Rise of the Archmage Alister
GROUNDED
Book Two
of the RotAA Series
After a horrible attack on the capital city during the funeral of the archduke,
things have gotten tense for the Kingdom of Mare.
As a ducal territory, the Severins have a responsibility to care for and protect their people and their nation. That especially is true in times of war. With political drama and violence looming over the horizon to the west, his core damaged from the encounter with the crystal terrorist, and everything changing as they move from Keene to Rythwith, nothing is simple anymore.
In these years before he turns 13, before he can go to the academy, all Alister can do is train and prepare.
RotAA: Grounded is a story about doing what you can within your means, making friends, and the politics of a growing war. This second book in the RotAA series, meant to be an interlude, shows Alister as he grows from a child into a teenager, and ends right before they go into the academy.
Excerpt from RotAA: Grounded
The carriage driver was dead, a black spike the length of a person through his chest and abdomen. It flickered and twitched like a dying bug inside the corpse as it slowly slumped into an inky liquid. The horses were lying dead on the ground as well; the carriage had its wheels smashed inside one of the carcasses that were torn in two with organs trailing down the road. Like a massive bite had been taken out of their middles, all of them were cleaved apart. A couple of knights who had been beside the carriage for safety were injured and in bad shape. One had a cut across the metal of his chest plate, coated in boiling ink. Another was stumbling to his feet after his horse had suffered a terrible fate.
Perched atop a thick branch was a beast of prey, wings jutting out from its body as if a mockery of biology. While it seemed to be a bird, it was hard to tell as it was a mass of black undulations that paid no mind to reality. Wings, a dozen in total, flapped in an orchestra of chaos as it took off from the large branch towards the group. When one wing moved, it wasn’t a smooth motion, it buckled and twisted in on itself before jutting out at random angles, before eventually settling back to how it was supposed to move. Like a glitch in reality, all of its limbs followed this twitchy mess. Despite this, it was swift and almost as large as Alister was tall.
