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I returned to the camp and let them know the good news. “Kharon agreed to help. He hates what the new governor has done as much as we do and will be here momentarily to guide us through a secret way under the walls and back into the palace.”

Civitas stoo…

"Ah that's a real nice boon there, a standout miracle of blessings that any priest-liar's tongue would envy. Many thanks for this warmth, my fiend, that you've bestowed upon me in drink-form. She is a real beauty that touches me loving-like, a whisper tha…

Light.

It was too hot.

Uncomfortable.

If I could just worm my way deeper into unconsciousness I wouldn’t have to face . . . anything.

Something nuzzled against the top of my head. My skin crawled. Not daring to open an eye too wide lest I see too clea…

The girl took a step back from me, a hand creeping to her mouth.

“Umm, is that normal?” she asked, nodding toward the blood streaks running down the spears of grass.

Normal? I tried to connect anything to that word but nothing came to mind. Trying to th…

I couldn’t help but groan. Standing up had not been a good idea. Everything hurt.

“Do you know that guy?” the girl asked.

An icy spike shot up my spine. Panic swarmed at the edge of my vision like beating wings. I hunched down and grabbed her arm. “What…

An uncomfortable tingling ran across my shoulders and up the back of my neck; the sensation of insects crawling across my grave.

“Where did he go? People don’t just disappear!” I didn’t quite shout.

The girl looked away and said softly, “People disappea…

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…

I felt around the sides of my neck. She was right. The skin there was sore, tender to the touch. My suspicion of her seemed justified and came flooding back. I was choked recently and she finds me, leash in hand? I don't know if it was guilt or what that …

Thanks to a bright sun and a wide cloudless sky, the afternoon was warm with nothing but the echo of a breeze to prevent it from getting too hot. That just goes to show that monsters weren't caged by night. They can show up at any time, even a day as nic…

"Here it gors. Me and my cogs was moffing along the murky part of the Long Tews, minding our own business-grifts, we was. When all of a sudden these two 'barians spilled outta a drunkard's den. Real strangers, they was, and really going at it, faces like …

I hopped over a pair of the ash-filled streams, so contaminated that the clear water of my childhood had become an opaque gray. The air wasn't much better but it was getting clearer. The sun behind the smoky sky was still such an angry red that I could fe…

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There is a light that comes past my window early in the morning. It's not that bright, certainly not bright enough to wake me from a deep sleep. Unfortunately my dreams have been troubled lately and worse yet, broken by urgent calls of nature that treat m…

Suddenly her simply standing there watching me made her suspect. Why was this girl trying to help me? Sure it had been her dog that had woke me up but there had been no reason to stick around after her apology. She had made sure I was okay. By all account…

I awoke to soft light in the hallway outside my room. Soft greenness pulsed faintly about chest high, far below where the hallway light was mounted. The ebb and flow of it's intensity gave it a kind of bobbing motion.

There was no sign of the sun outside…

“Do you have a wallet?”

I looked at the girl without comprehension, my mind focused on the fact that I no longer had a name, just this infinite hollow blank where my name used to be. I felt naked. Undefined. Like something vital had been stripped away.

…

Streaking down from the heavens, long tailed comets signaled the end of everything. Tears of blazing light marring the inscrutable face of the sky. Were we ready? It was stupid of me to think about such things now, when it was too late to matter, but I co…

Responder pruned, collapsing in on itself, shrinking down like bacon in a frying pan. I knew from the few weeks since he'd shown up that the intensity of his emotional distress dictated the amount of area he lost. This was the worst I'd ever seen, losing …

There is something not quite right with the world. It teems with chaos, madness, and sudden death. Worse than quick ones are the deaths that linger on accompanied by unbearable, untreatable pain. That which isn't it out to get us will surely let us die wi…

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I'm a monster. Born of rage, that primordial scream from birth hovers at the edge of my consciousness and beats against my vision like wind-blown torrents of rain against a windshield. Some days it's all I can do to keep lips that peel away from my teeth …

Our train of wagons, ten strong, traveled along the narrow ledges of the Rushaven Mountains. Even as slow as we were going many of the wheels squeaked but we dared not stop to oil them until dawn's blush seeped across the eastern sky.

From this high up, …

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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…