Showing results by author "Aaron Michael Ritchey" in All Categories

Wounded Army vet Logan Murray thought mimics were the stuff of board games and dungeon manuals...right up until one ate him. In a flash of snapping teeth, Logan suddenly finds himself on the doorstep to another world. He’s been unwittingly recruited into the Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons - the most prestigious interdimensional school dedicated to training the monstrous guardians who protect the Tree of Souls from so-called heroes. Heroes who would destroy the universe if it meant a shot at advancement.

After narrowly surviving his first year at Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons, Logan Murray - army vet turned fungaloid - thought the hardest and weirdest days of his life were finally behind him. Logan has never been that lucky. Students are being killed, more so than usual, and no one is quite sure why. Logan and the Terrible Twelfth suspect it has something to do with Arborea’s secretive past. Worse, solving the mystery is only one of Logan’s many problems.

Logan’s sophomore year was fine. Destroy an ancient evil. Solve a murder mystery. Tell way too many silverware jokes. No big deal. His junior year, on the other hand, is shaping up to be the deadliest of them all. Shadowcroft Academy is hosting the Interschool Tournament, and though there is no Goblet, Logan and the Terrible Twelfth are about to find themselves tossed into the Fire.

Meet Calcannis Illudere, a certified dungeon accountant (TM), who takes on failing dungeon cores, turning their lairs into the hero-slaying death traps of their dreams. On Fidotopia, a world full of otherwise happy puppies, a sudden shift in the Tree of Souls has flooded a cynical stink slime’s disorganized dungeon with new energy. Now that rubbish dungeon is the number one destination for powerful raiders looking to level up quickly.

Niko has long since given up on his dreams of being a world class battle artist. Thanks to his damaged core and crazy family, he never stood a chance anyway. With money, fame, and untold power on the line, the corporations decide who wins. End of story. But when a mysterious group calling themselves the Sages of the Underpass threaten to upend the entire system with their unorthodox training and cultivation methods, Nikko soon learns that what was once a handicap might be his greatest asset. The only thing standing in his way is a bitter, hard-hearted veteran.

It is the year 2058. The Sino-American War has decimated several generations of men, and the Sterility Epidemic has made 90 percent of the surviving males sterile. Electricity does not function in five western states. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana are territories once again. Collectively, they are known as the Juniper. It is the most dangerous place on Earth. On a desperate post-apocalyptic cattle drive to save their family ranch, Cavatica Weller and her two gunslinging sisters stumble across a rare boy.

Even ghosts need help from a Cunning Man. Hiram and his son Michael are dowsing a well in Eastern Utah when they hear a cry of help from the ghost of a small boy, torn to pieces by wild animals. Before they can even begin to look into that tragedy, however, a prosperous local rancher is murdered right before their eyes. In an attempt to both help the ghost and find the killer, Hiram and Michael must navigate an eccentric cast of characters that includes failed bank robbers, a seductive fortune-teller, an inept sheriff, a crazy prospector, and a preacher with an apocalyptic grudge....

Hiram is a man with mystical abilities derived from the commonsense application of Scot-Irish folk wisdom and German Braucher magic. He possesses an arcane Bloodstone that allows him to see a lie the moment it is spoken. Behind the played-out farms and failed businesses are demons, curses, sorcerers, and unatoned wrongs. Bags of groceries and carpentry won't be enough this time. The job will take a man who has known sorrow. A man who has known war. A man of wisdom. A man of magic. The job will take a cunning man.

Cunning man Hiram Woolley and his son Michael carry an itinerant preacher across the border into Mexico. Hiram is haunted by the specter of a bloody-faced man that stalks him in his dreams, but also by doubts about what lies ahead in the Mormon colonies around Nuevo Casas Grandes—this is the country Hiram's father fled to when he abandoned young Hiram and his mother.