Trial by Fire — James Osiris Baldwin

One man. One game. One adorable baby dragon. Two weeks ago, Hector Park cheated death by uploading his mind to the ultra-immersive fantasy RPG game, Archemi. After exposing the rotten heart of an order of dragon knights, he's now on the run with a young queen dragon who could one day become the most powerful mount in the game. To get strong enough to face their enemies, they need a quest â€" a big one. Fortunately, trouble has a way of finding Hector, and it does â€" in the form of a series of brutally murdered priests, a king in desperate need of a hero, and a beautiful, fiery berserker. The risk? Huge. The payoff? More gold than a dragon's hoard. There's only one problem - Archemi is haunted by the ghost of a mad developer bent on making the game his personal playground. And now that the world outside has vanished in a storm of nuclear fire, there's no one left to stop him. Or at least, that's what he thinks. Because Hector isn't the kind of man to take this shit lying down.