by Tristan Vick
“My dear Dragoron.” I laugh. “I don’t want to harness it…” I pause and glance over my shoulder at Dragoron. He stands gazing out alongside me, his long robes flowing in the dusty warm breeze. “I want to unleash it.”
“As you wish, Mistress,” Dragoron says, without so much as a hint of trepidation. I smile to myself and think that Dragoron might someday be just as ruthless and powerful as me. But, then again, if he ever approached my level of power, I’d be forced to kill him. After all, I’m afraid there just isn’t room at the top for two supreme rulers.
“What of Lord Dathrium?” I inquire. “Does the good king expect anything out of the ordinary?”
“Not a thing, Mistress. He believes me dead. He now wallows in remorse locked away in his palace, alone, while Queen Sabine leads his and her armies to Sabolin to face off with the army of the dead. A better diversion there never was.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling curtly and accepting Dragoron’s rare compliment.
Looking back out across the hard laboring and toiling of the several hundred slaves I’ve amassed to dig my pit for me, I lick my lips in anticipation of the amount of blood I am about to spill in the name of Vulcanus, the God of Death.
“I am curious about one thing though,” Dragoron inquires, never taking his eyes off the delicious suffering of the pit. “What of Arianna De Amato? If she is an Outlier, she may threaten to undo everything we’ve worked for.”
“We’ll deal with her when the time comes, Dragoron. For now, the distraction in the north allows us to excavate the most dangerous artifact in the all the realms without any suspicion. Once we have reclaimed it, true power will be ours. There will be no one to stop us. Not Lord Dathrium, not Queen Sabine, not even that little pain in our backside, Arianna De Amato.”
Suddenly a horn blows and there is a lot of commotion down below amid screams of joy and relief. After several minutes two servants and one of my Dark Elf legionnaires arrive atop my perch. Stepping out of my tent, I look greedily upon the long-lost relic they bring me.
“High Mistress Darkthorne,” the elf says looking up at me, “after much toiling in the muck, we have finally found it.” The elf slave’s voice can barely conceal the great relief he feels now that he has completed his laborious task.
“Remove your gaze from High Mistress Darkthorne or I shall remove your eyes from your skull, you half-breed ingrate,” the legionnaire growls. He whips both slaves back into submission. The two slaves kneel and cower before me, yet the fear of provoking my ire any further causes them to take their lashings without a single word of protest.
I nod to Dragoron, who throws out a hand and orders, “Open it!”
The slaves, one elf and one human, scurry forward. They place the box on the ground at my feet and pry it open. Inside is a long slender sheath made of tempered black oak and polished so finely that its sheen is as glossy as the blackest obsidian.
A smile pulls my thin red lips tight across my white teeth, my fangs baring themselves as I gaze down at the artifact with a most covetous delight.
Dragoron picks up the massive casing and presents it to me. The moment my fingers touch its outer shell I can already feel its power drawing me to it like a lodestone, enticing me to take it out so that its power may be finally unleashed.
My eyes grow wide with excitement as I finally clasp the one thing I’ve been searching for these three excruciatingly long decades. “At last,” I say in a low, excited voice. “After all these years, it’s finally mine.”
As I unsheathe the sword, a shrill sound rings out, as though the sword has let loose the screams of a thousand victims who cry out from beyond the grave, warning all who are present of its destructive power.
Once I have freed it from its thirty-year prison, I hold up the red glowing blade high into the sky. The rubicund Dragon’s Eye crystal embedded in the baroque crosspiece abruptly flares up, letting loose a radiant reddish-orange light that bathes us all in its errant glory.
“Behold!” I announce to Dragoron, all my legionnaires, and all the slaves in the pit who now stare up in awe at the numinous sword I raise high into the sky. “The Dragon Blade!”
THE END
The adventure continues in:
Valandra The Dragon Blade Cycle
(Book Two)
AUTHOR NOTES
>>>HI! TRISTAN VICK HERE<<<
Let me just say, thanks for taking a chance on me and, more importantly, taking a chance on this book. Whether you’re a new reader or a die-hard fan, you have my gratitude. So, thank you. Truly. Sincerely. Splendiferously!
Now let’s talk about Valandra and why I set out to write my first YA book that ended up not a YA book but something else entirely.
I wanted to write something more accessible to younger readers than my standard fanfare. As an established horror writer, I knew I’d have to tone down the violence, gore, cussing, and even sex. It couldn’t be plastered on every other page like in my adult zombie series. But, there was a problem: I wasn’t all that familiar with YA literature. So, I studied up.
I read The Hunger Games, the Divergent series, Maze Runner, the Throne of Glass series, and the Rot & Ruin series. I reacquainted myself with a few of the classics, such as The Giver and The Wrinkle in Time series. I suppose my favorite growing up, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, constitute YA lit too, even though at the time the young adult genre wasn’t well established. Certainly not as its own important niche demographic in the publishing world. But I digress.
Armed with the newfound knowledge of what young readers like (or at least seem to like), things like action, adventure, and romance, I set out to write something filled with action, adventure, and romance. And I wrote this book, Valandra: The Winds of Time Cycle. I really hoped you enjoyed it, because the truth is, I really enjoyed writing it.
Imagine my surprise when I asked readers, friends, and fellow authors about whether or not some of my more steamy and risqué scenes were too much for YA? Turns out, they were—and my category was all wrong.
I was told on numerous occasions that this book was a New Adult (NA) novel, not a YA novel. A what-the-what novel, you say? Exactly.
Honestly, until I started talking to other authors online and on Facebook, I didn’t even know that NA was a category in literature. And there’s a good reason for this—it wasn’t made one until Amazon.com adopted it back in 2009 due to a large publishing shortage in a genre that grew exponentially popular—due to indie writers!
That’s right. The main publishing world had largely neglected an entire demographic for a long time, mainly because there is a lot of overlap, but some successful indie authors discovered there was a hunger for NA books, and since they were basically only available in indie form, it blew the market wide open.
So I wrote a book starring young protagonists in a fantasy world with sensuality, romance, and steamy situations, along with action, drama, and suspense. Thus the world of Valandra was born. And although it was a bit too mature for YA, it was perfect for NA. I think you’ll agree.
My only hope is that readers enjoy these characters and story. If I can excite readers and give them something that entertains, enthralls even, then I know this experiment was a smashing success and I will look forward to writing many more books in this series. I’m already well into plotting out the second book and should start writing Valandra: The Dragon Blade very soon. So keep an eye out for that (by joining the newsletter, hint, hint).
Also, if you liked this book, please, by all means, leave a review. Good or bad, your reviews really do matter—and can be the difference of whether a series grows more successful or falls into obscurity.
Visit Tristan Vick’s author website at:
www.tristanvick.com
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NEWSLETTER
Gratitude.
Tristan Vick
January 20, 2017
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tristan Vick is the popular author of BITTEN, the Resurrection Virus saga, and the comedic-noir paranormal investigative series The Scarecrow and Lady Kingston. Tristan Vick graduated from Montana State University with degrees in English Literature and Asian Cultural Studies. He speaks fluent Japanese and lives with his wife and two children in Japan. When he's not commuting on the train or teaching English, he spends his time reading, writing, blogging, binge-watching his favorite television shows, and eating sara-udon. In addition to being traditionally published, Tristan Vick continues to self-publish under his own imprint, Regolith Publications.
FULL LENGTH NOVELS
BY TRISTAN VICK
***Available Now***
BITTEN: Resurrection
BITTEN 2: Land of the Rising Dead
BITTEN 3: Kingdom of the Living Dead
The Scarecrow & Lady Kingston: Rough Justice
Tokyo’s Lost Souls: The Girl on the Train
*Coming Soon*
Valandra: The Dragon Blade (Book 2)
Robotica A Glitch in the Digital Dream
Exoverse: Invasion of the Draugr
BITTEN 4: Ancient of Dread Days
Little Red Gauntlet: A Steampunk Fairytale
If you want to learn more about the exciting worlds of Tristan Vick you can visit his official author page at:
www.tristanvick.com
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VALANDRA
THE WINDS OF TIME CYCLE
BOOK ONE
