Michael L. Burgess

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?

Despite having their secret revealed, the residents of Melbrook Hall return to Lander University for another year in the Hero Certification Program. Good thing the focus of this year is teamwork, because with their origins known they’ll have to lean on each other more than ever.

What happens when the haggling is done and the shops are closed? When the quest has been given, the steeds saddled, and the adventurers are off to their next encounter? They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters? In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry.

The battle with the Iron Legion has left The Last Horizon battered and broken, drifting in space. Varic needs an exceptional engineer to fix his ship, and there’s only one person for the job: Mell, the master Aether technician. But first, they have to break her out of prison. Mell has been captured by the Advocates, a group of superpowered vigilantes who dominate their corner of the galaxy. They are led by Starhammer, an invincible champion with a personal obsession with Mell.

Academy graduate Natalya Regyri stood first in line for her pick of engineering officer jobs, until, at the graduation party, a classmate turned up dead. Now, betrayed by her friends and framed for murder, she must flee beyond the reach of the Confederation...and any semblance of civilized society. With a damaged second-hand ship and TIC interceptors dogging her step, she nets a smuggling contract that might just get her back on her feet and in control of her destiny. But only if she's willing to make an ore run back to the place she's wanted for murder.

The DFZ, the metropolis formerly known as Detroit, is the world’s most magical city with a population of nine million and zero public safety laws. That’s a lot of mages, cybernetically enhanced chrome heads, and mythical beasties who die, get into debt, and otherwise fail to pay their rent. When they can’t pay their bills, their stuff gets sold to the highest bidder. That’s when they call me. I’m a Cleaner: a freelance mage employed by the DFZ to sort through the mountains of magical junk people leave behind. It’s not a pretty job, or a safe one....