Ninth Harmonizer Episode Four: Beholden

By Brett P. S.

The trio heads to Filgar, a city in the marshes of the Solf Empire, in search of bed, breakfast and supplies for a suicide mission if there ever was one. The smoldering ruins of Valsur seem a distant memory to Rita. A good night’s sleep is all the trio will get once they catch wind of not one, but two Harmonizers on their tail. Friends and enemies mingle in a battle of wits and remnants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brett P. S.
• Release date: May 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463162149

Brett P. S.

Brett Sawyer (1986), born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, is an indie author who writes short stories & novellas, from science fiction to heroes. He graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 2015 with a Bachelor’s in education and currently teaches game design at Lake Land College.Short Change arrived at retailers in November of 2014, the start of a hero series where ordinary people gained powers over oddly specific domains, following the story of a shorter than average hero who can telekinetically manipulate small units of currency.Short Change is free on “smashwords.com/profile/view/BrettPS” and Barnes & Noble along with other samples and short fiction.Brett’s popular releases in science fiction include “Dark Station” and “Tales from the Colony: An Interstellar Saga.” Dark Station is a deep space thriller set aboard an abandoned orbital science station where Ben Gebbley and his crew secretly investigate the disappearance of the original staff before others come to claim the lost assets.

Book preview

Table of Contents

TEN YEAR WAR

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

EPILOGUE

Ten Year War

Suffering Strife of Iidris

The continent of Iidris, the known world, has met the last ten years drenched in the blood of a bitter war over a precious and non-renewable resource ...

Remnants.

Last vestiges of a forgotten past and the echoes of a people too mighty to have merely eroded in time.  These stone fragments are endowed with cosmic functions, epitaphs that range in size from the smallest diamonds to grand stone-craft mobile fortresses.  remnants make life in the wastes bearable.  They fuel labor, transportation, medicine … and war.

remnants cannot be reproduced.  They cannot be synthesized and they can hardly be repaired.  remnants are dug from the wastes.  Countries excavate them by the masses in quarries that stick in the ground like a gaping wound, countries like the Solf Empire, a decadent reserve of patron nations from across Iidris.

Vast barren wastelands and dunes spread across most of the continent, leaving those with no stomach for The Wastes to seek shelter in the few places filled with green grass and flowing rivers.

The Solf Empire of the eastern dominance took its foothold in the valleys and mountains that cradled the wastes.  Green forevermore, a heart to dwell in its own lush power, cautious to venture forth into the emptiness and cold.  To the west lay the crimson kingdom of Muisan.  Rolling hills and steep plateaus lay covered in an eternal autumn.  Gold and rusty grasslands matched only by its mighty treetops and a breaking dawn.

This ten-year war was not the first time Muisan had shed blood against the steadily growing Empire.  The Kingdom had always proved a thorn in Solf’s side, but never a competent foe.  After continuous swings in a declining war effort that left Muisan’s people battered, starving and weary, the battles shifted in favor of Muisan.

Something happened in the battlefields of the wastes, something strange and ghastly dug from those quarries that gave Muisan’s might the upper hand in a war that should have ended five years ago with a broken people and a new addition to the Solf Empire.  Rumors circulated like propaganda and a new spirit of hope birthed from the blood soaked soil.

In Iidris, wars are not fought over Principle.  They are fought over quarries and mines, because it is in these grave sites that real power is obtained.  Fortunate are those with the military might to walk the wastes unhindered, to walk the rows of tombstones that litter the shadows of a once-dead world and pluck free those hearts of stone.

Chapter 1

New Direction

Ever Tree, Gana

The roots of Gana’s Ever Tree burrowed deep beneath the earth into a winding tapestry wrought by Gods and things mankind will never know.  Solfan, Muisani, Lilite.  The nature and nation of Rita’s fellow human beings would never understand the machination she had become.  She felt the power deep in her bones, a rippling energy that surged through each grain of sand.  Her connection to her sands had grown stronger than before and deep in her skull, she knew the name of the Master Remnant that made it so. 

Rita cursed under her breath as she stared down Gilraf.  The two of them, Ham on her shoulder, stood in the thickest