. It’s like an emotional thing. Kinda like how you humans have mood rings. I’m one big mood ring. It helps pixies empathize with each other. Totally inconvenient when talking to non-pixies, though. Makes lying harder. You’ll never catch a pixie playing…poker? That’s the human game, right?”

  Alex reached over to Brath’s bed, grabbed a pillow, and threw it at Gill. “Hey, do you have any cards in here?”

  Gill hardly responded to being hit with a pillow. He looked away from his HUD visor for a moment before returning. “Yep,” he replied. “Over there, on top of my dresser. Why?”

&nb
sp; Alex got up and grabbed the cards. They weren’t like any cards she’d ever seen in Middang3ard before. They reminded her of a description she had read of tarot cards, but other than that, they were completely confusing to her.

  She took them anyway.

  Brath scoffed loudly as he sat down on his bed. “Are you seriously going to play cards right now? While the Nest is going through an orc invasion?”

  It took all of Alex’s self-control to speak in an even tone to Brath. She was terrified, but sitting in a room thinking about how scared she was wasn’t going to help anyone.

  Even if Brath didn’t want to admit it, Alex could tell he was afraid too. All his pacing and sitting and standing were dead giveaways. Gill was the only one in the room who didn’t seem worried about the orcs.

  Alex sat down across from Brath and looked at the cards. She looked at them, and even never having seen playing cards before, she knew this wasn’t an Earth card deck. The images were too… She struggled for a word before settling on “fantastical.”

  She handed them to Brath. “Do you know what these are?”

  Brath snatched the cards from Alex’s hands and sighed loudly. He thumbed through the cards before handing them back to Alex. “Of course, I do,” he said. “These are drow Fate cards.”

  “What are those?”

  Brath looked taken aback by Alex’s asking for more details. For a moment, he forgot about the orcish invasion and was more concerned with trying to understand why she would be interested in the cards.

  Alex took the cards back from Brath as he started to explain, “It’s an elvish thing. All kinds of elves get these when they’re born. Every elf gets their own specific deck—someone makes it for them or something—but they use them to tell the future. Usually their own future.”