The Accidental Archmage - Book Five, Edmund Batara [best way to read ebooks txt] 📗

The ACCIDENTAL ARCHMAGE Series

ARC THREE

BOOK FIVE

LOKI’S GAMBIT

EDMUND A.M. BATARAJanuary 2019First Publication2020 EDITION

ASIN: B07KS24WQQ

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, interactions, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously unless otherwise indicated. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 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. All Rights Reserved. 2018.

To my family. My wife, Julette-Marie, and my daughters, Amina Francesca, Katrina Fae, and Ana Bettina – For all the support and joy you have given me.

To my sisters – For being so supportive.

To my readers, Kindle readers of the series and those at the website where the first drafts of this continuing story were posted – For the encouragement and constructive feedback.

CREDITS/ATTRIBUTIONS

Cover Image and Main Part Separator under license from www.123RF.com. Jeffrey Thompson. All other design elements by the author.

Copy Editor:   Annie Jenkinson at www.just-copyeditors.com

Other Image Credits:

Title page image, bonus chapter images, Viking engraver – Public domain. Clipart.org.

Other attributions listed in the Notes and Lore by Chapter.

English translation of The Lokasenna courtesy of http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe10.htm

Other Book Illustrations–Commissioned from artist Marvin Dulay(2020) for eBook and paperback. All other rights to artist (mrvndl6@gmail.com).

Contents

An Introduction to Book V

The Lokasenna

Map of Eastern Adar

Jorund's Old Map of Skaney

List of Illustrations

Prologue Spiderwebs

Chapter One Preparing for the Barrens

Chapter Two A Deity's Daughter

Chapter Three The Feathered Serpent

Chapter Four “You Lazy Excuse for a Mage!"

Chapter Five Staff Meeting

Chapter Six Old Greyskin

Chapter Seven Lizards Galore

Chapter Eight Predator Magnet

Chapter Nine Elder Emanations

Chapter Ten Lessons on Iron and Steel

Chapter Eleven A Choice

Chapter Twelve Woodland Undead

Chapter Thirteen Bull in a China Shop

Chapter Fourteen A Dipshit of a Day

Chapter Fifteen Down Came Three Spiders

Chapter Sixteen The Heavenly Sword Art of Living Longer

Chapter Seventeen Hedmark

Chapter Eighteen A Wretched Tour

Chapter Nineteen Dwarven Rumble

Chapter Twenty Après Nous

Chapter Twenty-One Le Déluge

Chapter Twenty-Two Bony Regards

Chapter Twenty-Three Through the Valley of Undead

Chapter Twenty-Four The Way to Hell

Chapter Twenty-Five A Strange War

Chapter Twenty-Six An Ocean of Repulsive Green Eyes

Chapter Twenty-Seven Insults Matter

Chapter Twenty-Eight Deadlord

Chapter Twenty-Nine Loki's Gambit

Epilogue Threads

Notes and Definitions by Chapter

Bonus Content: The Chronicles of Adar (Prequel Stories)

Babylonia: The Sumerians (circa 3000 B.C.)

Ur-Kasdim: The Chaldeans (circa 500 B.C.)

Hofsa: The Norse (The Late Iron Age)

Abdal: White Hun (circa 558 A.D.)

About the Author

Next in the Series

Also Available: The ARCHMAGE OMNIBUS Series

An Introduction to Book V

Hello.

We’ve now come to Book V of the series, where Loki finally gets to play. My heartfelt thanks to readers who found the journey entertaining enough to follow our protagonist as he experiences a world familiar in some respects to his own, yet so unfamiliar in many facets of its reality. Along the way, he’s found his personal beliefs challenged, his worldview changed, has wrestled with issues of conscience and guilt, and been made to adapt to survive. All this, in a magical world where man is not on top of the food chain and a visitor from Earth finds himself bereft of magic.

The series is high or epic fantasy though I have shied away from the classic “us-good, you-evil” stereotypes so prevalent in the genre. Just because a creature is ugly or so far from human conceptions of what is normal doesn’t mean the being is evil. The fantasy world is depicted as a huge, living and breathing realm. It is based on numerous myths and legends from various cultures. Their motivations and beliefs drive the characters of the story. The fantasy world itself is not pretty. Life for humans was usually nasty, brutish, and short, to quote Hobbes. But our myths and legends were never tales for children. Many were bloody, terrifying, nightmarish even, and showed man either at his best or his worst. Early stories dealt with human sacrifice and were cruel or debauched to the extreme. As with this plane of reality, the insane lust for power drove men, deities, and other beings.

Plots and schemes abound, and one does have difficulty in differentiating between truth and lies. Often, traps of half-truths wait for the unwary.

Thanks to you, the reader, each previous book in the series had its respective days in the sun – each was a bestseller in its own right. Book V tells of the devious schemes of the Trickster God—a colorful and core character since the beginning of the epic—his motivations, and the delightfully intricate web he had made. But as I have always maintained, the core of the story is in the journey, not the destination. The reader might realize that some chapter notes and lore have legend indicators.

TAA stands for the name of the series, followed by the book volume. SOA refers to the book “Stories of Adar: Tales from the Abyss (Book One).” Some elements of the latter were incorporated in Books IV and V. Presenting long stories in another book and literary format enables the writer to explore the viewpoints and experiences of other characters in the epic. We do have a change in the format of the notes and definitions; they are now presented by chapter at the end of the book.

It is up to the reader to decide whether Tyler West is a hero. In the eyes of the protagonist, he isn’t. He has his priorities and views, though a moral streak characterizes his personality, just like most of us. This depiction begs the question: what we would do if we were in his place?

There have been observations about the main character’s reactions to his experiences in Adar, and about his unwillingness to adapt and be as hard as the world he finds himself in. The protagonist comes from a world where the