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    Witch Hunt: Gryphonpike Chronicles, #1
    Witch Hunt: Gryphonpike Chronicles, #1
    Witch Hunt: Gryphonpike Chronicles, #1
    Ebook51 pages49 minutes

    Witch Hunt: Gryphonpike Chronicles, #1

    By Annie Bellet

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A mute elven archer known only as Killer. Azyrin, a half Winter-orc shaman and his human swordswoman bride, Makha. Drake, the charming, swashbuckling rogue. The fireball-slinging pixie-goblin, Rahiel, and her mini-unicorn, Bill.
    These are the Gryphonpike Companions.

    Arriving in Strongwater Barrow, the Companions find the town riddled with plague and death. Ending the curse and saving the survivors means going into the swamps where monsters lurk and witches wait. Sounds like exactly their kind of day.

    Witch Hunt is an adventure fantasy novella.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDoomed Muse Press
    Release dateMar 30, 2019
    ISBN9781386864042
    Witch Hunt: Gryphonpike Chronicles, #1
    Author

    Annie Bellet

    Annie Bellet is the author of the Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division, The Twenty-Sided Sorceress, and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh.   Her short fiction work is available in multiple collections and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horse-back riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits.  She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.

    Read more from Annie Bellet

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    • 5/5
      This book does a very good job of establishing simple characters with more than one dimension, and the plot was neither convoluted nor predictable. No, this wasn't a megalithic Stephen King novel, but I think it was very effective and enjoyable nevertheless!

    Book preview

    Witch Hunt - Annie Bellet

    Witch Hunt

    A Gryphonpike Chronicles Novella by Annie Bellet

    Copyright 2011, Annie Bellet

    All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

    This story is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

    No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

    Cover designed by Greg Jensen and images by Jay Hilgert.

    Electronic edition, 2011

    ––––––––

    We all know this tale. There once was a beautiful elven princess who lived in a crystal forest in a hidden kingdom far beyond the common worlds. Her voice was unparalleled among the World-singers and her power brought her all she desired.

    Until Wrath and Pride wound their way around her heart, turning songs of beauty and creation into songs of death and violence. For her crimes, she was cast out and cursed to live among the lesser creatures, among the elves and men who had forgotten those who sang into existence the earth they squabbled over. Her voice was stolen; her words taken like ember-waves melt footprints from the glowing sands.

    Her banishment and silence will end when she has purged her crime by doing one thousand good deeds. So she joined with a rag-tag band of adventurers who call themselves the Gryphonpike Companions.

    I am that foolish Singer. These are the chronicles of my path home.

    * * *

    Witch Hunt

    By the time we’d climbed up the Ragged Hills and come through the pass, the five of us had short tempers, worse body odor, and only three days until our Adventuring Guild charter expired and the fines would start piling up. The High Road is a remarkable feat of engineering and while my companions stopped to argue about our course, I wandered a short distance away to admire the clean stone-paved path twisting away into the misty hills beyond. The road, which started at the base of the mountain pass we had just come through and snaked a hundred leagues to the Verdant Coast and the city of Ramsport, was wide enough for two wagons to go side by side, built slightly elevated from the surrounding ground with culverts to let rainwater drain away. It was almost as functional as something my people would have sung into being. Almost.

    I am not the one who got tangled up with a Baron’s daughter, forcing us to flee from the only city with a Guild chapter between Salvat and Ramsport, said Rahiel. The pixie-goblin shook her wand in Drake’s face, then flapped her butterfly-like wings furiously, blowing more of Drake’s human sweat stink in my direction.

    Drake smoothed his black curls with an exaggerated hand motion and blinked the dust out of his eyes before replying. Oi. And I’m not the one who detoured us for a fortnight to find a pearl in a bleeding lake.

    The lake wasn’t bleeding, Rahiel said. And it is a very beautiful pearl with qualities your feeble man-mind cannot grasp. She stroked the black pearl in question where it hung suspended in silver wire around her scrawny green neck.

    It’s an expression, oh, curse you. Drake raised his hands in throttling motion.

    Azyrin, our half-orc shaman, intervened before Rahiel’s familiar, the mini-unicorn Bill, could stick his diminutive but sharp horn into Drake’s thigh.

    Enough. Makha and I consulted maps, we have solution. He folded his blue-skinned arms, managing to look calm and reasonable despite the summer heat, the angry glares directed at him, and the sweat-stains darkening the edges of his thick leather jerkin.

    Splinters! I want to examine that road.

    I took one last look over my shoulder at the open road in the distance, then repressed a sigh and shifted my full attention to the conversation. Makha, Azyrin’s wife and our heavy hitter was crouched next to her pack, finishing the elaborate process of buckling on her armor. She finished messing with her knee-buckles and leaned her chin on her shield before returning my look with a small

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