Full, freestanding prologue is now available on:

• Right here

• Royal Road

• Scribblehub

• Tapas

serializing will be absolutely free — with the option to pick up a copy of the entire story early.

if you like your leading ladies to be able to throw a punch — and take one.

If you like a world that’s a little tilted from what most fantasy is putting out.

If you’re intrigued by the concept of a weapons-grade possum.

I hope you find something here you like <3

New drops Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday til complete — and I should have the full version compiled and ready for release this weekend (fingers crossed).

Everything is in front of the paywall, and I’m running off a tip jar and sub system with Patreon. Free to read, and if you don’t want to (or can’t afford to right now — i get it) flash me some cash: you can still help for free by sharing, commenting, and telling your enemies about the story.

and now I’ll shut up — and catapult you dramatically into the:

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PROLOGUE

DRAKKONYN SALT BARRENS: ONE WEEK AGO

THE WILDSTORMS BURNED THE SKY overhead, crackling in oil-slick smears in the air.

The deep magenta sky bruised a rainbow with them. Low clouds lit sickly azure, rotting orange, veined with fire opal lightning stitching cloud to salt and back again — with a taste of pennies on the tongue.

The Baron’s steel and brass leviathan ripped through the deadly haze. All chrome flanks, filigreed brass, ornate sigils stamped into boiler plates, it howled across the broken salt barrens.

Its wheels cut deep into ribbons of tracks glowing molten stained glass. Blistered green, bloody red, wailing violet and sparking veins of copper lightning.

The long, baroque, unmarked train backlit against a deep magenta sky and framed with salt mesas, playas, and buttes as the suns began languidly drifting toward the horizon. The sleek, chrome beast of an engine dragged six armored cars — and one problem.

A door in a rattling cargo car screeched open. A bald man in a pinstriped tailored longcoat stepped in. Pearl-handled runecaster resting easy in a leather holster on his hip, his hand perched on it. A big signet ring idly clicked against the handle.

Two big men in dust-stained shirts roughly held the woman’s arms. Nyxxa’s sun-bleached brown jacket missing a few more studs and sporting a rip on the arm, ringed in dried blood.

Her flowing pink, rune-marked sarong nearly unknotted at her waist, wrinkled as her pride. Her weapons were gone, Button was missing, she’d been unceremoniously dragged from sleep. She puffed a breath, pushing her purple hair out of her face.

“Small world, isn’t it, girl?” he said, in a drawling, cask-aged voice.

“Too small to keep meeting like this. What’ll people think?” she grinned.

The dagger they’d taken from her lay on a velvet tray across the car, next to a box hewn from green glass? No. More like bottle-glass fused into something that never cooled right. Warped — not catching the sun. Seeming like it was trying to avoid the light.

Her heart pounded. She counted beats, counted the whine of the couplers, counted the guards’ footsteps she could hear over the noise from beyond the door. Counting her scars and ghosts of bad decisions with the same ink as panic.

The Baron walked to the table holding the velvet tray, boots thudding on an ornate rug blanketing the floor of the car. Glyphs rippled on the spine when the train hit a seam of bad rail. It was the only delicate thing in a room full of steel. He picked up the dagger, tilting it in the light from a dust-filmed window.

“You stole from me, Nyxxa. This was under my protection.”

“It was just lying around,” she said, “How was I supposed to know you were protecting it?”

He glared at her with stormcloud eyes.

“It was in my safe. My safe that’s in my office, at my home.”

She smirked, “It didn’t seem all that safe to me.”

The big man with a red bandanna at her left — Marzen, she thought his name was — hid a laugh in a cough.

The baron shot his eyes toward Marzen, who promptly stopped coughing. He walked over to her, thudding boots punctuating the clacks and squeals from the train.

“You have a big mouth, girl.”

She sneered up at him, “Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

“No?” He asked.

She felt his fist crack hard across her face, his rings cutting into her cheek and lip. Nyxxa tasted the blood, slumping in the men’s arms, her boots skipping across the floor.

“Resilient though,” he said, “I’ll give you that much. We aren’t that different, Nyxxa. Not like you seem to think.”

She spat blood onto the floor.

“Now you’re just being rude.”

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Smack the button below for the rest, babe. We’re just getting started.