Free A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4) by Travis Simmons

sorcerer die?” Jovian asked.
    “Well, obviously I know she was beheaded, but why?” Angelica wondered.
    Jovian leaned in to read the copper plate, but it was in a strange block-like language he couldn't decipher.
    “Figures: the Realm of Shadow has a different language too.” Jovian grumbled.
    “It says she died in the Frement Uprising. Apparently a battle of some note here,” Uthia said.
    “What are the frement?” Angelica asked.
    “A race of cat people,” Joya mumbled. “They are always at odds with the ooslebed.”
    “And they are?” Jovian asked.
    “Dark elves – those that fled with the first daughter from the Mountains of Nependier,” Joya answered.
    “Alright, this is getting weird,” Angelica said.
    “Getting?” Jovian asked. “You’re just now thinking it’s getting weird?”
    “It's this place,” Joya said, looking around. “In here I feel this information just pouring into me. Like the Guardian residing here for all eternity is giving to me her knowledge of the realm.”
    They were all too stunned to answer.
    Joya started walking along the edges of the room, when necessary leaning over empty caskets without name plates so that she could touch the wall. Her hand was flat along the stones, rubbing and occasionally patting them with a solid slap of flesh on granite.
    And then, in the back, behind a table, the slap of her hand on stone block sounded hollow instead of solid.
    Joya set her bouquet of sunflowers down, slid the small table aside, and pressed one hand firmly on the back wall. Again, at the touch of her flesh, the mausoleum came to life. The stone wall slid back and to the right. Beyond the wall was a winding tunnel. The light from torches set into sconces flickered cheerily off the moisture clinging to the walls and floor. It wasn't a rough tunnel, chiseled out of the stone, but instead a corridor that certainly led to some place much more civilized than one would expect to find the entrance to in a place of the dead.
    “Are we ready?” Joya asked them, and all they could do was swallow hard before stepping into the dank hallway.

When Jovian thought of tunnels in the earth he often thought of the one they’d taken from the Temple of Badock — a rough tunnel appearing to have been shoveled out in haste, used only for emergencies. But this tunnel put even the stairway to the underground dwarven city of Dellenbore to shame in its expert craftsmanship.
    Perfectly square, it was fashioned of equal-sized gray granite blocks, interlocking in geometrical patterns Jovian’s eyes could barely follow.
    The most pleasing aspect of all was the natural color of the firelight on the gray stone. Golden light, flickering all around him. How long had it been since he had seen natural light? Something that reminded him that he wasn't in a world all that different than the realms he knew? It had only been a couple of days, but it seemed an eternity.
    Benches were set here and there along the walls, as if this hallway had been used for leisure. A silent pilgrimage from a rich estate to the dwelling place of their fallen leaders? Jovian didn't know, but he felt immediately at ease inside the hallway, despite the strange circumstances that brought them here.
    There was a probing sense that came to his mind, like the wyrd of the border when it was testing him. But this time there was no pain, no suffocation. The wyrd delved into his mind, and when it had apparently found that he meant no harm, it moved along.
    He shook his head. This wasn’t a tomb of fallen family members, but of Realm Guardians. Whatever connected with the other end of this tunnel wasn’t going to be a rich estate.
    Ahead, Joya walked with purpose, back straight, shoulders back in a commanding way he had never seen his older sister use.
    He tried not to think about his sister right now. She was acting too strangely, and his family had gone through enough already. So many changes to all of them, and now this. Jovian wasn’t