Life in the Order of the Widowed Dragon has never been easy. For countless centuries, a lone Steward has protected and served the people of Aachen, living amongst and yet apart from them, never knowing kinship, gratitude or love. Martin had accepted this long before he took up the mantle himself. However, his late mentor failed to warn him that preserving the Pact between Aachen and the Dragon would break his heart. For it was his duty, every handful of years, to escort the Bride of Winter Roses up to the Tree of Souls, to be devoured before his eyes. Duty warred with his growing sense of injustice, but the conflict had become more personal for him; the last woman he took to be wed to the Dragon had quietly stolen his heart, and he has lived with remorse these past five years. And now, as if the Maker were mocking him, he finds himself falling once more, for Cassandra, the newly chosen Bride. With only the aid of Cassandra and her companion Leanne, the younger sibling of his ghostly love, Maria, and Bishop Vavers, a man whose faith in a loving creator is flagging, Martin has less than three days to end the Dragon's reign, unaware that the stakes are higher than mere star-crossed love or the fate of a forsaken mountain village. For the first time in over a millennium, the magic sustaining the Dragon and the Pact is in flux, as the cycle of sacrifice has come around to completion once more. If Martin can learn the Dragon's weakness, Aachen can be spared another millennium of bloody tyranny. However, forces eldritch and political are moving to abolish the Pact prematurely, which could unleash a greater evil upon an unsuspecting world.

A private dick gets shot up to keep him from giving away trade secrets. A child remembers the monster he called friend. A secret agent discovers he is being watched while waiting for the man he is assigned to kill. A rich Sultan has second thoughts about a magic transaction he has hired a Djinn to process for him. A thief tries to steal a magic orb and gets more than he bargained for. A brother and sister get lost in the woods on a winter's night. Another private eye tries to rescue his client, and discovers they're up against the most dangerous creatures around: angels. A man reflects on the loss of his best friend. A woman goes to her night job and accidentally stumbles upon an ugly secret about the world she lives in when a stranger gives her a special stone. Yet another private detective's Girl Friday makes Christmas Dinner for two and then tries to help him solve a case. A game developer finds his true medium when he starts writing an interactive novel about a singing detective. A member of the Sisterhood of Brianna sets out to prevent a Darkling from corrupting a nobleman's innocent daughter. Another secret agent tries to find and rescue his young protege, who has been captured by a secret worldwide criminal organisation. The Sultan discovers the price for trying to scotch the deal with the Djinn is much higher than he ever imagined These are just a small handful of the story ideas from the mind of Lee Edward McIlmoyle, author of the novels The Bride of War and Terminal Monday, and the novellas The Dark Guild (LinkTales Volume One) and ASHES: Infinite Redress. This is just the beginning. Once you're on the Road to Limbo, you can never go home again.

It's the fall of 2007, and Richard Burley is riding a losing streak. Not only is his marriage on rocky ground, but his writing career has devolved from co-writing one best seller thirteen years ago to writing freelance ad copy for brochures and radio commercials. And he has a dark secret; an under-the-table script doctoring gig he's doing for some movie producers whose head writer is out on the picket line. The only thing keeping Richard sane is his rock opera, and even that might not be as healthy an outlet as he needs it to be, as it tells the story of a cartoonist who loses everything including his mind. Then one day, Richard runs into an ex-girlfriend who reminds him that he used to be an ambitious novellist, and introduces him to a group of fellow aspiring authors, which reawakens his desire to write fiction. However, his wife Kara becomes angry at him for associating with the woman who left him for the man who stole the rights to the book series he spawned, and, accusing him of infidelity, sends him packing. From there, Richard drifts from sofa to sofa and into the arms of one woman after another, trying desperately to reinvent himself and preserve the dwindling remains of his own self-respect, all the while fearing he is being haunted by the ghost of his not-dead, not-yet-ex-wife. He begins having real-life encounters with the characters of his various writing projects, even as the relationships with his friends are eroding. And his fear that the scab movie script project will be discovered finally comes true when he receives an email from an unhappy Edwin McKay, the author and head writer of the movie. Can Richard save his marriage, revive his writing career, avoid being blacklisted, stage his rock opera and keep his sanity, or will he lose everyone he loves and everything he has worked so hard to build for himself? And if he loses, will he be in any condition to tell the difference?