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RUNEBOUND 8 IS OUT ON AMAZON!

I've been so busy I completely forgot that Runebound 8 released on Amazon today.

An Amazon which is, as becoming sadly common, broken as all hell. Reviews aren't showing up, many ratings are vanishing entirely, it's a complete shitshow. But what it boils down to is that every single review/download/etc matters a ton, and they are seriously important for the longevity of a series.

If you've been keeping up with Runebound, please consider swinging over to Amazon at the link below ...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 315

The River King’s jaw clenched tight enough to bite through solid gold. That may not have been a particularly impressive feat. Gold wasn’t exactly the densest metal. But as far as jaws went, his wasn’t all that strong.

Muscle was a sign of effort that could have been offloaded. A trouble that could have been handed to someone whose time was less worthy than his. He did not do menial labor. That was saved for those who worked for him. It was their honor to serve him.

...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 554

“We have bigger problems than Dorne,” Rodrick said. He interlaced his fingers on the table and leaned back in his chair. “Well. Not problems. But Dorne won’t be one from here on out. So we can focus on the things that actually interest us… such as figuring out who the next person to Sunset should be. That is… assuming Eleven is going to be taking someone else?”

That got everyone’s attention pretty quickly. Everyone turned to look at Koyu. The tall lich paused, clearly so...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 852

“Custom commissions take a week.”

Noah stared at the shopkeeper. He didn’t even bother trying to keep his eye from twitching. That was one of the benefits of wearing a mask. Minor motions in his features were completely obscured from anyone watching.

“It’s a cloth. A fancy cloth,” Noah said. “And all it has to do is some basic blocking.”

“That’s lovely,” the sharp-nosed merchant replied. She adjusted her frilly coat, then sent Noah an annoyed look. “E...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 564-565

“These croissants are really good,” Arwin said through a mouthful of pastry. “Have you tried them?”

“I made them, Arwin,” Lillia replied.

“That doesn’t mean you’ve tried them. I don’t put on every piece of armor I make.”

“That’s… fair,” Lillia admitted. “But yes. I’ve tried them. I’m not quite at the stage where I don’t sample my own work. There’s always more to improve upon. The learning never stops.”

“That’s a very dedica...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 851

Noah’s foot landed on familiar wooden ground. Pulsating veins of sunlit gold throbbed at the edges of his vision and a shower of fragmented slivers of light skittered out beneath his feet.

A thick miasma of energy slithered out from his lungs as he exhaled. He could have sworn coils of golden thread were peeling away from his skin to dissipate into the atmosphere. But, the moment he blinked, it was all gone.

He was back in the tavern room that he and Lee had rented. Lee sat upri...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 553

Everyone from the Menagerie steadily congregated in the Devil’s Den over the course of the day. They all wanted to check in on Vix and make sure that the procedure had gone well. It was a lot more attention than she was used to. There were several moments where Vix had very clearly wanted to slip away.

Unfortunately for her, Anna was being very strict — and attentive — about making sure Vix didn’t go using any magical power that she wasn’t permitted to. And at the moment, that...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 552

Arwin strode down the street behind Koyu, his weariness falling away like the rotting petals of a flower as anger sharpened his mind. They’d left the rest of the Menagerie that had been with them in the Infernal Armory behind to keep an eye on Vix.

For a single, frozen dwarf, the two of them were more than enough.

It was taking just about everything Arwin had to keep up with Koyu. That wasn’t just because he’d spent a lot of his energy crafting Vix’s heart. The lich was fa...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 314

Wess rifled through Brandon’s pockets. He checked the man’s blooded jacket for hidden sections and pulled his shoes off to inspect them for any hidden compartments. He lifted the ring off the dead Outworlder’s pinky finger and was in the process of pulling the man’s pants off when a shadow fell over him.

He glanced up, tipping his hat back with one of his guns, to meet Hazel’s somewhat-horrified gaze.

“Why are you… defiling his corpse?”

“Defiling?” Wess a...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 313

NOTE: Damn it, accidentally de-selected a tier when releasing this. Sorry!

———

The hatred in Brandon’s eyes burned with such an intensity that it sliced through the smoke curling around Wess like a razor. His knuckles turned white as his hands clenched at his sides, wrapped so tightly around his bow that the weapon itself was quaking.

Screams split the air. Magic crashed and the smell of ozone and viscera filled the air in a thick, sickly haze. Metal rang, bel...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 312

Claire’s sword sliced through the air, passing no more than an inch away from Alex’s nose as he vaulted backward, springing off his palms to land on his feet several feet away from her.

“Hah!” Alex exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. “I did—”

Cold steel pressed to his neck. Claire had closed the distance between them in an instant. She sent a pointed look at her sword, then pulled it away and shook her head.

“Don’t celebrate mid-fight.”

“Oh, come on,...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 562-563

Art’s cane clicked against the rooftop as he limped over to its edge where Rodrick sat. The other man had his legs crossed and palms braced against his knees. An expression of intense concentration creased his features even though his eyes were closed as if in sleep.

With a grunt, Art lowered himself down to sit beside Rodrick. He set his cane to the side and let his legs dangle over the edge of the rooftop. The alley below was completely empty. There wasn’t even so much as a rat wa...

Return of the Runebound Chapter - 850

Noah’s eyes snapped open as the ground fell out from beneath him. His heart lurched. He drew in a sharp breath, jerking upright in his bed — except his bed was nowhere to be found. The ground flipped to take the place of the ceiling and then spun back into its proper place a moment before his feet hit cold stone.

Confusion assaulted his thoughts. He nearly tripped over his own feet as his still half-asleep body struggled to figure out what was happening. But before he could fall, so...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 551

It was nearly a minute before Vix managed to get a hold of herself again. She let her arms hang back over the edges of the platform as she stared up at the roof of the Infernal Armory, blood and tears still mixing in a mess on her face.

“How are you feeling? Is anything different?” Arwin asked, somewhat pointlessly, as Anna scurried around Vix, examining her from every angle to ensure her healing magic hadn’t somehow faltered for the first time in history.

“I… I don’t ...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 849

“The cost to sign up for the tournament is 50 crystals,” the merchant said, a sleazy smile pulling across his wide lips. He leaned back in the chair behind the stall, the moonlight illuminating his features in a ghastly glow. “And that’s the law. Any one of the others will tell you the same, but please, feel free to go waste a few hours hunting around for better options that aren’t there.”

The cloaked figures standing in line before him said nothing for just long enough to m...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 550

Song filled Arwin’s mind. Layers upon layers of magic wove through every level of his being. The Infernal Armory’s presence connected him to the others and pumped all of them full of magical energy to ensure they wouldn’t run short during the operation.

Vix laid on the obsidian platform between him and Wallace, her chest cut open and a gaping wound leading straight down to her still-beating heart. Beside her rested a metal contraption that had taken all of them the better part of ...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 311

Hazel gave Wess just about as much information as she could on Brandon and his supporters over the next hour or so. It was probably a good idea. Knowing one’s enemy was the first step to defeating them… or something like that.

Wess was pretty sure there was a passage about that sort of thing in Art of War. Unfortunately, he’d only read the book through quotes that he’d seen floating around online or overheard from men whose closest brush with war had been a scuffle over a diet c...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 549

Ida chewed on a strip of beef jerky. It wasn’t a particularly good piece of meat. There had been a time when she’d been quite used to that. But recent times had changed things. They’d changed a number of things.

Ever since starting her “job” for the Menagerie, she’d been surprised to find just how much things had improved. Perhaps it was simply because her Indrana now had considerably bigger things to worry about rather than if her daughter was useful or not.

Without I...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 848

Vivian pressed her fingertips to the sides of her temples. For once, she wasn’t sitting in her throne room. There were no infuriatingly determined hordes of clergymen trying to get her attention or latching onto her every word as if they were the gospel itself.

She sat surrounded by nothing but the silence of her personal quarters.

It wasn’t often she got a chance to recline back, hunched over like a dried shrimp, with her legs kicked up onto her desk and the front legs of her...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 560-561

Thane sat on the edge of a rooftop, squinting down at the milling crowd below. There were so many people here. He’d known there would be, of course. But knowing and observing were two entirely different things altogether.

But Thane was thrilled to find that, even with the larger group and entirely different demographic of person present on the Menagerie’s street today, his studies about crowd patterns were still correct.

People were still moving the way he generally expected t...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 548

Koyu floated in a sea of white. Nothingness stretched out around him in every direction, spanning past infinity and into whatever laid beyond. The memory of molten gold power still shimmered at the back of his mind.

Before him stood the Mesh.

There was no way to have known that for certain. The man hadn’t introduced himself, nor had Koyu. Neither of them had spoken. And yet, even in spite of that, Koyu knew without a doubt that the plain-looking individual before him was none ot...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 310

“Slow down,” Hazel hissed, holding a hand up. “Are all of you like this? Or did Nobody just send the other psychopath to deal with this?”

“Can I decline to comment?” Wess asked. “And I don’t think I’m a psychopath, thank you very much. Psychopaths don’t feel emotion or something along those lines, yeah? That couldn’t be farther from what I am. I don’t know what you Outworlders were up to before the System popped up and said hi, but I can promise it was a lot more...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 847

The moon’s silver light cut through the clouds in beams to paint cross the streets of Aqua Terra. It washed over the crowds in portions of the city that never slept and slithered into the alleyways that hadn’t been seen a living occupant in months.

Moonlight graced every part of the city. But it did not grace them equally. The light shone brightest at the great peaks of the city that cut through the thick clouds hanging in the night sky, and darkest in the shadowed alleys that neede...

Nightmare Realm Summoner - Chapter 309

Wess waited by the portal as Glint vanished into its depths. The monster hadn’t said a single word. That was, unfortunately, how Glint tended to work. Prying conversation out of him was like squeezing water from a rock.

That wasn’t to say that Wess hadn’t tried. He’d spent the better half of the time on the trip over to the dungeon trying to convince the monster to speak with him. Alex had warned Wess that the monsters didn’t speak.

Wess had ignored that. It mig...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 547

Vix returned to the Infernal Armory a day later than she’d promised to. Arwin barely even noticed her entrance. He and Wallace stood before a wall covered with scribbled papers bearing dozens and dozens of different ideas and discarded designs.

The two of them had been in the armory for just about every waking moment between them. Their only breaks had been to rest for the night to keep their minds sharp. Every scrap of their attention over the past few days had been focused on the co...

Return of the Runabound Professor - Chapter 846

Noah’s badass exit lasted about two seconds before he realized how stupid it would be to leave without looting the idiot he’d just killed. Money didn’t exactly grow on trees, after all. He made it exactly one step before turning on his heel and striding right back into it.

The man’s pockets ended up being empty. That was probably for the best, as they were already completely soaked through with his blood. However, Noah did spot a bronze ring similar to the one that Lee had given...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 845

Noah and Lee stood beneath a river.

Not under it. Beneath it.

The rushing water passed through the very air about a dozen feet above their heads. It wasn’t just floating there on its own. A faint shimmer of translucent energy swirled all along and beneath the river to keep it contained. It did nothing to stop the sunlight filtering through the water, sending patterns dancing down to transform everything beneath the river into a moving artwork.

Calling it beautiful would ha...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapter 546

Vanessa wiped the sweat form her brow and let out a satisfied sigh. She took a step back from the giant barrel and took a step back to give it a once-over. It bristled with the hilts of deadly cursed weapons like the back of a very malformed porcupine.

“Yeah,” Vanessa said. “That’s good.”

The barrel trembled slightly. That was probably a good thing. The weapons were voicing their approval of her sorting technique. At least, that was how Vanessa planned to take it. She ha...

Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 558-559

Niel choked on his pastry.

He doubled over, coughing and rasping for air as he scrambled to grab his drink. Neil pounded his chest as he hurriedly washed the food down before it could attempt to suffocate him. His ears rang as he stared down at the auction stage and desperately battled to make sense of the words that had just intruded past his ears. 

And he wasn’t the only one. All around the Mausoleum, people had either burst into conversation or had suffered similar fates...

Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 844

Noah’s estimate turned out to be roughly accurate. It was several more hours before they were anywhere near Aqua Terra. The closer they got, the more impressive the city became. He was also able to figure out why the word Aqua had made it into the massive structure’s name.

Rivers of water poured through the many tiered layers of the megalopolis, writhing and flowing through its entirety like ever-moving snakes. They were dotted with dozens of lifts and small boats that doubtlessly f...