And now a look at the OTHER side, since any epic needs some bad guys....   ---   Chapter 8.        The room was large and open, of polished marble and obsidian worked with patterns of gold and sapphire and silver, but few decorations outside of these. A bed was set back against one wall, with a locked chest at its foot, a small dresser nearby, all looking rather small against the expanse of the room with its twenty-foot ceiling. A short distance away sat a table, draped in cloth so black that it seemed to drink in the [ Continue reading... ]

    Let's look in on our prince and what he's up to...       Chapter 7.        Tobimar squinted across the water. There was nothing to see, just more water, as the Lucramalalla continued through the five-foot seas. Of course, that was part of what bothered him; until now, the huge Sauran-built ship had sailed always just in sight of land, able to see ports and cities as they passed, ready in case they were hailed or if there was some need to stop. But sometime during the night, it seemed, they had swung far out [ Continue reading... ]

  And now, let's see how a little Toad deals with a big problem...   ---     Chapter 6.        Duckweed lowered himself slowly down the cord. Ritual's still going on… Maybe, just maybe…        It wasn't easy. Two bags were now tied onto him with some of the same string he'd gotten from the fourth alcove, bulky bags that were fairly light but almost as big as his own body. His sword was in a hastily-wrapped semi-scabbard on his back. Rigging everything in the alcoves had taken him ten minutes, but it had been [ Continue reading... ]

  Well, we'd left our little Toad hero in a tight spot...   ---   Chapter 5.        Once his heart slowed to normal, Duckweed looked up at the doors. Have to get through the one… or the other, maybe. Wonder what's through there? He'd seen that the door at the end of the corridor was, as he'd suspected, one of the two into the big cavern. He moved off his sword and hooked it in the little loop of leather tied around his body; if he was going to make a habit of this, he needed to figure out a better way of doing [ Continue reading... ]

  And now we meet our third protagonist...     ---   Chapter 4.        This was absolutely not in my plans today, he thought as he gazed down into the cavern, yellow-gray stone tinted orange and red by unnatural fire burning in the center of the cave. Figures moved around the fire in an orderly, menacing progression, muttering in a language he didn't understand.   But he didn't need to understand much; he'd only dabbled a little in magic so far, but what he saw now… a huge five-pointed star, carven into the [ Continue reading... ]

Young Tobimar had a journey ahead of him...   ----   Chapter 3.        Tobimar stood at the rail of the Lucramalalla and stared at Skysand, the great capital city sharing the name of the entirety of the gem-scattered mountains and golden sands of the country itself. The rising sun struck the seven Lesser Towers and made them seem forged of gold, while the central Great Tower, which was in fact gilded, blazed as though poured from a furnace of auric fire. Sparks of other color shimmered in that light, the light of his departure, [ Continue reading... ]