Tsaimath

Chapter 1288

The moment the magic keeping the guy I had acquired broke, I reached out with my Blood Magic and struck. I had no desire to have the guy try to escape, fight back or, really, do anything but lie quietly on the slab of stone I had pulled from the ground to place him on. I didn’t want to risk breaking his mind, so I had to let him wake up, but his body? That was an entirely different aspect of ...

Chapter 1287

Silently, I appeared behind the first guy to leave the warded area of the Blessed City. Before the guy could notice my presence, or anyone else was able to pick up on it, I placed a hand on his neck and used a combination of Mind and Blood Magic to knock him out. The attack used very little Astral Power, making it incredibly subtle, and he never had a chance to make noise. He simply fell uncons...

Chapter 1286

“You know, Mom, some people would call us strange,” Lia quietly remarked, while we looked down into the Blessed City. After the excitement and the various talks of the night, and the reconciliation in the morning, we had both slept the day away, rising only after the sun had already set. During breakfast, Lia had given Luna a brief, and somewhat condensed, explanation, and once we were all ...

Chapter 1285

It was far too early when a noise pulled me from my slumber. I had no real idea how long I had been asleep; I only knew it hadn’t been long enough. However, living in the Changed world had thoroughly trained me to wake whenever someone came too close while I was sleeping. In this case, opening the door of the shrine caused enough of a disturbance to rip me from the deep sleep I had fallen int...

Interlude: Lost in the Dark

• AN: I admit the Chapter didn't go quite the way I had initially intended. Still, I hope you enjoy.

Sometimes, running away wasn’t cowardice. Sometimes, running away meant removing yourself from a perilous situation, reducing the risk of getting hurt. It was a lesson her Mother had taught her, and now, she was using it against her Mother. Or maybe for her Moth...

Chapter 1284

If I had learned one thing during my interactions with Lady Hecate, it was that her lessons would always leave me with a headache. This one was no different, especially as it focused on something I had barely learned about, meaning I didn’t have the time and mental capacity to sort a new revelation into my worldview. In this case, the new discoveries were those thin, blue threads I had observ...

Chapter 1283

“Good Morning, my dear Jade,” a familiar voice, far too cheerful for comfort and mixed with the same childlike curiosity I regularly heard from Luna, greeted me. A part of me wanted to turn over, wrap a pillow around my head, not that I had one, and ignore the cheery voice, hoping it would go away. However, my experience with Luna told me that someone with this voice, and that excitement, w...

Chapter 1282

After my daughter left, I remained seated in the shrine for some time. Exactly how long, I had no idea. I simply sat there, my mind going in circles, questioning every word I had said, wondering about the things I could have explained differently, asking myself if there had been a better way to give Carnelia the news. There were so many possibilities, so many nuances that could have been commun...

Chapter 1281

A small, cowardly part of me was relieved when I realised that Carnelia wasn’t present in Jademoon Tower when Silva and I got there. It was only a slight reprieve. I had decided that I would tell Carnelia about my actions and the magical bindings entangling her today, and I would do so, unless I didn’t see her. Or some other major event interrupted it, knowing my luck, we might just get att...

Chapter 1280

• AN: In commemoration of all our four-legged friends, especially those of the canine variety. You truly are men's best friend.

When I pulled my disappearing act, I had hoped that they’d think I shadow stepped away. And, in a way, it would have been the truth. I stepped into the shadows and disappeared. I just didn’t step back out. Instead, I moved through the ...

Interlude: Times of Confusion

“Hey, gents,” Jack greeted two of his three friends after returning to their little village with Jonas, before adding, “And lady,” with a rogueish smirk, despite knowing that Samantha wasn’t interested in him. The flirting had become a habit he just couldn’t seem to break, and he wouldn’t even try unless Samantha gave him clear signs of discomfort. Until that happened, he was cont...

Chapter 1279

The excitement didn’t end with my accidental blessing of young Jade. Instead, that incident was only one of several that occurred during my visit. Some of them, like the moment when a minor accident made my fight or flight reflex kick in and freeze a large amount of water after a rooftop tank broke, were minor. Others, not so much. 

Amusingly, what I considered the biggest, or mayb...

Chapter 1278

Other than the ward I had noticed earlier, the protections around this community were all physical. Just the wall and people guarding it, enough to repel most enemies they’d have to face. Maybe not all, I could readily remember several foes that would have made short work of it, either by circumventing it or by breaking through it outright. Still, against the usual Shattered and Undead, the w...

Chapter 1277

I continued my journey to inform people about the events in the Blessed City until I eventually arrived in an area I hadn’t personally visited but knew about. And, more importantly, I knew the people who were living here, especially one group of them. Their Search Group One, led by the ever-amusing Jack and composed of his other buddies. Including Samantha, the woman I had some seriously mixe...

Chapter 1276

To distract myself from the weirdness happening in the Blessed City, I decided to hunt down a few of the locals. Just telling a couple of people about the events there would probably do additional damage to their cause, especially when it came to recruitment numbers. After all, the prospect of living in a well-fortified and supplied city was a lot less tempting when said city came fully equippe...

Chapter 1275

As it turned out, Lorgar was willing to push the punishment as far as it could go.

Over the next two days, I was provided with ample evidence of human, or in this case, centaur, depravity. Not only was the punishment ongoing, I could watch and listen to Lorgar preach about the light of Lady Sunna multiple times a day, never repeating himself. Just driving home the message that Sunna was m...

Chapter 1274

As it so often happened, things didn’t go as I had planned. Not at all.

The original idea and plan Lia and I had hatched had been to slowly increase our efforts in driving the people of the Blessed City into a frenzy. Slowly but steadily making them more irritable and paranoid, showing them that even the longest night, and subsequent rising of their deity’s power, wouldn’t stop thei...

Chapter 1273

It was amusing just how visibly taken aback the guy was at the challenge, but he rallied quickly enough to make me think he wasn’t just a waste of space. Still an idiot, that much was fairly obvious given that he walked to the tower from the Blessed City on his own with minimal combat ability and no obvious plan to get back home, given that night would fall before he got there. So, an idiot b...

Chapter 1272

Looking at the few students who had come by, I wasn’t sure if I should be happy or a little disappointed. Somehow, I managed to be both at the same time, which was a fairly odd sensation; however, this entire situation was a little odd. On the positive side, these people had shown up, uncertain if there would even be a lesson from yours truly or if they would have to make do with Luna. While ...

Chapter 1271

“Mom, have you considered when you’re going to teach the locals a few lessons?” Luna asked me one morning, when I was just about to head out once more, planning to do exactly that: teach the locals yet another lesson. Not that they’d know they were being taught, but the eventual explosion would be all the lesson, and destruction, the people of the Blessed City needed.

“What do y...

Chapter 1270

Circumventing the wards came with a few challenges. Both Darkness and Ice Magic didn’t last long within their confines; spells and constructs that would normally last for hours, if not for entire days or weeks, were burned away within minutes, with some not even lasting that long. Any purely magic construct was burned away within seconds, and if I anchored them to physical objects, like my sc...

Chapter 1269

A part of me was sorely tempted to venture into the so-called Blessed City, as I had learned the local Sunna worshippers called their town. Quite bombastic for a collection of largely wooden buildings, but I wasn’t too surprised. Lorgar and the others had left a city called ‘New Dawn’ behind, so I had a feeling any name with the word ‘Dawn’ would be out from the start, or maybe even a...

Interlude: Darkening Days

Waking up, Jeff couldn’t help but shiver, despite the thick blankets he had been wrapped in for the night. His room was freezing, and he knew he’d have to get out of his warm cocoon to light a new fire, or things wouldn’t get warm.

It took him a moment to overcome his weaker self and get up, his breath misting in the air as he quickly made his way across the room to the stove. It wa...

Chapter 1268

Whistling to myself, I kept looking at the ever-increasing list of tricks I had played on the people of Sunna’s community. I really needed to come up with a better name to call that place, other than, well, that place, the town or the local loony bin. Something catching and fitting, maybe a play on the etymology of lunacy and the amusing relation it had to worshipping the Sun, but I hadn’t ...

Chapter 1267

For once, I wasn’t stalking the forest near Jademoon Tower, looking for worshippers of Sunna to torment. Instead, I was sitting in the cave Lia and I had set up near the giants close to the Nexus Tower, observing the world through a scrying construct. In a way, this was a vacation from my vacation, a distraction from all the amusing curses and misfortune I spread on the people down south. By ...

Chapter 1266

After I sat close to the edge of the community’s wards and studied them for about ninety minutes, Lia returned. She was moving quietly enough that I didn’t notice her presence until she was just about on top of me, proving once again how capable she was when it came to concealing herself. As we had done on the way to the community, or maybe calling it a town would be more appropriate, there...

Chapter 1265

As the night was starting to fully set, my family came together for a nice, early dinner. While the sun wasn’t setting as early here as it had near the Nexus Tower, the longest night was coming, and the nights were getting longer in preparation for that. We would have to see whether we wanted to do something special that night, either a celebration of our own or some mischief with the local s...

Chapter 1264

With the start of a plan to make serious trouble for the local fanatics, I felt a lot lighter than I had before, as if a burden I hadn’t noticed had been lifted, no longer weighing me down. My earlier indecision and the feeling of powerlessness started to fade. However, I was well aware that those sensations would only completely disappear once I made actual progress on the issue. Now, the ob...

Chapter 1263

If there was one sensation I despised, it was insecurity, especially when it combined with ignorance. Questioning myself about whether to take a specific path, made worse by my lack of information to make an informed decision about the potential consequences of those paths, was something I utterly loathed. I wanted to have a reasonable chance of predicting the outcomes of a course of action bef...

Chapter 1262

The transition between the physical realm and the seemingly endless, grey expanse of Lady Hecate’s domain continued to confound me. Just a few moments earlier, I had closed my eyes after making myself somewhat comfortable in the shrine we had created at the bottom of Jademoon Tower and focused on the deity, trying to make contact. Then, without any fanfare or any perceivable sensation, the bl...