Birthright

Book 1: Birthright: A Boronian Saga

by Ross Buzzell

Genres: Space Exploration; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Some people are born into greatness, others are dragged into it kicking and screaming.

Konner Lorian happens to be the latter. Being born with a gift of violence, he desires nothing more than knowledge and peace.

Join Konner and his Off World Squad as they hone their skills and travel the galaxy in search of adventure. On their travels Konner uncovers a threat greater than any his civilization has faced before.

Will he be able to get to the bottom of the threat before it's too late, not just for him, but for us as well?

Grab a copy of Birthright and follow Konner as he learns what it means to be a diplomat and a warrior in a time where violence and diplomacy may not be enough.

 

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Release date: October 5, 2023

Print pages: 434

Sample

Chapter 1: Four on One

Sparks flew through the air as two bracers clashed with one another. Konner deflected a
punch at his face from one of his best friends. The auburn-haired beauty cracked a smile, her
exotic eyes scanning his stance.
“You’re getting faster,” she mused.
The soft crunch of footsteps behind him caught his ear. Jil-Thorin punched at his stomach
with her free hand. Grabbing her wrist, Konner pivoted on his back foot and yanked his sparring
partner off balance before turning and throwing her. She collided with a wall of a man almost
two full head lengths taller than himself.
“Konner,” he said, letting Jil’Thorin drop to the ground.
“Man’Sanfur,” he replied.
“I’m going to kick you now,” the giant declared.
“Can you at least let me get out of the way first?” Jil’Thorin groaned.
Man stepped forward, sliding Jil’Thorin out of his way. As he leaned forward to kick
Konner, the warrior stepped toward his attacker, maneuvering around the kick. Grabbing
Man’Sanfur’s ankle, he pulled his fellow soldier onto his back before standing up and flipping
him onto the rocky floor of the Training Ground.
THUD!
Konner’s head whipped to the side. A dull throb encompassed his cheek and face. As he
turned to see his attacker, another fist was planted firmly into his stomach. A knot lurched
throughout his body before starting to burn.
Clenching his teeth, Konner pushed the pain out of his mind. Lifting his hands, he
blocked another inbound punch before delivering a powerful knee to his attacker’s gut. The

blond woman staggered backward, gasping for air, holding her stomach with one hand while
extending her other to motion for him to stop.
“This isn’t supposed to be full contact!” she exclaimed.
“Come on, Bara, are you telling me you four are really holding back?” Konner asked.
A rush of air to his right caught his attention. Konner leaned back as Man threw a fist at
the side of his head. Positioning his feet to flip the giant once more, Konner’s leg was flung out
from under him. He hit the ground, gritting his teeth on impact while Jil’Thorin stood back up,
readying a downward kick.
As he rolled between her legs, Jil’s foot smashed into the ground, cracking the stone by
her impact. Konner wrapped one arm around her shin before grabbing the edge of her breastplate
and rolling toward Man’Sanfur. He threw her into the giant, causing both to stagger backward.
Kicking his feet toward his head, he rolled over his shoulder as Bara’Helor rushed in for
another barrage of attacks. She was fast, on the back foot, but Konner was still faster. He dodged
around her attacks, blocking where he had to and looking for an opening. Finding it, he stiffened
his fingers and struck at her armpit with a jab.
KLANG!
More sparks flew, and Konner’s arm was forced down, causing his strike to miss. A spear
flipped through the air, accompanied by the soldier’s detached bracer. A second spear whistled
while cutting the cool early morning air.
Another KLANG! This time, it hit his breastplate, breaking the heavy practice armor free.
As it fell to the ground, a third flew from another angle, catching his under shirt and ripping it
wide open.
“DISA’ANI!” Konner roared.

He grabbed the cold, metallic spear that knocked his breastplate off and pulled it from the
dirt. Its head was narrow and sharp.
“THIS ISN’T A TRAINING WEAPON!”
“Sorry, majesty!” a slender blond man about Konner’s height called down from the
Training Ground’s high walls. “But your enemy won’t be using training weapons.”
As the sandy blond-haired man rushed to another weapon stand, Konner turned the spear
around and threw it, blunt side at his best friend.
TONK!
Disa’ani’s head whipped to one side as the throw found its mark. Stunned, he staggered a
few more steps before dropping to a knee. Konner grabbed another spear. He held it up to block
Man’Sanfur’s incoming kick. His shin hit the metal pole first. It bent. Time slowed down for the
warrior as he watched the inch-and-a-half-thick bar bend before snapping like it was made of a
brittle wood.
Konner swore to himself as he braced for impact. Time snapped back to full speed. The
blow to his chest caused his lungs to burn as air was forced from them. His ribs ached under the
strain of the attack but didn’t break.
His eyes closed tightly out of reflex while his feet left two deep gouges in the ground. A
violent shudder coursed through Konner as his momentum was arrested by a large stone. His
head bounced off the rock, sending speckles of black and white through his field of view.
Konner dropped to a knee, his torn shirt now little more than ribbons dangling from his
waist. When he took a deep breath, his lungs ached as they filled with air once more. Dust stung
his nostrils and throat while one hand supported his weight on the ground and the other held his
chest.

Looking up at his friends, he saw they’d all regained their footing and squared up against
him. Even Disa’ani jumped down from his perch to join in on the fight. He pushed himself to the
front of the group and clapped his hands once as he hopped to a stop.
“We’ve been doing this for three years!” Disa’ani called out, the cut on the side of his
head already starting to clot. “You really think you’re going to beat us while you’re training us to
fight? We know how you move!”
Konner’s fingertips ran over smooth, raised skin. Three circular scars sat in his shoulder.
Looking back at the stone he’d crashed into, he could hardly believe his eyes. After over twenty
years, still sticking deep into the stone, were the three Spinara spikes that didn’t find their mark.
“I’m teaching you to fight like a Cryptea,” Konner huffed, standing to his feet and
staggering to line the spikes up where he wanted them. “And I’m getting closer. If I can take the
four of you on, they may just actually let me graduate.”
“It’s a four-year program; you’ve been in for ten,” Jil’Thorin added, a hint of frustration
in her voice. “They’re never going to let you graduate.”
“I like the fight!” Man’Sanfur exclaimed.
“What’s today’s lesson anyway?” Bara asked.
“Improvising,” Konner shouted.
He kicked the rocks at his feet, sending them shooting at his friends like bullets. They
covered their faces, causing the stones to shatter on impact with their training armor. While they
were distracted, Konner turned, ripped the Spinara spines from the rock and flung them at Bara,
Jil’Thorin and Disa.

Rushing Man, the soldier passed his own projectiles as they spun in near slow motion
through the air. With a fraction of his strength, he leaped off the ground to meet the giant’s head
height.
Jil’Thorin and Bara dodged the spikes. Disa’ani tried to block it with his bracer. He let
out a high-pitched scream as the insectoid’s barb punched through his protective layer and into
his arm. Konner punched Man’Sanfur as hard as he could in the face.
A shockwave caused the giant to stagger back while pushing Konner almost three meters
the opposite direction before landing. As he did, the hum of metal caught his ear. Throwing an
arm up, he blindly blocked one of the broken spear pieces Bara’Helor now wielded like a club.
A bolt of electricity shot through his ribs as the other half made contact. Staggering
backwards, Jil’Thorin leaped off the back of a crouched Disa’ani, his spear in hand. She soared
through the air with the ferocity of a dragon. Her primal scream caused Konner to hesitate.
In that fraction of a second, she brought the spear’s handle down on his collarbone.
Konner’s skeleton rattled as the ground beneath him gave way. He dropped to one knee, his ears
ringing from the impact.
Man’Sanfur recovered. He closed the gap, kneeing Konner in the face. The soldier’s head
whipped back, caught in a stun lock. The soldier fell to the ground. As soon as he hit,
Man’Sanfur’s massive foot was on his chest, holding him down.
Konner reached for the boot on him, only to have his left arm ripped away by Bara’Helor.
She slammed his appendage into the stone floor before using the spear’s two halves to lock his
wrist in place. Jil slid in, grabbed his right arm and put the warrior into an arm bar.

If his head wasn’t ringing from the overkill brought on by his friends, Konner knew he’d
be feeling pain from the arm bar. With a defeated groan, he flailed his wrist, smacking Jil’Thorin
in the face repeatedly.
“What are you doing?” she asked, trying to get away. “Are you trying to tap out or are
you trying to hit me?”
“What are you doing to my trainee?” a commanding feminine voice called out.
Her words echoed through the Training Grounds like the winds of a storm. All four of his
friends stopped their attack. They lined up so fast, they were almost a blur. A closed fist
slammed into their chests in unison as they bowed.
As Konner’s senses returned to him, he twisted his body to look at the source of the
voice. A tall, muscular woman in black form-fitting armor that stood in stark contrast to her
white pulled-back hair with a glowing pale family crest on her chest.
Stepping down from the boulder she stood on, she marched toward Konner. Grabbing
him by his arm like a disappointed mother, she pulled him to his feet just in time for his senses to
return.
“General,” he said, saluting her.
The general turned toward his friends. Shaking her head, she crossed her arms and tapped
her foot.
“I expected this kind of behavior from my son,” she said, motioning toward the giant.
“And I believe it’s a default setting for Disa’ani...”
“Hey!” he interjected.
A steely gaze quieted him down almost instantly.

“But you two ladies. You’re smarter than this, I expected you to know better than to spar
so aggressively with a Cryptea initiate!”
“Didn’t seem to be an issue every other time we did,” Disa muttered.
Konner’s stomach dropped. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. Every part of his
body ached from the beating he’d taken; it wasn’t half as bad as the feeling of Ja’Sanfur’s glare
locked onto him.
“How long has this been going on?” she asked in a low, heated tone.
“Not long,” Konner lied.
Ja looked at her son and raised an eyebrow.
“Three years,” he said without missing a beet.
“Come on, man,” Disa’ani whispered.
“We’re only in this situation because of your fat mouth,” Jil’Thorin scolded him in a
hushed reply.
“Three years?” Ja’Sanfur asked, turning back toward Konner. “This has been going on
for three years?”
Konner nodded, the pain in his body starting to subside. The general turned toward the
other four.
“Dismissed,” she said.
As the four turned to walk away, Ja raised a hand. They stopped in their tracks.
“In second thought. Since you four are so dedicated to training. How about an hour in the
Training Grounds? And the real Training Ground. Not this sparring with your High Prince
nonsense.”
“Now?” Disa asked.

“How about we wait until the sun comes up,” Ja replied.
“But it’ll be three hundred degrees in here if that happens!” Disa’ani exclaimed.
“Then at least we know we won’t be fighting Nelaka,” Jil’Thorin murmured.
“No, just the giant spiders!” Bara countered.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Ja’Sanfur replied, turning back to Konner, looking the half-
naked member of the royal family up and down. “If you could take him, I’m thinking you can

handle whatever the Draronian can throw at you.”
“Really?” Konner asked.
“They want a tough fight, I’ll give them a tough fight.”
“At least let them have weapons,” he pleaded.
“So be it. You may use whatever weapons are inside the walls within the next twenty
seconds,” Ja’Sanfur said before pointing at Konner. “Now you, come with me.”
All four of his friends rushed toward the walls. Man’Sanfur launched both girls to the top
like they were nothing. They rushed to a weapon rack and kicked the entire thing into the
Training Ground in a panic.
Konner followed the general to the opposite side. The walls slid open for them, revealing
the military Sol’lor Academy hewn out of the mountaintop into a structure carved from a single
onyx material.
Ja’Sanfur tucked her lower lip into her teeth and let out a whistle. It was so loud that
Konner covered his ears to shield from the sharp pain that jabbed at his eardrums. After the echo
of the whistle dissipated, the prince slowly lowered his hands.
WHOOSH!

The sound of wings flapping through the air soon filled the silence. Excitement bubbled
up inside Konner, washing the lingering remnants of pain away. He looked around in excitement.
That sound was the herald of a single fascinating creature, something only the most legendary
warriors had the opportunity to train.
“Dragon,” Konner whispered in awe.
A massive scaled creature shot over the mountain’s edge and rushed over the buildings
and into the skies above Konner and Ja’Sanfur. Its wings blotted out the nighttime sun for a
moment before gradually descending in front of them. Konner’s eyes studied the creature in
astonishment. Its massive muscular body was near effortlessly supported in the air by wings just
as large.
It was a rare white dragon with a strong, square jaw. As it landed, its wings folded down
its flanks before leaning to one side, using a long, spiraled horn to scratch at its neck. Ja’Sanfur
approached the beast and climbed onto its back as if she’d done it a thousand times before.
“Come on, we need to get you to an Emissary before Tal’lak and Fi’ran start looking for
you,” she said, turning and offering him her hand.
Konner hesitated. The beast before him could swallow most animals on Boron whole.
That included High Princes. Its several rows of serrated teeth didn’t calm him much either.
“I’ll heal up just fine. I can get patched up and back to the barracks before they even
know I’m gone.”
“You go to a healing center, and they’ll just inform your father, who is honor bound to
inform the Cryptea,” Ja’Sanfur countered. “They’re already figured out how to not let you pass.
Now they’re just looking for a reason to kick you out. Do you really want that?”

Konner clenched his jaw. It didn’t really matter to him if he got kicked out or not, but this
wasn’t for him; it was for his family, his people. It was the best way to serve them as a future
High King. Relenting, he grabbed her hand and was pulled up onto the beast’s boney back
behind her.
“I’ve never ridden one of these before!” Konner said, looking around at the large
creature. He could tell Ja’Sanfur had an ornery smile on her face by the way her shoulders
hunched as the dragon’s wings slowly spread on either side of them.
“Just hang on tight,” the general instructed.
Konner looked around. There was no saddle, no reins and nothing to hold on to. His heart
skipped a beat as a semi-numb sensation coursed through him that washed away his excitement.
“To what?” he asked.
The words barely left his lips before the feeling of being forced downwards nearly
overtook him. There was a massive gust of air as the dragon launched them into the skies,
leaving the ground far behind, along with Konner’s stomach. ...