Garden of Stone: A Soulbright Prequel

Garden of Stone: A Soulbright Prequel

By Tony Breeden

Øtherworld #1.9

Smashwords Edition

2nd Edition

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Copyright © 2014 Tony Breeden

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means–electronic, mechanical, recording, scanning, or other–except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the author.

Cover art © 2016 Gremlin Graphix

AUTHOR’S NOTE

 This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

All other characters are Copyright and Trademark their respective owners.

2nd EDITION NOTE

The 2nd Edition of Garden of Stone includes bonus material not included in the original. This edition includes two short stories which originally appeared in the Worlds of Faith anthology: Better Off Dead and Bad Program. Both of these works are Copyrighted © 2013 Tony Breeden. The 2nd Edition also contains character interviews from the series. The Dreadknights interview is adapted from Dreadknights: For the Love of the Game (© 2015 Tony Breeden); the other four interviews were published online just prior to the publication of Luckbane.

SMASHWORDS EDITION, LICENSE NOTES

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This story immediately precedes the events in Soulbright by Tony Breeden.

DEDICATION

To Jesus Christ, my Creator, Savior & King 

To Angie, my wife, best friend and soul mate.

To my boys, Justice, Bill, Henry & Jack.

And to the late, great Ray Harryhausen, one of the original and most brilliant of all true technomancers, whose creativity and imagination pushed my own to its limits.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1 – Seventhborn

2 – Technomancer

3 – Blindsight

4 – Medusan

5 – Corpulus

6 – Lucretia

7 – Were-Scorpions

8 – Servant

9 – Out of Control

10 – Moira

11 – Close Shaves

12 – Reasonable Folk

13 – Against the Horde

Epilogue

GAME ROSTER

CHARACTER INTERVIEWS:

Dreadknights of Outland

Moog

Sir Stanley Dragonslayer

Copper Gallows

Rogar Thunderhammer

SHORT STORY: Bad Program

1 – Trapped

2 – Murder

3 – More Human

4 – Save Me

SHORT STORY: Better Off Dead

1 – Saints and Sinners

2 – Awakening

3 – Interrogation

4 – Fallen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AFTERWORD

PROLOGUE

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Preparing for the interview took very little effort. Marcus Wayne’s virtual wardrobe and appearance were taken care of by a program. Once the nodal connection initialized, he found himself in a well-known studio.

Arcadium was the most popular game commentary show in the universe. A favorable interview could boost his popularity points and get him closer to the Impworld Finals.

Impworld was the known universe’s most popular game. When GameComm decided to incorporate nodal technology into their massively multiplayer sword, steam and sorcery role-playing game, they created an instant hit. In Impworld’s virtual reality, you could be a swashbuckling hero, a villainous spellcaster, a monstrous dragon, a steam-powered robot or nearly anything else you dared to imagine. Players like Marcus created their own channels, where anyone in the universe could watch your character’s adventures play out like a television show.

Darius Darwin, Arcadium’s regular host, was nowhere to be seen. Darius’ co-host was Stewart Frakes, better known in gaming circles as the half-crazed dragonslayer. Og from Grog. Og was an Impworld legend. In fact, if he hadn’t opted to end his career by voluntarily walking into the mouth of a dragon while strapped down with dynamite, he’d probably be an Impworld Finalist himself. Then again, Frakes was as crazy as his character. Point in fact, he’d stopped using his real name in favor of his character name years ago. One could excuse that as a mild affection of fame if it weren’t for the fact that Frakes also insisted on calling everyone else by their character’s names too.

Og sat across from Marcus, smiling benignly as they waited for their cue to begin. Og’s expression was pleasant but alarmingly neutral. The fact that he hadn’t yet said so much as hello to Marcus was also bothering him. Was he harboring a grudge? Og had once been represented by Wayne Entertainment, the company owned by Marcus’ family. More than one commentator had suggested that he purposely game-overed his character to get out of his contract.

Before he could mull it over further, the interview began and Og’s big booming voice filled the virtual studio.

Welcome to Arcadium. I’m Og from Grog, filling in for Shadow Prophet aka Darius Darwin. Today we continue our series of interviews with top contenders for the Impworld Finals. Joining us today is the well-known vampyre slayer, Copernicus Gallows. Welcome to the show, Copper.

Thanks, Marcus said.

Tell us a little about your character.

OK, as you mentioned, I'm a vampyre slayer, so I deal with a lot of vampyres, werewolves, zombies, that sort of thing. Basically, the darker, survival-horror side of the game. I'm one of the few people to ever master a render.

Og leaned forward. Now for folks who've never heard of a render, what is that?

A render is a saw-toothed disc weapon that flies around at my mental command. A render isn't like most other weapons. It's alive, it has a will of its own and it needs to feed on a regular basis or it rebels against me. Fortunately, my work is bloodier than most, so it usually doesn’t have an opportunity to turn on me.

"Now you did have a little trouble with it in your latest adventure," Og said.

Marcus forced himself to keep smiling, but he felt like he was dancing on a razor’s edge. Thus far, the interview had been pretty standard fare, but he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something definitely felt off. I did, he said. The Garden of Stone has little in the way of warm bodies. Almost everybody who enters gets turned into a statue. My render started to get a little thirsty toward the end there. Almost took my hand off once. He offered a nervous laugh. I was actually relieved when the medusan showed up.

Og shook his head and chuckled dryly. I did some pretty crazy things back in my day, but what in the Verse could be worth the risk of braving the Garden of Stone?

Marcus looked at the ceiling like he was seriously considering his answer. It was a verbal dance. Og already knew the answer. This was an info-dump for the viewers. What had Marcus’ mind racing was that remark about crazy things back in my day; was that a reference to Og’s game suicide? More importantly, was Og the sort of fellow who’d hold someone responsible for what their family’s company had done to him? Or was Marcus just being paranoid?

Alice Seventhborn was the only creature who might know the whereabouts of the next piece of Soulbright, Marcus said. Soulbright has pretty much been my on-going quest since I had my first run-in with Impunus. I'd run out of clues. The trail had gone cold. It was the Garden or nothing.

A moving holographic image of Impunus appeared between them. Og gestured toward the image. Impunus styles himself as the brat prince of the Broken Lands. He has powers well beyond any other vampyre in the Game. His coven serves as his personal army. What makes you think you can take on such a formidable monster? Og asked.

Marcus scoffed as he put it all together. By suggesting that Copper couldn’t handle his weapon, that he was outmatched by Impunus, and that he was foolish to think he could ever complete his quest, Og was trying to undermine Copper’s fan base. If the fans began to doubt him, his character would lose popularity points and endanger his chances of making it into the Finals. Marcus wasn’t about to let that happen.

Grinning his cockiest grin, Marcus leaned forward and made sure Og had his undivided attention. Because despite all that stuff you just mentioned – and you're forgetting the fact that Impunus has sworn he'll turn me or kill me – I'm still breathing each morning, Marcus said. Once I have all of the pieces of Soulbright, I can use it to turn Impunus into a mortal, strip him of his powers and kill him once and for all.

Og’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and... Was that grudging admiration? I think a lot of our viewers would like to see you do just that, Og said, but after your adventure in the Garden of Stone some folks are now skeptical about your chances of acquiring all of the pieces of Soulbright.

Marcus shook his head, but kept a grin affixed to his face. He knew exactly what Og was getting at. On some levels the Garden Gambit was a mistake. It was undeniable that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do. Still there were moments when he had to ask himself if the cost had been too great.

Time would tell.

1 – SEVENTHBORN

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Ollie ollie oxen free! the vampyre slayer shouted.

Copernicus Gallows listened as his voice echoed eerily through the shadow-filled labyrinth of the Garden of Stone. Under normal circumstances, the childish taunt would be an idiot move. Sane, ordinary folk preferred not to attract the attention of a stonegazer. Of course, these weren’t exactly normal circumstances and Copper’s sanity was often questionable. They didn’t call him Gloryhound Gallows for nothing.

The medusan hissed. She sounded much closer than Copper had thought she’d be.

His back to a vine-covered stone wall, he used a small mirror mounted on his headgear to peer around the corner. He was using a centaur statue to hide behind. Statues littered the labyrinth. Legends said that a medusan’s gaze could turn any living creature she looked at to stone. Copper couldn’t remember if that