With his prize in hand, his real one, Russel closed the hidden opening in the wall and retreated to the aft of the ship where he made his home. Kiera was going to be mad. She would yell, call him names, and threaten to do bad things to him, but he knew she wouldn’t act on them.
He did not want to make her mad, but it was almost impossible not to anger Kiera no matter what you did. He needed the gold more than she did. He had to save them. Only he could do that. Have to be safe. Have to fly before they come. Even if he could talk, Russel could not say who was coming, when, or why. He just knew. Had to fly.
Once inside his workshop in the airship’s bowels, he stoked the fire in his small stove. Plucking out the useless gems from the jewelry, he set the gold in a crucible and placed it in his stove. While Russel waited for the gold to melt, he checked on one of his many apparatuses.
The contraption sat on a table against one wall. A small box inscribed with strange geometric symbols with an arcanstone, by far the most valuable item any of them had ever possessed, cradled inside it sat at one end. Copper wires led from the box to a pair of glass cylinders connected at the base by a pipe and filled with water, which rested at the other end. One of the cylinders had a copper tube attached to the top, which led to a large metal canister.
Russel unscrewed the larger cylinder from the tube and attached it to another pipe that led to an even bigger tank. He sat at a pair of pedals that worked a large pump and forced the gas out of the smaller canister and into the bigger one as he had done countless times before.
Russel finished pumping and retrieved the crucible from the stove with metal tongs and set about making gold wire. It never ceased to amaze him how much wonderful wire he was able to get out of just a small bit of useless ornamentation.
He crept deeper into the ship’s hull, using a small lantern to light the way. Russel adjusted the magnifying lenses attached to the padded leather hat hiding his mop of straw-colored hair and muffling his ears, and began inlaying the complex engravings carved in the hull with the gold wire.
It was a laborious task, but Russel found solace in the tedious work as he tapped the wire into the reliefs with a tiny hammer and various punches. He caressed his newest work after laying the last strand of gold. “Gotta fly,” he whispered, looking around furtively to make sure no one heard him.
FROM THE AUTHOR
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The Sorcerer’s Path is an epic fantasy series.
The Sorcerer’s Ascension: Torn from a life of comfort and luxury, his family destroyed by political intrigues and aspirations, a young boy must quickly grow into a man before the deadly streets of Southport devour him. Follow Azerick through a page-turning adventure that pits him against thieves, thugs, murderers, and men of power that will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.
Azerick must fight just to survive, but for him survival is not enough. A hunger to avenge the wrongs committed against him burns deep within. But that is not all that lies within the young man. There is a power waiting to be unleashed that may be the key to achieving the justice and security he seeks--if it does not destroy him first.
The Sorcerer’s Torment: Azerick flees The Academy but quickly falls prey to powerful beings that use his skills and power for their own amusement. What these creatures do not understand is the power of the young sorcerer’s will and the lengths he will go to for vengeance. Despite becoming a prisoner, Azerick finds his first true love, but can he keep it?
The Sorcerer’s Legacy: Azerick has found himself a home and tries to settle down. He takes on an apprentice and tries to put all the death and desire for vengeance behind him. But when the Rook finds him, Azerick is once again pulled back into Ulric’s schemes. Knowing that all he has worked toward and everyone close to him is in danger as long as these schemes are ongoing; Azerick decides to put an end to it, once and for all.
The Sorcerer’s Vengeance: After narrowly avoiding being killed in his own bed by the land’s most feared assassin, Azerick leaves his school behind to find out who sent him and to put an end to the threat once and for all. Azerick’s search will take him to the very pits of the abyss and back to unleash hellish fury upon those that threaten him.
The Sorcerer’s Scourge: With the siege broken and Ulric dead, Azerick can finally relax, study his magic, and run his school in peace. Unfortunately, Jarvin’s reign is far from uncontested and the true usurper decides to make his move. Jarvin escapes with help from an unlikely source—a vampire named Landrin who still clings tenaciously to his own humanity. While Azerick and a large force from North Haven race to save the king in exile, evil forces are preparing to unleash a nightmare upon the kingdom that may well destroy them all.
The Sorcerer’s Abyss: Now the master of the Fifth Circle of the abyss, Azerick is challenged by another demon lord for supremacy. Azerick must face this threat as well as his innermost demons, all the while searching for a way to escape his hellish prison.
Ellyssa fears she is going insane as she plagued by nightmares of her capture and enslavement. Deciding the key to saving herself lies in the total destruction of the object of her fears, she embarks on a crusade to find and kill the slaver, Captain Jake, and eradicate the slave trade.
Ellyssa’s nightmares and battles spill out onto the streets of North Haven and gains the attention of The Academy. Fearing Azerick’s school is turning out rogue wizards, The Academy decides to hunt down and destroy the rogue and place the school within their control.
The Sorcerer’s Return: Azerick has come back from the abyss in order to try to unite all the races against the return of the old gods who seek to destroy them and subjugate the few they allow to survive a brutal purging. However, fighting ancient gods may be the least of his troubles as he battles to save a fractured kingdom, a brilliant son traveling a dark path, and the splintered soul of his own humanity.
The Sorcerer’s Destiny: Brutally purged of his demonic influence, Azerick continues the struggle of uniting the kingdom to face the coming of the Scions, ancient gods banished by the mortal races during the Great Revolution two thousand years ago. The fallen gods’ prison is crumbling, and Azerick is powerless to stop them from breaking free and enacting their cataclysmic vengeance upon the world.
The humans must ally with the other races in a final battle against impossible odds while their entire world crumbles to the ground and is trod beneath the feet of an unstoppable foe. How can they set aside their distrust of each other when they fear the very person trying to save them?
Brooklyn Shadows is a modern day vampire tale. Full of action and snarky dialogue, Brooklyn Shadows is an enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys the supernatural underworld and butt-kicking vampires.
Shrouds of Darkness (Brooklyn Shadows Book 1) Leo Malone has been a vampire for the better part of the twentieth century. Once a prominent Sherriff (vampire cop), he now earns his living as a private eye and occasional bodyguard for anyone that requires some serious protection. Leo is hired by the daughter of a mob accountant who has gone missing.
The fact that her father is also a werewolf has Leo following a trail of grisly murders that will lead him through a web of intrigue and conspiracy involving his fellow vampires and the local werewolves that make New York their home, all the while trying to keep one particularly determined cop off his back and himself out of jail. Leo is not some pretty-boy vampire that al
l the girls ogle over, but a hard-eyed, remorseless killing machine who does not take crap from anyone.
Blood Conspiracy (Brooklyn Shadows Book 2): While dealing with the aftermath of the failed vampire council coup, Leo discovers that the modified Cure has fallen into the hands of a black ops government project designed to create vampiric super soldiers. When the inevitable happens, the off-book Homeland Security operation forcefully enlists Leo to help them resolve the situation. Worse yet, he has to work not only with an antagonistic werewolf named Meat, he is reunited with his hated creator, Lesile.
Primacy of Darkness (Brooklyn Shadows Book 3): Jack the Ripper, sadistic madman of old London, once thought long dead, has returned to New York in an effort to quench his thirst for blood and mayhem. When the city’s vampire enclave finds itself insufficient to deal with a madman of Jack’s caliber, Vincent, the enclave head, enlists Leo Malone to put the maniac down before he reveals the existence of vampires as he throws the city into the throes of chaos and terror. Leo soon finds that Jack is not the only monster with which he must contend. A ghost from his past has also seemingly crawled from its grave and seeks to put an end to him and the rest of his kind.
The Transcended Chronicles is the story of an outlandish young man as he goes from being a troublesome youth to one of the kingdom’s greatest secret agents. Blessed (or cursed) with an amazing ability to both fight and abuse his body with every conceivable vice known to man, Garran Holt is either the kingdom’s greatest hero or its biggest embarrassment.
The Miscreant (The Transcended Chronicles Book 1): Garran Holt is a troubled young man. Unable to tolerate his self-destructive ways, his mother sells him into indentured servitude as part of a work crew building King Remiel’s new trade road. When mercenaries sent to disrupt the road’s construction attack his work camp, Garran discovers an inner power capable of turning him into a warrior of unparalleled ability. When the leader of his work crew recognizes Garran as being one of the transcended (a fighter able to slip into the swifter currents of time), he is trained as an agent, one of the kingdom’s elite spies. Crude, abrasive, and deeply committed to destroying himself with drugs, alcohol, and debauchery, Garran might be the kingdom’s only hope against falling to The Guild, the powerful trade cartel bent on becoming the true and undisputed power in the land.
The Agent (The Transcended Chronicles Book 2): The Guild rules the kingdom through their puppet monarch, and Garran must race to save the last living heir to the throne before the powerful syndicate's assassins complete their extermination of anyone who could oppose them. Garran and Prince Adam Altena struggle to find allies in hopes of rescuing Adam's sister, who was forced to marry the usurper in order to prevent even the thought of rebellion, and raise an army capable of defeating The Guild. With The Guild now in control of Anatolia's powerful army as well as their legion of mercenaries, their future is grim. How can a disreputable agent and a deposed prince convince their neighboring rulers to oppose The Guild, an organization that has had them cowed for decades?
Empire of Masks is an exciting and explosive new series that takes place in the world of Hedon and takes you across the land of Eidolan where ships sail through the skies and men and women wage war with magic, swords, muskets, and cannons.
Highlords of Phaer (Book one of Empire of Masks): Born a slave, descended of kings, Jareen Velarius just wants to provide the best life he can for his family, but Eidolan is a realm that challenges even the most stalwart of souls. Caught between his masters and those brave or foolish enough to strike against them, Jareen struggles to reconcile his role as a dutiful slave with that of a man who desires to be free. His goal: to return his people to a life stolen by the highlords more than a millennium ago.
Auberon Victore, sorcerer, alchemist, son of a powerful overlord, and Jareen’s master, creates an alchemic compound he is certain will change the world; he just does not know how. Jareen sees it for the weapon that could break the sorcerers’ iron grasp wrapped around the necks of every lowborn in the empire. It will change the world, but not in the way his master desires.
Across the Tempest Sea, a mighty storm has raged for a thousand years, keeping a terrible, long-forgotten enemy at bay, an enemy whose cruelty knows no bounds. Only the perpetual storm and their fear of the sorcerer highlords keep the Necrophages from returning to Eidolan and cloaking the empire in death and darkness. But the tempest is waning, and the dissidents’ freedom may well come at the cost of their total destruction.
(Coming soon) Night Bird (Book 2 of Empire of Masks): The Great Revolution ended the Highlords’ tyranny two hundred years ago, but the legacy of that epic war, and that of the principle architects’ descendants, lives on. With the Highlords’ death and their taking magic, as it was once known, to their graves, Eidolan fell into a time of darkness and its cities lived in isolation. However, some people, dubbed arcanists, discovered a new form of magic and the airships returned to the skies, rejoining the cities in trade as well as conspiracy, but a new darkness, more dreadful and deadly than any they faced before, is coming.
Kiera is a fifteen-year-old night bird, one of many who flit about after dark, stealing whatever they can find in order to survive. She lives on a derelict airship in the poorest part of the city with Wesley, a young man with a penchant for lying and plies his trade as an “escort” to wealthy older women, and his little brother Russel, an autistic savant who communicates only through sign but who could secretly be the most powerful arcanist the empire has ever known. Deep in debt to the Underlord Nimat, Kiera decides dives into ever more dangerous schemes that puts her at the heart of secret war between various factions that could spell the destruction of not just the city, but the very empire.
Standalone books
The Portal is a fun and exciting story of some less than popular teenagers that accidentally open a portal to a mystical land during one of their role-playing games. Drew, a dour and anti-establishment teenager, is pulled through and captured by evil creatures lying in wait on the other side. Now it is up to his friends and older brother to rescue him, but who will rescue Drew’s captors from him?
Amelia (Battle for Ardentia): Amelia is a precocious, ten-year-old girl with a powerful imagination. In her alter-ego guise of a demi-goddess warrior princess, Amelia fights against a powerful demonic sorcerer named Romut and his horde of monsters in a never ending series of battles to protect the people of her imaginary world. However, the true battle strikes home when Amelia is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Now Amelia must fight not just the evil living in her imagination, but for her very life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brock Deskins was born in a small town located in rural Oregon. At age twenty, he joined the army and served as an M1A1 tank crewman, dental specialist, and computer analyst. While in the military, he became an accomplished traveler, husband, and father of three wonderful children. His military career completed, attended college to brush up on his skills as a computer analyst and gain new skills as a writer. Brock received his degree in computer networking and is now devoting his full time and limited attention span to writing.
Table of Contents
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
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 3
3
CHAPTER 34
SNEAK PREVIEW OF NIGHT BIRD
FROM THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1) Page 36
