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  Forbidden Arcana

  Sable

  Tamryn Tamer

  Copyright © 2019 by Tamryn Tamer. All rights reserved. www.smirkpublishing.com.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Except in the cases permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All characters are 18 years of age or older.

  WARNING: This work contains over the top graphic sex and violence.

  Contents

  Also by Tamryn Tamer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Acknowledgements

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  Also by Tamryn Tamer

  Forbidden Arcana Series

  Jinx (Book 1)

  Ariel (Book 2)

  Mirage (Book 3)

  Theia (Book 4)

  Sable (Book 5)

  Luna (Coming Soon!)

  Chapter 1

  A Beastly Battle

  Alliances always seem like a good idea. A person has a powerful enemy so they join a guild, a guild has a powerful enemy so they join an alliance. It’s sound in theory. But in practice, a person who joins a guild accepts that guild’s enemies and a guild that joins an alliance may now have a hundred enemies. It’s all escalation.

  Tiamat, Endgame, and Sin banded together to solidify their power and before long, Ambrosia, Phoenix, and Grim created an alliance of their own with the sole objective of crushing their enemies. What had started as a relatively small dispute had escalated into a war.

  The big question was what Jericho’s guild could do to help the cause. His guild was young, small, and weak. The only thing he brought to the table was star power. He was still the most powerful mage in Forbidden Arcana and had mastered elemental magic, sensory magic, and even light magic.

  That’s probably why Raven put him and Terra on diplomatic missions to negotiate ceasefires with old enemies or find new allies. Everybody was interested in meeting the most powerful mage in the game.

  Unfortunately, diplomacy wasn’t Jericho’s strong suit.

  “Jinx!” Terra yelled while firing a flurry of arrows and ducking behind a rock. “Get over here now!”

  “I don’t take orders from you! Bimbo! Harlot!” Jinx yelled back while dodging an overzealous warrior and countering with an uppercut that nearly took his head off.

  “Why did you bring her?” Terra angrily asked Jericho. “You know how she is!”

  “She wanted to come,” Jericho laughed while eating a chocolate bar. “And if Jinx hadn’t done it, I would have. Darwin should have kept his hands to himself. As soon as he touched Jinx, he was a dead man.”

  “It was a shoulder touch!” Terra yelled. “It’s not like he smacked her ass or grazed a tit!”

  “Jinx said it was a sexual shoulder touch,” Jericho said.

  “Even if it was a sexual shoulder touch, she executed him!” Terra growled. “She literally punched an unarmed man’s head off before the negotiation began! And Darwin is a huge fan of yours and is super interested in familiars! That’s why Raven asked us to negotiate a ceasefire! She did not ask us to assassinate a guild master!”

  “No,” Jericho grinned wickedly while finishing the high-calorie chocolate bar Theia made for him. It turned out that while his new Seraphim familiar couldn’t fight, she was a master of all professions, including cooking. “She said to try.”

  “Jericho,” Terra’s eyes widened as Jericho started to transform. “Goddammit.”

  Since Jericho had no leads on new familiars, he spent most of his free time training. His training in elemental magic had evolved from strengthening his elemental pathways to creative implementations of the magic such as superheating sandstorms until they became whirlwinds of glass.

  That wasn’t the only thing he’d been practicing. Since unlocking sensory overload he’d been working on enhanced transformations. He practiced changing into various other creatures such as bears, wolves, and birds. But he didn’t stop there, he’d realized that with the right recipe and enough control, he could transform into anything for a limited time.

  He was excited to give his newest transformation a test run. Jericho activated both elemental and sensory overload. He filled his elemental pathways to double capacity with fire, water, earth, and wind and started compressing everything as his body grew.

  The books Jericho acquired from the Raycastle bestiary proved infinitely more valuable than he originally believed. They provided information about the different monsters’ compositions down to what lined their stomach. Before he learned to activate sensory overload, he believed the information was superfluous. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  He started releasing earth magic into himself while merging it with his bones increasing their toughness. Liquids and gasses inside of him merged with everchanging organic matter as he continued to grow. Anything in his body that seemed like it might break he reinforced with light magic to keep it stable. He finished by hardening his flesh with stone before heating it with condensed fire.

  “A molten drake?” Terra scoffed as Jericho rushed to join Jinx in battle. “Seriously?”

  “We need a tank,” several archers yelled while taking aim at Jericho as he rushed them. They fired their arrows only to have them glance off Jericho’s molten scales. “Tank!”

  It had taken Jericho some time to get used to transformations but the payoff was worth it. With mages becoming more abundant guilds had started adjusting their strategies. Magic resistance armor was getting popular and players were tasked with killing mages first. But in Jericho’s case, they rushed in wearing magic resist armor and drinking magic resist potions only to find their opponent wasn’t a mage at all, but a heavily armored flaming lizard.

  Jericho roared as he tore off three ranger’s heads in a single swipe of his massive claw.

  “About time! Loafer! Slouch!” Jinx said while effortlessly dodging three players attacking her from behind. She sent out three spikes of spirit magic stunning them before unleashing a barrage of punches culminating in three crushed corpses.

  Jinx could hold her own against the best players for a time, but the longer she fought, the more her spirit exhausted. This meant that they needed the fight to end quickly which wasn’t going to happen with so many opponents.

  Jericho created an army of illusionary Jinx’s for her to hide in as she dashed around killing enemies. By offering her places to hide and rest he could limit her fatigue.

  “Hey,” Terra called out to Jericho while rushing toward him. He lowered a wing giving her cover from incoming arrows. “So, I had an idea. What do you think of artillery?”

  “I like the sound of that. Hop on,” Jericho growled as Terra climbed onto his back, careful to avoid the streams of lava between the warm stone. He lifted his wings offering Terra additionally cover as he marched forward into the oncoming soldiers.

  “How far are we going to take this?” Terra asked while sniping enemies in the middle of swapping their magic resistance gear for physical resistance. “We can’t fight this many enemies for too long. Not to mention reinforcements.”

  “No idea,” Jericho said while taking off an assassin’s head with his claw. “I imagine Jinx will run out of steam
soon. There’s about fifty of them and three of us. The strong ones are hanging back until we’re exhausted.”

  “Kill them all! Cowards! Chickens!” Jinx said while dealing a spinning backhand followed by a left hook to an assassin. Another assassin caught Jinx’s knee to the face mid-blink. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” Jinx cried out hopping around holding her knee.

  “I got her,” Terra jumped off to grab Jinx. They’d only killed about fifteen players and were already pushed to their limits. And both sensory and elemental overload were going to wear off soon. Terra helped Jinx behind Jericho’s wing for cover. “Maybe we should leave before we run out of luck.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jericho rumbled. “Just one more thing to do. Do you see Garnet, Jackal, and Sledge? They’re the three best tanks in the Amber Hawks. Have you used it today?”

  “Nope,” Terra pulled out Trivium, her legendary bow capable of infusing three arrows a day with dark magic that could pierce anything but light. Terra looked out from behind the cover of the wing. “That’s a pretty tough shot. And they’ll see the arrows coming.”

  “I’ll take care of it. They won’t see them coming,” Jericho said. She nocked the first arrow and pointed toward the officers. “Jinx, want to help her? We don’t want to give them much time to dodge.”

  “Fine,” Jinx said focusing on the three officers watching from almost half a mile away. She started giving Terra the angle, distance away, and distance from the ground. “Left to right. Two-point-three, two thousand one hundred twenty-four, seventy-eight. Two-point-five, two thousand one hundred twenty-four, seventy-six. Two-point-six, two thousand one hundred twenty-five, seventy-eight. Idiots. Jerks.”

  “Alright,” Terra drew her bow and activated Trivia, igniting the arrow’s tip in darkness from behind the safety of Jericho’s wing. She adjusted herself to the first target. “Now.”

  Jericho raised his wing as Terra released three fast darkness infused shots at her targets. Jericho immediately veiled the arrows in illusions before dropping his wing back down to provide cover. He watched as the three officers glanced at each other. He imagined they were asking what that odd maneuver was about. Right before the three of them fell to the ground one after another.

  “You got them. Slut. Whore.” Jinx said bitterly.

  “Message sent?” Terra asked hopefully.

  “Yeah,” Jericho said as he felt his stomach start to eat itself from hunger. “I only have a few more seconds of this at best.”

  The three of them rushed across the hillside toward the Howling Forest as a few dozen players chased after them. Jericho easily deflected ranged projectiles with his wings and assassins were hesitant to blink anywhere near Jinx’s vicinity due to what they saw happen to their cohorts.

  They vanished into the forest and Jericho’s body reverted to his normal mage form. He pulled out more chocolate bars and scarfed them down before his stomach pains became paralyzing. The biggest pitfall of transformation magic was the caloric requirements.

  The players from Amber Hawk weren’t likely to follow them into the forest without reinforcements. Even if they were willing to fight an elf ranger in the forest, they wouldn’t want to fight a mage capable of turning the entire place into a matchbook.

  “They following?” Terra asked looking at Jinx.

  “Not yet,” Jinx said with a hint of irritation. “But they’re not leaving. Morons. Dunces.”

  “They’re waiting for reinforcements,” Jericho said. “Nearest portal is on the other side of them. They know we’re tired, have no reinforcements, and the deeper we go into the woods the more dangerous they become.”

  “Dangerous?” Jinx said intrigued. She turned around and began staring off toward the center of the woods. After a few moments, her eyes lit up with excitement, “Let’s go! Cowards! Weaklings!”

  “You don’t sense anything?” Jericho asked in shock. Even he could sense the giant arachnids and wargs only a short distance away. And things would only get more dangerous from there. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” Jinx grinned impishly. “I sense all of the bugs, dogs, snakes, and monsters. I also sense something fun deep inside the woods. Other spirit beasts! Idiot. Fool.”

  “You make it sound like a good thing,” Terra chuckled. “I think I’d rather take my chances with Amber Hawk.”

  “Are they like you or are they like the monsters?” Jericho asked the enthusiastic familiar. Jericho had seen Jinx excited often enough to know the difference between locating treasure and locating prey, it was definitely the latter.

  “Don’t compare them to me!” Jinx said insulted by the implication. “I am the strongest! Dimwit! Numbskull!”

  “Maybe they’re weak spirit beasts,” Jericho shrugged at Terra. “I say we find out.”

  “Sure, why not?” Terra smiled. “It’s not like we much choice.”

  “Alright,” Jericho said gesturing to Jinx. “Lead the way.”

  They made their way through the forest while eliminating any monsters that decided to attack. At first, Jericho froze the opponents and either Jinx would smash them or Terra would fire several arrows into them. Gradually the monsters became stronger and after a while, they became more resistant to magic. Eventually, only powerful magic would even dent them.

  “How far away are these beasts? We don’t have all the time in the world. Amber Hawks will invade as soon as they have the forces,” Terra said while putting a dozen arrows into one of the heads of a two-headed warg.

  “They keep moving,” Jinx growled smashing the other head of the warg. “They can sense me just like I can sense them. They’re scared! Wimps! Gutless!”

  “Maybe we should just try to pass through the forest then and forget about them?” Jericho said while patting Jinx’s head. “I already have the best spirit beast.”

  “It’s not about that!” Jinx blushed. “I want to fight their king! Clod. Oaf.”

  “King?” Terra asked while killing a large snake that was attempting to approach silently. “What’s that mean?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” Jinx said irritated by all the questions. “Every forest with spirit beasts has a ruler! I want to fight their ruler! Nitwits! Stooges!”

  “But why?” Jericho asked curiously. While it wasn’t unusual for Jinx to enjoy fighting, it was unusual for her to be so adamant about fighting a specific opponent. While she had a preference for large game, the insistence on a specific opponent was odd. “I’m sure you have a reason.”

  “You wouldn’t understand!” Jinx stomped. “I was the ruler of my forest! Then Alistair summoned me away into that stupid room where I sat for years. I was so weak! But now? I need to see how strong I am! Dolts! Twits!”

  Jericho instantly understood. It wasn’t as though he didn’t notice Jinx getting stronger but he hadn’t really thought about it in depth until recently. It was natural to get stronger. But in Castle Black when he felt Jinx’s aura come crashing down on him, he realized the extent of her growth.

  That’s when he started to realize that when he’d found her, she wasn’t her best self. She’d been starving in that room for years. She went from being the most powerful creature in her world to relying on a mage who barely knew magic for protection. It was no wonder she was terrified of the Soul Eater back then.

  “Alright,” Jericho patted Jinx’s head, “Let’s do it.”

  “Seriously,” Terra whined. “We’re almost halfway through the forest! I’m low on supplies, tired, and we really shouldn’t be picking fights. We still might have to fight the Amber Hawk.”

  “I’ll be the one doing the fighting,” Jinx said assuredly. “You can just sit back and do nothing like always. Whore. Bimbo.”

  “Goddammit,” Terra groaned. “Fine. Any idea on how to catch them if they can detect us?”

  “Already have that covered,” Jericho said hiding their spirits in an illusion. It was a difficult trick to master. The secret was you weren’t trying to remove the spirit, but instead creating an illusion o
f a spiritless area, like paper covering a painting. He looked at Jinx, “Did it work?”

  “Yes,” Jinx grinned wickedly. “They stopped moving. Idiots. Morons”

  Jinx rushed off excitedly as the other two followed behind. Jericho found it difficult to keep up with her as she darted between clusters of trees and bounced off stones. He even needed to create a bridge of ice to cross a river while Jinx simply hopped across the stones.

  Terra had no issue keeping up thanks to her elf passive giving her increased stats while in the forest. She could practically fly between trees and leap over rivers without trying.

  “Keep up slowpoke,” Terra laughed while leaping up a ledge. Jericho launched himself up with a pillar of earth and kept running. They were pretty far ahead of him but still in sight. “Jericho!”

  Jericho heard a loud feminine scream followed by several roars and vicious barking. He took out another chocolate bar as he enhanced the muscles in his legs to increase his speed. He regretted it immediately as his insides resisted the transformation and his stomach churned but he forced himself to maintain the transformation and quickly caught up.

  “Get off her,” roared an enormous spirit wolf. It was easily three times the size of Jinx’s spectral tiger form and lot more intimidating. Like Jinx, its flames were greenish blue and it had two glowing yellow eyes. Jericho felt a heavy spirit aura as he approached the scene.

  “Get her off me!” the feminine voice yelped as Jinx straddled a naked brown-haired woman. Her body was similar to Jinx’s but slightly less muscular, and her chest and hips were much curvier. Jinx had her pinned with her hand on her neck.

  “Quiet!” Jinx roared. The woman fell silent as the other three wolves quieted and backed off. Only the large wolf wasn’t intimidated by her. “We’re having a conversation! Whelps. Pups.”