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Chapter 1

I clung to the pain like a badge of honor Blood dripped in a slow splatter froash in my forearm, and my left knee throbbed froed rime, and squinted at the rove trees a dozen feet across the clearing Two blue-white splodges of arcane potency writhed on his chest like knots of electrified wor

“Well played,” Gestas wide then folded theainst the rich bronze of his heavy-featured bestial face “You have been practicing”

“Every single day,” I replied It was the first tiood “Games” with Gestamar—the demonic lord Mzatal’s essence-bound reyza—were like a combination of hide and seek, tackle football without pads, and hunting, all while trying to reach and defuse a bomb that happened to be on the other side of a kick-your-ass obstacle course from hell

Not that ere in hell or anything remotely like it This world, known simply as the “demon realm,” was about as far from the Earth concept of hell as a rain forest was from an oil refinery

And as et battered, bloodied, and knocked on rateful for every scenario he ran withand conditioning I could get—physical, round as a cop and deet me so far with the kind of enemies I had: Rhyzkahl, Jesral, Amkir, and Kadir—four demonic lords dubbed by Lord Seretis as the Mraztur, which loosely translated as “ asshole dickwad defilers”

The designation fit perfectly

Those four were bound and deter Too bad I had other ideas

I wiped blood from the Glock with a relatively clean corner of my shirt and jammed it into its holster at the small of my back Technically it wasn’t a Glock at all, but a ht and action near indistinguishable froun was an integral part of both offense and defense on Earth Aunpowder, and potency pellets—an ingenious creation of Mzatal’s—turned the thing into what I lovingly called un The option to includein live fire scenarios rocked

“You endure much for Idris,” Gestamar said and swept a clawed hand over his chest several times to clear the residue of the potency strikes

“He’d do the same for me” My jaw clenched Like me, Idris Palatino was a summoner—a human with the ability to open a portal between Earth and this world, the deé, utterly brilliant, and a dauy who I was proud to call friend

But four o, I’d inadvertently al a ritual to retrieve Vsuhl—one of the three essence blades And, when the dust cleared, Idris was gone—kidnapped by the fucking asshole Mraztur

“We’ll be going after hihtened et back to Earth, I have family and friends to protect”