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    Crossed Paths: DragonTide, #9
    Crossed Paths: DragonTide, #9
    Crossed Paths: DragonTide, #9
    Ebook56 pages40 minutesDragonTide

    Crossed Paths: DragonTide, #9

    By Colin Taber

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    About this ebook

    Welcome to a drowning world.

    Long ago, the world offered prosperity and hope for all, but not now. In a new age, after the end of the Dragon Wars, the world is instead scarred and slowly dying. The storms above roll with greater fury, the forests wither, and the seas are ever-rising. 

    Where once great ports sat by the sea, waves now wash over their submerged towers and walls. Once green farms that reliably delivered bounty are now more and more swamped and stolen away year after year by the flooding waters.

    Trade is fading, kingdoms are falling, and people are dying as the ties that have bound their societies together fray and unravel, all under the pressures unleashed by the rising waters of the Dragon Tide. 

    ***


    In this release, Kalia and Spader are on the road home. The two families have fled the coast while Ruck and Tanner seek a way out of the Highlands. Amidst it all, fires smoulder, and Steen in Barterington has begun his chase.       
     

    ***

     

    Dragon Tide is an ebook serial of monthly short fiction releases.

    The first instalment, The Rising, is a short intro of 1500 words or 5-6 pages. This and following instalments will be between 6500-13000 words or 25-50 pages.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThought Stream Creative Services
    Release dateFeb 1, 2025
    ISBN9798230738763
    Crossed Paths: DragonTide, #9
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    Author

    Colin Taber

      Colin Taber was born in Australia in 1970 and announced his intention to be a writer at the innocent age of 6. His father, an accountant, provided some cautious advice, suggesting that life might be easier if his son pursued a more predictable vocation. Colin didn't listen. Over the past twenty years Colin's had over a hundred magazine articles published, notably in Australian Realms Magazine. In 2009 his first novel, The Fall of Ossard, was released to open his coming of age dark fantasy series, The Ossard Trilogy. The second installment, Ossard's Hope, followed in 2011 and was supported by a national book signing tour. Currently Colin is working on the final book in that trilogy, Lae Ossard, and his new series The United States of Vinland. Colin has done many things over the years, from working in bookshops to event management, small press publishing, landscape design and even tree farming. All he really wants to do, though, is to get back to his oak grove and be left to write. Thankfully, with an enthusiastic and growing readership, that day is coming. He currently haunts the west coast city of Perth.

    Read more from Colin Taber

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      Book preview

      Crossed Paths - Colin Taber

      Chapter 63

      -

      A Foggy Night

      Along Newshore of the Young Sea

      Calo drove the cart up the Old Trade Road and into the night. Mara was by his side. Dela also sat with them while Lucia, Tark and Fae were nestled in the tray behind them. They left the chaos of the greyheads’ attack on the coast at their backs and, thankfully, the fog and mysterious flaring blue lights.

      As they took the road and climbed the gentle rise, only two things followed them. The smoke of the dying fires and other people fleeing the fighting.

      Of those also escaping the attack, many were making their way across terraced fields and to higher farms away from the sea. Others walked along the side of the road. Ahead, when the way was lit by the strange blue waves of light that swept in or flared periodically behind them, they could see groups of people scattered everywhere on foot and in carts.

      Eventually, by the time they were half a mile away from the shoreline, they could tell they were clear of the greyheads. Looking back, as the adrenalin and tension of their escape eased, they could see the coast marked by the dull glow of dying fires, the occasional surge of blue light setting the fog and smoke aglow, and even glimpses of clusters of pink, blue, green and purple lamps by the coast where the greyheads were concentrated.

      With their escape from the attack achieved, each of them, in their own way, slowly fell into their own thoughts and reactions to what they had witnessed.

      Lucia sighed with relief as she relived the attack and their flight for freedom. She had lost the farm, but they had also been lucky in their efforts to escape. And she knew it. They were all here, unhurt, and had what they needed to start again.

      That was more than some of their poor neighbours would be able to claim.

      Mara sat there quietly. In spite of her brave actions and quick thinking, she now simply leaned into the comfort of Calo. He, for his own part, watched the road ahead, especially for those walking that way inland. But he also wore a smile. Despite all that had happened, he could not believe how things had turned out. They had escaped and were all safe, and Mara had not left his side since sundown.

      Dela was proud of her son. He had done well, just as they all had, even if a good portion of this terrible night had been filled with luck. And now, more than ever, it seemed her family’s fate was intertwined with that of Lucia and Ruck’s. But that was not so bad.

      Tark and Fae sat together in the back of the cart, a blanket wrapped around their shoulders, as they looked back at the smouldering coast, which occasionally flared with jets of blue. The sight was terrible but also mesmerising. For once, Tark was quiet. He did not ask any questions, not even once. He just watched what was unfolding around him.

      But Fae had something to say.

      She looked out, back to the shore from the road’s increasing heights. Rolling in from the Young Sea were two great jets of blue to flash and flare, the same lethal attacks that had helped clear the way for their escape. The

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