Are places like the Court of Moths and Teeth and the Undry market on the Isles of Elfhame or are they a different landmass entirely? Cuz the map in the Stolen Heir isn't exactly clear on where they actually are.
Sorry I'm still stuck on the title!
Blurb:
15yr old Elias nearly dies when a Barrier fails on his walk home and the attacks malfunction. He and his closest friend are trust directily into the heart of a 15-year long Celestial-Infernal war.
My phone was far too bright. Damned adaptive brightness always turns itself on after I update. The usual after-school chaos has thinned. I looked around the corridor; no one save the odd cleaner emptying bins. The plasma screen was off, as usual; it's as if the SLT wants students to be late to class. The plasma screen shook suddenly, and dust rained from the ceiling. Probably another battle, the 3rd today. Honestly, why hadn't Hell deployed its actual army yet? I walked down the corridor slowly. I saw a maintenance guy fixing what looked to be a grey disk with a blunt spike at the centre. It lacked the distinct curved engravings every Celestial device was supposed to have and the tell-tale serrated scratches of Infernal contraptions. Must be human-made then. When the maintenance guy left, I walked toward the disk. I touched it, and it was rough under my fingertips and ice-cold. It buzzed slightly. Odd; the only reason it should buzz is if there was a vibrator in it or, more interestingly, magic. Probably something to enforce the new phone ban. Screw you too, Mr Harrison. It buzzed hard enough to send pain down my arm “Shit”, I muttered, cradling my hand. “Language”, I heard a familiar voice scold. I turned around to see Mr Harrison, all 5 foot 3 of him, staring right at me, his bald spot reflecting the shaking lights. I lifted my phone up to my ear and pretended to call someone “I said fuck off, Peter. Stop calling me; I'm not interested”. Did I know anyone called Peter?No. Was Mr Harrison's first name Peter? Yes. Did I care? Absolutely not. Mr Harrison's face had gone red, and I could see veins pulsing at his temples. “Is there something wrong, Sir?” I asked half-heartedly. “There are two problems now, Mr Volkov”, he said, grossly mispronouncing my surname. Again. I wasn't even surprised at that point. “It's Vyolkovich, Sir, not Volkov”, I corrected for the hundredth time this term. “Well, Mr Volkov, you know perfectly well that phones are prohibited in this institution, so hand it over”, he smugly stated. “Let me think. No , Sir,” I replied as I watched his face flash with confusion. I bent down slightly so he could look me in the eye.“It's 15:51 now, so this ‘institution’s’ jurisdiction expired 11 minutes ago. In short, you can't do anything about me,” I replied just as smugly as him. “Well, the policy states that phones are prohibited on school property and during school hours” , he replied, trying to regain his dignity. “I’m pretty sure computers didn’t exist in the 1800’s, so let me explain this to you slowly so you understand”, I said and watched his face go from red to an ugly shade of purple. Bruise maybe? Or mauve? Anyway, “And-Gates require both inputs to be True before the output is True. You should know this; you sat in on the lesson in Yr 7. Only one of the terms is true, so the policy doesn't apply,” I continued smoothly and watched his face go even darker. “You can’t speak to a teacher like that, let alone a member of the SLT”,he sputtered, the veins at his temples threatening to burst. I started to walk toward the Atrium doors and said over my shoulder, “I can’t, during school hours”.
The sky flashed red as a spear of infernal magic arched through the clouds. I glanced up and saw a squadron of winged demons in what looked to be a Prong-Formation. The blue forcefield, the Barrier, keeping the battle contained, had white veins streaking through it and cast a dull, off-blue veil over the desolate, half-pulverised buildings beside me. 14 years of stalemate, not a single breakthrough, and this is what's left. Broken buildings, mass graves and craters deep enough to rival the Mariana Trench. Neither side claiming responsibility. Klaxons placed throughout the wrecks shrieked, signalling that a Barrier had fallen.
I looked up, and my heart decided that an early retirement was a good idea. The veins in the Barrier were thicker and pulsing an ominous red. Behind it, the front lines clashed with more fervour than I've ever seen. In retrospect, I should have run, not that it would’ve helped. They both charged up what seemed to be some sort of beam. The Demons’ was a greyish black in colour and seemed to be trying to break free; the Angels’, on the other hand, was blindingly white and was completely obedient, concerningly so. They grew larger and larger until they were the size of houses. The Angels' beam was now fraying at the edges, almost as if it was trying to escape. Both beams twisted in on themselves, creating concentric spheres and lines carved into them. The Barrier snapped more like a shockwave than a sound. My ears popped, again and again, each one worse than the last, until everything just… stopped.
The world went off. Distant. Submerged.
Warmth trickled down my cheek and along my neck, and I laughed without meaning to. It came out wrong—sharp and dull at the same time, both far away and right inside my skull.
I wiped my cheek. My fingers came back slick with blood. The Demons and the Angels decided that was the best time to fire. Extradimensional beings aren't exactly known for their room-reading skills. Usually these types of beams make a high-pitched whistling noise, but now it sounded like a submerged rocket.The beams raced toward each other and clashed in an almost beautiful cascade of grey, black, and white. They should have stayed like that, fighting for dominance until one won and annihilated the other force. But they merged into a beam that looked like it came out of a 1950s sitcom, going from black to grey to white to black again. It folded in on itself, blooming outward, covering the sky in a monochrome blanket of energy. Suddenly it collapsed into itself, creating a sort of singularity. Being the idiots they were, the Angels and Demons tried to correct it. They didn't disengage or stop firing. They doubled down, sending more and more energy into something that had stopped behaving like a weapon and had almost achieved sentience. The Singularity started sucking the power out of the Angels and Demons; they started shrivelling up like they'd been left out too long on a hot summer day and started falling out of the sky one by one, flinging dust debris and rebar into the air. I ducked as a 6-foot rusted pole of rebar sailed inches from my head, making a dull, dampened whistling sound. The singularity grew, and more beams started lancing through the sky in random directions. It started pulsing, shrinking with each beat. It collapsed completely, sending out a blinding wave of homicidal power. The heat created blisters the size of grapes across any exposed skin. The acrid stench of burnt skin etched itself into my nose as wave after wave of pure agony rippled through my body. A translucent dome formed, shielding my body from the rest of the blast. My breaths came out ragged and shallow, and everything went black.
Does anyone have epub word or pdf files of Fury Bound by Sable Sorensen ik its come out today