C. Sebastian Nutt

Chapter 223 - Potion Man

The door snaps closed behind me as I trudge into the penthouse. It wasn’t until the last half mile back that my feet began to drag. With how tight the spiraling stairwell is up the interior of the building, I had to climb each step instead of navigating around with the use of my wings. As if to taunt me, the curtain hung across the open door of the balcony lists into the room, waving like a d...

Chapter 222 - Fishing

“How is this possible?” 

I stare down at the device on my laboratory table, my newest addition. It is similar to the one the dwarven man flouted to me less than two hours ago, only cheaper. The information from the probe, a copper wand that I had to hold on the infused copper in front of me, was conveyed in two dials. One displayed the maximum capacity for the medium the probe to...

Chapter 221 - Golden Return

Light streaming in through the eastern-facing window wakes me. It filters through the crack in the velvet curtains, a line of radiance falling across the bed. For a moment, I don’t want to rise. Corinth left the master bedroom of the penthouse to me, and my brother’s bed is by far the most comfortable I have ever lain in, even more comfortable than the ones in the Mari manor. 

Th...

Chapter 220 - Family Dinner

I am lost in thought for the entirety of the trip back to Corinth’s penthouse in the city. The ache in my eye won’t disappear, and a strange anxiousness to sleep comes over me as I travel along the moving walkways beneath the city. The idea of finding a money changer to turn what is left of my currency into something more usable in the city is attractive, but the late hour pushes that aside...

Chapter 219 - Repairs

Her words bounce off the walls for a moment, slowly working their way around the room and through my mind. She makes no move to protect herself from my blatant hostility, nor does she use any magical means to push back against the roiling wave of my gold and red soul presence that floods through the room. Her legs buckle a bit as the weight of my magic settles on her, and she grabs onto the ban...

Chapter 218 - Lady Talagast

“Yes, I understand.” I can cut the tension in the air with a knife. 

Around me, six men dressed in dark orange clothes I now recognize as the uniform for the Faethian Police Force, stand. Two keep their hands firmly placed on the metallic wands hooked onto loops on their belts, but all keep their gazes trained on me. That is hard to tell exactly in the pupiless eyes of the dwarve...

Chapter 217 - Hidden Armory

Once I have the table set and moved into the precise placement I like, I spend another hour contending with moving and ordering all of the instruments I have collected atop it. That done, I can’t help but move the rest of my equipment from my vault and into the room, filling one of the bookshelves with the collection of works I have managed to gather up to this point. Stepping back and starin...

Chapter 216 - Faeth

Blooms white block my vision as the ship starts to rise. We are lost in the shadow of Faeth, an eclipsing penumbra too large to understand from below. Then, we break through the surface of the cloud layer, and an island floating on a sea of white spreads out before me.

The sky around the massive island is all of one color, rolling mists of white vapor perfectly encapsulating the edges for...

Chapter 215 - Drops on the Carpet

“Charlie, quiet,” Jess hisses. Behind her, Sasha, her cousin, snickers, earning an equally penetrating glare from Jess. I mumble an apology, picking up the garden tool from the stone pathway and setting it against the wall once more. 

Overhead, the stars twinkle, somehow looking closer tonight than they have before. Jess’ parents always take forever to get into their beds. Stay...

Chapter 214 - Hell and Academy

I breathe a long exhale, but focusing on my breath does little to help. I can smell it, the char in the air. Even a week later, Danfalla reeks of fire as we sail over it on our way out. Dovik stands at the fore of the ship, staring down into the ruin and wreckage beneath us as we glide past. Despite the dark, some people still stare up at the sky, tracking the shadow of my vessel with their eye...

Chapter 213 - Heading

I feel weird, just lying here and listening to him breathe. There is something about the way that he does it which is so different, but I can't put my finger on it. The short rise of his chest followed by long exhales, the way he looks like he is smiling in his sleep. It is the only time that I have seen him smile in the last few days. I hope that I helped do that, give him that little bit of c...

Chapter 212 - Goodbye

In the manor that once belonged to his brother, I sit with Jor'Mari, the two of us alone around a wooden table. They've gone now. Haford was the first to leave. Bali came, Gods it feels like forever since the last time I saw her. She hasn't changed, still the same warm woman that kept the world looking straight, always there to fix what she can. She told me about how everyone else is doing, app...

Chapter 211 - Gods and Monsters

“The Trial of Soul and Bone?” I say.

“How?” Dovik asks at the same time.

Illigar reaches into his robes, removing a small, metallic cylinder. Infused rings of copper wire wrap the object and runes are painted on its surface with red ink. It is a crude device, but when he grabs the ends and twists, snapping the cylinder, a familiar blue bubble expands around us. It does not m...

Chapter 210 - Debriefing

The clash of steel echoes from the yard. Droplets of water from the drizzle a few hours ago cling to the fabric covering the furniture out on the lawn. The back fence of the estate stands low, stretching out to frame the street to the south side of the property. Some stand, looking over the retaining wall of brick, peering through the continuance of wrought-iron that tops it to watch the fight ...

Chapter 209 - First Victories

I’m still on the roof of the Mari manor when he arrives. I don’t notice when Corinth makes it up to the roof. Just one moment, I am alone, and the next, he is standing on the slight slope of shingles next to me. He appears so different than what I remember from the night before, just a man as regular as you might find anywhere. 

“Been here long?” he asks. The roof creaks as h...

Chapter 208 - Scarring

My eyelids are heavy. Reaching, my nails rake over the sheets fit to the mattress beneath me, my fingers skipping with tiny pops as they scratch over the wrinkles on the fabric. Something in my shoulder pops with the movement, the snapping in my arm eliciting a satisfied groan from me. For one blissful moment, I am relaxed.

I snap my eyes open, the heaviness of my eyelids vanishing as I j...

Chapter 207 - Warfire

A crossbow bolt moving so fast that the air visibly parts in its wake rocks through the air. The strange monster turns it’s head, smiling at the incoming missile. The bolt releases a flash of light, a wash of magical energy so powerful that it blinds me. My vision clears almost instantly, leaving me staring at the monster calling itself the Thirty-Seventh, standing with the iron bolt grasped ...

Chapter 206 - The Servant's Arrival

Illigar arrives on the top of the stump, his boots clicking against the hard wood. I never saw him in the tent before, but I can’t imagine he looked much better then. He stands, bare-chested except for the bloody bindings over his chest. Six golden arms stretch from his back, each far longer than a normal man’s, the surface looking hard and almost insectoid. The fingers of the arms rattle a...

Chapter 205 - Final Congregation

Heat seeps through the transport chamber, too many bodies crowded in to wait impatiently around the silver disc in the center of the room. Hundreds of large runes are painted in flowing lavender lines upon the wide, ten-foot disc, all connected in a chaotic manner that only a master enchanter might be able to decipher. Halford doesn’t need to decipher the intention behind the magic to underst...

Chapter 204 - Golden Boy

This is the first time I feel as if I am back in that day again. As the boughs of the giant tree creak, swaying ever so softly in the warm breeze, the memory grows like a gnawing insect in the back of my brain. Turning, I see it there, a monster made of gnarled wood, the only vestiges left of its face a wide mouth with long and flat teeth. 

Near me, the rank three commander groans. S...

Chapter 203 - End of Madness

The demon screams its rage at me, swiping now with its hands while its tentacles are occupied, scaling the tree. The claws of its hands impossibly cut the air, slicing far further than their reach should allow. I learned that lesson the hard way, taking a nasty cut across the arm.

A quarter of the way up the tree, the battle has become insanity. Dragonfire pours from my hands, washing ove...

Chapter 202 - Alerted

Dovik feels a buzz tingle through his fingertips. It is a slight thing, barely registering, but he feels it all the same.

He sits inside the vault Charlene had deposited in the dome, his chair pulled up to the bed where Jess lies. On the other side of the bed, one of the healers sits in a similar chair, his head lolled back against the rest, his eyes closed. The man collapsed from mana ex...

Chapter 201 - Beanstalk

The field is an agony to cross. The land is at once both a clear path, yet there is no easy way to navigate between the bodies strewn mostly along the paths of the once expansive garden. They hurry, feeling every second slip by. Benson carries the duke’s daughter by her shoulders, her already pale face gone pallid and bloodless, the bandage around her leg leaking. The sergeant ahead calls a h...

Chapter 200 - Demon

“I think I lost myself somewhere in there,” Jor’Mari says as I pull away from him. His hands linger on me, the points of his claw-like nails

“I think I lost myself somewhere in there,” Jor’Mari says as I pull away from him. His hands linger on me, the points of his claw-like nails snagging fabric, but he doesn’t hold on, doesn’t stop me from turning his attention. “I tho...

Chapter 199 - Light Under Shadow

There is something that moves. It grinds like a misaligned link in a spooled chain, like a stubborn thorn of rock scratching against the lim

There is something that moves. It grinds like a misaligned link in a spooled chain, like a stubborn thorn of rock scratching against the lime as the foundations of the earth slowly shift. Morello feels it, a jagged point set against his bones, but he...

Chapter 198 - Battlefield

I start to see it now, and I’m entranced by it. Once, Tacit the Grim told me that he would show me what the world truly was. It is only now

I start to see it now, and I’m entranced by it. Once, Tacit the Grim told me that he would show me what the world truly was. It is only now

I start to see it now, and I’m entranced by it. Once, Tacit the Grim told me that he would show me ...

Chapter 197 - Return to the Field

I'm not certain what I expected to find when I ascended toward the palace grounds, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of it

I'm not certain what I expected to find when I ascended toward the palace grounds, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of it

I'm not certain what I expected to find when I ascended toward the palace grounds, but nothing could have...

Chapter 196 - Miracle

I don’t know how long I stand there, staring down at the charred body of the monster, probably only a few minutes. I’m so damn tired.  My so

I don’t know how long I stand there, staring down at the charred body of the monster, probably only a few minutes. I’m so damn tired. 

My soul washes over the remains before I trigger my disenchantment. Dried and twisted flesh...

Chapter 195 - My World and My Dark Dream

Ferro tries to stand, but his body moves strangely. The weight that he had shrugged off just before presses down on him now with a new force. He twists, trying to shift to his hand, finding some strength left there. Knees buckle beneath his weight. Gasping, his hands run over his chest. He feels the touch of bone beneath his iron fingers. His breath hitches, pieces of his lungs torn away. Ferro...

Chapter 194 - The Path

The soft earth crunches beneath my boot as I climb the hill. I always find him here after supper, staring out at the orchard, smiling to him

The soft earth crunches beneath my boot as I climb the hill. I always find him here after supper, staring out at the orchard, smiling to himself like he knows something no one else does. He probably does, come to think of it. Corinth turns as I make ...