Freelance Heroics (53 page)

As always, thank you to my other friends. To Brent Topa, for yelling at me to finish my book (again); to Mikey Garcia, for helping me brainstorm and for coming up with the word “spellhound”; to R.J. Goss, for helping me move halfway across the country; and to Michelle George, for being there to hang out when I wandered back into town. Thank you also to all the writers and readers at Random Curiosity, who continue to graciously put up with me.

A special thanks goes to my existing readers, especially those who’ve interacted with me through my email list over the past year. I’ve enjoyed talking with you, hearing your feedback, and keeping you in my mind as I worked on this book. Thanks for being game for a novel of four connected novellas, and for being patient when I marvelously blew past two different deadlines. Turns out traveling makes it hard for me to write. Lesson learned.

Because I went out of the way to create a canine character, I have to mention the family dogs who influenced him. To Smokey, the dog I grew up with; we were as thick as thieves to the end, pal. To Shiloh, the golden who gave our newest protagonist his fur; thanks for almost getting named Stephen’s Golden Shadow, which was a great moment even if it would have been a terrible name (it’s a phrase, Mom, not a name!). And to Kody, the last of my dogs (so far); everyone else thought you were evil, but I understood you. Probably because I’m a bit evil myself.

Finally, my eternal love and gratitude goes to my parents, Thomas and Sherry Gee, for whom this book is dedicated. Thank you for giving me all those
Star Wars
and fantasy books when I was younger. If you hadn’t cultivated my love for reading, I never would have found my love for writing, which means all my books are really thanks to you. You’re the best. I love you.

STEPHEN W. GEE is a fantasy author, anime blogger, craft beer lover, and exceedingly tall man.
Freelance Heroics
is his second novel. He’s only getting started.

www.stephenwgee.com

¹
In Houk, adventuring guilds fell into two groups: the Big Six and the mid-tiers. The Big Six were the six largest guilds in the city, accounting for well over two-thirds of Houk’s adventurers. The ten mid-tier guilds made up the rest, with each sporting no more than fifty members apiece
²
.

²
Because guilds need a charter from the city to operate officially, and because the existing guilds lobbied the government to keep more charters from being issued, there were no small adventuring guilds in Houk. This suited the Tyrant just fine, who used it as a threat every time the guilds got out of line.

³
The Guildmaster’s Council was the governing organization of Houk’s adventuring guilds. Adventuring was unique among professions in that there were multiple guilds, due to the potential threat adventurers posed. The council existed to guide the actions of the guilds while still allowing enough competition so the city didn’t become nervous and try to kill them all.

⁴
When they had one. There were nine seats on the council, with six of them reserved for the Big Six. The other three rotated among the mid-tier guilds every few months.

⁵
Hard barriers block all incoming damage until they shatter. This is opposed to soft barriers, which let a portion of the damage through in exchange for increased flexibility and durability. Personal mana barriers (MPBs) are soft barriers. All barriers are semi-permeable, allowing for the passage of light, air, and sound.

⁶
Barrier binds, which use fields of mana to physically restrain the target.

⁷
Force binds perform the same function as barrier binds, though through the use of alteration.

⁸
Though even advanced summoned object can be exposed with certain divine magicks, or by keening its mana and aura.

⁹
Food and drink can be summoned, but will be tasteless and dissipate as soon as they’re swallowed. Living creatures can be summoned as well, but because magick cannot affect the mind, they will be brain-dead and unable to move.

¹⁰
Illusions can fool the sense of touch using alteration, but it’s usually confined to rough actions such as striking or punching, since force magick cannot duplicate more delicate sensations.

¹¹
Only the announcer and Mazik so far. They were hoping it would catch on.

¹²
While illusions could use protection and alteration to appear solid when struck by a sword or a spell, they can’t mimic the feeling of sweat, clothing, or flesh. Mazik could figure out which one was which, provided that he touched them with his bare hands.

¹³
Also known as brass knuckles or knuckledusters, Houkian fists were a favored weapon of anyone who had ever been to Houk ever.

¹⁴
While it’s impossible to summon a living creature with arcane magick, divine magick is under no such restriction. Raedren could almost hear Mazik complaining about it from here.

¹⁵
Charge crystals are specialized focus crystals that can store concentrated mana for a limited amount of time. This allows casters to temporarily increase their effective mana pool and release more mana at one time than they normally could. Mana contained in a charge crystal must be consciously held onto or it will dissipate, and it cannot be absorbed back into the caster’s mana pool. Charge crystals are both heinously expensive and difficult to use.

¹⁶
While casters travel by cart, horse, or boat like everyone else, over land many opt to simply run. Through a combination of enhancement, rejuvenation, and alteration, a skilled caster can rival the speed of top-class manaless sprinters—and maintain it for hours at a time. The same distance would take twice as long to cover on horseback, and six times as long in a cart.

¹⁷
On the surface, orck prismatic blades looked like primitive, blocky stone swords—which they were, though they have unique properties that make them more lethal than their human analogs. Made from a glossy black stone exclusive to the Badlands, they’re crafted as one might expect, by chipping away at a large piece of stone. But thanks to a magick unique to orcks, the stone could be shaped almost like metal, resulting in a weapon with the balance, symmetry, and durability of steel, the cutting edge of obsidian, and the striking power of a stout club—not to mention a weapon that cannot be studied for long, since orck prismatic blades weaken and deteriorate when not in the presence of an orck. Orcks that stole human weapons were generally considered less dangerous than those with prismatic blades.

¹⁸
Orcks weren’t big on secondary sex characteristics, nor did they pay much attention to each other’s sex until it came time to make more orcks. The main noticeable difference was that the females were larger, stronger, and faster than the males, though the males made up for it with sheer throat-tightening aggression.

¹⁹
Uard was an elve. Like halvelin, elves were no different from regular humans, because they
were
regular humans. They weren’t wiser, didn’t live longer, and weren’t inherently more magickal, though that didn’t stop some from perpetuating those myths. They were just normal humans with more earring real estate.

²⁰
Orck exiles are members of the orck upper class who, having kept their intelligence into adulthood, decide to live among humanity rather than become warlords. Though mistrusted by most humans, they’re the source of much of humanity’s knowledge about orcks, including customs, culture, technology, and most importantly, troop dispositions.

²¹
Aegis has a twenty-six-hour day. Aegisians have two extra hours in the day, and it’s still not enough time. There’s a lesson in that.