Beastborne- Mark of the Founder Read online

  Beastborne: Mark of the Founder

  Beastborne Chronicles, Book 1

  James T. Callum

  Copyright © 2020 by James T. Callum

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Newsletter

  Hal’s Final Stats

  Dramatis Personae

  Bestiary

  Skill List

  Spells & Abilities

  Dedication

  For my wife, who has never wavered, never doubted, never given up on me, even when I have. You are the shining star in the dark of night that I set my course by.

  Next, to my awesome patrons who have been with me from the beginning. Your support has quite literally changed my life. Thank you! And, of course, to you the reader. This story is for you. I hope you enjoy it.

  Foreword

  Beastborne was originally written as a web serial. For those uninitiated into the wonderful world of web serials, they are often written long-form but with numerous chapters. It is not uncommon to see many serials reach hundreds of chapters per volume.

  As a result, you may find some of the chapters are a bit different from what you might be used to.

  Additionally, if you find any typos or errors feel free to drop me an email citing what chapter they’re in at: [email protected]. I update the manuscript whenever an error is found, so make sure you allow your reading device to update your ebooks! That way you will always have the best version.

  Prologue

  Midarian stepped through the door and kicked it shut behind him.

  He was prepared for the shift before it happened. Aldim had stats. Actually, every Worldshard had stats but most of them were hidden and far from the consciousness of the denizens.

  Aldim and its ilk were different. Though his home had been Earth, the nature of places like Aldim and Telsara were not unknown to Midarian.

  A series of mental commands brushed away the distracting prompts and windows. He knew what he was about and needed no list of his spells.

  His time on Aldim would be short and any stat-geeking he indulged in would be wasteful. Besides, he already knew he was more than a match for the useless god.

  Erastus stood with his back to Midarian atop a wide argent dais, the telltale signs of a portal spell taking shape in the air in front of him. He was pulling some poor soul from the world between sleep and waking.

  What a lot of people didn’t realize was that those myoclonic jerks that feel like you’re falling right when you’re about to fall asleep are usually attempts at planar travel.

  They’re mostly misfires. Latent magic.

  But in the right circumstances and with enough juice, you could effectively shunt a person subconsciously attempting to Dive through a portal and to the destination of your choosing.

  Of course, that’s a pretty shirty thing to do. Huh, language filter on the Worldshard too? I definitely did not mean shirty.

  Most people only subconsciously did that when they were trying to run away from a situation so bad they would rather be anywhere else. Abuse victims, runaways, the most vulnerable people in other words.

  It didn’t surprise Midarian that Erastus would prey on that sort. The poor guy the god had homed in on would go to sleep in his bed and wake up somewhere else entirely.

  Not that he needed it but Midarian welcomed another reason to murder the god.

  Killing a god had been on his bucket list for a long time. God-killer just had such a nice ring to it. So many of the worlds Midarian visited had silent gods or gods that had gone to the corner store for a pack of smokes and never came back.

  The realms that did have active gods were mostly ashholes. Which meant that they were heavily guarded. There was a level of self-awareness among gods. Not enough to change their ways – who would stop them anyway? – but enough to guard themselves against the likes of Midarian.

  So when he finally, finally, managed to get through Erastus’s layered web of protections, he was ecstatic.

  Midarian arrived several seconds before the god had made his fatal mistake. A simple enough trick to perform from the Margins and it satisfied his most important tenet that had kept the rogue Magi alive all these long years: never arrive when and where you are expected.

  Seeing the spell taking shape, Midarian understood the so
urce of the flaw.

  Portals were leaky, messy things. They always made cracks and fissures in reality. It was in their nature.

  Any good spellweaver would be able to cover the flaw immediately. And indeed the foolish god had done just that. Too little, too late. Unlike a mortal spellweaver, a god had more juice to swing. He had pulled back the veil of time over the flaw in a bid to entrap Midarian as soon as he exploited the flaw.

  Unfortunately for Erastus, Midarian had moved the moment of the flaw precious seconds prior to its appearance. And he was there in the god’s chamber before he was ready for Midarian.

  The poor soul Erastus had targeted appeared in the black abyss of the portal and fell with a meaty thump onto the marble flooring. Dazed but surprisingly quick to recover, the man pushed to his feet. His brown eyes were wide with confusion.

  Erastus spread his arms out like some tent revivalist preacher. His long billowing sleeves swung down and kissed the floor. Midarian imagined the god thought he looked impressive. But he just looked like a silk-winged bat.

  Midarian drew two daggers and approached his quarry. Daydream in his left hand, gold as the first sunset of summer, and Nightmare in his right, black as the deepest moonless night in the dead of winter.

  The time of the god’s trap drew near.

  Any second now Erastus would be expecting Midarian to come through the Margins and walk straight into his waiting trap. Midarian didn’t need to see his face to know the savage grin that would mar the deity’s eternally youthful boyish features.

  Midarian stayed his hand long enough to time his strike at the exact moment the god’s trap would have caught him, had he not arrived seconds earlier. At the moment of the god’s appointed victory, Midarian drove Daydream into his spine.

  Before Erastus knew he had erred deeper than he could ever fear, Nightmare dove down like the beak of a hungry raven into the vulnerable space between neck and shoulder.

  A gout of golden ichor sprayed from the wounds.

  Midarian sawed Daydream through the spine and ripped Nightmare down. Either wound would have proven fatal on their own. But Midarian had a score to settle and the wily old cretin had slipped past his fingers far too many times for him to do anything halfway.

  Flickers of cannon fire erupted from the wounds as Midarian pulled his daggers out, the last of the god’s defenses faded in those bursts of light and thick gold blood.

  Midarian planted a boot into his white-robed back and pushed the god forward. He didn’t want to see his disturbingly innocent face.

  The golden ichor that flowed from the wounds slowed, puddling about the god. It didn’t stain his robes, merely flowed over them like mercury leaving no trace on the fabric.

  As the last dregs of stubborn life fled the god, the ichor began to change.

  Midarian, ever the opportunist, scooped up some of it into a vial while it was still gold. He slipped the daggers back into their sheaths that had appeared at the small of his back and pulled his red stardusted hood over his head.

  Eventually, the gold gave way to mythril-green, then shimmering silver before it hardened and began to solidify into a dark iron in both form and color. As magic fled the ichor, the hardened blood rippled from iron to burnished copper, completing its transmutation.

  Midarian was halfway through the incantation for another door, ready to Dive back into the Margins, when he realized the young man was staring open-mouthed at him. He had just witnessed Midarian kill a god, though he doubted the man understood the significance.

  More importantly, Erastus’s portal was still open.

  He turned, studying the magic – not terribly complex by his standards, but then Erastus earned his station like all the elite and influential did; by the circumstance of his birth – and decided that he would not consign the young man to whatever plans Erastus had for him.

  Erastus had already pulled him from his particular brand of Earth. Midarian couldn’t send him back, and quite honestly wouldn’t have wanted to. Aldim offered adventure and true growth that anybody would kill for.

  Many had.

  Midarian stepped to the side of Erastus’s dais, not willing to share the same platform as the dead creature. He summoned a gilded throne, appropriately gaudy and bedazzled not with precious gems uncountable but with cheap plastic costume jewelry.

  Much better.

  He took a seat, acclimatizing himself to the ebb and flow of the weave upon Aldim. Once attuned, he shifted the portal to another location. Wherever Erastus had meant to send the boy looked positively villainous.

  Midarian didn’t know the world of Aldim well but he figured depositing the guy in a stretch of woods at the foot of the mountains was a better destination than a barracks full of soldiers wielding cruel-looking black blades.

  Crossing one leg over the other, Midarian watched the man with a curious twinkle to his glowing eyes.

  The man didn’t scream or run. That was a good sign. But he also wasn’t being sucked up into the portal as Midarian had expected.

  Something was missing.

  His attention span waning, Midarian looked back over the weave of the magic Erastus had set into motion.

  Aha, you gods and your marks.

  He snorted and rose from his throne. “C’mere,” he called to the young man.

  * * *

  The last thing Hal recalled was passing out at 3 AM on his couch. He had just spent the last several hours catching late-night surge fares and then cleaning all the vomit from the back of his car.

  He had expected to wake up a few hours later, stumble blindly to the bathroom, then do the adult thing and go sleep on his bed full of unfolded clothes he had been putting off for the last three days.

  Instead, he jerked awake in the middle of the night and fell into darkness. The terrible nightmare hadn’t ended there, falling dreams weren’t that uncommon considering his near-phobia of heights.

  Hal pushed himself up from the hard, cold floor and lifted his gaze to the strange cherubic, blonde-haired boy’s face that sat so strangely on the robed body of a man.

  The robed man had his arms spread wide with a disturbingly rapturous expression. His long sleeves dragged across the marble floor, partially obscuring another figure behind the man from Hal’s point of view.

  Somebody was sneaking up behind him, though sneak wasn’t quite the right word. The jean-jacketed man sauntered toward the baby-faced man’s back, two daggers of opposing qualities pulled free and held out to the side in mockery of the robed man.

  His intent was crystal clear.

  Maybe Hal should have called out a warning but something kept his mouth shut. This was something bigger than himself at play here. So he stood witness as a casual bystander and tried to wake himself up from this hellish dream.

  The Assassin struck and took down Babyface with casual grace. Streams of golden fluid erupted from the wounds and flashes of light chased the blood as it splattered across the room. Miraculously, it soiled neither the Assassin’s clothes nor Babyface's.

  Hal watched the blood change color and harden into something that resembled cooled lava. It was then that he realized without a doubt that he was not dreaming.

  He would have suspected a bad acid trip if he had ever tried the stuff.

  Hal’s brown eyes locked with the strange glowing orbs from deep within the dark confines of the Assassin’s red hood.

  He looked like no assassin Hal had ever seen or dreamed up in all his life. No black leather with dozens of hidden pockets. He wore a garish red hoodie beneath a jean jacket.

  Who still wore jean jackets? The Assassin looked like he wanted to be an extra on Stranger Things.

  The Assassin casually rolled a free hand and summoned a golden throne out of the air. He looked at the body, then something in the air to Hal’s left. Hal followed his gaze but saw nothing except empty space.

  The chamber was a dimly lit cavernous expanse, candelabras placed every ten or twenty feet cast flickering reflections on the gaudy m
arble flooring. The roof was held up by a series of fluted columns that vanished into the gloom overhead.

  It was like somebody heard a story about the Greek gods of antiquity and attempted to model this place after them. Except the creator lacked even the most basic comprehension of ancient Greek architecture or aesthetics.

  The whole thing was a caricature of ancient Greek style.

  “C’mere,” called the Assassin as he rose and wandered over to the body.