Showing results by narrator "J Arquin" in All Categories

High up on the windswept cliffs of Pale Peak, Faye and Felix celebrate their new engagement. But soon, a chorus of ghastly noises erupts from the nearby woods: the screams of animals, the cries of children, and the mad babble of a hundred mournful voices. A dark figure looms near the windows in the dead of night, whispering to Faye. As the weather turns deadly, Felix discovers that his terrified fiancée isn't just mumbling in her sleep—she's whispering back. 

Matt plans to delve the rifts responsible for the monsters that destroyed his city and murdered his parents. But his dreams are crushed when his Tier 1 Talent is rated as detrimental and no guild or group will take him. Working at a nearby inn, he meets a mysterious and powerful couple. They give him a chance to join the Path of Ascension, an empire-wide race to ascend the Tiers and become living legends. With their recommendation and a stolen Skill, Matt begins his journey to the peak of power. Maybe then, he can get vengeance he seeks.

When Valora Keri was six years old, she was tired of being bullied. So she did what any kid in her shoes would do: She freed a cat-demon in exchange for the power to fight back. She might have accidentally killed her mother in the process. Since then, she’s tried to balance the scales by living a good life in post-collapse San Francisco, tending bar in a seedy club and acting as protector for the girls who work there.

After a player-led event turns his once peaceful town into a band of ravenous monsters, Hirrus obtains a sentience usually unobtainable by non-player characters. It might be a gift of the gods, or a mistake, but Hirrus doesn’t care. It means he can track down and find the players responsible and stop them from doing it again.

Madison only joined the Koyesta Online's early access because her brother begged her. Of course, the fact that they're awarding brand-new cryptocurrency to the early players for in-game actions might have something to do with it too. Thrust inside the world's most immersive fantasy VRMMORPG, Madison, her brother, and two cousins find themselves in some backwater little town. Determined to make the most of it, they set out on a series of adventures and stumble upon hidden ruins and a secret quest capable of reshaping the face of the game before it's even been officially released.

Gage Cross was a retired assassin from another world. A world he only vaguely remembered as Earth. Since being dropped onto this new world as a boy, he’d become one of the best assassins on this planet. He’d left the life of an assassin behind—given all of it up for a woman named Alani and his daughter, Shaunna. He was supposed to live a simple, peaceful life. Then his old life caught up with him. Assassins came. They burned down his house. They killed his wife and child. Now, Gage will find the person responsible and make them pay—and no one will stop him.

Madison isn't a hardcore gamer, but along with her brother and two cousins, she's become embroiled in a mythic quest spanning the entire world of Koyesta Online. The ramifications of this quest may just change the entire game before it’s even out of early access.

Hirrus Callabryn has gotten his revenge against the players who unleashed the Merciless Plague and killed his wife. He's happy to wait for the weekly reset to rejoin his wife in their quiet small-town life. But he isn't the only freed NPC. Far to the west, an unscrupulous evil builds an army of disillusioned NPCs, and Hirrus is tasked to stop it...or else face deletion. Aided by the boisterous adventurer, Alric, Hirrus must find and stop the manipulator before it's too late. 

For centuries, the wizards of the north have pretended to be gods. They call themselves Odin, Thor, and more but Gage knows they are only men—men with magic who oppress those without it. But that time is coming to an end.

Valora Keri’s problems are multiplying like moles. Every time she whacks one, three more pop up. First, a good friend turns up dead under mysterious circumstances. While Val is busy trying to figure out why, witch hunters show up at her door, demanding she stand trial for crimes committed years ago. She needs time to sort it out, but instead she’s coerced into a new job she doesn’t want, forcing her to rub shoulders with powerful people. Add in a dash of necromancer and a pinch of pissed off vampire queen, and Val is in a stew bubbling with all the ingredients for disaster.

Helping a holy order find a missing sister should be a simple enough job—and Ruby owes the Aymaya Apostles everything after they took her and her brother in as children. Simple enough, until the missing holy sister's trail takes an unexpected turn, landing Ruby and the rest of the crew in the middle of a high-society soirée—and into the crosshairs of Ruby's ex, Kitty. Something sinister is lurking beneath the surface of whatever Kitty and the holy sister are caught up in, and the skills of the entire crew are put to the test when they go head-to-head with the ultimate con artist.

When a ghost from Lasadi’s past hires the crew of the Nanshe to find a crashed plane with mysterious origins, they take the job despite the troubling client. The good news? The cover story is Lasadi's childhood dream: flying in the Liluri Star Run, a wildly popular off-the-grid race through the Liluri Mountains. Soaring through emerald jungle canyons in search of their prize—and the fabled Blood River—this job has the potential to do more than net these five misfits a payday. It could turn them into a real crew.

One minute Ethan Gower was an average computer technician, playing online games with his friends. Now he’s been abducted and dropped into a strange world with others who have been taken from their homes. And magic and monsters are real. Now Ethan is a wizard and must convince his new companions to band together in order to survive in this strange new world as they level up, gain abilities, and try to unravel the mystery of why they were abducted and how to find a way home. But things are never easy.

Lasadi doesn't like strangers on her ship, but she'll need a bigger crew if she's going to steal a mysterious artifact from a dead pirate's long-lost space station. She takes a chance on a charming grifter named Raj, along with a skilled hacker and her genius little brother. And it's...nice? If Lasadi isn't careful, she's going to start enjoying having a crew aboard. Raj's last bit of luck capsized right before he ran into Lasadi, and this job could finally get his life back on track—as long as Lasadi never learns the truth about his past.

Sex. Horror. Discomfort. In five stories and one poem, you'll find questions and answers, and you might learn something about yourself along the way. Something uncomfortable. Something dark. Come on in and join us. Lean back, open up, and let us take a look at that tickle. We're sure it's nothing serious. Just...something in your mouth. 

Merlin is alive! Ethan, Guinevere, and his friends must rescue the legendary wizard. But first, they have to find him. With only vague clues to give them direction, Ethan must pool all of his resources and knowledge before it is too late. At the same time, there's a magic-using Ogre who wants him dead, a corrupted city trying to summon an evil goddess, and the strange insect queen who wants to eat his brain. Ethan will need to use all of his cunning and unravel the mystery of the strange dragon glyph before his world collapses around him. 

Charlie Johns has been snatched from his home on Earth and delivered to the strange future world of Ledom. Technology has triumphed over hunger, overpopulation, pollution, and even time and space. But there is a change Charlie finds even more shocking: Gender is a thing of the past. Gone are the tensions between male and female. Gone is the human preoccupation with sex.

Floating in a sentient space balloon with his pants around his ankles, Geddy watched a competing salvage trawler swallow his one-of-a-kind ship. Could it get any worse? Most definitely. The For Sale Make Offer's fateful trip to Kigantu ended with a daring escape, but Geddy's checkered past as a partly reformed henchman came back to haunt him. Now, the Penetrator is gone, and he doesn't know where. The newly expanded crew of the Fizmo welcomes him as their new captain, but it'll take more than a can-do attitude and witty repartee to be a working ship.

Fired from his dream job and exiled among the misfits and mutants of the Undercity, Tak has gone from wunderkind to washed-out failure in record time. His last hope of reclaiming his life in the shining city above is to somehow prove his wild theories correct. In order to continue his research, Tak accepts a job at a shady underground laboratory, where he struggles to reconcile what he believes to be right with the things he must do to survive. But when a strange plague rips through the people of the Undercity, Tak’s knowledge becomes their only hope of survival.

Ethan has tracked down the sword Excalibur to an ancient tomb now controlled by the orc nation. They will let him see it, but he just has to do one simple task: Talk to a rampaging dragon! Did they forget to mention that the shamans they previously sent never returned? The companions must make it to the dragon's lair through the troll and giant infested forest while being harried by more fishmen. And there's the magic eating fairies to deal with! Supposedly, they can drain the Mana right out of a wizard!