Star Paladin
Sword of Asteria Book 1
Eddie R. Hicks
Star Paladin
Sword of Asteria Book 1
By Eddie R. Hicks
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Copyright © 2021 Eddie R. Hicks
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This novel contains scenes of graphic violence, explicit language, and sexuality and is intended for mature readers.
Cover Art by: Caterina Kalymniou
Contents
Newsletter
Prologue
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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
Final Stats
Afterword
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Prologue
Rains from the heavens fell upon the world, washing Averyl’s worries away. It gave her the clarity needed to pray to Asteria’s statue, one of many in the Temple of Asteria reserved for imperial nobles and family members.
It also took her mind off the echoes of footsteps behind. Humans had trespassed on sacred fae territory and entered the temple with blades drawn.
Porcelain jars smashed on the floor, drawing Averyl’s gaze away from Asteria’s statue. Irate men screamed and threatened one another with death. The confrontation at the temple’s main entrance had exploded. The shouting intensified, then turned to clangs of swords clashing against other swords. A second vase broke, then a body thudded.
The humans had come for Averyl.
Only her prayers could keep her alive and calm now.
She stood from the immaculate mat with her soft hands clasped together, then gave the chamber’s exquisitely crafted decor a glance, wondering when she could see such fine fae craftmanship again. The events coming today would forever change her life going forward. Averyl had minutes left of normalcy.
The clicks of her heeled shoes echoed on marbled tiles as she approached the confrontation. She felt a draft brush against her shoulders, exposed from the strap and backless dress she wore, giving space for Averyl’s fae wings, turned to the color of autumn leaves.
Averyl stopped at the door. “Asteria, please defend me going forward.”
She opened the door slowly, meandered into the temple’s main halls, past its chairs reserved for visitors, and watched the altercation at the entrance.
A temple maiden named Chrivana knelt before a fallen imperial guard. His back was gushing blood from the spot his wings once were. What remained of the wings lay beside. Three imperial guardsmen stood with their blades drawn, their wings sprouted and ready, eyes peering at the two humans who attacked the temple.
One guard spoke. “Humans . . .”
“Last time, you fucking pixies,” said the lead human bandit as he gave his short sword a twirl. “Hand over the girl, or we do this the hard way.”
The guards refused to lower their blades. One even flapped his wings, causing him to fly and hover above the floor. “You’re outnumbered, humans!” the guard roared. “Depart from this holy place, and perhaps we’ll ask the emperor to forgive you.”
A second human sneered, unimpressed at the flying imperial guard. “I see you are choosing the hard way. Okay, then.” The human spun to his leader. “Shall we, Dolnir?”
“Yeah,” said the first human, Dolnir. “Fuck up these pixies.”
“You got it, boss man!”
The guard maintained his height. “You humans have no honor!”
The second imperial guard nodded as his wings sprouted. “Of course not, humans do not have a home nation!”
The guards had the advantage—three armor fae with broadswords—all of them now taking flight and lunging for the human bandits. Averyl expected a bloodbath. There was no way the humans wearing leather jerkins could win.
The first flying guard dove, swinging his blade furiously at the human who had called himself Dolnir. No blood splattered on the marbled floor. The second and third guards flew down and swiped, their swords delivering the same results. Nobody could slice the human, despite the fact that he stood still.
The three guards hovered before the two humans and gazed at their clean blades with confusion. “What the?”
Dolnir laughed. “That tickles.”
The lead guard charged and impaled Dolnir, his blade’s tip exiting through the human’s back. The human did not scream, bleed, or show any fear. He just stood there, laughing, even after the guard withdrew his blade from the man’s chest—one that bore no grisly stab wounds.
“Careful,” Dolnir said. “You might scratch my chest!”
Three flying faes attacked the two humans invincible to their blades. When the humans grew bored, they waved their short swords at the guards and swatted them out of the air like flies. Blood was everywhere. Three faes now lay dead, killed by a single blade slash across their torso, exposing internal organs inside.
Averyl wanted to vomit. Since when did humans possess this level of magic? Why is this happening? It was not supposed to be like this.
The two humans directed their weapons to Chrivana, their tips causing her to fall over backward and crawl away. They were going to kill her. That was not part of the plan. Averyl stood in front of the maiden with her hands raised up in surrender.
“Stop!” Averyl yelled, drawing the humans’ attention to her.
“Hey, boss, there
she is!” The human bandit said to Dolnir.
“Princess Averyl Autumnfall,” Dolnir said with a grin. “Come on over, will ya?”
Chrivana crawled ahead of Averyl and used her body as a shield to protect the imperial princess. “No! You will have to slay me if you want her.”
“Chrivana,” Averyl said, gently pushing Chrivana to the right. “It is all right.”
Chrivana shook her head. “Princess Autumnfall—”
“This is the only way to prevent further bloodshed,” Averyl cut in. The bloodshed that should not have started.
“I cannot allow you to go!” bellowed Chrivana. “The emperor shall never forgive me!”
“You have seen their power, Chrivana,” Averyl said. “You should worry more about what these humans will do if they do not get what they want.”
Dolnir holstered his sword to his side while nodding at his accomplice. “Marlon, if you will.”
“Sure thing, boss man.” The human, named Marlon, grabbed Averyl’s tiny wrist with one hand, while his other hand pointed his blade at Chrivana to send her a message: No funny stuff. “Come along now, princess.”
At Averyl’s left and right were two humans escorting her outside the temple and stepping foot on the rain-drenched stone path. A worn horse and carriage idled with two other humans mulling about in the rain. Averyl’s trembling increased.
“Those guys were hardly worth the XP,” Dolnir said.
Marlon nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I was hoping to hit level three too.”
XP? Level three? What nonsense were these men talking about?
Rainwater soaked Averyl’s short cherry red hair, making it stick to her pale skin as the men forced her to their carriage. To the sides, she noticed three, perhaps five, imperial guards on the grass with the rain washing away their blood. Like the three dead imperial guards inside the temple, a single slash brought them to an end. The guards’ armor did nothing to protect them.
Dolnir and Marlon heaved Averyl into the carriage, then joined her as they nodded to the remaining human bandits. Two sat upfront to send the horses off. The rest gathered and sat inside the carriage’s open space. She felt the carriage bump up and down when the horses galloped off, dragging the vehicle with them. Once the temple and the deaths were behind, Averyl sighed and faced the bandit leader, Dolnir.
“So, what do you think of my performance?” she asked him.
“Great,” Dolnir said with a cheery smile. “I think they bought it, princess.”
Averyl grimaced, looking at the two men’s blood-soaked blades. “I wish you had not killed them.”
Marlon shrugged. “They would not let us through.”
“Clearly, you had more power than them,” Averyl said. “You could have pushed them aside by the looks of it.”
They both grinned at her in reply. As the guard had said, humans had no honor because they had no nation to call home. She offered her wrists to them, and they gave it a long and confused glare.
“What do you want now?” Dolnir asked her.
“Tie me up,” Averyl said. “This is supposed to look like a real kidnapping, right?”
Dolnir scratched the back of his wet, short brown hair. “You paid us to snatch you.”
“And now I am asking one last task,” Averyl said, still holding her wrists out to him. “Tie me, please. My father must believe that I am leaving against my will.”
“Fine,” Dolnir said, and released a long sigh. He grabbed some ropes and bonded Averyl’s wrists and legs together. She lay back after that and pretended to be a kidnapped imperial princess.
Minutes into their escape, Dolnir sat back as a mysterious thin, rectangularly shaped object appeared ahead of him. Averyl could not make out what it was, just that there were words and diagrams on it. It was like a massive floating page from a book or scroll. Whenever Dolnir touched the floating page, it changed and listed brief sentences for his eyes to glance over. Dolnir smiled. Were the hovering magical pages the source of their power?
“Quest completed!” Dolnir said. “See, I told you killing them would count toward the quest progression.”
Marlon made a floating page appear ahead of him, and like Dolnir, he tapped it and studied its content. “You were right, boss man,” Marlon said. “I just got good XP from that quest.”
A third human did the same and read the text on his floating page. “Same,” he said. “I am about to hit level five.”
There was that word again, level, followed by a number. The floating pages, XP, levels—it had to have been a new form of magic, the source of their power, the reason why the imperial guards could do no damage against them, yet, their short swords bested the armored men with one blow.
Averyl had to speak up. They never told her they could do this. “What sort of wizardry are you using? I have never seen anything like it.”
The men looked at her, shocked, and with two taps on their floating pages, they made them magically vanish. Averyl saw something she was not supposed to see.
“Eh,” Dolnir said. “Magic? I would not call it magic.”
“What is it then?” Averyl asked him.
“Worry not about it. Just know that you hired the best to get this task done.”
“Hey, boss man,” Marlon said. “You close to leveling up?”
“Yeah, 400 more XP.”
Averyl could not understand it, and it worried her. Did she pay the wrong bandits for the job? Was it even magic at all? She wondered if faking her kidnapping with these humans was a good idea. Perhaps remaining in the empire was a better choice.
She doubted they would take her to another world as promised.
Chapter One
“It’s easy to use, makes the best meals, super easy to clean, and . . .”
“And?”
Guy Sutherland paused, his mouth unable to answer Laurence’s question. Or come up with flashy buzz words to seal the deal. There was a reason Guy never worked in retail. And that’s why you’re a broke motherfucker and can’t hold down a job to save yourself.
He refused to give up.
He had to make this job work, or he could kiss college life goodbye. The tuition wasn’t cheap. Guy gave the white picket fence of the farmhouse’s patio a long glance, hoping its owner, Laurence, didn’t notice the awkward silence.
Guy’s uncle, Matthew, approached from behind. “Guy,” Matthew said to him. “It’s a barbeque.”
“And what is that?” Laurence asked as he pointed downward, and Guy followed. He had pointed at the barbeque Guy and Matthew wheeled over, its white tank to be exact.
“That’s the propane tank,” Guy replied. “It’s what fuels it.”
Laurence raised his eyebrow, giving the barbeque and its tank a long and confused gaze. “Propane?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Guy said and gave the barbeque a pat. “Your world hasn’t discovered propane yet. All the more reason you need this, Laurence. You can transform this farm into the most advanced one in your world, just by having this propane barbeque.”
Laurence crossed his arms. “You star-dwellers.”
Guy stepped aside, allowing Laurence to kneel and examine the barbeque. There was a fifty percent chance Laurence would buy it, he figured. So, Guy kept silent, hoping he wouldn’t say something that would spoil the potential trade, and walked away from the farmhouse’s porch, giving the crops in the field a long look. The early morning spring air rushed through the valley, rustling his dark hair and coat. At least, Guy thought, it was spring air. It was hard to tell on underdeveloped planets like Mennaze with its weird seasons. It was harder for the humans living on the planet Mennaze to know of Guy and his uncle Matthew’s secret. They were from space and so dressed to blend in.
Laurence stood up, having finished giving the barbeque his examination. “I’ll take it,” he said, turning to Guy. “What do you want for it?”
Matthew handed Laurence a list of items written on a single piece of paper. “Just these.”
La
urence held the list to his face, scanning it quickly. “Basically, a third of my harvest.”
Guy joined the two men on the porch. “You ever had grilled steaks, Laurence?”
“No . . .”
“Then you’ve made the right deal!” Guy waved at the barbeque. “You can grill up some steaks and sell them to the townsfolk.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Guy . . .”
“Yes, Uncle?”
“It’s just a barbeque.”
It was a done deal. Laurence now possessed the first barbeque on Mennaze, a blue-sky planet with an entirely human population. It wasn’t the human homeworld, though, just some planet a few humans found themselves on centuries ago—one of many planets with an underdeveloped civilization living on it. Historians were still scratching their heads at that.
Laurence’s farm was in the planet’s largest city: Coldhorn. Horse and buggies were the vehicles of choice and steam-powered trains were the planet’s most advanced technological achievements. In the distance, Guy watched Laurence’s son and daughter load dozens of buggies full of freshly farmed crops, eggs, and butchered meat; payment for the medicine; and now, the barbeque Guy and his uncle sold to the planet. Laurence’s daughter, Dianna, took a break from work, wiping away a buildup of sweat that moistened her forehead.
Star Paladin: A LitRPG Space Fantasy (Sword of Asteria Book 1) Page 1