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The Story So Far...
Dragon Seed
Before being conscripted to fight in the Total War, Hector Park had a shattered family, a collection of old videogames, and a promising career as a motorcycle stuntman. Now, he is dying from a virus threatening humankind with extinction. He has three days to live.
When Hector’s brother contacts him after years of hostile silence, Hector goes to try and make peace. But his brother has an offer even more unbelievable than reconciliation: the chance to cheat death by joining him in Archemi, a full-immersion fantasy VR-RPG videogame.
Determined to forge a life worth living, Hector undergoes the experimental upload process and chooses the difficult path of the Dragon Knight. To achieve his dream, he must prove himself worthy of imprinting a dragon, a being with whom he will share a telepathic bond more intimate than any human relationship.
But at what cost?
Spoiler: Full Synopsis with Plot Details
After entering the world of Archemi, Hector finds himself in a glitched scenario, trapped on a slaver's airship and then locked into a temporal loop. He is rescued from his unpleasant situation by Matir, a mysterious and unsettling being who Hector learns is one of The Nine, the gods originally worshipped by the dragons. Matir brands him with a mark, and gives him the title of 'Herald of the Hidden Seed', along with a quest that will take him to a remote province of Vlachia, a nation in the far east.
After the airship crashes, Hector and his friend, the sorceress Rutha, are rescued by dragon knights. Hector falls in love with them and with the adreniline rush of flying, but when he asks the Knight-Commander of the Order of St. Grigori if he could join them as a dragon knight, he is rudely rebuffed. However, at Rutha's urging, Hector persists. Rutha gives him an ancient weapon, the Spear of Nine Spheres: a spear that is almost broken and mostly worthless in combat, but that comes with an epic-level quest: [Restore the Spear of Nine Spheres].
Hector travels to the dragon knights' stronghold, where he elbows his way into taking the Trials that will mutate him and allow him to be able to withstand the physical demands of dragon riding. He also gains a unique class, Dark Lancer, and a new friend: Baldr Hyland, a fellow soldier and an extremely talented gamer who is also a ruthless asshole. As the trials progress, that initial promising friendship frays as Hector begins to suspect that something evil is at work within the Order.
In the middle of the Trial of Marantha, the final test for apprentice dragon knights, the game world resets. Hector is horrified to discover that all of the people outside of the game are uncontactable. While he has been playing in Archemi, the world outside is still at war - and the reset occurred when the city housing the on-world servers was nuked, leaving the game and its human data - the players - to reboot from an orbital backup server. There are now no moderators or admins to help if anything goes wrong.
Soon after this, Hector falls into ancient ruins, defeats a boss, and discovers the first part of the [Restore the Spear of Nine Spheres] mega-quest. But something's fucky, and as he hestitates before carrying out the quest instructions, he is ambushed by Baldr and Baldr's toady, a cowardly rogue named Lucien. Lucien backstabs Hector and Baldr takes the Spear. The weapon is supposed to be soulbound, but Baldr is able to use it - and recieves the same suspicious quest Hector had. Hector tries to warn them, but his cries fall on deaf ears. Baldr activates the quest step and is struck down by what seems to be some kind of in-game malware.
Hector escapes, and goes on to complete his quest to become a dragon knight. He survives the agonizing ritual that will allow him to safely bond with a dragon, but loses some of his recent memories of the Trial. However, when he is taken to talk to the Matriarch of the Eyrie, he realizes that his hunch that something about the knights is correct. The Queen dragon manages to work around the magical geas that chains all of the knights and dragons to the will of the Knight-Commander and warn Hector that, if he bonds with a hatchling and takes his vows, that he will be trapped in the same magical compulsion. Before he can act, however, a resurrected, changed, evil Baldr returns - and has the Knight-Commander arrest Hector in preperation to make him disappear.
After coming to terms with his own greed and helplessness, Hector escapes his cell. The Matriarch summons him to her chamber, and there - battling the geas at the cost of her life - gives him a Queen dragon egg she had hidden from the knights. She tells him the geas is weakening enough that she can fight, and begs him to protect her unborn daughter from the Order. He agrees, and she opens a portal for Hector to escape with the egg.
Hector flees with the Queen egg on his ornery dinosaur mount, Cutthroat, and escapes the dragon knights. As he is hiding from them in some ruins, the egg hatches - and Hector bonds with his dragon: Karalti the Black Opal Queen, the first Queen Dragon in 2000 years to be born into freedom instead of slavery.
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Trial by Fire
ONE MAN. ONE GAME. ONE ADORABLE BABY DRAGON.
Two weeks ago, Hector Park cheated death by uploading his mind to the ultra-immersive fantasy RPG game, Archemi. After exposing the rotten heart of an order of dragon knights, he’s now on the run with a young queen dragon who could one day become the most powerful mount in the game.
To get strong enough to face their enemies, they need a quest – a big one. Fortunately, trouble has a way of finding Hector, and it does – in the form of a series of brutally murdered priests, a king in desperate need of a hero, and a beautiful, fiery berserker. The risk? Huge. The payoff? More gold than a dragon’s hoard.
There's only one problem - Archemi is haunted by the ghost of a mad developer bent on making the game his personal playground. And now that the world outside has vanished in a storm of nuclear fire, there's no one left to stop him.
Or at least, that’s what he thinks. Because Hector isn't the kind of man to take this shit lying down.
Trial by Fire: Plot Details and Synopsis
Hector and his infant dragon, Karalti, have been living like outlaws since fleeing the Order of St. Grigori. The dragon knights and their lackeys have been hunting them across the land, trying to recapture Karalti now that she is potentially the only Queen Dragon left on the continent.
When the bad guys catch up with Hector, Karalti and Cutthroat just before they flee the country, two knights-errand step in to help. They are emisseries of a foreign nation that worships one of The Nine, the gods of the dragons, and view Karalti as a holy being. They invite them to the Eastern nation of Vlachia, where they need a hero for a quest the Volod - the King of Vlachia - has issued.
On their airship, Hector learns that a serial killer has been brutally murdering priets of Khors, the God of Crafting, and leaving their bodies in grotesque displays around the city of Taltos. The Volod, Andrik Corvinus, is paying a small fortune to anyone who can catch the killer alive or dead. Hector agrees to the quest, as he has a pre-existing interest in Vlachia.
In Vlachia, Hector is disturbed to discover that Andrik is oppressing the non-humans in his kingdom. When he is taken to meet with the Volod, he is also introduced to a fierce and beautiful woman - the Beserker, Suri Ba'hadir. Hector is bewildered to learn that she's Australian - a nation on the opposite side of the World War still raging on Earth.
Suri reluctantly works with Hector to solve the case. Their first lead is the discovery of an advanced spying device in the High Priest's office - a magical Artifact created with great skill and delicacy. After following clues and working out the murderer's pattern, Hector is able to catch the Slayer of Taltos in the act of murdering a man. The Slayer is a Mercurion, who escapes when another Mercurion intervenes in the fight. This Mercurion, Rin, is the Slayer's crafting apprentice - and a Developer who lost her admin powers when the game reset.
Rin tells them about her Craftmaster, Kanzo, and asserts that he would never be killing humans unless he was being controlled or blackmailed. In the course of their arguement, Hector lets slip what happened with the Order of St. Grigori. Rin is horrified - she insists that the Knights should not be corrupt, but she knows why they are. Michael Pratt, aka Ororgael: Another Developer, the first person to be perma-uploaded to Archemi. Michael experienced a glitch where he died hundreds of times and went crazy. He hacked the game from the inside, changing world events, characters, and organizations to suit his own twisted need for control. As far as Rin knew, all of his work had been undone - but the [Restore the Spear of Nine Spheres] questline was malware designed to respawn his deleted character - Ororgael - and hijack the body of another player.
The Order catches up with Hector and Karalti in Vlachia. In fighting them off, Hector learns about the Cult of the Architect: a cult of NPCs who worship 'the Architects' - the Devs - as Gods-Above-the-Gods. Ororgael, now possessing the body and mind of Baldr, has promised his mortal NPC followers eternal life if they catch Karalti.
The king's temper begins to fray as the investigation drags on, but the party of Rin, Hector, Suri and Karalti figure out that the Slayer is being blackmailed by a mysterious underworld figure known as the King of Cats. When they meet with him, they discover that he is in fact Ignas Corvinus, the elder brother of Andrik - presumed to have committed suicide after a sex scandal at court. Ignas is stern, fair, but consumed by the need to restore his honor and save his nation. Ignas and the Slayer's illegitimate 'daughter', Ebisa, have been blackmailing Kanzo to murder the men who are planning a theocratic takeover of Vlachia. Ignas tells them that his brother set him up, falsifying the scandal and forcing him into exile. He notes that his brother was part of a strange cult connected to Ilia. Hector realizes that Andrik is part of this cult, and that he sold him and Karalti out to their pursuers.
Anticipating their betrayal, Andrik has the party arrested. Hector breaks a sacred oath of confidence to expose Andrik's betrayal of his brother, the rightful heir to the throne, and manages to bluff Andrik into facing Ignas personally. Hectpr completes the difficult task the king set for him, but when he is taken to Karalti, he is killed in an ambush - by Void Wraiths, a monster that is not supposed to be in the game.
Hector respawns in an underground crypt with Tuun and dragon skeletons, gaining some good equipment, and learns from Rin that Andrik has set up a time to meet his brother - and bring the Void Wraiths to kill him and everyone else. He rushes to the fight, navigating the catacombs of Taltos to reach the final battle, where Andrik is slain and Ignas survives to reclaim his kingdom.
Ignas gives Hector and Suri noble titles in exchange for their work, and then offers them a very difficult, but ultimately rewarding quest: to recapture an outer province of Vlachia from the undead. If they can do it, the duchy is theirs for the keeping. That province is Myszno: the place that Matir told Hector to go when he was first uploaded into the game and named the Herald of the Hidden Seed.
Trial by Fire can be found on Amazon and is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.
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