The Oblivion Trials (The Astral Wanderer Book 3)

by D'Artagnan Rey

  The Oblivion Trials

  The Astral Wanderer™ Book Three

  D'Artagnan Rey

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2021 LMBPN Publishing

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact info@kurtherianbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.00, June 2021

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-837-2

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-838-9

  The Oblivion Trials Team

  Thanks to our Beta Team:

  Rachel Beckford, John Ashmore, Larry Omans, Kelly O’Donnell

  Thanks to our JIT Team:

  Dave Hicks

  Diane L. Smith

  Peter Manis

  Paul Westman

  If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  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 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Skharr DeathEater

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Books By D'Artagnan Rey

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael

  Chapter One

  The night sky around the Emerald Forest crackled as blue and red lights flared from torches and cobalt lanterns. These were held by a party of forest rangers who searched the area in a determined and well-orchestrated hunt for a trio of bandits who had attacked a traveling magi only a short while before. They had struck the man on the head and begun to pilfer his belongings when one of the rangers stumbled on the scene.

  When the brigands fled, she summoned her comrades to hunt them while she took the injured magi to a healer. They covered ground quickly and the more time passed, the more rangers joined the hunt. Unfortunately for them, however, the area they searched was not even remotely close to the thieves. They had been misled by a simple trick. One of the bandits used pre-placed curios that emitted sounds to lead their pursuers down the wrong path, while they ran deeper into the center of the forest where they could hide safely until the search was called off.

  “Hells, they arrived quickly,” Leno muttered and peered over his shoulder as he and his brothers in thievery finally found a place to rest. “Don’t they have better things to do? Wasn’t some big nasty wolf discovered around here some months ago? They still haven’t found a den.”

  “Quiet!” Hodder, the leader of the group, snapped. “If yer squawking brings them our way again, we’ll leave you as the distraction!”

  “Shall we check the goods, Hodder?” Barter—who had devised their curio trick—asked. “We got a couple of shiny things off him but I wasn’t able to get a good look at most of it.”

  The leader mulled it over for a moment before he nodded “Aye, we might as well make sure we return to camp with something worthwhile. We’ve been sittin’ around here for more than a week and the first bastard we find who looked like he had something good almost gets us caught. I’d rather have something to show for it than get yelled at if we return with nothing more than knick-knacks,”

  “Do you think the boss would seriously take our thumbs?” Leno shuddered. “That’s what he said he’d do if we didn’t get nothin’ good, right?”

  Hodder shrugged and pointed to the bags, and Barter nodded and dumped the contents out. “I don’t see why he would lie. He’s certainly done worse than that to others who pissed him off.” He smiled as the three began to go through their haul and identified the shiny things already mentioned—a couple of rings and a necklace, probably worth a full cobalt coin together. Leno looked through a satchel of vials filled with liquids and powders. Depending on what was inside, it could be worth a few splinters or possible shards.

  “Hey, look at this.” Barter unrolled a scroll and something fell out of it. He placed it on the ground while Hodder picked up the fallen item and studied it in the dim light of the moon. It appeared to be some kind of signet, very dark in color, and seemed to disappear in his hand when he lifted it to the night sky.

  In the middle was an etching of some kind of animal, but none he was familiar with. The bird depicted had four wings and an odd protrusion on the head—maybe a horn of some kind. Then he realized it had no beak but had pointed ears, which made him think it was some breed of bat instead.

  Whatever it was, it appeared to be a token or marker, perhaps to show allegiance to a certain house? Unless he could find a collector for such things, the value would be nothing more than a few bits. He couldn’t even determine what it was made of.

  “Look at this.” Barter pointed to lines on the map. “Was he keeping track of where he was going? There are lines all over this.”

  “I don’t know.” Hodder passed the signet to him. “It might have something to do with this since it fell out of there. Have you got any idea what that is?”

  “It’s the entry token for the trials.”

  He looked up quizzically. “The trials? What trials, Leno?”

  Their third teammate looked around before he glanced at the other two and shook his head. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Eh?” Hodder grasped the handle of his ax and scanned the trees. “Is someone here?” he asked. He wanted to yell but feared attracting more rangers if one of them had somehow discovered them already. “Barter, do you see anything?” He extended a hand to grasp the man’s shoulder but only swiped at air. “Barter?”

  Leno took a torch out, lit it, and held it up. Their comrade had vanished. “Barter? Where did he go?”

  “Quiet.” his leader growled warningly and straightened. “He probably went to check the area. No one could get to him when h
e was right next to us.”

  The other man trembled a little in worry but nodded. He stood beside his leader and took his club out, still caked with the traveler’s blood, and they walked the perimeter in search of their comrade.

  Hodder retrieved another torch, struck a match, and ignited it. He wished the naked flame could be held close enough to his chest to hopefully not give their position away, but they would simply have to hope for the best. When he paused for a moment to listen, he didn’t hear anything.

  Even though he was sure Barter couldn’t have been snatched or killed when he was so close, he also knew he wouldn’t simply run off without saying anything. He turned to Leno to make sure he didn’t wander too far, only to see him standing in front of a large tree with his torch held well above his head.

  He pressed his lips together, strode forward, and grasped the oaf by his neck. “What in the hells are you doing?” he seethed. “Do you want to be seen? That fire might as well be the sun in this darkness.”

  The man did not respond and seemed transfixed by the tree branches above. Hodder heard a dripping sound, looked down, and frowned at the odd blobs of red that coated the dirt path beside his boots. He looked up slowly to where Leno was gazing and his jaw slackened.

  They had found Barter. His body lay on one of the branches and his face looked down at them, his mouth agape and eyes wide in shock. A gaping wound in his throat dripped blood onto the branch and from there to the forest floor.

  “That map.” The voice spoke again and Leno, surprised, was jostled out of his shocked state. He dropped the torch onto the dirt as held his club up. “That map probably indicates the site of the trials or at least has crossed off some areas where it is not located.”

  “Where are ya?” Hodder hissed his outrage and held both his torch and ax up. “Come on out.”

  “How about you get out?” the voice replied and its tone changed from low muttering to include a trace of venom. “I had my eye on that magi for a while now. I was gonna let him do all the leg work for me before I took what I needed. Then you louts went and bashed his head in before he was finished.”

  “Hodder, is it some kind of phantom?” Leno asked and his panicked gaze darted from side to side.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he snapped. “Start spouting that superstitious nonsense and you will seriously go crazy. No phantom can do that to Barter.”

  The voice responded with a dry laugh. “You say that like it makes things better for you,” A rush of air billowed past the two bandits. They turned and Hodder held his torch higher but saw nothing. “This is your last chance. Get out of here and leave the goods. If you want to make it out—”

  “No deal, you bastard,” His hold on his ax tightened and the wood almost began to snap from the strain. “I don’t give a damn if that was supposedly yer mark. You should have reached him sooner then. If you want what we rightfully stole, come and claim it if you got the balls.”

  Something warm and wet splashed on his head. He stepped back and shook it off, and when he ran a hand through his hair and looked at it, he knew it was blood. The two bandits turned sharply toward a loud scraping sound nearby.

  A wooden pike made from what appeared to be a carved branch had been planted beside their stolen goods. Barter’s head was placed at the top. Both men looked reflexively at the branch above and confirmed that the body was still there but the head was missing. Hodder realized whose blood he had been drenched with.

  Leno was utterly panicked by now and he began to bolt away as he uttered frightened gasps and yelps.

  The leader tried to stop him but he was too slow. “Don’t run off, you idiot!” he shouted. He’d let his guard down fully and no longer cared about being heard. At this point, he was certain that whoever was trying to trap them was no ranger and he would far rather deal with them than an invisible and certainly murderous foe.

  Leno did not listen and he moved fast for being the biggest among them. He was soon out of the torchlight. Hodder was barely able to make him out among the trees before he simply dropped through the forest floor, no doubt into a pit trap.

  He hurried in pursuit and stopped a few paces short of where the man had fallen but saw no hole or ropes or anything like that. It was as if his comrade had simply disappeared. He took a few cautious steps back and whispered Leno’s name. Inevitably, fear had begun to creep in and he stuttered slightly. Through his fear, his mind insisted that he needed to get away. This attacker was obviously a magi and he couldn’t deal with his kind of crazy without backup.

  As he turned to run, a heavy object fell on top of him. It crushed his torch and knocked the wind out of him, but he was otherwise unharmed. When he pushed it off, he heard a weird gurgling sound. He looked down at what had landed on him and realized it was Leno. The man’s throat had been slit like Barter’s had but he still clung to life and reached out to him, his eyes wild and his face streaked with blood.

  Hodder kicked him off and raced to their loot. He swung his ax wildly around him, determined to not let this bastard kill him like he had the others. It was a relatively short distance to the valuables but he knocked the pike over in his rush. He fell to his knees and gathered as much of it together into a pile as he could.

  Unfortunately, he could only take one bag and would have to leave the rest. He snatched one of the sacks and opened it but a hand holding a large dagger lashed out from inside it. The brigand shrieked as the blade thrust toward his eye.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, hey—watch the face!” Jazai jumped back as Freki pushed forward and swiped at him with his claws. “Zier, did you make some kind of deal with him?”

  “Nonsense, Jazaiah,” the scholar assured him and tilted his head as he studied his apprentice’s cantrip work. “You are training for one of the most difficult tests of your life. If you go there with such a shoddy performance, even your father would understand why you died.”

  “So you wanna play like that, huh?” The young magi placed his hands on the ground. “Pulse!” The earth shook and many of the arena’s tiles cracked and erupted spectacularly. Freki crouched before he launched himself high to avoid the attack. “Gotcha.”

  Jazai smirked and held onto his right hand which was adorned with his cantrip rings. He activated the one on his middle finger and fired another pulse, which blasted all the tiles like shrapnel at the wildkin warrior.

  Freki spun, snatched the two-handed ax from his back, and charged it with his green mana. He whipped the blade across his body to launch a pulse using only his mana and the force of his swing. These combined were sufficient to hurl the projectiles away and he followed up by throwing his weapon like a green streak directed at the apprentice.

  The boy sighed and blinked away from the attack to the west side of the arena, but the ax continued toward him once he reappeared. He extended his hand hastily and pointed with his ringed index finger, and a shield formed in front of him. The ax struck the shield and split it apart, and the force generated from the impact was enough to knock him back a few feet and out of the arena, where he crumpled in the dirt.

  “Are you all right, Jazai?” Freki called as he landed and moved forward to collect his ax.

  Zier blinked onto the arena and retrieved the weapon. “Don’t coddle him now, Freki,” he muttered, levitated the ax casually, and sent it to his owner. “His opponents in the trials certainly won’t.”

  “How many of them are Templars with more than three decades of training?” The young diviner coughed and shook his head as he pushed to his feet and dusted his robes off. “How did you know where I would appear?”

  Freki went to speak but Zier held a hand up to stop him. “You should be well aware of that, Jazaiah,” he responded acerbically and pointed to the place the boy had blinked to. “In your hurry, you did not control your mana output.”

  Jazai looked where he indicated and frowned at the faint wisps of his mana. “So I made a trail, dammit.” He sighed and scratched his head. “Still, blinking is fas
t. How many guys can see where I’ll go and react in time to do any damage?”

  “It only takes one to be fatal.” The dryad scoffed and Freki touched his shoulder and pointed to the far path from which he had watched the skirmish. Grand Mistress Nauru had appeared and now observed them. “Let Asla have another chance,” he ordered and turned to head toward their leader. “Think about your mistakes and how to improve in the meantime. You can start by not relying on those rings so much.”

  “Ever my rock of support, Zier.” The young magi sighed and waved for the young wildkin to join them as he looked at his opponent. “I gotta give you your due. Most warrior magi aren’t great against casters, much less are able to pressure them like you do.”

  Freki laughed. “Then you haven’t run into many good warriors.” He rested his ax over his shoulders and stretched his arms around it. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly good but any warrior knows that if they are serious about the craft, dealing with ranged opponents is where you bust your ass during training. Any of them who gets bent out of shape when facing one ain’t worth their weight.”