Wizardborn World’s First Wizard™ Series Book 03 Aaron D. Schneider Michael Anderle This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both. Copyright © 2020 LMBPN Publishing Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing A Michael Anderle Production LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. LMBPN Publishing PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy Las Vegas, NV 89109 First US edition, November 2020 ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-299-8 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64971-300-1 Contents The Wizardborn Team Prologue: Fidite Nemini 1. These Pictures 2. These Stains 3. These Signs 4. These Questions 5. These Memories 6. These Messages 7. These Surprises 8. These Names 9. These Expectations 10. These Fragments 11. These Ghosts 12. These Deceptions 13. These Misfortunes 14. These Echoes 15. These Guilts 16. These Schemes 17. These Ashes 18. These Insanities 19. These Sacrifices 20. These Allies 21. These Wounds 22. These Pieces Epilogue: Memento Mori Author Notes - Aaron Schneider Author Notes - Michael Anderle Acknowledgments Connect with The Authors Other Books by Aaron Schneider Other LMBPN Publishing Books The Wizardborn Team Thanks to our Beta Team: Kelly O’Donnell, Jim Caplan, Larry Omans, Rachel Beckford Thanks to our JIT Team: Diane L. Smith Micky Cocker Jeff Goode John Ashmore Paul Westman If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know! Editor SkyHunter Editing Team Yeah, I burned like a witch in a Puritan town It lit me It was a good dream —Lit Me Up, Brand New No course was open to me save to leap, with eyes self-bound, into the yawning abyss of the future. —Vathek, William Beckford Blood-Curdling Story That story is creepy, It's waily, it's weepy, It's screechy and screamy Right up to the end. It's spooky, it's crawly, It's grizzly, it's gory, It's the awfulest story (Please tell it again). —Falling Up, Shel Silverstein I devoutly dedicate this book to my wife, my darling, my dueling partner, and the peg o’ my heart. Nothing I’ve ever done of consequence has always been with your love and support. Love you, babe. Prologue: Fidite Nemini Of all the tragedies that had strutted their hour upon the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, none were as heartbreaking as the sight of the theatre as the warlords shuffled in. It had been nearly two decades since the premiere theatre of Moscow, perhaps of all of Eastern Europe, had opened for a show, but in the meantime, the Bolshoi had been ill-used. The Bolshoi had not been afforded the dignity of a placid, dusty decrepitude as the Russian Empire crumbled. There had been meetings held in its concert hall, some public and others more clandestine. There had been vandalism, some more artistic than the rest, with scrawled tragic poetry sharing sections of the wall and floor with crude, anatomically impossible pictograms. There had been treasures and decor and furnishings ransacked for reasons ranging from posterity to fuel for the hearth. There was even evidence of creatures having taken shelter in the place from the feces-encrusted roost in the blackened chandelier to the nesting pile of detritus from which rodent eyes gleamed. Larger but no less feral occupants had been cleared out along with most of their filth in preparation for the meeting. The roof was still intact, though for the past few years, a growing stain had spread like a seasonally swelling inkblot worked in beige and brown. With that had come damp that had crept and wept across the walls and balconies until they were woolly with molds and other less easily classifiable forms of life. The only place that could accommodate the meeting was the central floor. Most of the seats were in disarray, having been destroyed or gnawed by scavengers, and in places, the carpet had been stripped away, leaving the bare boards. Such bare spots near the occupied orchestra pit had seen even the boards gnawed to splinters, and through those jagged gaps on the unsound floor could be glimpsed the dark and glistening depth of the stygian basement. To avoid plummeting into the depths, what seats could be salvaged had been dragged into the center of the hall. Here they formed a three-quarter ring, and to this ring came warlords, commanders of armies, patriots, and murderers. Each man had left his contingent of soldierly bandits without, having been permitted only one attendant at the meeting. Some had chosen their attendant as a tool of intimidation, being escorted by hard-handed and cold-eyed killers, while others were accompanied by men whose skills were strictly secretarial. They fell into separate but roughly equal camps as their attendants shuffled their seats to one side or another. The two tribes eyed each other warily, one band muttering imprecations against “traitorous Whites,” while the other hissed and spat at the “godless Reds.” After the opposing congregations were seated, some time was spent in muted choruses of denouncement, but it never reached beyond that. Finally, realizing that they’d been whispering amongst themselves for some time, a spokesman emerged from each faction. For the Reds, it was a bushy-haired man with spectacles on his prominent nose and a mustachioed goatee around thick lips. Apparently no one had bothered to tell him he looked positively Mephistophelian, or perhaps that was the point. For the Whites, it was a tall, long-featured man with a dark mustache whose crisp uniform accentuated his thin, straight figure. The men eyed each other, the Red speaker seemingly intent on boring holes through the other man with his piercing stare, while the White viewed his opponent as something to be brushed off his brightly polished boots. “So why did you call us here, Trotsky?” the White asked in a drawling voice pitched to express how little he cared. “Did you
