Victor Deus (Heritage of the Blood Book 1) (47 page)

“I am sure that whoever has him, will not harm him… much.” Nim's glance told him that he wasn't going to lie, and sugar coating things was nonsense. “The truth is, I think the Siniquitans have him, which means the Blood Mages, or the Dracair. I am not sure what they will do to him, but we must stand strong. We will get him back, but not I'm afraid, until whatever needs to happen their happens.” Nim tossed a small stone into the shallow brook, and the plunk it made as it hit the water was the only sound heard. Shawnrik was getting ready to turn back to the camp, but Nim spoke a moment before he turned. “You know, it was only a few weeks ago that I sat next to a stream talking to Victor like this.”

“Really?” Shawnrik wanted to know what Nim and Victor had done during their time apart.

“Yeah, it was only a few hours after he rather precisely removed the head of a Magnus Dracani.” Nim said with a laugh.

“A dreadnaught! What in the light was he doing that for?”

As the fire crackled to a low burn, those around it could hear Nim talking about something excitedly, and then the sound of laughter. Each of them eyed the other, and nodded. Everything would be alright, they would survive, and life would go on. They always had, and it always would. Each of them took to their bed rolls as Nim and Shawnrik talked on into the night. 

Epilogue

So it was, that while others all around the world of Terrazil celebrated the Festival of the sun, twenty men road horseback with all the speed their mounts could give them, headed towards the city of Stalwart.  In time they would turn off of the road, and head back into the hills, but for now they made sure their was nothing on the roads for the wagons that had fallen farther and farther behind every hour.  Their horses gave them all that they could, and in a week they covered a distance that should have been covered in three.

As the party neared the foothills where the Order of the Griffon maintained it's base of operation, and winter home, they were met by a large party.  There were not many of them, but the giants made up for numbers in size.  They were often called cloud, and storm giants, because of the powers they harnessed, and the moods, which could go from a soft bank of clouds to a roaring torrential storm in moments.  Nim Mithriannil met with the leader of the giant party, and the stares that all of the giants were giving towards one of the members of his party was information enough.

The argument lasted all of two sentences, and was cut short when Nim yelled a name which had no significance to the Giants, so they ignored it.  With his shoulders sagging, Shawnrik Larston went into the hills with the ancient blood which ran through his veins.  In moments, the party led by Nim was speeding across the hills.

When Nim came out of the compound of the Order of the Griffon, he did not look happy.  It took them another two days to reach the Fortress of the Wardens, also known as Steadfast.  There, his reception was much warmer.  He found that the battle was on in full from the messengers that had arrived only hours before himself.  The leader of the Wardens, a gruff dwarf who was known to his soldiers as Cyclops, when he wasn't in hearing, and Field Marshall Bannis when he was.  The old dwarf was already issuing the orders for troop mobilization, when Nim met with him.  He told them of a circle of transport which connected the fortress to Asylum which was only used in emergencies, after Nim told him he thought something bad was going to happen.

None of them were prepared for what they would find in Asylum however, and soon a messenger was sent speeding from the wardens base to the compound of the Order of the Griffon.  

(Personal Log: Captain Syrallak: Entry #8)

We have found it! The system was right where the Empress's charts predicted it would be. The rogue system Zeta Iota One. Currently on a heading to Orbit the outer moon of the second planet in the system. Initial scans show it has a bustling variety of life. It appears that the inhabitants have exiled the most dangerous sections of their societies onto one of the continents as a type of super prison. More analysis is needed, but I believe that this may indeed be the perfect planet with which to carry out the Empress's commands.

About the Author

Brent Lee Markee was born in Washington in 1983, and has been moving around the Northwestern part of the United States for most of his life. He has moved over thirty times in his life, but has come to rest(for now) in Anaconda, MT where he spent several of his younger years.

As a kid he was very interested in Dinosaurs and Mythology, which probably had a hand in his later developed love of Fantasy and character driven Science Fiction. After High School he joined Job Corps and learned how to be a chef. It didn't take long for him to realize that he was not inclined towards the profession(physically, mentally, or emotionally). It was not all a loss however, as he picked up very valuable cooking skills, and also developed a greater love of fantasy during this time. Shortly after finishing his training he decided to try his hand at college, but due to circumstances beyond his control he lost his funding and had to go out into the world.

Right around his twenty first birthday he found out that the Depression he had been dealing with for the majority of his life was not what everyone else had to deal with. After a lot of internal fighting, trying several different medications, and figuring out that laughter was indeed the best medicine he has come to a truce with his brain.

He started writing during his first term in college; finally got around to finishing his first book in 2008 shortly before his father developed lung cancer and passed away. Several years were spent after that trying to figure out what he was going to be when he grew up, before finally deciding that he was happiest when reading and writing. In late 2013 he pulled up his files for the book he had written and began the laborious process of editing his younger selves work. Now he spends his time trying to figure out how to write his Author Bio in the third person. As to what the future holds, we'll see!

More about the Author

(contact info after this section)

  My love for fantasy started around the time I went into middle school. I would devour book after book about Mythology, something about these larger than life characters tugged something within me. Around the time I started High School I only read occasionally, however I still picked up the occasional novel here and there. During this time I read books like Dune, and Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I also played a lot of RPG's(Role Playing Games) on the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and PlayStation.

  Anyone that has played such games might be able to point out the correlation, but for those of you who haven't, here's some info. Most RPG's, especially the ones I seem to enjoy the most, start out with you assuming the role of a would be hero, you start from a low level character trying to figure out what's going on in the world and why you are being dragged into it. You fight through challenge after challenge, through dozens of hours of game in order to defeat the bad guy, or just make sense of it all. In many ways these games were feeding my fantasy addiction, even if I didn't know it myself at the time. They had taken the place of my mythological stories and involved me in the process of discovery more than anything before had.

  It wasn't until several months after High School that I discovered a little game called Dungeons and Dragons. My first day of Job Corps the Dorm Leader asked me if I played D&D, and I told him that I'd heard about it and would be interested in learning. At that time it was against the rules to play on campus(because some Live action Role Players in Texas had ruined it for every Job Corps), so we had to keep our games a secret.

  Eventually there were about fifteen of us playing on campus, so it didn't stay a secret from the higher ups for very long. Some of them were against us playing, but those were the people that had no idea what D&D really was, and had only heard bad things. Luckily for us the person running the campus was ok with it as long as we did everything we could to do it away from public view. We played in our dorm rooms, and in whatever room on the facility that we could get access to. It was during this time that my relationship with fantasy turned into a full fledged love affair.

  I began to get book recommendations from my fellow players, and having enjoyed a book or two here and there in my life I thought what could go wrong? What went wrong was that my imagination was opened to all these new possibilities. After a crappy day I could go into another world and slay dragons, or save the fair maiden(or be saved by said maiden). I began to dig into world upon world of interesting characters from greats like Eddings, Jordan, and Salvatore just to name a few.

  As things got progressively more difficult in my life I began to rely more and more on fantasy to dig me out of my rut(s). Soon however, the escapes weren't coming fast enough to keep me above water, and I succumbed to the darkest depression that I had faced to that point in my life. I ended up leaving Portland, Or and going to Montana where my family had relocated to in the time between High School and me going to Job Corps. My family told me that I needed to go see someone, because I was not OK, and I agreed.

  Shortly after my twenty first birthday I found out that the feelings I had been fighting and suppressing ever since I was a little kid were not things that other people had to deal with on a daily basis. I remember being in Elementary School and thinking "OK, it's time to put on the mask, and try to get through today without any issues." I thought that everyone had to do that, and didn't even think to ask if that was abnormal. All those years later looking back on it, it seemed so obvious, but how is someone supposed to know unless they are told.

  What followed was a long period of homelessness, counseling(sometimes with people that were helpful, sometimes not), and medication. After trying several different medications that helped me escape from a depression that I wasn't sure that I was going to make it out of, I discovered several things that helped me.

  The first of which, is probably the least healthy, and I do not recommend it to anyone, and that is World of Warcraft. I devoted way too many hours to this game in order to be someone else and do something else other than brood. It was a valuable tool when I needed it, but escaping its clutches was almost as hard as fighting back the depression.

  Second, I learned how to laugh at everything. I think you more than likely have to develop a cynical view of the world to be able to pull this one off as well as I have, but I can find humor in all but the darkest of situations. It has been this ability that has, more than anything else, allowed me to make it this far.

  Third, I learned how to recognize when my mind wanted me to start falling into the depressions(which is a lot). The medications did one great thing for me personally, and that is the ability to notice the shift in my brains chemistry, and work towards counteracting it. The best way that I can do this is to divert my attention elsewhere when I get that feeling. The first diversion, I have already explained was World of Warcraft, but I began to delve further and further into fantasy books.

  Now, before I get back into my fantasy addiction I want to clarify something here, reading books, and playing games is only the more apparent way in which I was able to divert my mind from the mix of chemicals that were trying to send me into a depression. The most used method is to simply notice when I start to think about things that will send me into a depression, and change my train of thought to something more positive. Stopping the mind from dwelling on things was one of the hardest things I've ever learned to do, but most days I am able to cast aside these debilitating thoughts before they are allowed to take root. OK, now, back to talking about my Fantasy bug.

  I began to buy books with whatever money I could scrounge up, I would find cheap ones for $.25 from yard sales. I began to amass a collection of hundreds of books, almost all Fantasy. Every once in awhile I would try a science fiction book, and I read a few good ones during this time, but I found that a lot of these books seemed to rely more on the setting for the story than the characters. One great thing about fantasy is a large portion of it is very character driven. Sure there is usually some great evil or another to thwart, but it is the characters that give the books their heart and soul. Nothing drives me more crazy than a character doing something that everything up to that point says that they wouldn't just so an event can happen for the book to go a certain direction.

  The closest I hope I ever come to such a thing is the end of this book, where Victor chooses to go instead of seeing his friends attacked by a horde of Dracair. I think had he more time he would have figured out a way to get out of it, but it was simply the only thing he could do at the time(and he knew that they would not stop trying to get him anyway). Every time I make a decision like that I want you to know that I do think about who the character is, and what they would do in such a situation. There will be times where there are very few options out of a problem, but there will also be times where if I want something to happen and the character strongly disagrees, from there I'd say it's about a 99.9% chance that the character will win the discussion(not an actual discussion, just a logical, and emotional look at the situation from the characters perspective, I'm not that crazy yet).

  So here I am, several hundred fantasy books later, many video games, and not enough movies later. The idea for this book has been brewing in my head through all of it. I started writing the first chapter of this book when I was nineteen. I punched out little pieces here and there over the years and finally finished my first draft of the book shortly before my father developed lung cancer. The book sat on a disk, for several years while I devoured more fantasy and figured out who I was going to be from now on.

  I decided that I was done letting life tell me how things were going to go, and that I was going to have a say in things from now on. I figured out how to access the file(because it was written in works, and nothing reads that anymore), and began editing. Now, I will say this, for someone who is easily distracted, and enjoys video games, this is perhaps the worst form of torture imaginable. It is a very dull and laborious process, and you have to stop yourself from second and third guessing your choices. I hope that I have managed to take my earlier selves writings, and make them enjoyable. I hope that you can see the development of me as a writer come through as the book progresses, and I promise that in the future I will do everything in my power to make these books as enjoyable as possible.