A Scholar’s Journey: The Divine Tempest
A Scholar’s Journey: The Divine Tempest is a no-holds-barred fantasy brawl. It begins when the God of Justice and Retribution opens The Abyss and unleashes a vengeful demon upon the mortal realm of Therra.
Now it is up to scholar Penndarius Greyson and his tormented protector, martial artist Soren Luna Mortalitas, to stop a crisis that would send shockwaves through the very fabric of creation. In addition, Penndarius is waging an internal battle with a disembodied presence attempting to possess his mind. The two heroes must avoid death or capture, but there is a catch: They have only one day to solve a riddle older than history before a dark host of unstoppable demons is released into the world.
The Divine Tempest includes warring factions, betrayal and redemption, and of course, Herrick Erickson-Brigl’s trademark: epic fight scenes. This is the lean, hard-hitting first installment in a series that follows Penndarius’s growth as the avatar of the God of Creation and Soren’s reclamation of his lethal family’s humanity.
Purchase A Scholar’s Journey: The Divine Tempest on Amazon.
About Herrick C. Erickson-Brigl
Herrick Erickson-Brigl has been reading fantasy since he first learned to read and writing it nearly as long. While in college, Herrick’s passion for writing culminated in his first novel, entitled *A Scholar’s Journey: The Divine Tempest*. He is currently completing his second book in that series.
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Soren saw the four guards form a semicircle around him as he closed the bar door gently behind him. He eyed them all calmly, noting every piece of furniture and every person in the room in order to form a perfect image in his mind.
Jadice watched the beginnings of the fight dispassionately from near the stairs at the back of the bar, along with a robed guardsman who was also watching Soren intently.
Soren carefully edged his foot toward the guards as they closed in around him in a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc and cut off his options. The coolness that pervaded Soren's demeanor, along with his balanced stance, caused shivers of anticipation up and down Jadice's spine, a chill that only true warriors felt before a battle, which was a mixture of fear and excitement. Who was this man, Jadice wondered, and where did he come from?
Each of the guards in the semicircle was wearing a shirt of chain mail covered with a white tabard stamped with a silver hammer, the same symbol as the gold hammers on Jadice's and Aedan's tabards. Each wore leather pants studded with metal. None of them was wearing a helmet, and they handled their weapons with the ease of skilled warriors. Some of them had battle scars on their faces, and one was missing an eye, which had been replaced by a garish scar that extended downward through the center of the socket.
Soren observed them all with cold composure. "I will give you one chance to walk away. If you do not, I will finish this," he said serenely as he kept all four within his field of vision.
The guardsmen ignored his warning, and one of them tried to take him down with a less lethal but no less brutal right cross with the haft of his spear. Soren ducked under the swing and left the minimal amount of space under the haft. The spear butt struck the wall behind Soren and reverberated violently, and this left the guard's defenses wide open.
The crimson warrior took advantage of the weakened defenses of the guardsman and with an open palm slammed him across the jaw. The guardsman stumbled away as he tried to clear the vision of stars from his head.
The other three guardsmen closed in quickly and were on Soren an instant after the first strike. Lightning fast, Soren’s gauntlet-armored forearm blocked several thrusts from the three with a stunning display of speed. Then when they came back for another thrust, Soren dodged to the left and front-kicked the middle of the haft of the closest guardsman's spear, propelling it into the other three, which opened that guard's side completely.
Soren spun about and shin-kicked the guardsman in the back of the neck with his left leg and then followed through, pushing him head first into the wooden floorboards with the same leg. A fellow guardsman tried to turn to come to his rescue. Soren, now in a kneeling stance, performed a quick three-sixty sweep with his free leg, taking the next guardsman completely off his feet before coming back to a standing position.
The one-eyed guardsman was the only one left, and he thought he had the upper hand. All notions of non-lethal force went out the window, and he ran forward and attempted to perform a close-range downward stab into Soren's chest.
Quick as a snake, Soren batted the tip of the spear aside, coiled his other fist, and struck the one-eyed guardsman in the crotch, which caused him to buckle in anguish as he gasped for breath. Soren grabbed his head as the guardsman he had just punched curled up to protect his groin and pounded him, face first, into the floorboards for good measure.
The guardsman he had sent reeling at the start of the fight had regained his senses and was approaching again. Meanwhile, the guardsman Soren had slammed into the ground with his shin was slowly levering himself up. Soren reached out to grab that man at the back of the head and drag him down by the hair, easily pulling him over backwards.
The guardsmen tried to struggle against the hold, but to no avail. Soren then stomped down on the face of the guardsman he had punched in the crotch, relieving the one-eyed guard of his senses.
The last remaining guardsman ran toward Soren with his spear ready and was about to stab Soren with it. With a quick movement, Soren pulled the guardsman he had by the hair to a position in front of his body, to act as a shield. The attacking guardsman reacted and halted his stab, with the spear tip barely touching his comrade's chest.
Soren laughed and booted his captive into the attacking guardsman, who only just managed to move his spear out of the way so as not to impale his comrade. They fell down together in a mass of legs and kicking feet.
Keeping his eyes on Jadice and the white-robed man, Soren grabbed the struggling guardsmen by their heads and smashed them together with a resounding crack that caused them both to fall still.
Jadice watched the fight impassively. Then the white-robed man stepped in front of his commander.
"May I act, Your Lordship?" he asked, with his eyes locked on Soren.
Jadice nodded. "Do your worst, Aneurus," the larger twin said in his deep baritone.
"You want to step up?" Soren asked as he stood to face the two of them.
Aneurus began moving his hands in an intricate way to cast a spell. "Pelmanalriakosa faromilosakosaros vasaral," he said in the spidery language of magic. "Wind, fickle lord of the clouds, cut the air and blast my foes away," he finished and slapped his hands on the ground.
The faintest outline of a bird, Anneurus’s kirin, appeared in front of the magus for the briefest moment before diving down to the ground and disappearing. A few runes appeared on the ground where the hawk had disappeared, and four spinning, scythe-like semicircles of wind appeared before Anneurus, visible because they kicked up the residual dust in the air and dirt from the floor.
Soren twisted his neck to adjust the vertebrae with a crackle. "Wonderful," he commented with displeasure. "They have a magus."
Aneurus flung his hands outward, and one of the scythes streaked toward Soren, while another immediately took its place near the conjurer.
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Herrick is also kickstarting the editing for his second book “A War of Lies”
*Book Two, A War of Lies:* Three nations stand divided by a devil’s trick that will spark a war between the elder gods and their daemonic children. Penndarius and his fierce protectors travel to the fertile land of Utopia to delve deeper into Therra’s hidden past. Will the answers they find be what they are seeking, or will they reveal something much more sinister?
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