In which we begin a short series looking at the starring characters in The Hero's Code. The series final two novels will be launching this fall, and in a bid to catch people up on the who's who, here are some swift blurbs about the bunch.
If The Hero's Code means nothing to you and you'd like to fix that, you can snag the series starter, Paragon's Fall, just about anywhere for free (in ebook).
The Myth, the Man, the Legend.
Aegis, the unbreakable Paragon backbone. A military recruit that taught the world's most powerful about anomaly possibilities. Rather than be feared, see, people with special powers ought to be used. Why send soldiers on a mission, risking their lives, when Aegis could dive in, take bullets, and come out alive and well on the other side with the enemy vanquished?
What could've stayed quiet didn't sit well with Aegis, though. Fighting for cause and country was all fine and good until those causes started rubbing the wrong way, until the country seemed less about the flag and more about the few up top pulling the strings. Aegis would get flown in to rough up people on the wrong side of the wrong deals, while the truly villainous stayed safe behind their moneyed barriers.
And when he wasn't off in the dark punching through some cartel's cutthroats, Aegis paraded to the media's tune. Interviews, movies, magazines: he hit them all, a rising star that began to realize he had real power. And as Aegis inspired millions, the letters, the emails, the messages he received from those anomalies looking for hope, for something beyond frightened stares and lost dreams due to genetic dice inspired him.
A few choice meetings with a few choice anomalies and Aegis had his team, the Champions. They weren't friends, exactly, but ambition and belief bound them well enough to each other. At first they just went beyond their orders, taking out or making public the crimes of people who thought they were above scrutiny.
And when those people decided enough was enough?
Aegis and the Champions decided they didn't need those people anymore. That society didn't either. Like a starting gun fired, the Champions found sympathetic anomalies and swept the gifted world into a fight to overturn the established order. Now Aegis wasn't just a media darling, he was a political titan, his name and image broadcasting a return to righteousness, to equality and peace.
At least, that's how all these things start, right?
Years later, with the Paragons in control, Aegis has the world he wanted. Or, at least, that's what he tells himself, even as it frays along the edges. Even as his hair grays, the winters grow colder, and discontent whispers in the streets.
Aegis once lifted the world from corruption. Can he do it again, one last time, and cement a better future for his family?
