Sons of the Curse

by Dan Rabarts

If falling into a volcano is the worst thing that happens to Akmenos today, he’ll be happy. It took the breaking of a heart for him to escape the clutches of his brother Hrodok and Scimitar, scion of the diabolical Eternal Stair, but will his entry into the halls of the Holy Flame bring him sanctuary, or is this descent merely a fall into deeper, darker chaos, like chili dissolving in chocolate?

Determined to clear his name and bring Cordax back to life, Akmenos agrees to go in search of the Eternal Stair, dooming himself to the same quest his brother Thurgrin had been on when he was lost, years before. But the empire is crumbling, and the world is turning against him with every passing hour, souring like cream in the sun. And what are these secrets of his past—so secret even Akmenos doesn’t know them—that have turned so many eyes his way without so much as a sticky pudding for his troubles?

Surrounded and hunted by monsters and murderers, can Akmenos unlock the secrets of the Eternal Stair and bring Cordax back from the brink of whatever it is a mecha might call death, before his goose is truly cooked?

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About the Author

Dan Rabarts is the winner of New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent, 2013. His horror, dark fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk short stories can be found at Beneath Ceaseless Skies and midnightecho.com, in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Aurealis Magazine, SQ Mag, and in the anthologies Bloodstones, Dreaming of Djinn, Ministry Protocol, Regeneration, and Insert Title Here, among others. The horror flash fiction anthology Baby Teeth – Bite-sized Tales of Terror, which he co-edited with Lee Murray to raise funds for children’s literacy charity Duffy Books in Homes, won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work, and the Australian Shadows Award for Best Edited Work. His stories have been podcast on the StarShipSofa, Tales to Terrify, Tales from the Archives and Wily Writers’ podcasts. Find out more at dan.rabarts.com.



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