The dwarven civil war might have ended, but the powers behind it still fester....
Snuv Scavage is about as lowborn as a dwarf can get. With no parents and no home, she tends Arnoch’s battle-goats and sleeps in their pen. But there is something special about this dwarf. Something written in her blood.
When disturbing reports come in from the city of Jeridium, Snuv is sent to kill the heavily pregnant Skald, Nyra Sahtis, before she can give birth to her unnatural child. But Nyra is watched over by the Church of the Way, whose priests have changed beyond all recognition. And she enjoys the protection of Caelin the Cleaver, the most deadly warrior of her generation.
Meanwhile, the wizard Venton Nap has returned to life on Aosia with only one thing on his mind: to bring back his deceased family from the Supernal Realm. Employing a guide from the backwater town of Malfen, Venton picks up on the ill-fated quest that once ended his life, determined to find the fabled lily cats of Rhylion and wrest from them the secret of life.
As the ages old war between the Lich Lord of Verusia and the Witch Queen of Tho-Agoth at last comes to a head, plunging Medryn-Tha into a new age of darkness, Snuv is confronted by a dwarf with a plain-looking axe, which he claims is the legendary Paxa Boraga.
A dwarf who has done his fair share of fighting, and who knows Snuv better than she knows herself.
'A masterpiece of sword and sorcery storytelling. A visceral yet thoughtful epic.' (Bookwraiths Reviews)
When the wolf-men attack and the companions are split up, Nameless and Ilesa find themselves marooned on an island at the center of a newly formed lake.
With the dwarf unable to swim, and a monstrous serpent patrolling the water, it's down to Ilesa to get them back to shore. But can she be trusted, what with the bounty on Nameless' head and her long history of betrayal?
Nils's cat burgling past comes in handy when he takes to the trees to avoid being eaten, but it soon becomes apparent the wolf-men are the least of his worries. Someone, or something, is watching him from the depths of the forest …
Meanwhile, Silas hides below ground in a giant burrow and draws upon the dark knowledge of the Liche Lord's grimoire to keep him safe. But how much credence should he give a book that promises everything?
All hell has broken loose in the Forest of Tar.
Thousands of demonic Feeders consume everything in their path, but top of the menu is dwarf flesh.
Nils has been captured by the Liche Lord Otto Blightey but would sooner be dead, and Nameless is on the run, carrying a warning of doom to the last of his people.
As the Liche Lord and his horde of Feeders relentlessly pursue him, there is little time for Nameless to settle old scores, mend bridges, and pray that the survivors of his butchery at Arx Gravis can forgive him just enough for him to save them.
Only problem is, he's not sure he has the strength or the courage for the task.
With the sentient Axe of the Dwarf Lords as petrified as everyone else, the last hope of the dwarves lies in the hands of a shapeshifting assassin with a reputation for self-preservation at all costs.
'A masterpiece of sword and sorcery storytelling. A visceral yet thoughtful epic.' (Bookwraiths Reviews)
When the dwarven civil war ended, the Nameless Dwarf lay cold upon the battlefield, his broken axe beside him.
But death is not the end in a cosmos ruled by the Supernals, beings of pure sorcery with the power to create worlds.
Nameless finds himself aboard a ship bound for the Feasting Hall of Witandos, but disappointment, rather than beer, awaits him, along with a mountain of unpaid penance.
For the deeds performed in life have their consequences in the world to come, and an evil has taken root at the heart of the afterlife.
An evil that seeks to turn the Supernal Realm into a second Abyss.
When the dwarven civil war ended, the Nameless Dwarf lay cold upon the battlefield, his broken axe beside him.
But death is not the end in a cosmos ruled by the Supernals, beings of pure sorcery with the power to create worlds.
Nameless finds himself aboard a ship bound for the Feasting Hall of Witandos, but disappointment, rather than beer, awaits him, along with a mountain of unpaid penance.
For the deeds performed in life have their consequences in the world to come, and an evil has taken root at the heart of the afterlife.
An evil that seeks to turn the Supernal Realm into a second Abyss.
Cursed by a demonic axe and fueled with an unquenchable bloodlust, the Nameless Dwarf slaughters his own people in their thousands. The survivors flee to the nightmare realms beyond the mountains, where no one has ever set foot and lived to tell the tale.
Freed from the axe, and horrified by what he has done, the Nameless Dwarf pursues them across the known world. Convinced there can be no atonement, he is prepared to sacrifice everything to save the last of his race from extinction.
The trail leads to the brigand town of Malfen, on the fringes of civilization. But no one passes though without paying a toll to an underground boss known as the Ant-Man.
It is a toll that has already cost many their lives.
Publisher's Note: A Dwarf With No Name was previously published as The Ant-Man of Malfen. The most recent edition of the story is included in Annals of the Nameless Dwarf Book 4: Skull of the Lich Lord.
A name destined to be forgotten. A cursed axe. An atrocity too great to be forgiven.
'Gritty, tense, and brutally tragic. High quality storytelling with great characters and a relentless plot.' -- Mitchell Hogan, author of A Crucible of Souls and Aurealis Award winner.
The legend begins...
For more than a thousand years, the dwarves have hidden away from the world in their ravine city of Arx Gravis.
Governed by an inflexible council whose sole aim is to avoid the errors of the past, the defining virtue of their society is that nothing should ever change.
But when the Scriptorium is broken into, and Ravine Guard Carnifex Thane sees a homunculus fleeing the scene of the crime, events are set in motion that will ensure nothing will ever be the same again.
Deception and death are coming to Arx Gravis.
The riddles that preceded Carnifex's birth crystalize into a horrifying fate that inexorably closes in.
But it is in blood that legends are born, and redemption is seeded in the gravest of sins.
For Carnifex is destined to become the Ravine Butcher, before even that grim appellation is forever lost, along with everything that once defined him.
'One of the best fantasy novels I have read so far this year.'
Rebecca Ross, Reedsy Discovery
When a bloodthirsty horde storms out of the north, refugees flee for their lives, among them the skald Nyra Sahtis and Sister Caelin, a priestess who was once a trainer of armies.
But with the capital, Jeridium, under siege from a second incursion, there is nowhere left to run.
As rival armies converge on Jeridium, the Senate are reduced to clutching at straws. In a desperate last gambit, they send the assassin Shadrak the Unseen past enemy lines and into the mountains, where he must find a grief-stricken warrior and his mythical axe.
'Derek Prior always produces masterpieces of storytelling, with great characters full of life, relentless plots, and gripping and intense fight scenes.'
Mitchell Hogan, author of A Crucible of Souls
When contagion turns Wesley Harding’s world insane, and horror enters his home, the attic is the last place left to hide.
At nine years old, he finds himself alone in the dark, amid heaped-up piles of the familiar and the unknown.
Gunshots and howls punctuate the thunderstorm outside. Crashes and groans come from below.
There isn’t much time, and Wesley must uncover the secrets of the attic, if he is to survive the night.
The dwarves have captured Nameless and left the Axe of the Dwarf Lords abandoned on the shore of the serpent’s lake.
With Ilesa gone, it’s down to Nils and Silas to stage a rescue, but first they’ll have to stop squabbling and find something they can agree on.
Meanwhile, the legendary prevarication of the dwarven Council of Twelve is under threat from a people grown tired of indecision.
The survivors of the Ravine Butcher’s massacre want their pound of flesh. Blightey’s grimoire makes more and more demands, and Silas suspects he no longer has any say in where it is leading him.
As his body ails and he grows nostalgic for all he’s left behind, his mind is usurped by visions of a forest of tar, and at its center, wreathed in briars, a staff of deepest ebony.
Nils Fargin wishes he’d never taken the job to escort a dwarf with no name on a madcap quest for redemption.
Ilesa reckons she should have asked for a bigger bounty, and Silas is beginning to think the grimoire he stole from the Academy has a sinister will of its own.
Nameless, on the other hand, is having the time of his life. After all, what more could a dwarf want than a horde of undead to splatter with his axe, a shape-shifting woman who does dwarf especially well, and a wizard who can produce ale out of thin air?
But his ever fragile mood takes a turn for the worse when he discovers a terrible secret at the bottom of the sea—an unstoppable horror that destroyed an entire race, and a mythical axe that brings back the darkest of memories from his recent past.
