Spellslayer 1: Curse of the Wizard's Guild by V. Greene

Heat Rating: Fire

Content Warning: GLBT-homoerotica, dubious consent, Happy for Now Ending--this is an ongoing series.

How much trouble can a trained barbarian hero and a celibacy-sworn Guild wizard get into?

Gazriel smirked to himself as the last alarm faded. Every few weeks a barbarian would come along and try to kill him, because that's what barbarians did. It seemed to be part of their training. Barbarians assumed that every wizard was up to no good, and they had fair odds of being right on any particular one. For his own part, Gazriel spent little time considering the morality of his researches. He wanted to learn; he wanted to make a discovery fit to make the Wizard's Guild let him keep his comfortable tower past his ten-year journeyman's lease. Those desires might or might not take him to intellectual territory which would bother the average man.

Come to think of it, this was the third intruder this month. Gazriel wondered if there was a shortage of wizards to harass. The average barbarian had a short attention span, and once the would-be assassin had failed a sufficient number of times, he tended to leave.

The knock at the door, then, came as an utter surprise.

Gazriel supposed he could ignore it, as he had the more traditional assaults, but he hadn't been top of his class for being incurious. After the third polite tapping, barely hard enough to carry through the thick door and up two floors, he sighed and rose to his feet. Upright, he noticed he was hungry. One peril of living alone was the lack of anyone to remind him of mealtimes. He'd deal with that after he sent the intruder packing.

His defenses in place, he threw open the door. The barbarian at the threshold had an honest-looking face and far too much bare flesh, in Gazriel's opinion, for the cool night. His clothing seemed to consist largely of strips of leather with weapons attached. His bare chest and legs had a light coat of fur in the same common brown as the hair of his head. In his great paw, he grasped the neck of a wine bottle. "Turak the barbarian, requesting the hospitality of your tower for the night," he said by way of introduction.

Gazriel bit back the first word that came to mind, as Shit was not a response to further his professional reputation. Who had taught this great lummox to ask for hospitality? It was the one request that could not be turned down, especially from someone who had brought wine. Stalling, Gazriel asked, "Weren't you just pitching a grappling hook at my roof?"

Barbarians shouldn't blush, but this one did. "Afraid so."

Gazriel narrowed his eyes and let his first word last three times as long as it should. "And why in the world should I let you in and make you comfortable after you've spent the past hour and a half disturbing my peace? I dislike letting in assassins."

"I'm no assassin!" The intruder looked genuinely offended.

"So this determined assault was only an attempt to find the guest room?" Gazriel felt entitled to his skepticism.