by Joe Jackson
The Eve of Redemption Series
Books 1-3
Salvation’s Dawn
White Serpent, Black Dragon
Serpents Rising
Copyright 2015-17 by Joe Jackson
All rights reserved
Cover Art by Andreas Zafiratos
Follow the author:
http://Citaria.wordpress.com
www.Twitter.com/shoelessauthor
www.Facebook.com/shoelessauthor
The Eve of Redemption Series
Salvation’s Dawn
White Serpent, Black Dragon
Serpents Rising
Legacy of the Devil Queen
The Huntresses’ Game
Preludes to War
Convergence (due 2018)
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Contents
Salvation’s Dawn
Chapter I – The Calling
Chapter II – Under Orders
Chapter III – The Silver Blades
Chapter IV – The Company of Strangers
Chapter V – Salkorum
Chapter VI – Dedication
Chapter VII – Storm of Memories
Chapter VIII – Arrival
Chapter IX – Bond of Trust
Chapter X – Strange Bedfellows
Chapter XI – Uncertainty
Chapter XII – Snake Trail
Chapter XIII - Protection
Chapter XIV – Small Blessings
Chapter XV – Charisma
Chapter XVI – Failures
Chapter XVII – Consequences
Chapter XVIII – Invasion
Chapter XIX – Salvation’s Dawn
White Serpent, Black Dragon
Prologue
Chapter I – Conflict of Interest
Chapter II – First Blood
Chapter III – Blood Oath
Chapter IV – Remnants
Chapter V – Murky Waters
Chapter VI – Dark Seduction
Chapter VII – The Earl of Lajere
Chapter VIII – Falling
Chapter IX – Mandar-Czar
Chapter X – Unexpected Welcome
Chapter XI – One Small Favor
Chapter XII – The Wolf’s Hour
Chapter XIII – Resistance
Chapter XIV – Demon Against Demon
Chapter XV – Complications
Chapter XVI – Faces of Evil
Chapter XVII – Recognition
Chapter XVIII – The Unyielding
Chapter XIX – The Hunter’s Mind
Chapter XX – Setting the Snare
Chapter XXI – Strength of the Avatar
Chapter XXII – Frustration
Chapter XXIII – Downfall
Chapter XXIV – The Hand of Zalkar
Chapter XXV – Full Disclosure
Serpents Rising
Chapter I – Unmasked
Chapter II – Alternatives
Chapter III – The War At Home
Chapter IV – Intelligence
Chapter V – Preparations
Chapter VI – Apprehension
Chapter VII – The City of Black Glass
Chapter VIII – The Reluctant Prince
Chapter IX – Complications
Chapter X – Moskarre
Chapter XI – Lessons Learned
Chapter XII – Into the Birthplace
Chapter XIII – Uldriana’s Trust
Chapter XIV – Dancing Shadows
Chapter XV – Den of Cobras
Chapter XVI – Run Like Hell
Chapter XVII – The Weeping Woodlands
Chapter XVIII – Full Circle
Chapter XIX – Sanctuary
Chapter XX – Settlements
Chapter XXI – The Price of Success
Chapter XXII – Communion
Chapter XXIII – Vengeance
Chapter XXIV – Safeguards
Chapter XXV – Unrest
A Sneak Peek of Legacy of the Devil Queen
Thank Yous & Acknowledgements
Appendix A: The Many Unique Races of Citaria
Appendix B: The Merged Citarian-Koryonite Pantheons
Appendix C: Geography and History
Appendix D: The Kings and Races of Mehr’Durillia
Eve of Redemption, Book I
Salvation’s Dawn
Copyright 2015 by Joe Jackson
All rights reserved
Cover Art by Andreas Zafiratos
Follow the author:
http://Citaria.wordpress.com
www.Twitter.com/shoelessauthor
www.Facebook.com/shoelessauthor
This book is dedicated to Mrs. Raftery, who told a strange kid with a stranger imagination to let it take him anywhere he wanted it to, and to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, defenders of freedom.
Chapter I – The Calling
Kari turned and looked westward.
Her companions slowed in their walk when they saw she’d stopped. “Colonel?” Captain Machall prompted.
Kari ignored him for a few moments, in part to listen for the sound to come a second time, and in part because she still wasn't used to being called colonel even after eight years. She was a demonhunter, not a soldier, but like countless others, she’d been conscripted to fight in the Apocalypse against the Devil Queen and her forces. Due to the fact that she was one of the highest-ranking demonhunters, she’d been afforded a position as an officer and named lieutenant colonel by the brigadier general under whom she'd served. Still, in her mind she was always just Kari, and she'd preferred those under her command to call her such. Military decorum, however, dictated otherwise.
After a brief pause, she heard it again: the faint but unmistakable sound of a summons. It had to have come from the city of Barcon a few hours to the west, and Kari grimaced. She and her companions had specifically avoided the city on their way down from the mountains. Her intent was to go with her subordinate and friend, Captain Lawrence Machall, to help with the late harvest at his farm on the outskirts of Gavean. Now, though, that plan was dashed as she realized her deity’s priesthood was summoning her for a hunt, and she would have to separate from her companions.
The War was over, the Devil Queen Seril cast down. Her death had brought eight long years of grueling fighting to a close. As Kari walked with her companions toward the town of Gavean, though, she wondered what that really meant. Her people had battled the Devil Queen’s demonic creations for so long; what would no longer having such an enemy really mean? Would Seril’s death mean the extinction of her creations, or would they continue to be a problem, led by some other evil? Worse yet, would the absence of such an enemy mean that some other evil would arise to fill the void – perhaps even another war among the mortals themselves? Was it too much to hope that they had found not just victory, but peace?
Kari sighed. She had hoped to push aside such questions for a while, to take up a simple life helping on Captain Machall’s farm, but the summons of her deity’s priests meant she would enjoy no such respite. The War might have been over, but a part of her understood that as a demonhunter, it would never end for her. She glanced at her companions, who waited patiently for their former lieutenant colonel to give voice to her thoughts, and her draconic lips tightened into a line. It came as little surprise to her that even after the death of the Devil Queen and the technical ‘end’ of the war, there would still be work to do and demons to be hunted.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?” the captain asked, still maintaining the discipline and respect for chain of command he’d honored all throughout the war.
>
“I’m being summoned by my church,” Kari said at last. “I guess I’m not going to be helping you and your family after all.”
Captain Machall and the others were disappointed; that showed plainly enough in their expressions. In those expressions, though, Kari could see that they understood what she'd been thinking just moments before. “You’ve got more important things to do than harvesting,” the captain said. He straightened up and saluted her respectfully, and the others followed suit. “It’s been an honor to serve under you, ma’am.”
Kari returned their salute by bumping her fist over her heart and bowing her head: the typical salute of the Demonhunter Order. “It was an honor to serve with you,” she returned. “I guess it was silly of me to think we’d get any rest after the war. Would you do me a favor, though, Lawrence? Take this sword back to your farm and keep it hidden somewhere. With any luck, I’ll never ask for it back. But let it collect dust somewhere.”
She handed the captain a sheathed katana with a brilliantly carved handle of a black dragon with red crystal eyes. His brows rose immediately; there was little mistaking whose it was, but he asked anyway. “Is this the sword you took from–?”
“Yes,” she interrupted, in no mood to hear his name. “If someone comes after me looking for it, I want to make sure it’s someplace safe. Keep it out of sight.”
“Understood,” he said, and he saluted her again. “Stay safe, Colonel.”
“You all do the same,” she returned. She bid farewell to her companions, former members of the Thirty-Fifth Light Division, and turned to head back west to the city of Barcon.
Kari began to jog at a brisk pace. She gathered her hair into a tail to keep it out of her face as it swung about, and she threw it over her shoulder to settle between her black, leathery wings. She could smell rain on the wind and the temperature was dropping; she did not want to be alone on the road when the full storm descended. Reaching the city before nightfall would mean she could find out why she was being summoned by the priests and then indulge herself in a warm bath and a good, solid meal.
Winter came early this far south, a fact attested to by the chill wind that danced cruelly across her shoulders, sending her hair whipping to the side. The chill bit deeper than that of the wind, and Kari realized why accompanying Captain Machall back to his family’s farm and helping with the harvest had appealed to her: it would have served to cover up the fact that she had no family of her own, nor even a permanent dwelling. As a demonhunter, hers had always been a life lived on the road, but here and now, so far removed from the life she had known, Kari felt out of place and out of touch with the world she had just helped save. She had no idea where her road would lead her once she was put on assignment by the priests, but she knew whatever it was would do nothing to dispel eight years’ worth of battle fatigue.
Barcon would’ve never been her first choice of refuge, but it was the closest major inland city to where her brigade was stationed at the war’s end. Barcon was a haven for organized crime and had been for as long as Kari could remember, but even still it had a well-established temple district, and her deity, Zalkar, the patron of law and the Demonhunter Order, maintained a church despite the corruption of the city. Kari figured that for all its problems, Barcon also had inns and taverns, which meant baths and strong drinks – both of which she planned to indulge in for as long as she could before heading out on whatever assignment she received.
The very thought of a potent double-godhammer in her hand as she relaxed in a steaming tub warmed her blood, and Kari tucked her wings close to her back, the thumb claws lightly gripping her shoulders, her head down into the wind. She was able to keep up her brisk pace for some time, testament to a life of physical activity and conditioning, and Barcon came into sight after a while. The first few drops of rain began to pelt Kari on her draconic snout, and her clawed feet kicked up dust from the road as she approached the city. Within minutes she closed the remaining distance, just as the skies opened up and the steady beat of rain upon the earth began. She hoped the guards at the gate would let her through quickly and she’d be in a bathtub by the time the rain became a steady downpour.
She slowed her approach as she reached the edge of the firelight from the gates. The rir people had strong eyes and could see well in the dark, but Barcon was a primarily human city and the two guards posted at the southeast gate were both human. Kari was a terra-dracon, a subspecies of the rir people that mutated to grow leathery bat-like wings. They were very rare and, because of the wings, they were quite often mistaken for half-demons, a product of the rir people being crossbred with the Devil Queen’s creations. Despite being a high-ranking demonhunter, Kari could easily be mistaken for a charging half-demon warrior, and she wanted to avoid provoking the guards.
As she approached the gates, the two humans posted at ground level prepared to stop her. They both had the look of green recruits, and wore the expressions of men who were not happy to be stationed out in the cold rain while their comrades sat inside the tower or up in the covered archers’ post. Hands went to hilts and the one on the left held his hand up, so Kari came to a stop a respectable distance from them once she stepped into the firelight. The guards studied her for a few moments before exchanging a glance, and then the one on the left spoke.
“Half-demons are not welcome in the city,” he said with the accent common in the southern plains. He was dressed in dull gray chainmail, with a tabard depicting the standard of the city of Barcon – a black heart upon a red field – upon his breast. His bright green eyes fixed Kari with an unwelcoming stare.
Kari reached behind her neck and drew up the chain of her dog tags so that they fell across her breastplate. They were the tags of a demonhunter, enchanted with a latent aura that marked them as authentic to anyone sensitive to the arcane or the divine. “Karian Vanador, Shield of the Heavens, by Zalkar’s grace,” she responded as she stood straight before the men. The guards were about her size, though when she expanded her wings she cut a much more imposing figure than either of them. Kari’s black lips peeled back to show off her pearly-white teeth. “I’m not a half-breed.”
“She got white teeth,” the other guard said, approaching. “She ain’t half-demon, she’s terra-dracon.”
“I can see that, McKinley,” the first said with a roll of his eyes, but then he saluted Kari respectfully. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, we were just nervous what with…”
The demonhunter waved off his apology. “No need to explain,” she said. “When a winged soldier approaches in the dark, I usually have the same reaction.” She smiled and the guards chuckled as they waved her through the gate.
“Enjoy your stay, ma’am,” they said, and Kari stepped into the city.
As the gate closed behind her, Kari paused a moment in the shadow of the portal, where she was partially shielded from the increasing beat of the rain. Barcon was a walled city several miles east of the southern end of the great forest, and was surrounded by farmland. The interior of the city was broken up into four districts, and Kari had entered through the southeast gate into the temple district. She wondered if the city had changed at all since her last stay so long before, but she knew of one thing that had not changed: Kaelin Black – the Earl of Southwick County, the city’s mysterious ruler, and alleged head of the Black Dragon Society – was still in power. His criminal syndicate was one of the worst in the world, and had a horrid reputation that stretched back over two hundred years. They made Barcon a dangerous city, particularly for those who served Kari’s deity. That her deity’s people had maintained a temple to Law in a city of lawlessness so long was a testament to their dedication and courage.
Kari looked down the long main avenue of the district and the well-kept facades of the temples stood proudly on both sides of the road. Eternal flames stood in crackling vigil on each of the front terraces, illuminating the white-washed walls and the carved symbols of each deity: the golden axe of Garra Ktarra; the gold cross of Bek the Pious; t
he shield with the lion’s head that represented Ambergaust and Carsius Coramin; the winged focus of Kaelariel; and at last the light blue balanced forces symbol of Zalkar the Unyielding. There were many more deities amongst the pantheon, but these were some of the most prominent and widely-served amongst humans.
Kari considered going to the temple immediately, but she wanted to be clean and presentable when she went. She looked left and right down the streets that ran along the outer walls of the city, but saw no obvious signs of an inn, so she walked up the main road. She passed the temples, the places of worship dark and quiet within as evening settled and meditations began. At the end of the road was an intersection, and a neat and clean inn stood directly across from Kari. There was a sign hanging over the front porch, where several older humans sat smoking pipes as they watched the growing intensity of the rain. Kari moved closer to read the sign and saw it was emblazoned with a golden axe coated in black blood, and read The Bloodied Blade.
Glad to find an inn dedicated to the god of explorers, Kari nodded briefly to the humans on the porch as they regarded her curiously. She knew it was because of the wings, but soon enough they went back to smoking their pipes and Kari entered the warm interior. A clean, smooth wood floor creaked slightly as she stepped inside and tucked her wings tight to her back, and the eyes of not quite a dozen patrons looked up to mark her briefly before they returned to their mugs or conversations. The clientele was completely human, and Kari took a moment to remind herself that Barcon was a primarily human town; the number of her kind, the rir, was small here. She wiped her wet feet on the rug by the door and proceeded toward the bar.
An older, slightly portly human pulled up a tankard and began polishing it as Kari approached, and he marked her with a mostly neutral expression. Once she sat down on one of the high stools before him, he hung the towel over his shoulder and placed the mug down in front of her. He was of fair complexion: the humans of the southern region didn’t have much in the way of skin color, though when compared to her own ebon skin, she guessed the same held true for almost anyone who wasn’t rir. His hair was thinning and beginning to match his grey eyes, and he rubbed his moustache thoughtfully as he flashed a smile at the terra-dracon woman. “What’ll it be?” he asked.