Twinborn Short Stories

Yancy Taruk doesn't look like much. That's part of the job when you're an assassin. But someone knows Yancy's secret and has set a bounty on his head sure to draw others of his kind like sharks to a shipwreck.

With the harbor watched, Yancy is trapped on the island of Marker's Point until someone collects that bounty. Or until there's no one left to collect.

The former first mate of the pirate ship Honest Merchant managed to survive the ship?s capture by the Acardian Navy.

With just a beggar?s haul of coins in his pocket and the sea-soaked clothes on his back, Robbono Stalyart sets about getting back on his feet using one of his favorite skills: the ability to separate men from their purses over a game of Crackle.

It began with a charge across the frigid landscape, heading for the human city at the foot of the mountains. But for two goblin soldiers in the wrong place at the wrong time, it ended half a continent away.

Plucked from the battlefield by titanic magic that cared not a whit for what became of them, they exchanged places with a human sorcerer en route to the battlefield. Dropped into a city of half a million humans, the two goblins scramble to find a safe haven and figure out a way back home.

His human assistants call him Mister Kookaroot. Goblin tinker K'k'rt considers that close enough. The foreign wars weren't kind to K'k'rt's fortunes. As a last resort, he returns to goblin lands in the hope of finding a new patron.

The question is: who is going to hire a washed-up old tinker and his oafish entourage?

Tanner and Rakashi find themselves on opposing sides of a family dispute. Tanner's mercenary company has been hired to return a wayward daughter to her father. Rakashi happens to be traveling with the caravan where two fugitive lovers have taken refuge.

As the two sides clash over the fate of two innocents, Tanner and Rakashi cross swords in a duel that neither of them expected.

Cadmus Errol is an apprentice clockmaker rankling under the tutelage of a master he has already surpassed. He has dreams of greater things, but too much patience for his own good. When Jennai steps into his life, she derails the track his life was stuck on.

Together, they find a purpose, a crusade. She introduces him to a whole new world, and it needs a Mad Tinker, not a clockmaker.

Argen has always had trouble sleeping. He's tried drugs, both prescription and otherwise, sought magical help, and seen numerous doctors and therapists all to little avail.

But with science and magic having failed to solve his problems, Argen turns to religion. A crazy cult of crackpot scientists believes that certain troubled sleepers—like Argen—are actually seeing another world.

Much to the chagrin of his adopted sister Perranine, Argen embarks on a journey of self-discovery and pseudoscience. He'll discover the root of his troubled dreams, as well as a shocking secret about his birth parents.

Greuder owns a small pastry shop in Scar Harbor, but his true employer is the Mad Tinker, Cadmus Errol, owner of the largest private company in the world. Errol Company doesn't just build the impossible, they do the impossible.

With access to knowledge from another world, they exploit the technological gap to bring advanced machinery and science into Tellurak. Those who can see that other world are rare and valuable and a select few of these twinborn are specialists in finding and recruiting others of their kind.

Greuder has served longer than any of the others, baiting his shop with recipes from the world of Korr, and seeing whose memories they awaken. Now though, his operation is unraveling and he must rely on the agents he helped recruit to smuggle one last twinborn to safety: himself.

Rejected by his sorcerous family, Brannis Solaran sought to make a name for himself in service to the knighthood. Stationed on the border of the ogrelands, he and his fellow knights have been ordered to drive back the ogre incursion and put an end to their raiding. He was armed with a sorcerer's education and a blade that bore a deadly magic.

But the ogres aren't simple creatures, and this is their forest. It will be up to Brannis to save the battalion when command falls to him.

Tod and Jodoul are not your model soldiers. They were conscripted into the Kadrin Imperial army and are making the most of it. Taking dereliction of duty to an art form, they regularly gamble while on watch. Their battalion is on the hunt for goblins, not trying to hide, so why should the sentries need to be all that vigilant … This lost scene was originally the prologue for Knight in the Nighttime (formerly titled Firehurler).