The Crystal of Light

Everyone is happy in the Kingdom of Imperia. Humans farm, dwarves mine, elves craft golden items. People sing and dance in the streets. Everyone is happy!But beneath the surface, trouble is brewing. An evil wizard named the Dark Wizard seeks to steal a magical item named the Crystal of Light, with which he will have the power to summon dragons who can destroy the entire realm. The Crystal of Light is safeguarded in a heavily fortified magical temple named the Temple of Light, where it is watched over by the most powerful wizard in the realm, a legendary magic user named the White Wizard. So, to steal it, the Dark Wizard recruits six hapless, down-on-their-luck, flat-broke fantasy heroes to raid the temple, crawl the dungeon, and steal the treasure from the dungeon boss, the White Wizard.Those six heroes, a.k.a. the thieving crew, are:Yarid, a Fae King, who leads the faerie court into exile after a goblin army forces them to flee from the Fae Realm. The Dark Wizard promises to give him the money to hire mercenaries and raise an army to take back the Fae Realm.Sylis, a simple young farm wizard with a proficiency in time magic from a rural backwater town, who is forced to flee when assassins come after him and burn his farm to the ground and he barely escapes with his life. The Dark Wizard promises him the knowledge of who is hunting him and why.Nathan, a necromancer who owes a ton of gold to the necromancer who trained him and who will reclaim payment for his student loans as either gold, or blood. The Dark Wizard promises him money to pay off his debt.Rose, a wizard-thief crime boss, who is in her element stealing things from other people. She is eager when the Dark Wizard offers her a heist.Glorissa, a young female paladin cadet, whose twin sister went missing from their paladin academy one year ago, and who is on a mission to find and rescue her sister. The Dark Wizard offers her something she can’t resist: information that could lead her to her sister.Kylus, a young male soldier-in-training recently expelled from his military academy after they learned about his dark secret, which the Dark Wizard offers to sell him a cure for. (Hint: his dark secret has something to do with gender and sexuality.)These six heroes are good, and innocent, and noble, and heroic, and they should know better than to take a job offered by an evil wizard. But being poor and having a prize of a huge pile of gold coins dangled in front of your eyes makes people make bad decisions. They make the poor choice to take the job offer and go on the quest to steal the Crystal of Light. And the quest begins!Author’s Note: The elements of LitRPG in this novel are light/creamy, and the two romance arcs (the cishet romance arc between Yarid the fae king and Glorissa the girl knight, and the queer/gay coming-of-age romance arc between Sylis and Kylus) are a subplot to the main quest but do form an important part of the book. Mostly, the book is just the best epic high fantasy quest adventure you will ever read. It’s a character-driven soap opera with plenty of action and strong motivations to move the story forward. It is a fantasy heist novel, and the edge-of-your-seat thrills of watching the six main characters face the many dangers of stealing their target make it a gripping, compelling thriller suspense novel, while also being a traditional fantasy story set in a high fantasy realm with humans, elves, goblins, wizards, a feudal society of kings and knights, and a hard magic system with six types of magic. The magic plays a central role in how the heroes try to steal their target, because they will need all six of the six different types of magic for their heist to succeed. The novel begins with standalone stories that introduce the main characters, and then after all main characters are introduced, the characters meet by chance at an inn and tavern where they meet the Dark Wizard, and the main plot arc begins.