Chronicles of Cain (1-3) - John Corwin

Written by John Corwin
Read by Austin Rising
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

01) To Kill a Unicorn
The gods are dead. The fae rule Gaia.

Cain used to kill for the fae. The only human to become a member of the Oblivion Guard, he killed one time too many and had enough. Leaving it all behind wasn’t as easy as turning in a resignation. But the fae had trained him well and soon it was they who bargained for him to leave Feary and live in exile in Gaia.

Now a tracker for an assassination and bounty hunting agency, Cain doesn’t kill anymore. When his mission to track a teenage girl goes horribly wrong, he and the girl end up on the run from powerful forces the likes of which he’s never seen before.

That’s because the fae have been hiding a terrible secret. The gods aren’t dead. In fact, they’re very much alive and killing humans they deem too powerful to survive. The girl is in their crosshairs and now he is too.

To make matters worse, Cain discovers he’s dying from the curse of Cthulhu. The cure? Eating a living, beating unicorn heart. Cain thought unicorns were extinct, but a mystery party offers him salvation: a unicorn for the assassination of the leader of the Mages Guild.

With the gods, the fae, and the rest of the supernatural world hunting the hunter, the odds don’t look good. But Cain has survived too much to give up now. And the high and mighty are about to find out what real fear feels like.

02) Enter Oblivion
Oblivion and beyond

Breaking a bargain with a god is impossible, or so they say.

Which means Hannah is Cthulhu’s forever. But she still hasn’t learned to use her powers at will and old Tentacle Face isn’t happy about it. His minions drop Hannah at Cain’s doorstep with orders — make her useful in a month, or she dies.

Cain isn’t sure what’s worse — damning her to an eternity serving Cthulhu, or letting her die. No matter what he does, he’ll lose her.

But a wizard and a dwarf have a proposition: Trade Cthulhu something of greater power than a demigoddess. It just so happens they know exactly where to find such a thing — on a dead world the gods abandoned eons ago.

The world of Oblivion was created before Gaia. A war between the gods destroyed most life and left it a desolate, dangerous wasteland. Hidden somewhere on that world is the lost armory of Hephaestus. It is said to contain super weapons created by the blacksmith of the gods. If Cain can locate it and procure such a weapon, Cthulhu might be willing to make a trade.

There are others also looking for the armory. Among them are the mechanists, a faction that despises magic and wants to destroy the gods with their own super weapons. Their clockwork devices are unlike anything Cain has faced before, and they’re the least of his worries.

But Hannah saved Cain by trading her freedom for his life, and he’ll enter Oblivion itself if it means saving her.

03) Throne of Lies
Welcome to the multiverse.

Hannah returns to Cthulhu in a week, and there’s nothing Cain can do to stop it. Though he still has Soultaker, Hannah won’t let him trade it for her freedom. The sword can summon an army of the dead, and Cthulhu wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

It turns out Soultaker wasn’t the only thing from the armory to survive. A mysterious cube was stolen by the mechanists. When Cain tries to retrieve it, he and Hannah end up in a parallel world where the mechanists reached the armory first and plundered it.

Using apocalypse weapons, the mechanists destroyed most of the coastal cities with tsunamis and have ground others to dust. To avoid destroying the world altogether, they’re fighting a conventional war with airships and a small army of demigods. And if that’s not formidable enough, they’re also allied with Cthulhu.

Cain discovers the only way back to his dimension is by finding a device called the Tetron. To do that, he’ll have to infiltrate the mechanists and steal it from them. But then, he discovers a nasty twist - the mechanists of this dimension plan to use the Tetron to invade other parallel dimensions. Cain’s dimension is considered the original-Prime. And the mechanists have their sights set on it.

If Cain can’t save this dimension, then his will also be doomed, and Cthulhu will ascend to true godhood.