Gada is a Goblin mercenary. Eleanor is an Elvish bard. Both carry the weight of their pasts. Who will say 'I love you' first? "The Last Goblin Queen: Harmony and Resonance" is free on Kindle this week until Saturday. *This Promotion has ended*  

The answer is: sort of. The Kingdoms has no pantheon of gods walking the world, throwing lightning bolts, or personally choosing the outcome of battles. Instead, each of the five Kingdoms is bound to an ancient oversoul tethered to one of the Elements. These are the beings known as the Sacred Flame (Flame, Human Kingdom), the Mountain Goddess (Stone, Goblin Kingdom), the Allforge (Metal, Ogre Kingdom), the Lady of Mirrors (Crystal, Elvish Kingdom), and the Storm Goddess (Water, Naga Kingdom). Each oversoul is centered on a sacred place where its presence is strongest. Around those places grew the monastic traditions that preserve their teachings and tend their shrines — not to please the oversoul, but to stay in step with it. These gods cannot step into the physical world or reshape it by force. Instead, they interact through dreams, visions, moments of inspiration, and the occasional glimpse of a possible future. They don't reward virtue or punish cruelty. The gods have no particu...

Sorcery is possible in the Kingdoms, but rare. Few choose this path, and fewer still walk away from it unscathed. To practice sorcery, one must replace a portion of their soul with pure Element — Fire, Stone, Water, Metal, Crystal, or Void. This grants the sorcerer a measure of power over that Element. But every use carries a risk: the Element may consume a little more of the sorcerer's soul in the exchange. Power grows with each taking, and so does the danger of losing oneself entirely. A sorcerer whose soul is fully consumed becomes a Demon — a being of pure Element where a person once stood. Unlike dragons, another form of Elemental creature, demons retain some trace of their former intelligence, even their personality, though warped now and bent entirely to a primal force. And yet, there is someone who always chooses this path. Each one certain that they will be the exception — the one who masters the Element instead of being consumed by it.

  A map of the lands of the Kingdoms from "The Last Goblin Queen" (not necessarily drawn to scale).

For the people of the Goblin Kingdom, a teahouse was never just a place to drink tea. Visitors to Goblin City remember the inns and taverns. That's where merchants haggle over contracts, caravaners bed down for the night, and travelers trade stories before moving on. Ask a Goblin where the real heart of the neighborhood is, though, and they'll point you to the teahouse. A Goblin teahouse can be almost anything. In one neighborhood, it's a shaded courtyard and a handcart pouring tea into whatever mugs customers happen to bring. In another, it's a sprawling hall that's stood for centuries, its stone worn smooth by generations of hands. What they all share: none of them are really businesses. They're common hearths. Most homes in Goblin City are cozy but small, often with barely more than a kitchen nook. Goblins are relentlessly social, and daily life spills out into the neighborhood teahouse, where a simple meal and cups of strong Goblin tea can be had for a coupl...

The world of the Last Goblin Queen has two moons. How they move against each other shapes how the different Kingdoms keep their calendars and time their festivals. The Greater Moon dominates the night sky, glowing with a silvery light. It has a 27-day cycle from full moon to full moon. The Lesser Moon is smaller and quicker, racing across the sky with a bluish glow. Its cycle is just 18 days. Put those two cycles together, and you get a double full moon (or double new moon) every 54 days. Most years bring six of these double full moons, but every fourth year, a seventh sneaks in. So next time you spot "moons light" in the Kingdoms stories, know that it's not a typo — it's just how the sky works there.

Three Kingdoms short stories, "Embermanes", "Coppercrawlers", and "Nyra the Forsaken" are currently available for free on Amazon and Kindle e-books. "Embermanes":  The Spring Horse Market in Bridgemark is the last place Gada wants to be noticed. A road-worn goblin mercenary with more scars than silver, she only needs a bed for the night—and a sturdy mare she can afford. But when a razor-tongued Elvish bard named Eleanor turns their first meeting into a public sparring match, Gada’s plans for a quiet, anonymous stay go up in smoke—almost literally. Because the market’s prize attraction is an Embermane colt: a rare Flamebound horse coveted by nobles… and dangerously mishandled. When panic sparks into fire, Gada runs toward the flames with bow in hand, while Eleanor answers with music that reaches deeper than sound. Together, they must keep a blazing miracle from becoming a catastrophe—before a single frightened creature ignites the entire fair. In ...

When Alchemy allows lead to be transformed into gold, what do people use for money? In the Kingdoms, the answer is simple. The most valuable materials are those that cannot be altered by Alchemy: dragon scales and Alchemist's Glass. The highest valued currency is, quite literally, the scales of dragons. Dragons are beings of pure Element (Stone, Fire, Crystal, Water, Metal, or Void), making their scales completely immune to the effects of Alchemy. No alchemist can create them, duplicate them, or transform them into something else. That doesn't mean adventurers can simply slay a dragon and spend its scales. Each Kingdom regulates its currency by acid-etching genuine dragon scales with the Kingdom's official glyphs and sigils, certifying them for use as legal tender. Even so, dragon scales are extraordinarily rare. Most people in the Kingdoms will never see one in their lifetime. They are reserved for diplomacy between Kingdoms, major commercial exchanges, and the storage of ...