Tales from An Unexpected Universe: Fantasy Collection (ePub)

JOURNEYS INTO MAGIC AND THE UNKNOWN--Three tales of high fantasy into landscapes filled with shapeshifters, alternate dimensions, ancient legends, and relics of power...

GUARDIANS OF THE FIELD--A doomsday trigger. A field of magic. A desperate call to those who can see beyond the veil of life and death. The field of the Esarad is the home of scryers, ageless ones who enter both future and past at will. Karin Anavid must protect her young daughter, a child of light born a scryer, from those who would harm her. Maeta, a guardian of the Esarad, guides them both in a desperate race across a land gutted by war. They face a ruler obsessed with finding a hidden route through the ice mountains of Scrinac into the Esarad to annihilate it, and the betrayal of an old friend whose greed has consumed him into darkness.

Each one is drawn inexorably toward each other and the ruined city of Alcedama to discover a doomsday trigger that lies at the heart of an ancient prophecy.

THE MAGIC HOUR--Before full night comes, when the air is indigo and objects less distinct, time and space can shift...this is the magic hour. For homicide detective Nathan Byrne, it is a time that signals chaos. As he tracks down art thefts connected to a murder in an abandoned mine, his head injury from a car accident triggers blackouts that pull him into the shadows of an alternate world, one that seems far more than a hallucination.

Sent by his captain into a backwater small town in the Pacific Northwest to get his act together, Nathan finds himself drawn to the slower pace of life the town holds, to the work of solving a real-life murder with the local sheriff, and to Sela, an artist and preacher. But the blackouts continue and each time he is drawn deeper into the destiny of the alternate world called Elaimat whose leader, Naliv, tells him her world cannot survive without his help. Nathan knows he needs to be healed.

Yet, as the border between the two worlds begins to merge, he is no longer sure he can remember which one is real.

THE GATEKEEPERS OF GENTHOR--A hidden enemy... A doorway into a virtual world...Genthor is no ordinary land. It is not easily found. Its borders shift, for it must keep hidden the deep mysteries of the Esoteric, an ancient, original magic known only to a few. It is where Gwendolen and Will have thrived under a summer sun. Now there has come a darkness, the presence of an intruder from another dimension, a threat corrupting everything they love.

Suddenly they are immersed in a journey they never dreamed they would have to take, for the intruder must be stopped. Mysteriously, extraordinary help comes to them through Ga Fael Fawr, the gatekeeper of the enchanted world of Aginmare, who gives Gwendolen a brilliant sword of light that is much more than a weapon, and Gideon, Will's falcon, who teaches him the power of silence in war.

They must find the way soon, for the intruder has not only crossed the barrier between worlds, but is obsessed with entering the Esoteric and seizing its absolute power forever.