Rune Breaker is a Web Serial Novel by Landon Porter, the guy who also writes The Descendants.
Where The Descendants is an episodic Superhero series, Rune Breaker is a Fantasy novel that follows a single story: that of Taylin, an escaped slave who stumbles upon the resting place of Ru Brakar (the titular Rune Breaker), an evil wizard who is magically compelled to serve whoever finds him, much like a genie.
After accidentally wishing to sleep a thousand years, Taylin wakes up a the future where all of her slave masters are dead, but with one major problem: Ru is still bound to her service and she has no intention to act like his master.
She tries to find her place in the world with Ru in tow, meeting up with Kaiel, a Loreman in training, and a clan of halflings that eventually take her in. But little does she know that someone else is after Ru for themselves...
The series is posted here
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The first book. A Girl and Her Monster is available from Amazon here and the second, Lighter Days, Darker Nights is on sale here.
This work features the following tropes:
- All There in the Manual: The setting, Ere was the author's Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Setting and there used to be a website for it detailing all sorts of world information. He also has several short stories set in the same world that explain a few things about Loremen and hailene.
- Amplifier Artifact: Dottir Logi, the Eastern Brand is one for fire spells.
- Benevolent Genie: The link forces Ru to be this. It doesn't stop him from being a Jerkass in other ways.
- BFS: Taylin seems to have been bred to wield these. Issacor later teachers her to dual-wield them!
- Big Bad: Immurai the Masked, an ancient demon who wants to take control of Ru for himself.
- Bio-Augmentation: Kaydan demons. Most of them started out humans but were custom upgraded to serve the Threefold Moon.
- Catapult Nightmare: Twice, Ru (who sleeps as a cat (It Makes Sense in Context)), awakens in such a frenzy that he changes shape instantly.
- Cold Sleep, Cold Future: Averted. Taylin accidentally causes Ru to put her to sleep for hundreds of years. She is overjoyed at the world she finds when she wakes up.
- Cool Sword: They're everywhere:
- Dottir Logi, the Eastern Brand is a Flaming Sword that, when activated, surrounds itself in a double helix of flame, spits sparks when it touches metal, and channels fire spells.
- Novacula Kuponya is a Healing Shiv that saps the energy of anyone hit with it and can unleash a Macross Missile Massacre.
- Faith-Be-Forgiven is a BFS that can let its wielder fight on even when they should have died.
- Darker and Edgier: Than the author's other series, The Descendants. There's much more violent and graphic violence here.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ru and Kaiel. Raiteria gets in on the act in Lighter Days, Darker Nights.
- Demihuman: Called by name on the very first page.
- Descriptively-Named Species: Ceratos (ceratopsian dionsaurs) are named by species this way with triceratops being called 'tri-horn cerato' and styracosauruses being 'bone-mask cerato'.
- Eating Optional: Ru can't die, so he can't starve to death. This doesn't stop him from not only eating but complaining about the quality of food.
- Evil Weapon: What everyone thinks the Rune Breaker is.
- Expressive Mask: Immurai the Masked's... mask. Averted with Matasume.
- Fantastic Racism: The hailene hate any hailene half-breeds or hailene who just happen to not have appropriate wing or hair color, dubbing them ang'hailene or 'not people'. Taylin, an ang'hailene, in turn struggles with her racism against hailene and wariness at minotaurs, who she fought when she was a slave. There's also some question of if Brin is racist against miare.
- Fantasy Gun Control : Averted. Raiteria is a sniper and Kaiel is handy with a rifle. Ru is not happy that this trope is no longer in effect.
- Flash Step: Immurai makes use of this a few times.
- Geometric Magic: The basics of how spells are controlled, every spell can be represented by an geometric array although not all magicians need to physically draw the arrays before casting.
- Hammerspace: Several. Blade Disciples get one from their goddess for storing swords, Kaiel has one that is a library, and the party also gets one that has a house inside. Ru also stores his books and scythe in one. It's so common that no one thinks to explain it to Taylin.
- Healing Shiv: Kaiel's fell-light bow uses healing energy to disrupt the normal function of the body. Ru constructs a sword that heals the instant it cuts someone.
- I Have Your Nephew: Immurai pulls this on Taylin at the end of Lighter Days, Darker Nights
- Immortality Immorality: Taylin suspect this is why Ru is the way he is.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: Both Ru and Immurai have no qualms with mixing magic with fisticuffs.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards : It upsets Ru greatly to learn about advances in weapons technology because this is becoming increasingly less true on Ere.
- Magic Knight: The King of Flame and Steel.
- Mindlink Mates: Averted. Taylin is only nice to Ru because she feels bad for enslaving him. Ru is only nice to Taylin because he needs her help to kill Immurai.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Ru. To the point that he claims simply having control of him made and toppled empires.
- Psychic Link: simply called 'the link', the spell in question enslaves Ru to whoever is on the other end. This allows the two to talk telepathically, read one another's emotions, and keeps Ru immortal. Unfortunately for Ru, disobeying his master results in painful retribution from the link and it is implied and he believes that it is both sentient and looking to harm him.
- Sorcerous Overlord: Ru was one before being enslaved to the link.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Ru calls himself a Shapeshifting Master and typically prefers to use this over any other magic despite being a powerful all-around wizard.
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Left oddly unexplained beyond shapeshifting being magical.
- Shapeshifter Default Form: Ru's can be set by his master.
- Shapeshifter Weapon: Ru's preferred mode of combat.
- Winged Humanoid: Taylin and hailene in general.
