“Nice job, Ripp!” Alex shouted. “Now, let’s get the hells away from here!”
“Way ahead of you, bosses!” The swiftling cried, racing from the hill and leaping into the air then soaring well above the treetops.
‘Claygon!’ Alex thought. ‘We’re finished, get out of there!”
‘Coming…father…’ came the reply, followed by a boom and a flash of li...
2022-11-17 23:47:05 +0000 UTC View PostAlex was more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs as Theresa, Claygon, Brutus and Ripp swooped toward the snow-covered hill.
The huntress’ hands were already blurring, loosing arrow after arrow into chitterers as the group of four attackers went for the Ravener-spawn. Her bowstring’s heavy twang announced a rapid stream of bolts that pierced their mon...
2022-11-17 00:15:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe fae roads weren’t what Alex had imagined, not what he’d imagined at all.
On Baelin’s map of Thameland, they’d appeared as golden glowing lines, shedding sparkling light like sunbeams snaking above fields, forests and hills. It was a captivating image, and—when Alex’s little group had stepped into a fae gate minutes before—he had thought they’d emerge on a path of glowi...
2022-11-16 01:38:14 +0000 UTC View Post“Hey, Khalik, I need your help,” Alex said suddenly, dragging his nose out of the immense tome of demonology lying before him.
The prince held up a finger as he jotted down a note, frowning at a certain passage. “Hmmm, I would have thought the air in the Domain of Cawarthin would have had a more acidic tinge to it…but it is the opposite: more slimy and basic, it seems. You will ne...
2022-11-13 00:30:19 +0000 UTC View PostIt was perfect.
Power bled from it in waves touched by a hint of the aeld’s natural warmth. A mound of snow nestled beneath the branch melted away from its touch, and its golden-green light sparkled in the melting rivulets.
“Oh, by the Traveller.” Alex reached toward the gift, feeling pure magic tingle across his fingers. Pure magic mixed with…something he couldn’t immedia...
2022-11-11 20:41:03 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a beautiful day in Greymoor; a lovely winter’s morning where it felt like all the world was at peace, almost as if the rivers of blood spilled on the Research Castle grounds in recent days had never been. The wind was uncharacteristically warm, the sky uncharacteristically clear: perfect dancing weather, to Alex’s mind.
And he and Claygon took full advantage of it.
“Goo...
2022-11-10 23:15:16 +0000 UTC View Post“Sixty-five thousand would be a very fair price, I would say.” Govert’s eyes narrowed as Troy tottered back into the room, bearing two hot cups of cider.
He carefully placed them on the table away from the contract.
“Your drinks, sirs,” the assistant said stiffly before returning to his spot behind the counter. There he stayed. There he watched.
“If you look at the...
2022-11-09 23:26:01 +0000 UTC View PostTo say that the living quarters were in an even worse state than Alex had feared would be an understatement…Troy hadn’t been exaggerating. Dust clouds rose in mounds, provoking fits of coughing and sneezing as the baker led him through a doorway that was covered in suspicious looking stains in the alleyway, then up a flight of stairs that creaked so badly, Alex had Claygon wait for him in t...
2022-11-08 23:31:15 +0000 UTC View Post“My name’s Troy,” the baker sighed, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He was bent so low over a table, that he looked about ready to collapse. “Troy of Tauberurg, from the Rhinean Empire originally, and now the very last person employed at the Mermaid’s Cakes Bakery.”
“Alex Roth,” the young wizard said, inspecting the man’s welts. “Originally of Alr...
2022-11-05 19:56:48 +0000 UTC View PostAlex Roth, the very first Junior Crafter ever hired by Toraka Shale, emerged from the workshop with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. Tucked away in his satchel, he carried a writ of employment with a promissory wage clause included of fifty gold pieces per shift, with three shifts per week as a schedule.
Not included in the written contract was Toraka’s verbal promise to le...
2022-11-04 22:49:04 +0000 UTC View PostI am…coming…are you safe, father?
“I am safe,” Alex said out loud.
“Hm?” Shale frowned.
“Oh, sorry, I do that sometimes,” he chuckled. “I was talking to Claygon.”
“Oh?” Toraka Shale’s eyes shone with curiosity. “You can communicate with him from this distance?”
Alex beamed.
The two of them were sitting in her very large,...
2022-11-03 23:50:29 +0000 UTC View Post“Before you say anything, I want to dispel all notions that this is a ‘hollow tower’.” Toraka Shale leaned forward on her desk, tenting her fingers. “I don’t tolerate such trash practices in my workshop, unlike some of our competition here in the city. Many of them are associated with enough hollow towers to build complete castles.”
The young, Thameish wizard was silent, cau...
2022-11-02 23:26:24 +0000 UTC View Post“Agh, you couldn’t have brought him a little later?” Lagor complained, glaring at the crowd as they slowly closed in on Claygon. Little by little the ring of curious onlookers surrounding the young Thameish wizard and his golem shrank, people pressing tighter and tighter against each other.
Crafters reached for Claygon, wanting to touch him, their hands yearning to ...
2022-11-01 23:31:05 +0000 UTC View Post“So, I’ve been doing some thinking in the last day or two.” Alex leaned forward, elbows pressed to the table, glancing over his shoulder at the room his sister and his girlfriend shared. “You’re getting bigger, Selina. A lot bigger.”
He looked at Claygon. “You’ve changed a lot too, buddy, and I need to make you a speakerbox or something that’ll let you talk, and...
2022-10-29 22:07:07 +0000 UTC View PostSelina looked at Alex solemnly, earlier warm feelings draining away as she thought about the story her brother had told. What he’d said was horrifying, a tale of monsters she could barely imagine, invisible dangers and enemies so powerful, they’d even given Baelin pause.
And she’d always looked at the chancellor as invincible.
Then Theresa had told her story: of darkness...
2022-10-29 00:09:19 +0000 UTC View PostSelina was tingling with excitement as she took the stairs two at a time. From somewhere behind and above her, she vaguely heard Shiani calling her name.
“Selina, be careful you don’t fall down the stairs!” She warned. “Your brother will kill me if you do!”
“I’m fine!” Selina shouted back undeterred, now stubbornly taking the stairs three at a time.
Sh...
2022-10-27 23:27:35 +0000 UTC View Post“—and so heat rises, travelling as high as it can go,” Shiani was saying, pointing to the flame. It was a tiny, controlled flicker caged within an oil lamp in the table’s centre. Glass walls surrounded the small fire, caging it in, giving it no opportunity to grow and spread to the books and papers sprawled around the lamp’s brass base.
The fire was harmless, Selina told herself...
2022-10-26 23:36:17 +0000 UTC View Post“Professor Jules is not going to like this,” Alex murmured. “I’m not sure I like it.”
Baelin, his eyes sparkling while he remained floating in mid-air as he schemed for the future, looked at Alex with incredulity. “Truly? Now you wish to turn coward? Bah, I say! When we spoke of slaying Ezaliel and obtaining information on the Traveller, you were as ...
2022-10-25 21:11:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Ah, Alex, Claygon, welcome.” Baelin looked up as the young wizard and his golem stepped into his office.
The ancient wizard was bent so low over a map table, that his beard-braids threatened to scrape the painted surface of Thameland. Across a tabletop made of cork, a map was carved showing the realm, the sea around it, and the nearby coast of the Rhinean Empire. It was topographic, ...
2022-10-22 19:57:20 +0000 UTC View Post“Ooooh I like the sound of that.” Hart snarled, his large eyes twinkling in anticipation. “You said you went from being a skinny baker’s boy a year ago to turning into…well, you?”
“Aye, is true, he’s bloody hard to recognise now,” Cedric said. “He went from lookin’ like a blade o’ grass to lookin’ more like a thick, bloody oak.”
“Blade of grass...
2022-10-21 21:26:47 +0000 UTC View PostAnd so the Fool, Chosen, Champion and Sage planned their future.
It wasn’t the first time they’d talked like this, but this time—at last—they spoke with all their secrets out in the open.
Or, at least, most of them.
Midnight had come and gone, but no one’s eyelids had grown heavy. They weren’t yawning. They hadn’t nodded off. Excitement filled the air…...
2022-10-20 17:58:08 +0000 UTC View Post“—and then I came here, and you punched me in the face,” the Fool finished his tale. “And that’s it. That’s the whole story, and I swear I’d rather box a behemoth than tell it again.”
‘Father…you cannot punch a behemoth. It would squash you, unless I protected you.’ His golem’s voice echoed in his mind.
‘Figure of speech, Claygon,’ Alex thought. ...
2022-10-19 18:27:18 +0000 UTC View PostAlex had met Cedric in Coille Forest a long time ago.
The Chosen was as boisterous as he was friendly; the type of fellow who made even Alex—who’d desperately wanted to avoid all the Heroes at the time—want to sit down and have an ale with him.
He wasn’t anything like the Chosen that Alex had imagined: the fountain overlooking Alric’s town square that paid tribute...
2022-10-18 17:23:56 +0000 UTC View PostAs days went in Alex Roth’s life, there were few as important as the day he received the Mark of the Fool. That day had altered his lifepath forever, and the only other that could compete was the night his parents’ alehouse burned.
But this day?
This was close; the dungeon core attack earlier, Claygon’s awakening, admitting that he was the fugitive Hero to Drestra…and now, s...
2022-10-15 23:29:38 +0000 UTC View PostIt took him longer to tell Drestra than it had to tell Baelin.
Though, he supposed the tale had grown longer since that day in the chancellor’s office. Perhaps he’d be well served to write it down and have it ready in some sort of pamphlet to hand out to the next person who asked.
In the end, though, he shared most of his story with her: escaping Thameland with his little sister...
2022-10-15 00:42:23 +0000 UTC View PostAlex Roth exploded.
Or at least, his mind did.
Thoughts and emotions clashed within, leaving him paralysed, yet filled with an overwhelming desire to burrow into the earth and disappear. Through all of the panic sweeping him up, one thought kept recurring, screaming through every cell in his being:
‘She knows. She knows, she knows, she knows, she knows!’ his mind shrieked....
2022-10-13 22:50:55 +0000 UTC View Post“Hello to you too.” Alex gave Drestra a surprised smile. “Can this wait for a while? We’re kinda in the middle of something.”
“I’d really rather it didn’t,” she said, her voice holding a gravity that wiped the smile from his face.
Behind him two heavy footsteps moved closer.
A menacing boom and the grind of stone on metal.
The Sage’s gaze shot to some...
2022-10-12 23:35:55 +0000 UTC View PostAlex burst into the entryway with a smile so wide that his jaws should have been aching, but even if they were, he wouldn't have noticed anyway. As the doors burst open and the cold night wind billowed his cloak around him, every eye in the room turned to him.
Blood mages looked up from tending the wounded. Warriors stirred from half-doze, hands falling on weapons as they geared up ...
2022-10-11 20:19:41 +0000 UTC View Post