Rienspel, Issue 1: The Forest

By Ryan P Freeman

What Rien Discovers about his past will change his future...

Rien Sucat wiles his days away, bored stiff in his small backwoods village. But after he encounters a flaming phoenix, his safe familiar world begins unraveling. Suddenly, all-consuming choices like which profession he’ll learn, or the fate of his missing father, are dwarfed in light of the mysterious firebird, along with the terrible secrets his older brother and the town watch harbor.
Every epic has its own humble beginnings... adventure with Rien as he launches out on his own with the first issue of the Rienspel series. Enter The Forest – full of dark terrors, lost ruins, and long-hidden secrets.

Rien’s tale continues with the next installment of the Rienspel series: Rienspel, Issue II: The Village – OR – Read the entire series by snagging a copy of The Phoenix of Redd, Volume I: Rienspel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan P Freeman
• Release date: Dec 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781979446495

Ryan P Freeman

Ryan was born in Portland, Oregon on February 24th, 1988. She's the (upper) middle child out of four (three sisters – how she survived them is a secret). Currently, she has family scattered all over the western states.Ryan was always a big reader growing up. Ever since her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Yorth spent extra time after school helping her learn how to read, she's been devouring books (so to speak). Growing up in Oregon meant plenty of time for reading since there’s about 7.3 fully sunny days per year there.To this day, she loves the smell of rain, the rumble of storms, and the scent of pine forests. Her favorite stories growing up were old tales with Robin Hood and King Arthur - along with a ginormous rambling list of other myths, legends, and fantasy works.Ryan graduated from high school in 2006 and first attended Central Christian College of the Bible in Missouri, where she met her wife and began writing what would later become Rienspel. Then, by happy coincidence, since they were both already planning on it anyway, they transferred to Hannibal LaGrange College (now University). In 2010, Ryan graduated with a B.S. in Communication Arts.Stephanie Lynn Worcester (aka ‘Steph’ aka ‘Stephalughagi’) and Ryan were married just after graduation. Still writing, she started working in talk radio out of Albuquerque. Later, Ryan and her wife moved back to Hannibal, MO in 2011 where she eventually worked in marketing for an area non-profit, was offered a job as a pastor, joined the St Louis Writers Guild, and founded the Hannibal Writers Guild.She began publishing her fantasy works in 2016. As of June 2018, she is represented by Patty Carothers of Metamorphosis Literary Agency. Ryan lives with her wife in an old Victorian about 300 yards from the Mississippi River.

Book preview

Rienspel

Issue I:

The Forest

© 2017 by Ryan P. Freeman

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

Cover designed by Laura Faraci

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Praise for Rienspel:

"Rienspel is a libation to the human soul. It is fantasy at its purest: a celebration of the myth, of the beauty of nature, of friends and family and forgotten goodness. The world and characters the author has created are simply unforgettable. Best of all, Rienspel is an unrivaled example

of how fiction can indeed be true."

- R.E. Dean,

Author of Blood for Glory

"Freeman’s style combines a John-Grisham-suspense and a C.S. Lewis-high-fantasy flare, to keep his reader

hooked. Page-after-page, I found myself wondering,

‘what’s going to happen next’.

Readers will be asking for the sequel."

- Donna Lowe,

Speaker and Author of Radical Love...Forever Changed

and Examine Your Heart

"High adventure meets high-fantasy in Rienspel. In a world of tall trees and elves reminiscent of Tolkien or Terry Brooks, Freeman brings the inquisitive Rien to life in a Celtic inspired world. With a few twists along the way Rien’s exciting adventure will carry you through to the very last page."

- Brad R. Cook,

Author of The Iron Horsemen Chronicles

Chapter I

From Darkness to Light

Atall figure sped through dense woods at twilight. The sound of pursuit - monstrous footfalls – came crashing only a breath behind. Honed arrows whizzed by. Dull thuds indicated where they deeply embedded themselves in thick-grained forest trees. The fleeing boy’s heart pounded like a master smith’s forge - crash crash crash. He had wandered too far from firelight and now he was paying for it. His vision blurred with sweat… luckily, he knew the woods infinitely better than his persistent hunters did. Leaves whirled by in reds, browns, and yellows streaking wild pale light through curling, heady mist. The forest shadows grew, ushering an ominous night. The boy wished he were indoors, safe behind strong stone walls or around a bright bonfire… because he knew sinister things lurked in the woods after sunset. And now they were after him.

Because of what he was…

There is no escape, Woodspirit! There is no more pretending among the true Sons of Poseidon! The ringing voice was high and piercing, and somehow vaguely familiar to the fleeing figure. The heavy footfalls charged ceaselessly on with an unsteady, lurching pattern, crushing underbrush as it passed.

The boy dodged into a thick hollow of trees, hoping to hide in the gathering tendrils of mist. His lungs burned - tempting his mind to surrender to whatever grim fate the hunters intended. Vaguely, the boy began wishing for his familiar village and his mother… for the girl he would probably never see again… and for his brother.

The boy’s last thought forced him to shudder… remembering the cold, fell light kindled in his older brother’s eyes the last night they ever saw each other…

The boy peered around the massive oak trunk he had taken refuge behind. Just across the moonlit glade, one of his hunters, a man ten feet tall and clad all in dark green and leather cast his gaze here and there, relentlessly searching. The same fell, maniacal light seemed to glow out of the hulking figure's hazel eyes the boy's brother had, once upon a time.

The lean boy shivered again.

Rien Sucat, you are summoned by her majesty the Emerald Queen to face your crimes against Rillium. Surrender. The glimmering light glinted off a trident-shaped broach.

Using the brief halt to gulp the nippy air, Rien wheezed, trying to regain his breath. Glancing left, he thought he saw a long, stretching hollow between the intertwining bows of gargantuan trees and immediately bolted noiselessly away.

A cry rang out within the sylvan depths, You cannot flee forever, Sucat! We know what you are!

The moon, looming and perilously bright, peaked far above an eastern aspen speckled ridge. Glimmering through the shivering, pale, golden leaves, the shafts illuminated the long, northerly natural tunnel which Rien stumbled into. In the shadowy distance, the sounds of the hunters seemed to be slowly fading away to the south. Idly, the panting boy wondered what his friends, the other Rangers and General Fy’el, would think when he did not return.

Would they miss him?

Or merely continue their desperate errand to restore justice and peace to a kingdom who had banished them within the forest depths they had once protected. Already the boy desperately wished he had not decided to wander from the Rangers’ camp earlier that day.

The heavy footfalls were not close anymore, but they weren’t far either… Rien wrapped his tattered grey cloak around him to ward off the pooling mist and fall chill and began trotting northwards, following the hollow through the trees. Soon the forest’s night sounds began to sing softly again as the moon climbed higher in the late October sky. Colored leaves crunched under the boy’s soft, supple boots as he nimbly advanced into the uncharted woodland depths. Soon his racing imagination began to wind down - and slowly the once frightening tree shadows resumed their old friendly, watchful repose.

With another step, Rien’s boots stumbled over a half-buried paving stone, almost entirely hidden by leaves and mossy dirt. He swiveled his head south down the long, narrow tree hollow and then back towards the looming north, to the darkling, snow-capped mountains dimly reflecting the moon and starlight. Judging it was now safe, or as safe as it ever was in the Great Forest these days, the boy threw himself onto a nearby hazel stump.

I must be on some kind of road, he thought as he scraped the loose soil and leaves away with his boots, revealing a worn road.

If he had not been dog-tired, sore and hunted, Rien would have been immensely curious. On either side of what he thought must once have been a spacious road there looked like round white stones lining the way. The trees grew close all around him, and something in the tall boy told him they were up to something. Whenever the wind blew through the branches the creaking sounded like whispering, but for good or for evil Rien could not tell.

I mean you no harm, old Hazel and Ash, he muttered softly.

But only a Borean wind breathed through the branches and broad, crackly leaves, which floated lazily down on the crumbling road. The boy picked up one of the round, white, lining stones lying forlornly near him and examined it. Its surface was smooth, yet pitted and scoured with ageless years of pedestrian service to who knew where. It reminded