Now Available for Pre-Order: Gulvane and the Dragon

Gulvane and the Dragon is this month's first short story release, and it's now available on pre-order. Releasing on the fourteenth, this fantasy short story explores the idea of an elven lifetime being divided into rooms, and couples it to the idea that dragons choose their familiars with care.

What's it About?

Gulvane and the Dragon is a short story about an elven wizard ready to transition to his fifth lifetime, a dragon who's always wanted an elf of his own, and memories locked away. When the dragon wants to unleash the pain of his past, Gulvane faces a choice: Take the beast's offer, and risk his past lives tearing him apart, or walk away.

How does it Start?

Gulvane walked the corridors of his mind, going deep into himself to remember who he was, and explore who he might become. The years of an elf were long, many more times longer than the span of an average mortal, and Gulvane was reaching another century, his third as a wizard, his seventh as an elf. In that time, he’d lived a lifetime in each of four different occupations.

Walking down the timber-lined hallway, Gulvane traced a hand along the walls, stopping at each of the three doors that kept the memories and skills that had made up his past. The first door was an oaken gold and adorned by a simple spray of leaves and flowers. A small gray-furred creature peered out from beneath the blossoms, its vivid green eyes touched with blue and gold.

Gulvane laid a finger on its forehead and let the bittersweet feeling it invoked touch him briefly. The second door was a glowing bronze, and adorned with a pair of crossed swords. The third door was the color of night, created from a single plank of ebon-wood. A crossbow adorned its centre, painted in a shade barely lighter than the surface that bore it.

Forester, fighter…assassin. Was it any wonder he’d become a wizard?

He walked past the gleaming darkness of the third door and stared at the heavy columns slowly forming in the blank space of wall beyond. Soon. His heart was restless, and soon he would embark on another era of his life.

Gulvane sighed. He had enjoyed his time as a wizard. It had been peaceful compared to what he had been before. The trouble was that he had no idea what he wanted to become next…and he was getting old, his body heading toward the end of middle age. He stood contemplating the slowly growing pillars before retracing his steps, touching each door as he passed.

Assassin, fighter, forester, he could return to any one of them by opening the door and stepping into the mind of who he’d been. Gulvane’s fingers lingered on the bright-eyed creature peering from the flowers, before he shook his head and walked on, focusing his thoughts outwards and slowly returning to consciousness.

He woke to find a dragon standing over his bed.

“You are most entertaining,” it said, “and I have always wanted an elf of my own.”

“You look like a man,” Gulvane replied, “yet I know you are dragon. How is it I know that?”

“You’re a wizard,” the dragon said, leaning forward, quick as lightning, and pinning Gulvane to the mattress by holding the blankets tight across his shoulders.

He bent in closer, until their foreheads almost touched, and then the dragon inhaled, moving his nose a hair’s breadth above Gulvane’s skin, and taking in the elf’s scent. It was frighteningly intimate and terrifyingly predatory at the same time.

“And you are so much more,” the dragon said, on the softest of breaths. “What is it I can smell? Blood and darkness, stealth and the silver shine of an adamantine dagger, the silence of a whisper bow. Deeper, and these mingle with the stench of death and battle, the mirrored arcs of twin blades, the lightning of a great sword—where did you store that, I wonder—and rage, such rage, fading to coldness.”

The dragon moved, stooping over him, and inhaling the scent of Gulvane’s neck, his mouth close enough to the wizard’s throat that Gulvane’s heart sped its rhythm.

Where Do You Find It?

You can find this short story in the collection, A Collection of Dragons, found at one of the locations listed here: https://books2read.com/u/mV6zV6

OR

As the stand-alone short story, Gulvane and the Dragon, at one of the locations listed here: https://books2read.com/u/4DqJlA