In Keshintai's absence, Taka fell to sadness. Her life became a series of motions that she followed. Her lessons lost most of their meaning, her time in the library was spent absent mindedly browsing the pages of long-forgotten tomes, though not a word wa…

I followed the stream up to where I had dammed it a year ago. I was surprised it had held this long. It hadn't taken much to build, just a couple dozen rocks stacked in the right places. Looking back, I wondered why I had done it at all. I mean I knew the…

The god was silent for a time. Irritation appeared across its countenance, but it knew now it had no choice in this matter. It was merely processing this information, coming to terms with it, making peace with its new fate.

"Very well," it agreed. "I am …

If you take the covered bridge over the River Ren and follow the twisting road that bisects the stagnant waters of the Coracotta Swamp, you'll find sickly trees in ones and twos that grow more numerous the deeper you go, until their limbs form a spiderweb…

There was an abrupt change of context, so violent that Tenever felt himself feeling for the edges of the dream, but was thrown back by the immediacy of the scene.

The interior of an armoured vehicle was once again folded around him, but it was mostly ups…

The inside of the tent was dark and cold and claustrophobic. Bree rolled over in her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. Dan, her mom's new boyfriend, whispered something on the other side of the tent causing her mom to giggle. Bree rolled …

Mitaran nudged the trajectory of the chestnuts with a whispered charm and caught it with one outstretched hand. Always so casual, Katy thought, taking a sip of water to hide her expression.

"Hey, uh, Mitt."

"Mhmm?"

"What are you going to do next year? …

"Hraz'Elarion!"

"Hraz'Elarion, have you been climbing trees again? Look at the state of your clothes!" Selura fussed over the young half-elf. In truth, she was proud of the boy. He had grown up to be a compassionate, charming, benevolent contradiction …

It wasn't Neptune who found us first, though.

A pirate craft dropped down on us a few days later, plummeting from a heavy cloud bank where it had been lying in wait. It arrested its fall neatly and elegantly off our starboard side, heliographs stuttering…

No, I wasn't concerned about faceless, independent threats. I was waiting for a far more dangerous foe to show his face.

"Nothing at all in the last few days," the crewman said to me over a tumbler of whiskey. "Nothing 'cept for a whisper of some Martese…

“Wicked are the men who dream and do nothing!”

The voice rang out above the early morning din of the market place. The accusation wasn't directed at me but in me it found a home and dug deep.

Before I knew it, my sandals had come to a stop in front of t…

You are a plague. I am a child.

You have the populace beguiled

And spell-bound as you stride around.

Your boots assault and salt the ground.

We see your staff sweep here and yon

In fear. You set your mark upon

The old and canny; young men hale;

Infants' f…

The smallest agent, I:

The jot-and-tittle spy.

At times I can't be seen,

Both placid and serene.

At other times, a glimpse

Is seen. Like elves or imps

I flutter into view;

I'll not get caught by you!

.

I hide among the blooms

In fancy dining rooms

In da…

“Why are you kicking me out? What did I do?”

Jack wouldn't quite meet my eye, staring just past my shoulder. He looked so pathetic standing there, shoulders slumped, hands stuffed in his pocket. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

I didn't respond though…

Dust. It was the dust, Tenever had decided. A very simple phenomenon that somehow accurately described everything that was FUBAR about this current situation. Normally any arcane practitioner of just about any ability had at least one warded layer to prot…

The Silver Skies was surprisingly spacious, for a clipper. Wooden crates lined two cargo bays in the side of the ship, while a larger stern bay housed two launches and the larger items of cargo.

"The captain would like to apologise for the mess," the f…

Astarlane was not with them. She was gone, folded into her cloak on the other side of the fire, her mind somewhere else entirely. She had been here before, in brief moments and scattered audiences, but she sensed this time was different.

She floated towa…

At the conclusion of the firefight I moved two of my controlling units closer to the High Senator. Local sensor capability had been significantly degraded due to defensive countermeasures deployed during the exchange of fire, which included the city datal…

Tenever landed hard, his wards snapping along with several ribs. Struggled, mind blank with pain, under the weight of Ferris' charred and burned body. Pushed and squeezed, wriggled and crawled out from under the remains of a man who had once been a frie-

…

Story is marked as mature

The Walmart and its parking lot were gone, replaced by a fleshy dome. Colors swam inside, alternating back and forth between contaminated white of curdled milk and the oily yellow of spoiled butter. It heaved and sighed and rippled with jellied motion.

W…

You reach out with your hands, ready to shove against the pushbar.

Yowtch!! It is burning hot.

You'd better get your handkerchief or something before trying that again.

"We've got it."

Captain Khan's tablet filled with lines of text and numbers. A massive spreadsheet, with some sort of unreadable data, plus a long program, rendered in some programming language.

A second message popped up onscreen.

"Target was not bank,…

I never understood what I'd done that was wrong,


Why you exiled me thus from my life.

Was it something I did? Was it something I said?

I strapped me to a table, I taped still my head


Underneath the hot lights. I was cut with a knife


But my brain wouldn…

Tenever watched himself bring Sadie back with the craftsman's satisfaction, knowing his protective wards had served their use. He remembered this particular layer, for use in situations just like this. In case of his own incapacitation through manipulatio…