Book excerpt: Capturing the electric short fiction energy that led Robert E. Howard to be one of the top fantasy writers of the century, with exclusive serialized eBook stories starring Conan, Solomon Kane, and more by many of today’s top writers in fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. “And about the table where stood the Dark Man, immovable as a mountain, washed the red waves of slaughter.” Dr. Elijah Blackthorn, a psychometric archaeologist with the Miskatonic Institute of Technology, seeks to validate the Dark Man statue discovered within one of the shattered pillars of the famed battlefield. Watched by an elderly priest and nun, he lays hands on the Dark Man. Blackthorn is witness to a bloody, second century battle between the Picts and the Romans. Aided by his son, Taloric, Bran Mak Morn fights the Roman soldiers who seek to rescue the bastards of Emperor Diocletian, captured by the Pict wizard Gonar. But the sorcerer needs those of royal blood for a ritual sacrifice… an act which will send arcane ripples down through the centuries.