A lord-focused story about planar war, management, establishing order, and the extraordinary paths of sorcerers and knights. Dear readers, my writing is a slow burn, so the beginning moves a little slowly. I hope you'll bear with me.
In the final stages of cancer, he chose to drown himself. When he opened his eyes again, he had become an indentured stable hand whose lord provided "room and board."
Knightly body-tempering techniques, projecting qi and blood, soul engraving, planar rifts... This is a Western fantasy world ruled by nobles, divided among feudal lords, where slavery is legal.
Finn spent two years working his way up from stable hand to the top of the training camp. Just after being promoted to knight, he was told:
"The lord is dead. You must marry into House Thorne and wed the lord's only daughter."
No connections, no backing, no family name. A commoner son-in-law takes over a heavily indebted border barony with fewer than a hundred soldiers, surrounded by four great noble houses that are waiting for it to die.
To the north lie the Everfrost Mountains, a forbidden zone of vicious beasts from which none return. To the east is the Black Forest, where House Klaus is searching for a door that should not exist. To the west lies a rocky shore where large ships cannot dock. To the south are the royal riverlands and three neighboring noble houses watching hungrily.
Thornridge has no way out.
Unless someone can open a door in the sky.
And deep in Finn's soul are the marks of two planes, along with coordinates from the consciousness of a plane.
"My lord, the Valens' soldiers are to the south, the Klauses' axes to the east, the beasts to the north, and the rocks to the west. Which way do we go?"
"Up into the sky."
