Chapter 25: Seize the Day
Martha Vesper chewed the inside of her cheek as she moved through the faux candle lit hallway to the reception area ahead. The calming music and scent of incense in the air did little to balm her nerves.
Her parents and personal tutor walked behind her, flanking her on either side as they both showed their support and cut off her only avenue of retreat. She...
2022-11-10 21:08:31 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 24: The New Routine
I skipped out on weight training the following morning for just a fifteen mile run, my own futile attempt at giving my sore and bruised muscles a chance to recover from the prior day’s abuses.
Listen to me. Just a fifteen mile run. Less than a year ago I could’ve maybe managed three before collapsing to the dirt rasping for air like ...
2022-11-08 20:10:19 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 23: Options
“He did what?”
Xavier’s axe slammed into my practice sword, sending the wooden blade flying from my grip. It bounced across the padded floor and over the edge of the dueling ring.
I help up my hands to admit defeat. “He refused to let me pass. Said as my instructor it’s up to him, and he intends to keep me in combat one until my year’s ...
2022-11-04 22:56:47 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 25: Don’t Wake the Dreamer
Edmund emerged from the dark between levels and glimpsed annihilation.
It seemed, at first, as a wall before him, scales the size of the festival platters he’d seen bear an entire roast pig every year on Bounty Day. They glimmered dark in the torchlight, a crimson so umbral it toed the very edge of black.
Only as Edmund averted his gaze c...
2022-11-01 21:31:23 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 22: Exam Day
I returned twice to the focus rooms over the following five weeks, each time equipped with a different specialty herb Nick had tailored for my specific purpose. The process proved remarkably simple: I chewed on a few leaves to reintroduce impurities into my system, then cycled my blood meridian to force them back out through the appropriate avenue.
To fake openi...
2022-10-21 21:02:17 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 21: Focus
“This is the last one.” Nick slid a small linen-wrapped bundle across the dinner table, more cloth than content. “If you can handle this one, you should be ready for tomorrow.”
“Thank the threads for that,” I said, swiping the package and slipping it into my pocket. “And thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Nick said. “When you’re writhing ...
2022-10-11 23:59:12 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys. I... apparently have not actually escaped that funk I mentioned. Over these past two weeks, I've spent something like fifty hours sitting, staring at a blank word document, making no progress on anything. I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I used to pride myself on my consistency; now here I am, apologizing for failing to meet the one commitment I made to you a...
2022-10-01 17:41:26 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 20: Trading Truths
“A skiff?” Charlotte’s voice echoed through the cavernous hangar. “The soulship’s a skiff?”
“Her name is Lucy,” I said pointedly, “be polite.”
Charlotte froze. “Wait. She can hear us?”
“Of course she can. She’s right there.” I nonetheless raised my voice as I added, “Hi, Lucy!”
“Cal!” Lucy’...
2022-09-21 00:08:11 +0000 UTC View Post[Ladies and gentlemen, we have a title! Big thanks to Akgreenday for bringing the word 'stargazer' to my attention. It's a good one. In other news, I'm sorry this chapter took so long. At 9.5k, it's the longest single chapter of anything I've ever written. Thankfully, I seem to have escaped self-doubt and uncertainty about this story that's been plaguing me these p...
2022-09-15 22:39:10 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 24: Sunk
Edmund nearly stumbled as he emerged from the darkness between levels onto a surface far steeper than he’d tread before. He caught himself on the open entrance, swinging wildly about as the door rotated on its hinges. Without a moment’s hesitation Edmund spun, his blackbone boots scuffing against wooden planks as he brought himself about to face the floor ahead.
Chapter 18: Happy Dueling Day
The next few weeks blurred past as I threw myself into my studies. Each day I awoke to my holopad’s alarm at the crack of six—formerly five twenty-seven before I’d re-synced my circadian time to Fyrion’s schedule—and joined Nick on the way downstairs for the morning workout.
Approximately two hours of weightlifting, agility training, and borin...
2022-08-25 19:39:59 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 17: Accolades and Admonitions
I awoke to my blaring alarm the following morning with a pounding hangover that lasted approximately forty seconds before I remembered I was cultivator now. I couldn’t soothe my head directly, but I could run qi through my blood meridian to improve circulation and through my kidney meridian to fortify my liver. Together with a few healthy swigs of l...
2022-08-19 00:01:49 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 16: Stronger
I arrived to breakfast ten minutes late, my brow sweaty and my uniform creased from the vac suit. I received a few more of the curious stares than usual as I crossed the mess to fetch a tray and made for my usual table, but none of the louder attention I’d feared. Nobody confronted me. Nobody appeared frightened or hostile or interested in blaming me for the incursi...
2022-08-13 21:12:20 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 15: Space to Think
I awoke with a start to a hand on my shoulder. The lights in the lobby had faded to their nighttime tones, indicating the passage of time if nothing else. I looked up to find one of the mortal nurses looking down at me.
“The lockdown is over,” he said. “You can go home, now.”
I blinked the sleep from my eyes and rubbed at the sore neck sleepi...
2022-08-08 20:38:51 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 14: We All Scream
There are a few things you need to know about void beasts. Well, actually, there are a bunch of things you need to know about void beasts, but I didn’t know most of them at the time, so you don’t get to either. Fair’s fair.
Void beasts come in all shapes and sizes with a few unifying characteristics. As the name would imply, they can all surv...
2022-08-03 20:23:05 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 23: Everyone Breaks
A chime rang out the moment Edmund left the darkness between levels. No loot chest appeared, no new Aspect became available, but the wooden door across the empty room swung open.
Coarse sand crunched beneath his boots, a layer of the stuff coating every inch of the stone floor just thick enough to reduce traction and inflict a nasty scrape should he fall ...
2022-08-02 00:56:31 +0000 UTC View Post[May be the last one of these for a bit. Got a busy few weeks ahead of me and I'll have to scramble a bit just to get the next Dungeon Devotee chapter out in time. I'll try and get 14 out sooner if I can because... you'll see. You've been warned.]
Chapter 13: Ice Cream
I learned more about my budding friend group over the course of that one dinner than in the entir...
2022-07-13 21:22:33 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 12: How Rumors Get Started
Elder Maria Lopez, one of six bronze core cultivators on all of Fyrion, third in command of The Dragon’s Right Eye’s local operations, kept her face a mask of cold neutrality as the outsider stepped from her office. A shiver ran down her spine as the door closed behind him.
That man was not human. Not anymore.
She’d bought the lie at fi...
2022-07-11 22:55:04 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 11: Something to Come Back For
“For the last time, I’m okay.”
I paced circles around my dorm room as I spoke to the empty air, my holopad transmitting my voice with a half-second delay through Fyrion’s comms network and into orbit.
“Cal, sweetie, you had a panic attack,” Lucy’s voice echoed clearly throughout the small room. “It’s been less t...
2022-07-09 00:05:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 10: A Suspiciously Long Shower
I picked the third in the line of eight showers and reached in to turn the water on. A chill ran down my body as the first frigid droplets struck my arm, which I jerked away to give the stream a moment to purge the cool water before the hot could catch up. It felt like ages.
With near certainty I believed the other floors didn’t have this pro...
2022-07-07 21:52:14 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 9: You Can Put Me in Class, But You Can’t Put Class in Me
There are only two things you need to know about meditation class. The first is that it almost entirely consisted of thirty ten-year-olds and one twenty-two-year-old trying to meditate while a pair of instructors wandered the room randomly hitting them with sticks. The second is that I was absolutely godawful at it.
Chapter 22: My Final Offer
A tunnel damp and dark and full of smoke met Edmund’s entrance. He coughed a single time, a sharp and abrasive thing, before the last of the fresh seaside air had left his lungs and he re-acclimated to the haze. His vacation was over.
The passage ahead tilted downwards at a treacherous forty degrees, shallow enough to walk yet too steep to do so comforta...
2022-07-01 20:34:21 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 8: Well, That Was Fast
I blinked. I looked back at the still-open door to my room behind me. I looked down at my sweaty, towel-clad self. I looked up at the cultivator who’d challenged me to a duel on my first day.
“How long have you been waiting here?”
“Two hours!” he proclaimed with both too much pride and too much volume.
My brow furrowed. “And you...
2022-06-25 19:31:09 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 7: Bad
“Soulship LC-81535 requesting permission to land.”
“LC-81535, I don’t see you on our docking schedule for toda—wait. Did you say soulship?”
“I did.”
“Holy fuck. Let me just—”
“Language!”
“Oh, yes. Sorry ma’am. You’re clear for dock sixteen. Welcome to Fyrion. Somebody fetch Elder Berkowitz! We’ve got a...
2022-06-24 19:14:19 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 6: In Transit
I have a theory. You see, I think cultivators are so obsessed with their ceremonies and their honorable combat and their constant drama because none of them have jobs. You can only meditate so long before the boredom sets in, and with the mortals doing all the actual work, the cultivators have nothing better to do than argue over petty bullshit and hit each ...
2022-06-21 22:11:35 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 5: A Way Forward
Lucy let me cry.
She didn’t interrupt to ask if I was alright, she didn’t try to stop me or convince me it would all be okay or to look on the bright side or any other meaningless bullshit. She stayed present, her perception lingering in the core room ready to listen or remind me I wasn’t alone, but she made no attempt to halt the outpouring emotions.<...
2022-06-20 23:06:10 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 4: Adrift in the Infinite Sea
I should’ve panicked. I should’ve withdrawn my senses, broken my focus, altered my breathing.
Instead, as the riptide of qi bore my consciousness away, I rode along with it. It felt right, like the time had finally come to commune with the great nothing to which I’d always felt some connection.
But nothing communed with me. ...
2022-06-17 21:44:30 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 3: Debt Unpaid
I dreamt of a soft bed and a cool pillow and a woman with a warm smile and silver streaks running through a golden braid. She sat at my bedside, watching over me and stroking my hair as I slumbered. I never questioned why she did this, never doubted this stranger’s intentions. It felt nice. It felt safe.
Behind her, darkness lurked. Dread and despair loomed ...
2022-06-16 22:39:31 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 2: The Survivor
“Caliban? Caliban, can you hear me?”
The words drifted through my mind even as consciousness eluded me, the first trickle in the oncoming storm of sensory information to break through the blackness around me. It sounded distant and tinny as if it echoed from down the hall, yet a distinctly feminine character survived the trip to my ears.
“Caliban,...
2022-06-14 22:05:00 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 1: The Call of the Void
The call of the void is that feeling when you stand in a high place and think about jumping, but don't actually want to and don't actually do it. It's a feeling more people have had than they'd like to admit.
-Words from the ancient scholar, Ghoo Guhl
——
The day I died started off as boring as the day before it.<...
2022-06-14 22:04:22 +0000 UTC View Post