Honour Rae

ATS B6 Ch1: Access To A Secret Place

Here it is! The start of book 6. I hope you're as excited as I am. :)

Arthur woke up as the leader of Blood Moon hive.

That was the first realization he had upon opening his eyes, and the last thought he’d had before he fell asleep – a fitful rest because all night he’d had nightmares about crushing responsibilities. Not a great recipe for rest.

On waking, he sat up in a bed big enough to easily sleep five people… which perhaps s...

SOMD Ch 4: The Journal

When they emerged the next morning, they found the entire ancient city bathed in sunlight. It was all the more impressive, and in the far-off distance, she picked out waterfalls rushing off other abandoned structures.

She half expected the old wind dragon to be outside, waiting for them. But there was no sign.

Iggy reported that he could not scent him out, either.

"That may be an aspect of his power," Numi said, blinking her slightly protuberant eyes. "If he has skills relat...

ATS B5 - Epilogue

Two days later

“I suppose we have to get this over with.” Arthur sighed. “The seers just reported in. We’ll have another eruption either late tonight or tomorrow at the latest.”

There were nods and grim looks all around the room.

He looked around at Horatio, Cressida, Desmond, Sybil, and Marion and his little dragon. No one looked happy about this, but they didn’t put up an argument either.

Well, he didn’t expect any argument from D...

SOMD Ch 3: Orris The Blind

The new dragon could not see them, but clearly sensed Iggy's fire. He stepped closer, his jaw moving slightly to the side to avoid the flames. The firelight caught the long, jagged scars running down his muzzle. Though not one of the scars intersected with his eyes—his blindness seemed to be from a different wound altogether, or perhaps old age.

"Be at peace, children," he said, "I could have easily killed you had I wanted to."

Which was not the most comforting thing he could ha...

ATS B5 Ch46: Brix Has His Say

Note: I was going to wait a few hours to post it, but I can't. This is my favorite chapter of the book.

Brixaby

Brixaby moved forward under stealth. Though he didn’t know why he bothered. No one here paid attention to any purples, which was both annoying . . . and rather gratifying when they realized their mistake.

Beside him, he passed the blue. His magic felt like a guttering candle, and his rider had just stoo...

ATS B5 Ch45: Boss Battle (3)

The scourgling seemed to grow and thicken. It wasn’t dying; it was growing stronger. It opened its clasping mandibles wide, all legs spread out, looking like it was embracing the power.

The shell-like armor thickened, and the few places where attacks had seemed to do damage healed over in a moment. As did the weeping welts.

It had never looked so alive.

“What is he doing?” Arthur muttered. Were Chester and Blood Drop . . . helping it?

No. No, it co...

SOMD B2 Ch2: Long Abandoned City

Without Natura, it would have been impossible to follow the hidden road. It seemed to wind almost randomly throughout the forest. They kept having to stop to reassess because there would be no indication when it would change direction.

Natura paused to sniff and paw at the ground a little bit. They all came to a halt as Natura paused to sniff and paw at the ground a bit.

"It shifted again?" Alice asked. They'd left the meadows a long time ago. It seemed that trees had...

ATS B5 Ch44: Boss Battle (2)

Arthur and Brixaby watched the fight from the outskirts.

 They weren’t the only ones, as a few dozen other Rares from various hives also had stayed back from the retreat. Some weren’t bothering to observe. They were taking the opportunity to kill more scourglings and harvest what they could from them.

But Arthur and Brixaby hovered in place and watched their peers go to battle. Arthur wasn’t sure which power belonged to whom, but suddenly there were lifelike copies of e...

ATS B5 Ch43: Boss Battle (1)

So far, all the ground scourglings in this eruption had been mantis types. Arthur half expected the emerging Legendary scourgling to be similar. Perhaps an extra-extra-large version of the ground runners.

He was wrong.

It was a bug, though.

The throat of the cone seemed to bulge, as if what was crawling out of it was too big for the narrow mouth. The earth shook with even more violence, and finally something gave.

Golden-brown mandibles came out first, followed by a re...

She of Many Dragons Book 2 Chapter 1: Through The Woods

Notes: Yay! I'm excited to start the next book of She of Many Dragons. Reminder (since it's been awhile) as Patreon subscribers you get a free copy of the ebook.

So if you need to refresh yourself on She of Many Dragons, click this link: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/qxq62r0qn1

Alice’s grand adventure through the wilderness did not start on an auspicious note.

She had been a creature of...

ATS B5 Ch42: In The Thick of Battle (2)

Note: Sorry for the wait on this one! I'll be posting another chapter on Friday to help catch up. Also those on the All The Novels tier should keep an eyeball out for something extra to drop Friday as well.

Griff looked reluctant at his order but saluted.

Buzzing upward, Squish roared to get everyone’s attention. When eyes fell his way, Griff circled above his head, then pointed back the way they came: the signal to retreat back to the port...

ATS B5 Ch41: The Thick of Battle

Inside his Personal Space, Arthur leaned back against Brixaby and took out the cards. He wasn’t very excited about them.

Brixaby noticed his look. “They were weak and aggressive. A foolish combination.”

“I know, but I still didn’t like killing them.”

“Think of it this way: It was better that they attacked us than any of our winged riders while they were alone.”

That actually helped. A little.

Arthur didn’t straighten. He was tired, and physical ...

ATS B5 Ch40: Assassins

Brixaby buzzed straight up, getting altitude so he and Arthur could get a read on the situation. It wasn’t good. It seemed that the leading wave of scourglings had indeed reached the farm. Arthur didn’t see anybody running for their lives, but not all the paddocked animals had been saved, either.

The buildings were already aflame, courtesy of fighting dragons that were trying to stem the outward push.

But as many scourglings as the dragons killed, more flowed to take th...

ATS B5 Ch39 - Wing Purple (2)

Arthur focused on a cluster of people that seemed to be heading back in their direction. That would make sense if they realized what was going on and were returning to save their farm and families.

But even as he and Brixaby closed in with the other dragons behind, he saw the cluster halt. One of the dots made as if to break away. The dot didn’t get far from the others before it suddenly disappeared from Arthur’s map.

Someone had just tried to run, and they had been killed. 2025-01-18 05:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

ATS B5 Ch38 - Wing Purple (1)

Arthur and Brixaby lifted into the air, and the rest of the wing followed . . . as an ungainly mob.

We’ll have to work on that, Arthur thought.

Being purples, no one was in danger of running into one another.

Everybody stayed respectfully back and allowed Brixaby and Arthur to hit the portal first. The transition was as smooth and instant as ever—no awkward conversations with a rower. That was a plus.

The first thing Arthur noticed on the ot...

ATS B5 Ch37 - Wing Captain

The bells clanged at full force as Arthur ran into the crater beside the hive complex.

He spared a moment to wonder if he should change out of his civilian clothes and into something more rider-like and professional. Certainly, the other wing captains had close-fit uniforms on with Blood Moon insignia sewn on. Plus what looked like panels of armor to protect vital organs.

After a moment, he decided to forgo the uniform. He wasn’t sure where he would find one, and he was short on...

ATS B5 Ch36 - A Warning

Arthur went into his Personal Space and let out a long sigh at the amount of clothing he had remaining. Or the lack of.

Luckily, he had basic, well-worn, civilian-type outfits. The type that would let him not stand out among non-dragon riders.

He dressed, exited his Personal Space, and went out to the ledge to wake Brixaby up from his nap.

His dragon must have seen his dour expression because he said, “What is wrong? Is it that your mate has gone practicing in another wing...

ATS B5 Ch35: Annoying The Healer

Instead of risking the vertical flight up the top of the crumbly throat of the eruption cone, Brixaby once again opened up the dark portal. Everyone simply walked in, and after a short rowboat ride, emerged outside of the cone.

The rower gave no indication he had seen them only a few minutes before.

Arthur told Horatio to flash a light signal to Sams, who gathered the rest of the wing up and had them land nearby.

Once they were all settled, Arthur gave a brief overview of wh...

ATS B5 Ch34 - It's About Time

When Arthur became aware again, every muscle, every joint was sore. His head rang and throbbed at the same time, and everything from his teeth to the soles of his feet hurt.

He slit open his eyes and looked around. Things were . . . off. He got glimpses of a starlit sky bracketed by the dark outline of bare branched trees. The grass under his cheek was colorless and dry, as if it had never seen water.

Where . . . came the hazy thought. Then h...

ATS B5 Ch33 - The Heart of The Eruption

“The core of this eruption? Where the Dark Heart would be?” Brixaby repeated, visibly shocked. “Are you certain that’s wise?”

That took Arthur by surprise. He had expected he would have to physically hold Brixaby back the moment he mentioned it. He couldn’t even remember the last time his dragon asked for caution.

“Brixaby, what’s wrong?” he asked slowly.

His dragon’s tongue flicked in and out, and he seemed to be at war with himself. “The air is...

ATS B5 Ch32 - A Rich Harvest

“There’s another nest about twenty feet straight down,” he said, opening his eyes. “And another near that, and another . . . there’s a lot.”

Brixaby, who had just finished up with the last ovoid and was storing the Uncommon shard, nodded and took a moment to cast Call of the Heart, himself. His and Arthur’s trust in the card had taken a dip since coming to Blood Moon.

“Yes, I see them as well. Most pleasing.”

“I can reach it us...

ATS B5 Ch31 - Hatching Ground

For a moment, Arthur could do nothing but stare. The room he found himself in made the nest fissures within New Houston look like a half-hearted attempt at a nest.

Not only was the entire room bathed in bioluminescent light, lines of brighter pulsing blue crisscrossed the wall and ended in dozens of soft ovoid clusters. The eggs all pulsed in time with one another, and when they lit up, he could see shapes briefly visible in the soft shells.

There was a cluster stuck ...

ATS B5 Ch30: (Almost) Buried Alive

The whistles came from a particularly dark corner of the cavern. Everybody instinctively swung that way. Arthur beamed his flashlight in the same direction, squinting hard to see through the dark.

Horatio gathered up all of the light around him and cast it out in that direction, too.

What at first looked like the pitch-black curve of the hollow eruption was actually the mouth of another tunnel.

It probably leads past where the ice reached, Arthur thought, his stomac...

ATS B5 Ch29: Down The Hatch

Note: Here's a beefy chapter in honor of American Thanksgiving!

When they emerged from the portal on the other side of the kingdom, it was the small hours of the morning. The moon was visible in the sky, and its light peeked in and out of shredded clouds.

That worked perfectly for Arthur, as less light meant fewer witnesses to see what they were doing.

He spent a few moments getting the wing arranged to his liking before they took off into the air. Brixaby and Arthur ...

ATS B5 Ch28: Don’t look up at the things in the sky.

Arthur didn’t even consider being nervous until he found himself standing in front of his wing riders and faced with their wary expressions.

His wing riders. People who he was responsible for, not only to keep safe during the eruption, but also to make sure they never fell victim to the blood price.

This had all happened very fast, in his opinion. It felt like not too long ago, Brixaby was breaking his shell, and now people were looking at him for safety and what to do ...

ATS Ch 27 - With Friends Like These...

"I'm dead," Horatio said, flopped over on a cushion. "You can't make me do anything, Arthur, because I'm already dead. And dead people just lay here and don't move."

Arthur had come back to the rooms to find Horatio, Cressida, and Joy laid out in various places, groaning like they were actively dying... and not in fact, dead. Even Soledad and Marion looked a little wilted. Their two young dragons who were fast asleep and hadn't even twitched an eyelid at Brixaby's appearance.

Art...

ATS B5 Ch26 - Life Siphon

Warning: Extra meaty chapter ahead!

Arthur and Brixaby weren't the first ones to arrive at the meeting, but they certainly were not the last.

Arthur already carried his wealth of shards within his Personal Space—and Brixaby had his own stash as well—but he and Brixaby still made a show of stopping at their room on the way up, just in case somebody was watching. He wanted to keep as much knowledge about his Personal Space secret as possible.

As the...

ATS B5 Ch25 - Arthur's Spy

Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur noticed that Brixaby had followed him out as well. But most of his concentration was on finding Larry. The exit led to a tunnel which curved sharply upward and led back up out at the crater opening. It was likely an emergency tunnel, carved out for emergencies.

Larry hadn't gone far past the opening. He stood with fists clenched, staring out to the middle distance.

Arthur walked up silently and didn't say anything, just offered his silent suppo...

ATS B5 Ch24 - Spring Awakens!

Arthur finished his conversation with Griff and went outside just in time to see Steve become a dragon rider.

The young man stood before a very... well, there was no other way to say it: the Purple dragon was goofy looking. He had an overall stretched out look with an extremely out of proportion long neck and tail and yellow eyes that stuck out too far from his head. His body length was a little longer than Brixaby’s, but with deep Purple bluish scales. On top of that, his legs were ...

ATS B5 Ch 23 - Congratulations and Condolences

Somebody coughed behind Arthur. He glanced back to see Griff, the Uncommon rider, standing awkwardly in the cave mouth opening.

Arthur turned back to Brixaby, but his dragon seemed to have this covered.

So Arthur gestured for Griff to follow him back into the room. Behind him, he heard buzzes as one by one, the Purples rejected the hopefuls and lifted into the air. Five more took their place, all under Brixaby's baleful eye.

Once inside, Arthur looked at Griff. "I sent for y...