Blade and Arrow

Jake, in his seventeenth year of Mindsword training, suffers the death of his father, signaling the onset of pavor nocturnus, horrific night terrors. Night after night, crazy scenes of a nine-foot tall cat and man-sized rats wreck his sleep. Sometimes he gets lucky and dreams of the dark-haired girl. His friends, determined to cheer him up, plan a hike in the woods.

Deep in the forest, the friends discover a dark and ancient path leading to a clearing and a long forgotten well. One discovers part of the well house floating below and drops a rope to pull out the rotten boards. Something grabs the rope and yanks them all under the putrid black water.

The hikers accidentally flush themselves through time and space to a world dominated by the genus rattus; rodents, tall as a man, that walk upright, and breed humans for food and slave labor.

Sluiced to the world of Jake's nightmares, the travelers survive deadly attacks, encounter horse-sized talking canines, and finally meet the dreaded Harvile rat-men horde in battle. The culmination of this moral and physical crusade is Jake’s single-handed duel against the deadly Ix, a nine-foot tall, twelve hundred pound feline predator.

Blade and Arrow is an exciting adventure; an entertaining tale of friendship,
honesty, and loyalty, conjuring up elements of Stephen King's "Stand By Me,"
C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, and J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter.”