Always a catch... For Bannor Starfist, the savant of reality, nothing is ever easy...including getting married. Fresh from an earth-shattering duel with allfather Odin, Bannor tries to start a new life in Malan with his cherished betrothed, Sarai. He hopes the worst of his troubles will be preparing for the elaborate royal marriage ceremonies. As usual, things don't go according to plan... Creation, annihilation, perpetuity... the words boom in Bannor's mind through his magical powers. The message is just a precursor to another big mess done Garmtur style. Daena, the savant of attractions turned immortal goddess, is up to something and Advocate Eternal Koass doesn't like the rumblings. Bannor goes to Eternity's Heart to speak on Daena's behalf and ends up the Shael Dal's latest draftee. The Protectorate has a problem. A million bloodthirsty war-mages are running rampant through the Ring Realms, destroying everything they come in contact with. The difficulty is, nobody can find them... except maybe someone with the reality-bending power of the Garmtur Shak'Nola. Bannor agrees to help but quickly learns the hard lesson that no good deed goes unpunished...

In this collection of fantasy short stories all featuring female protagonists, you'll find diverse, imaginative tales, including: A sorceress unravels a spell and gets a result she could never have expected... A young girl wins a contest--her prize: to speak with a god... A vampire in hiding fears she'll be blamed for the reckless depredations of another of her kind... A minstrel travels with a witch who has a pair of very unusual cart horses... As a bonus, this anthology includes "The Sow's Ear", originally published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's acclaimed Sword and Sorceress series.

Far away in the land of Mere Odain, a dragon calls out for help to her master--Pepin Merripen, now living as the son of Crown Prince Treyas Merripen and his wife, Cynthe. Pepin must answer, or die. Shocked and terrified, Treyas gathers his closest friends, and goes to Mere Odain. But the country is in turmoil. An ethnic cleansing is going on--any black or brown-skinned person must die. Treyas is determined to save his young son's life even if it means taking on the whole of the Keltin Empire and ending a war 40 years in the making.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Trustworthy Eternal Systems via Evolving Software, Data and Knowledge, EternalS, held in Montpellier, France, in August 2012 and co-located with the 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2012). The 10 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized into three main sections: natural language processing (NLP) for software systems, machine learning for software systems, roadmap for future research.

A desperate plea for help, written on a scroll and sent with magic, falls into the wrong hands, and with a few misplaced words, Treyas' young daughter activates the spell, sending her and her friends to a world controlled by the Albino. The Albino, not content with being dictator of only one world, now has a hostage--and one of royal pedigree--with which to extend his empire. It is up to Treyas and his companions to stop the Albino and free the world he has claimed as his own.

Karen Montgomery was an ordinary woman until she stumbled into the extraordinary... A bargain with elves worth its weight in gold. A plague of sinister ladybugs. Rogue vampire hunters, including one who tries to turn over a new leaf--with disastrous consequences. A ghostly huntsman of the Wild Hunt wishing for redemption. Karen's life will never be the same again. Long before Russell Moore ever met supernatural sleuth Karen Montgomery or set foot in Beth-Hill, he was a vampire hunter, possibly the best vampire hunter of all. He brought down whole nests of vampires, caring little about the consequences of his actions. Anyone who lived with or helped the vampires became enemies to be slaughtered. So what kind of an idiot would capture a ruthless vampire hunter without a conscience and try to reform him? Ethan Walker was that idiot. Wanting to protect his family, Ethan set out to prove to Russ that vampires weren't all evil, soulless creatures. If Russ would allow himself to witness their lives, see their humanity, surely he and other vampire hunters like him would let them live in peace. Surely?

Hecate, goddess of the moon and dark magic, wants a new body and eight-summer-old savant Liandra Kergatha has the one she covets. Torn from her mother's arms, the young girl is spirited away to another world to undergo the ritual of succorunding--the creation of an avatar. Before the procedure can be completed, the temple is attacked and Liandra escapes into the city with the bindings half completed and her name and memories of her former life wiped clean. Possessing great natural skill and many hidden powers, the young girl becomes known as Wren and perseveres on her own. A decade later Wren is one of the greatest master thieves in Corwin. Unfortunately for Wren after her ordeal as a child, lost is not forgotten. Following a bloody encounter with an avatar, Hecate's baneful attention is drawn to her once again. What started with a kidnapping becomes a conflict that escalates into a war involving powerful immortals, wizards, and otherworldly creatures as Wren seeks help and wins favor with the legendary clan of the Felspars. To survive the ordeal stretched in front of her, Wren must learn her origins, befriend amazing allies, and tap into the secret powers of her birthright. Even as she rises to the challenge, she discovers Hecate isn't the only foe gunning for her...

The rogue Kriar Daergons have possession of the ancient Jyril genemar, a weapon capable of destroying all the magic in Eternity--a device so destructive it can be made to slay any creature from a universe away. Bannor Starfist, Savant with the unique ability to bend reality, is just lucky enough to have the weapon aimed at him. In this fifth and final volume of Reality's Plaything, ultimate powers meet head-on in a devastating battle of mythological proportions.

The Wild Hunt roamed the forest outside of Beth-Hill until the Council bound them for a hundred years. Nevertheless, a century of existence has made an indelible mark not easily forgotten for these ghostly myths that are no longer so ghostly or myth-like... Twelve-year-old Arthur Morgan is small and slight, forced into a life of fairy taxidermy by his father. As a member of the cruel Morgan Household of vampires, Arthur has spent a lifetime being abused by his father and grandmother. In this family, all kowtow to the monstrous duo's iron will in sheer terror of what will be done to them if they disobey. When Arthur meets Iris, a cousin not highly-placed in the Morgan hierarchy, he sees himself in a light he's never wanted to before. He's becoming as cruel as his father, having trapped and killed fairies out in the forest for years. With Iris's influence, Arthur decides to free one of them and, in doing so, meets Maya, a water fairy, who shows him just how horrible and twisted the household he's grown up is--for both the innocent, defenseless fairies and family members that have been unjustly imprisoned by his father and grandmother. Deciding to smuggle those caged out of the household and to safety gives Arthur a sense of power he's never had before. But his secret can't be hidden long. With the help of water fairy and an adult vampire, Arthur and Iris attempt to escape. Even though Arthur is determined not to let his father win this time, he wonders if it's possible to become something other than what his family has decreed he must be to serve them.

Khyber is Istorica for the exiles, the one entrusted with remembering all their history, everything they've learned. Despite the support of her grandmother, Dayree, Khyber feels she's let down her family by not being able to step between worlds and take the exiles home. She has many gifts, but her talent for telling stories becomes the most important, when it offers the exiles a chance to reach out and find other exiles from Rehdonna. However, enemies have followed the exiles to Earth, and the only way to protect her family and village is to live separated from them under a false name. For the sake of the exiles, Khyber will do whatever it takes...and in the process find her way home.