Misbegotten Memories

Chapter 117

Not long into the first day, Hector began to worry that the Jinn might abandon him on this primitive world. The ‘city’ he’d been led to was a sprawling mess of adobe buildings topped with wooden shingles. The dirt streets were littered with human and animal waste. A tannery’s stink made him gag every time the wind turned the wrong direction. Street vendors cooked using cow dung. Young c...

Chapter 116

The grand culmination of the ritual lasted for less than a minute. Its steady drain on Hector’s cosmic energy reserves ended before he was fully emptied. The Arahant around him ran dry first. Theirs had been the greater contribution by far. Illusory energy empowered the ritual, his assistance only filled in the gaps to let it meld with the legal energy of the Jinn.

Flames ravaged about ...

Chapter 115

They lingered for two days by the rift on Earth to make sure the danger had passed. It made no appreciable difference to Hector. Once he’d entered War Barge Kevin, he’d effectively left the planet. There was no communication off the barge except through Kevin himself.

On the barge, things were different than what he expected.

There was no way to soften the sting to his ego. He�...

Interlude: Matthias

A/N:

Many (most?) of you will have already seen this interlude on RoyalRoad. It is supposed to come between volume 1 & 2, but a lot of readers complained that they were tired of reading about an untalented nobody. So I brought forward this interlude to entice them to keep reading. I believe that was a disservice to the narrative, but the more impatient readers needed reassurance ...

Chapter 114

The television continued to stream clips of the miraculous events that unfolded over the Atlantic Ocean and Evelyn continued to watch. This fell in line with the very best glimpses she had seen. The death toll of the monster attack in this timeline was only a handful of Navy pilots.

Her soul continued to saturate with the illusory energy of the world, which came to her faster than ever. S...

Chapter 113

In spite of their alliance, Kevin refused to relax his guard within the transit sphere of the Lord General. He’d fought the man for too long for even thirty years of cooperation to ease his paranoia. Perhaps he would be more at ease if it was just his life on the line. Eight hundred Jinn served on him and he valued those lives.

Darkness surrounded his hull, relieved only by his own hull...

Chapter 112

Thomas Killian stared into the cameras, dripping from his armpits as the hosts and other guest experts talked through the situation. On the monitors, he could see the images that would be displayed to the audience alongside the talking heads. There was an immense orange-red tear in the center of a blue sky. Lumps of what looked like gray puss overflowed from the edges of the jagged rip, droppin...

Chapter 111

Hector stared at the vial as if it held all the secrets to the universe.

“Drink it already,” Caroline sighed.

He ignored the sage. Why not? He’d just argued with a lord and been rewarded for it. In a single day, he’d interacted with two Arahant sages, a Jinn war barge, and a Xian lord. What illustrious company he kept. And Earth would be saved. Maybe. They still didn’t kno...

Chapter 110

“You can release my companion, Master Gavin.”

Hector thudded back down onto his seat, which collapsed sideways under the sudden load, sending him onto the canvas flooring. He looked at the feet of the Xian who had accosted him and swallowed. What had he been thinking? And this woman was a Sage?

“His behavior towards one of your station cannot be allowed to stand, sage. Allow m...

Chapter 109

What he’d thought to be just a random field proved to be a staging ground. A large ship of gray metal hovered overhead, defying gravity. “Is that a war barge?”

Conflagration snorted. “That’s Gunboat Kelly. She doesn’t even rate a schism beam.”

The portal to another world faded away behind them. Three of the Arahant who had spent so much time with Hector bowed to the sa...

Chapter 108

Because most of their adoring public were reading questions they’d written down, the seat switch performed by Vivian wasn’t addressed right away. There were questions addressed to Malachi from females of all ages about what he looked for when considering a partner. Malachi answered every variation of the question – and there were a lot – with an earnest profession that it was always the...

Chapter 107

Hector flared his aura to block a tentacle trying to wrap around his head. Much like he’d done with the dirty cops, the squid monster wanted to smash his skull in. Failing that, it wanted to twist his head off or suffocate him.

A sword of cartoon proportions sliced the creature in half.

“Nice one, Rod!”

They had discovered their optimal strategy. Instead of wasting energ...

Chapter 106

Hector sat upright in his chair, subtly flexing biceps that were shown to good effect by the form-fitting t-shirt he’d been given. With the fresh cut and hair dyed to no longer be gray, he looked remarkably better than two days prior. He’s survived his first battle with the monsters by sticking close to Rodrick and occasionally smacking the squid things with his domain.

Cameras caught...

Chapter 105

Everyone startled back from the young woman who appeared in their midst. She had auburn hair with a purple highlight streaking down from above her left brow. The delicate dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks and her startlingly blue eyes combined to make her almost a live-action anime character. Hector couldn’t tell if she was messing with his head or was inherently so adorable.

Chapter 104

“Your powers don’t seem very impressive is all I’m saying,” Greg continued.

“Again, I agree wholeheartedly that I personally am not very powerful. That does not generalize to the Xian as a species. My people are the most powerful warriors.”

The man shook his head in disbelief as he steered around a bend. “The fire whip thing Conflagration does? You can’t tell me your...

Chapter 103

The dreams were done. That hit hard. Almost as hard as the way they ended. He remembered being enclosed in the metal capsule, emptying his soul reserves into the engine. The way he had cultivated chaos at unprecedented rates, spurred onward by the steady suction of the Dream Engine. He’d felt himself die while acting as a conduit between chaos and the engine. Felt the trauma form a core at hi...

Exclusive #5: Zara's Tribulation

When her steely resolve began to fade, Zara Shaocheth went to visit the memorial of her youngest son. Corey’s remains stayed on the world now known as Union Central after the failed attack. She knew burying body and core ultimately did nothing to ease the loss of a child, but she still fixated on the fact that she’d been denied that hollow gesture. She placed a hand on her daughter’s near...

Chapter 102

The Lord Platinum dragged him out of the temporary holding cell of the strange Jinn facility. Volithur did nothing to protect himself and collapsed face first into the metal grating that served as the floor. “Do you want to be tortured for real?”

Volithur didn’t respond. He felt that his death was close now. They couldn’t prevent it from stealing him away. Anything they did to mot...

Chapter 101

He healed.

It happened in spite of his own desires. Charred skin renewed. Boiled eyes reformed. Eardrums regrew. It took time. Weeks, maybe months. The only thing that didn’t restore were his amputated limbs. Both hands and both feet had been taken by the Lord General.

At first they sought to keep him in line with threats to Khana and Darius. Over time, they realized he didn’t r...

Chapter 100

Rosa snapped a photo of the cops beating the dockworker’s union representative. Titles for her article spun through her head. ‘Corporate Friendly Police Negotiate with Heavy Hand’, ‘Thugs in Uniform Go Too Far’, ‘Long Arm of the Law Strikes Again’. This was exactly what she needed to expose the corruption on the force.

She hoped that the union rep survived the beating. Eithe...

Chapter 99

Two weeks of hell.

Constantly drinking. Constantly paranoid. Constantly second-guessing himself.

If things went poorly, he would not only die, he would witness the execution of Khana and Darius before receiving his own death. Xian did not mess around when it came to vengeance. The alcohol let thoughts he normally kept locked down slither all around his head.

He’d betrayed mo...

Chapter 98

He got no farther than his skull. Even that was only around ninety percent infused to the peak of the eighth level. For some reason, Volithur expected his progress to be similar to when he’d first used the cold forged method. That obviously could not be the case. Body enhancement to level eight required eight times the cosmic energy as level seven, which in turn required seven times more than...

Chapter 97

Volithur collected the items on the packing list from the warehouse, rushing because he’d slept in after hosting Darius’s second birthday party the day before. Corey and Rolanda had joined them with their daughter Erin. The adults imbibed much wine while the children played. There had even been murmurings between the girls that maybe the kids would make a good match some day.

Such tal...

Chapter 96

Hector watched as the assessor studied the case of silverware. His mother had loved the stuff. He never used it himself. Who wanted cutlery you had to periodically polish? Apparently, the answer to that was antique collectors on other worlds.

“I don’t recognize the make of this and I’m an expert in this area. Are you sure you don’t have any information you can share?”

“I...

Chapter 95

It took months for Volithur to hear about the outcome of his chat with the Jinn. During that time, he became a father to baby Darius. The addition to their little family changed everything. Constantly exhausted, tragically short on funds, and woefully ignorant of the art of parenting, they found themselves unbelievably, incandescently happy.

They’d coo at Darius for hours, fascinated by...

Chapter 94

Hector’s soul sat at full capacity. A sliver more energy and he’d advance to level five. Unless he decided to delay his trip by a month, he should not do that. Though maybe he should. Volithur’s first journeys, some of which were exciting in a bad way, were done at level six. Trying the same feat at level four was crazy ambitious.

He went to the gym for a final workout, being sure t...

Chapter 93

After rounds of congratulations, Rolanda and Corey explained that they had only known for a few weeks. It was still too early for them to make official announcements, but they’d told people close to them. Corey, ever the generous soul, wanted Rolanda to be able to tell friends from her childhood in addition to the people of the first household.

The girls got to talking then, with Khana ...

Chapter 92

Volithur stared up at the monument through watery eyes. The figures depicted were no one he knew. Possibly the statues weren’t based on any particular people. But the upright men and women and children stood defiantly among a desolate landscape. A large plaque titled the monument as ‘Our Dear Departed’.

His former city echoed with the whining and thudding of heavy construction machi...

Chapter 91

Hector checked the balance of the joint account and clapped his hands in celebration. The funds from his retirement account were deposited. He would owe a ten percent tax penalty for performing an early withdrawal, but that wasn’t his problem. The important thing was that Jen had access to the funds. He couldn’t stand the thought of the money trapped in an account while no one knew if he wa...

Chapter 90

“The first rule of travel is caution. Do not use a transit sphere if you don’t have abundant free energy in your soul. Forming one is the least expensive part of travel. It is the transition between normal space and chaos that drains you. If you are unable to hold the barrier as you transition, your sphere will catastrophically collapse. You will not survive.

“Generally, you should ...