Death Of An Author: A Middang3ard Novella Read online

  Death Of An Author

  A Middang3ard™ Novella

  Ramy Vance

  Michael Anderle

  The Death Of An Author Team

  Thanks to the Beta Readers

  Larry Omans, Kelly O’Donnell

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Diane L. Smith

  Misty Roa

  Dave Hicks

  Deb Mader

  Micky Cocker

  Nicole Emens

  If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 by Ramy Vance & Michael Anderle

  Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design

  http://jcalebdesign.com / [email protected]

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US Edition, October 2019

  ISBN (ebook) 978-1-64202-516-3

  Contents

  Heros

  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

  Epilogue

  Author Notes Ramy Vance

  Author Notes Michael Anderle

  Want more Middang3ard?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Other books by Ramy Vance

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with The Authors

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the wee monster growing in my wife’s belly at the moment of this book’s publication. I can’t wait to meet you!

  —Ramy Vance

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael

  Heroes who have fallen and will be fondly remembered, to be sung of in hymns and ballads:

  Team UF:

  Martha Carr

  Orlando Sanchez

  A.L. Knorr

  Nazri Noor

  John P. Logsdon

  Derek Murphy

  Ramy Vance

  Bryan Cohen

  Team LitRPG

  Dakota Krout

  Tao Wong

  Dawn Chapman

  Matthew Sylvester

  Andries Louws

  Team SciFi

  Craig Martelle

  Chris Fox

  Mal Cooper

  Jonathan Brazee

  Craig Falconer

  Kevin McLaughlin

  Michael Anderle

  Gerald M. Kilby

  Epic Fantasy

  Lindsay Buroker

  Robyn Wideman

  Jonathan Yanez

  Horror:

  Dan Willcocks

  Chapter One

  “The fate of humanity is in our hands.”

  “But we’re indie authors.”

  Craig Martelle looked at Robyn Wideman, epic fantasy author, over the rim of his glasses. “It is up to us to tell the world about the threat of the Dark One. Prepare them for the coming war.”

  “Dark what?”

  “Dark One.” Martelle sighed. “Didn’t you read the Welcome emails?”

  “Yeah, but I just glossed over them,” Robyn admitted. “I mean, this is 20Books Olympus. It’s an indie writers’ conference. Isn’t it?” He looked around the conference room, which was a converted dining hall in a large cottage in the countryside of Washington.

  There was a collective groan from the rest of the indie authors in the room. “Nah, dude,” Dakota—a LitRPG writer extraordinaire—chimed in. “We’re being recruited to help save the world.”

  “Through fantasy books?”

  Ramy Vance stood up, slapping his forehead. “Through all of this! The Dark One is real. Middang3ard is real. Elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls… all of its real. And we’re under attack, and it’s time Earth joined the fight. Our stories will prepare humanity for all that. I know; I’ve been there and it su-uucks.” Ramy let the last word trail out a bit too long as he emphasized his point.

  Robyn shook his head, confused. “All this was in the conference literature.”

  Linsey Buroker and Dawn Chapman both nodded, blurting in unison. “Yes.”

  “Literature for 20Books Olympus conference? Odd name, given we’re in Washington and nowhere near Greece,” Robyn added, muttering under his breath.

  “Yes,” chorused several other authors in the room.

  Robyn ducked his head, embarrassed that he seemed to be the only one not prepared. He turned his attention back to Craig. “Now that we’re done with that little outburst, let me fill you in as best I can.”

  Craig removed a black leather book from the bookcase behind him and clicked open the tiny gold lock that held it shut. Then, placing the book on the coffee table beside his chair, he waved his hand over it.

  The book opened, its pages flipping of their own accord faster than anyone could have turned them, until it stopped dead in the center.

  The pages were empty.

  Then gold letters began to ink themselves across the pages. Apparently, that was how he accomplished his incredible word count.

  Ornate, illuminated text transcribed itself as flecks of gold floated off the pages, circling and twirling above the manuscript until a vortex began to take shape, leading into what could only have been called a window in space. The window grew and grew until it was nearly the size of the cottage’s wall.

  An old, gray-bearded man stood in the center of the window. He held a book and a long wooden staff. His eyes were nearly as gray as his beard, and he smiled sweetly as he walked away from the authors, who stared, absorbed by the image before them. Even if no one would have dared say it aloud, all of them were jealous of Craig’s skill with magic. Writing was the only magic most of the authors were capable of performing. Granted, that in and of itself was impressive, but watching Craig cast spells was always a joy.

  The bearded man, Myrddin, walked through a valley between hills and mountains. As he walked, the mountains took different shapes, some of them melting away entirely, others contorting and shifting into faces any of the writers would have recognized even if they were black-out drunk.

  The great ones.

  Authors who had inspired this group of writers since childhood, Tolkien, Milton, Spencer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert…all weaving tales of intrigue and magic, stories of aliens and technology that surpassed the greatest imagination, of horrors that could not be surmised within the confines of the human mind.

  Myrddin took a seat on an ivory throne. As he sat down, his image ex
tended thousands of times into the future and the past.

  Each image took on the face of another writer.

  Farthest back, you could see Homer and nameless Vikings hunched over flames, sharing stories of the Allfather. Toward the future were some of the faces of the writers in the room, and past them, faces that none of them would ever see or know. As the various incarnations of storytellers stretched on, the sky above grew dark.

  Myrddin waved his hand as Nine Realms appeared. The dwarven, gnomish and elven homes, that of the orcs, trolls and goblins. The giants and dragons’ homes…and finally Earth. In the center of these nine worlds was Middang3ard, the realm shared by all other realms.

  The vision focused on Middang3ard before zooming in to where vast armies of the Dark One’s forces stood, advancing slowly across the land like a plague of locusts threatening to consume all in their path.

  Then the book shut itself and the vision disappeared.

  Craig picked up the book and put it in his briefcase. “In the last thirty years, the Dark One’s forces have grown. And in the last two years, he has conquered both the dwarven and gnomish lands. It’s time for humanity to join the war, but I’m afraid most people aren’t ready to accept that all this is real. We need to ease them into it. We need to tell them stories to prepare them. That was why I gathered you all here today.”

  One of the authors in the room, Tao Wong, crossed and uncrossed his arms uncomfortably. “Well, I guess you might as well just jump to the point and get all doom and gloom on us,” he muttered. “Does anyone have a pencil I can borrow? I’m assuming I’m gonna need to take more notes than I did at the last writers’ conference I went to.”

  There was a general chuckle around the room.

  Gerald M. Kilby raised his hand as if he were a college professor about to make a point. When the conversation quieted so that he could speak, he said, “It doesn’t sound like we’re giving the readers enough credit. I mean, thank God for video games, but most of these kids are putting in the work. At least, they’re likely to believe magic is possible if they come across it. Believing in a techno-organic alien invading our reality in an attempt to bring the nine realms to a perverse idea of orderly is a little bit much to swallow.”

  Tao laughed as he pulled out a pencil sharpener and got to work on the number two in his hand. “That’s a whole lot of suspension of disbelief—”

  Craig raised his hand to cut Tao off. “Trust me, we don’t have to worry about the suspension of disbelief,” Craig lectured. “We have been at this for thousands of years. That being said, our iteration of the work has been better received than any before. Thank God for video games, indeed. World of Warcraft was one of the best bits of writing we ever created, and now, all of our jobs are a thousand times easier. So, that being said, we need to look at how we can further extend our knowledge. The more we are able to convey to—"

  An explosion cut Craig off. It was not quite an explosion, though, nor was it an implosion. That would imply that there was either an external or internal force. Instead, the very air was sucked out of existence, as if a vacuum had just opened up in the room. And it was in fact exactly that. A few feet behind Tao, the air had grown thick and then suddenly thin, hot and then eerily cold.

  A pulse of energy shot through the room, knocking nearly everyone out of their seats. Only Craig remained on his feet, the force spewing from the distorted area behind the authors blowing his hair around and giving him the look of one driven mad with knowledge. And perhaps he was, for he understood what it was that was beginning to transpire within his quaint cottage.

  The air behind the authors shifted. That was the only way to explain what had happened. It was as if someone had stuck a butter knife into the air and quickly cut it down the middle. The tear was jagged and uncertain, as if it would seal itself in a matter of minutes. A foul odor came from what could only be called a portal as several opened up beside it.

  From out of the portal stepped a crude construction of a creature.

  It was squat and muscular and the size of a full-grown man, but it had a gut that protruded from its leather-clad waist. Leather wings nearly the size of its body stretched out from its shoulders, and it held a whip in its hand. One eye adorned in its swollen, piggish head. The eye was half-open and half-closed, as if it could not be troubled to look at its surroundings, or was perhaps freshly waking from a nap. The balor stumbled as it walked forward, burping loudly as it cracked its whip.

  The area around the balor’s eye pulsed with energy. Even though the eye was half closed, if one were to look closely, they could see that the skin around the eye was decaying in some fashion. It looked as if the skin were rotting, but instead of growing necrotic, it had begun to deteriorate into some sort of technological cousin to decay. When the balor cracked its eye open ever so slightly, its red iris sent a beam of energy shooting forth that burned a small hole in the floor beside Craig’s feet.

  “Are you the fucking writers?” the balor shouted, slurring its words.

  Craig looked from one author to the next. “Er…no, we aren’t,” Craig offered, trying to seal the deal with his most benevolent smile. “I think you might have gotten the wrong place, mate?”

  The balor cracked his whip, sending sparks of energy off of its tip as it snapped. “That sounds like just the kind of lie a writer would spout,” it shouted. “That’s all you fuckers are, ain’t it? Liars? And here you are in a room, just sitting round getting ready to spread your lies and whatnot!”

  Michael Anderle snickered, covering his mouth so no one would hear him. He leaned over to Tao and whispered in his ear, “Sounds like someone’s been reading Plato’s Republic a little too much.”

  The balor roared and pulled back his arm. His whip flew through the air and wrapped around Michael’s neck. The writer fell to his knees, struggling to pull the whip from around his neck as he choked, his eyes bulging out of his skull like some pathetic caricature of an insect. “These be the writers, boys,” the balor shouted. “Bring me their guts!” Then the balor pulled his whip toward him.

  Michael’s head went flying through the air, his eyes and mouth frozen in a state of shock as his body fell forward and landed on the ground with a heavy thud. “Fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck,” were the last words Michael’s rolling head managed to squeeze out before falling still.

  Blood shot from neck, splattering the writers closest to him. His head rolled under the dining room table.

  “Fitting last words, my man. Fucking fitting last words,” Jonathan Brazee uttered in a low growl. He had stepped back as blood splashed across his chest and looked down at the dark red splatter on his sternum, then steadied his hands.

  The portals behind the balor opened wider, and creatures of unimaginable grotesqueness poured forth. The writers screeched and screamed in fear. They all had active imaginations, and had pulled the worst images from their mind over the course of their careers, yet nothing prepared them for this moment.

  This was beyond their comprehension, these horrors that spewed forth from the reality-bending portals.

  A creature was vomited out of one of the portals and slid across the floor. It did not have a body as you would speak of such. Instead, all its organs were on the outside. It did not have appendages either, but rather, it had seventeen tentacles covered in suction cups, brine, and viscera. Those tentacles flew forward as the creature moaned in pain from the odd beak in the center of the mass of bodily parts, flapping as the rest of its tentacles shuddered. Its tentacles wrapped around Ramy Vance.

  Ramy threw up his arms and screamed as he was dragged to the ground. “Are you fucking serious!” he shouted. “Tentacles? That’s all you fucking got?”

  The inside-out creature rolled over Ramy’s body, its tentacles wrapping around Ramy’s throat and limbs and squeezing hard enough to cut off the circulation. Ramy’s eyes widened, as if he were surprised. “Fuck you and your bullshit Lovecraft aesthetics!” Ramy shouted as the blood vessels in his eyes swelled.r />
  Craig Falconer picked up a book from the shattered bookcase and tossed it at the horrible mess of tendrils and the snapping beak. “We’re trying to have a conference,” Falconer screamed. “Do you know how hard these are to organize?”

  A spear came flying from out of the portal and went straight through Falconer’s chest, pinning him into a wall. He looked down at the spear and wrung his hands, screaming, “Oh, shit! Did I really get red-shirted?”

  Ramy was still struggling with the tentacled abomination. The disgusting thing flexed its body, and Ramy’s eyes popped out of their sockets. His body slumped to the floor, blood trickling from his mouth.

  The portals around the balor continued to stretch themselves and grow. The abominations weren’t all that crawled through the portals. Creatures the writers were more familiar with snaked through the open chasms in their dimension. Orcs, nearly-human creatures with black and gray skin, their arms long and muscular, plodded out as well. Their bodies were marked with warpaint, many of the faces completely obscured by the pigment. They wore visors over their eyes, technological anachronist pieces that looked as if they had been pulled from a science fiction novel.