James A. Hunter

Portal Mage - A Viridian Gate Serial Adventure #5

I pulled the ancient door open by the mask-shaped handle. Every other person in the room stiffened as they stared straight ahead. Jen grabbed my shoulder, Kaivai’s forehead creased, and Tarsus turned pale. McClure laughed behind his mask, and Nil grinned with its mouthful of shark teeth. Gnaeus looked at me with surprise and awe, which was probably the most uncomfortable reaction of the lot.<...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Twelve

Prince Chadrigoth of the Diabolus Diaboli, of the Eritreus Elite, stood with the First Cohort in the massive entryway of the Mines of Madness. The walls were chiseled stone, any moisture frozen into ice. Various mine carts, rusted and useless, lay beside piles of yellow dirt and rough stone. The whole cavern was hundreds of feet high and hundreds of feet wide—large enough even to accommodate ...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Eleven

Even without Ed the Rot Troll livening up the Shadowcroft Academy, the next day dawned bright and glorious. Logan was glad for that morning’s intense training with Rockheart, though he did have to wonder if the Rector Prime could customize his hounds like they’d customized their minions in Arketa’s class the day before.

They’d gone from doomhounds, to hellhounds to pit-hounds. Wha...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Ten

Logan was about to say something to Inga, to try and make her feel better, when Tet beat him to it. “I can understand your worry, Inga. However, keep in mind, this is a controlled environment. Arketa is monitoring us all. If there is an issue, she can help, but more than that, you are in control.”

Inga smiled warmly. “Yes, of course. I will embrace my self-confidence. Let us all try...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Nine

The crypt should have been spooky—the flickering green light, the whisper of shrouds, the bodies and skulls—but Logan found the space rather comforting. Morta Apothos hung heavy in the air like a morning ground fog, and it set him at ease. Inga, on the other hand, looked like someone had just kicked over her sandcastle. Brows creased, arms folded, a frown marred her face. He had no idea wha...

Portal Mage - A Viridian Gate Serial Adventure #4

Morsheim isn’t so bad, once you get used to it. I’m not saying I’d want to spend my vacations there, but it would be tolerable if I wasn’t dead.

As it was, I was being dragged and my face was scraping across the rocks. My nerves were dead too, by this point, so I wasn’t in any pain, but imagine hearing the sound of your skull smacking into the floor over and over, your vision bl...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Eight

Logan, Marko, and Treacle walked out of the DIE portal and found themselves at the entrance of the Blasted Barrows, the southernmost dungeon on Arborea. Rough-hewn stones were piled into an archway set in the side of a grassy knoll. The Vralkag Hills were a low series of ridges between the two southern rivers that ran off the edges of the realm in dramatic waterfalls—flat worlds might defy ph...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Seven

Logan was able to get his cohort back in the Akros Coliseum that night after dinner, but no one was happy about it. Even Inga was less than thrilled and she loved training and unnecessary work. But she insisted they’re normal routine was to study in the library in the evenings, and adding a second cultivation session would cut into her reading time.

Logan, though, wasn’t going to get ...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Thirty-Four and Thirty-Five

A thousand thoughts raced through Roark’s head as he stared at the place the Tyrant King had been moments before. So tantalizingly close. The bastard had been here, right in his grasp, and he’d let it all slip away like black sand through his fingers. They’d captured the Vault and Lowen was dead—both significant victories—but all of that paled in comparison to the fact that Marek was ...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Thirty-Four

The sudden shift in the Vault seemed to have jarred Lowen’s troops into action, quickly transforming the tense duel into a chaotic free-for-all. The remaining Heralds went on the attack, assailing the surrounding Troll Nation mobs with renewed vigor. Shots popped off at every corner of the throne room, Dungeon Lords gunning down the frantically fighting Heralds. One of the Divine casters summ...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Thirty-Three

The timer on Roark’s Draconic Form spiraled down to zero, and he dropped to the floor, stumbling a few steps before catching himself.

“What’s the matter, trash?” Lowen taunted, beating his wings and rising higher toward the vaulted ceiling. In his right hand, he drew a shining Bastard Sword that rang with a thin, resonating tone, and in his left he prepared a fistful of Heavenly W...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Thirty-Two

Randy meant to just jump right into a Deep Dive POD as soon as he made it to the VIP lounge and changed into the sensory suit. The Griefer needed him, the fate of several worlds hung in the balance, and yet…

And yet this was his probable death he was staring down. He was old enough to remember when Green Gate Online had crashed back in the early days of ultra-immersive VRMMOs, ...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Thirty-One

The tank ran out of shells in the corridor just outside the Vault of the Radiant Shield’s throne room. It could blast its way no farther. Likely for the best, Roark thought. Between the tank’s devastating shells and the relentless bombardment from the siege engines, many of the load-bearing walls within the Vault had destabilized to dangerous levels. Even now, after the blasting had ceased,...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Thirty

Marek Konig Ustar, better known to all of Traisbin as the Tyrant King, felt the snap of unbinding the moment the World Stone came free of that cur von Graf’s soul. Though the sensation filled him with no small amount of joy, Marek kept his expression impassive. With bored annoyance, he gazed at the captured family of a suspected resistance fighter—a battered and bleeding man, his sow of a w...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Six

Logan was happy to be in a desk and not loitering like a hobo in a toolshed. But just seeing Professor Nekhbet made Logan sleepy. The classroom’s windows showed a bright blue sky outside the central tower of the school, where the classrooms were.

Inga’s crush was a balding vulture man in rumpled class robes. He was as disheveled as Professor Rockheart was put together. A red waddle hu...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Nine

The bombing started while Randy was typing furiously at his workstation. His books slumped on the shelf, everything from Rational Database Theory and Applications to Refactoring slipping sideways, the perfect model of the way this defense of three dimensions was suddenly going. He gritted his teeth and fought the urge to straighten them, forcing himself to stay focused on gett...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Eight

The allied dungeon mobs weren’t the only ones feeling the rush of optimism as Roark and his troops blasted their way through the golden corridors of the Heralds’ lair. All this time, Roark hadn’t allowed himself to think there was any chance he would kill the Tyrant King and escape with his life. Hadn’t dared to hold even the smoldering ember of possibility, but now… Now, that ember h...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Five

Logan hit his moldy bed in his new room with a glad heart. He laid on his back, in the gloom, everything cast in a hazy purple light thanks to his Fungal Vision. Around him spun a world of glowing spores, hidden to the human eye. The gleaming particles allowed him to see the outlines of his furniture as well as a view of Loch Endless where massive monsters of scales and fin glided through murky...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Seven

Scott Bayani leaned against the wall, tucked away in one of the murder corbels the Griefer had added to the tops of the walls when he battle-modded out Frontflip. All in all, the changes were pretty awesome. He had to admit the dude knew his siege defense. Made sense. Based on that slaughter Roark had shown him and Randy, they probably didn’t have any drone technology on the alien planet Roar...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Six

Roark took a step back from the massive piece of Flash he had just Tattooed onto the front armor plate of the tank—a skeleton finfolk woman with sparrow’s wings jutting up from her back, long hair flowing around her exposed skull, a snake slithering out of her grinning jaws in place of a tongue, and a dagger-pierced heart glowing inside her rib cage. It was quite impressive, he had to admit...

Portal Mage - A Viridian Gate Serial Adventure #3

I looked at Nil’s unsettling red eyes, full lips, and shark’s-tooth smile and said, “You can put me down, now.”

“Are you sure?” it said.

“Positive.”

“Because it’s my understanding human males are quite comfortable being carried by others.”

Gnaeus and Zara burst out laughing.

I scowled and squirmed like a fussy baby until the mimic set me down,...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Five

Rather than return to the encampment outside the Vault of the Radiant Shield, Roark had used the portal stone to transport himself, Mac, and the tank to the open grassland he’d crossed with Zyra what seemed like ages ago tracking down an ingredient for Kaz’s Gourmet quest. Roark was eager to get back to a smithy, but the tank was an enormous piece of equipment—fully as long as the trebuch...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Four

The groans of the injured filled the makeshift infirmary as Roark, Kaz, and a few humans from this dimension passed up and down the rows, handing out—and in some particularly severe cases administering—Ultimate Healing Potions. The chamber, which Randy and PwrnBwner referred to as a “cafeteria,” was every bit as large as the throne room in the Citadel’s Keep and had been stocked with ...

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Four

Chadrigoth of the Diabolus Diaboli, of the Eritreus Elite, hadn’t been in a good mood since he’d tried to kill Logan Murray and terrible cohort the year before. Things hadn’t improved since then. No, they’d only gotten worse. To be fair, the Terrible Twelfth weren’t to blame for Chadrigoth’s foul mood. There were so many far more important factors.

For one thing, Chadrigoth’...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Three

Lowen was in no mood for bad news when he returned to the Vault of the Radiant Shield. That von Graf bastard had found some new way to cheat—altering the entire structure of Frontflip Studios and then somehow turning into a twice-damned dragon. So, it was with terrible grace that he discovered his Hearthworld sanctuary in as much chaos as he’d left behind in the Other World. The th...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-Two

Leaving behind half the defenders under the leadership of Grozka and Pang, Roark took Kaz, Randy, and the rest of the troops from the newly christened Shieldwall and crept through the tunnel under the green. PwnrBwner had been indignant at the message to watch the sky, but he’d finally agreed to stay hunkered where he was and wait.

Roark hoped the impulsive Ranger-Cleric could hold out....

Shadowcroft Academy Year 2 - Chapter Three

Logan had help getting his things down into the bottom of the Ladder Hole, which was yes, four rooms stacked on top of one another connected by a ladder set into the stone wall. Logan couldn’t be happier. He was in the bottom room, which was set deep underground, but had a window that showed the churning depths of the Loch Endless. It was cramped, but he was small, and he didn’t need much. ...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty-One

The CEO’s throne turned out to be a bit of a letdown after the various thrones Roark had claimed in the Cruel Citadel. It was little more than a stark if comfortable chair with sleek black upholstery, though it did preside over the head of an ostentatiously long, smooth table. It rolled on a set of silent casters, but then so did every other chair in the room.

It hardly seemed fit for a...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Twenty

After loading his Inventory with as many Peerless weapons and as much armor as he could carry, Roark took the portal plate from the Troll Nation Marketplace back to the encampment around the Vault of the Radiant Shield. Noonday sunlight hit him like a gauntlet in the face after the gloom of the Cruel Citadel.

The Heralds’ golden hive was still for the moment, though tension hung in the ...

Dungeon Duel (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Nineteen

Scott Bayani finished up in the first-floor men’s room, then headed for the cafeteria, taking a couple practice swings with the bat as he went. The halls were plenty wide. He got the full follow-through without having to pull his arms in even a little.

Frontflip had some majorly nice facilities. Marble in the johns and heated toilet seats. Fully stocked employee lounges, plus coffee and...