Plum Parrot

Update on current projects and future plans:

Hi, everyone!

I wanted to drop a note to keep you all in the loop with my plans and to make sure it's clear what's available on the Patreon.

1. Falling with Folded Wings: We've got 30+ chapters beyond RR on Patreon now, and I'm working to keep that number going up. On Patreon we've got about half of volume 2 done, and I have plans for volume 3. After that, there wil...

M83

It ended up taking Morgan, Issa, and the band of refugees from Blake’s keep four days to get to the forest outside of Tarn’s Crossing. When they’d finally gotten everyone down the escarpment using ropes, makeshift platforms, and lots of patience, they’d burned through an entire day. When they’d camped at the base of the rocky cliff that night, Morgan had drawn a map in the dirt, showi...

Victor 4b: Secrets

Patrons, here's Sunday's Victor installment a little early. Let me know what you think, please!

-Plum

After sorting through the wounded delvers and seeing to their injuries the best they could, Sergeant Fath directed the able-bodied prisoners in the construction of a barrier over the tunnel that led deeper into the depths. One of the veterans had a rune inscribed b...

O33

Olivia waved her hand in front of her face while looking into the mirror. She didn’t quite know how to feel about what was happening to her. To his credit,  Professor ap’Gravin hadn’t skimped on his award. The Botner’s tincture had been even more potent than Radasheen’s Hereditary Delver had been, at least for Olivia, giving her a full four racial ranks. Some of her improvements ...

Victor Revisions 4/28/22

Hi all, just absorbing some feedback and trying to make Victor seem a little less "passive" about his situation.

2. Status

“After we eat, we get yard time?” Victor felt like he was in a prison VR. Now, he just had to keep his eyes open for some loose bricks or a guard who slipped away to be with his girlfriend, and then he could make a break ...

O32

Olivia sat on the stone bench, hands folded in her lap, and did her best not to feel like a mouse under the predatory gaze of Professor Oylla-dak. Something in her didn’t shrink away, though, and she felt a heat start to rise in her chest; she sat up straight and looked into the professor’s dark, star-filled eyes. There weren’t literal stars in her eyes, but something about the advanced r...

M82

After Morgan released all of the former prisoners of Gunther and Blake, he and Issa explored up the spiral stairs, looking for where Blake had stashed her dimensional bags and gear. If he were honest, Morgan was also hoping to find some treasure or clues as to who Blake had been. One of the people he rescued, a tall Shadeni man named Brel, said he’d lead some of the other survivors to free th...

O31

“Should I assign my five points from level ten before looking at my class choices?” Olivia asked Alyss. They were sitting in Alyss’s office, which would have made a fully tenured Harvard professor envious. They sat near a wide bank of windows that overlooked the back gardens of the academy on two warmly upholstered sofas that faced each other. Built-in bookcases lined the walls, overflowi...

M81

Morgan was starting to think the sedative wasn’t going to work. Perhaps the dosage for such a large pot had been insufficient. Perhaps alchemical concoctions couldn’t be mixed with other substances. He didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to let this chance slip away - it had been quite a while since he’d backstabbed anyone, but he still remembered how. Very carefully, he pulled his sword...

Victor 3b: Beetles

Really sorry I was slow posting this! I just wrote it this morning and got busy (moving house and painter showed up.)

Thanks all!

Three of Lam’s Furies had died fighting the stickmen. Nobody seemed particularly broken up about it, and Victor couldn’t help imagining himself in their shoes; one minute, they were marching along, joking and laughing with other pris...

Victor 2b: Delve Six-fourteen

Victor followed the old, blue Ardeni man to the back of Lam’s barracks, where he’d promised to hook him up with a belt. It was cool that he was allowed to have a club, considering he was basically a slave, but he didn’t like carrying it all the time. When he’d mentioned it to Gris, the guy that Captain Lam had ordered to show Victor around, he’d laughed and said that Victor just neede...

M80

Keiry spun around with a gasp, and Morgan held his hand out palm-down, his sword tucked against his body by his shortened left arm. “Please stay quiet; like I said, I’m here to help.”

“Who are you?” Keiry hissed, covering her breasts with her arms and moving around to the other side of the butcher’s table. Morgan did his best to make it obvious he was looking at her face and n...

O30

Olivia was disturbed to see that more upper-class students and professors had shown up for her demonstration than had for the awards assembly. She was standing on stage next to Alyss, wearing her gray first-year robes and nervously wringing her hands behind her back. The confidence she’d felt the previous night seemed to have departed her, and she was back to her old, anxious self. That wasn�...

O29

“Why did Alyss write that you shouldn’t be near anything flammable? Are you going to burst into flames?” Rald asked as they looked around the commons for a good spot for Olivia to absorb the elemental fragment.

“I don’t know, but you’re not helping my nerves!” Olivia frowned and pointed across the grass to the wrought iron fence that bordered the flower garden that adjoined ...

O28

“You shouldn’t let them get to you like that, Olivia,” Veena said, taking a seat at the foot of Olivia’s bed. They were all still hovering around her, some sitting on her bed, some on Veena’s, and Rald reclined on the floor between them. “I know it’s stressful, but you’re going to be fine. Alyss wouldn’t have chosen you if she weren’t confident in your ability. I, for one, a...

O27

The awards assembly took place in a large auditorium that Olivia hadn’t yet visited. It reminded her a lot of one of the larger lecture halls at university, except for the aesthetics: polished wooden seats with soft cushions, warm glowing light fixtures, wooden paneling hung with elaborate tapestries to dampen the echo, and a slightly raised stage on which all the first-year professors sat in...

M79

Happy Monday, all! Thanks a lot, to those of you that took the time to go over to RR and support my new story! I really appreciate it!

As he hurried across the twenty or so paces between the trees and the wall, Morgan tried to map out an ascent path. He saw plenty of gaps in the mortar beneath the right-hand window, so he ran that way. When he stood against the stone w...

Victor 1b: Lam's Furies

Victor still hadn’t taken a look inward to his Core by the time the wagon trundled to a stop at the bottom of the long, hard-packed gravel road. He was afraid of what he’d find; right now, he had a little hope that something good was happening, and he knew that if he looked and still just saw his shattered remnant of a Core, he’d fall into a pit of despair that would be tough to climb out...

M78

The journey through the grasslands of the Chebli Sea went smoothly for Morgan and Issa. They didn’t run into the Ardeni herders, nor did they encounter any wildlife of any size. They saw lots of birds and small animals scurrying through the grass at their approach, but, for the most part, they were alone, like two small boats on a vast ocean with wavy, red-purple water. “It smells different...

Victor on RR - Please help if you have time :)

Dear Patrons - 

I'm pushing Victor's story live on RR this weekend. If you have time and enjoyed reading the story here, I'd really appreciate it if you could go over there and give a follow/favorite/rating or review!

Victor of Tucson - Part 1: Pit Fighter | Royal Roa...

M77

“Well, that’s a little disturbing,” Arthur said after Morgan explained that he could sense Bronwyn but that she was extremely distant and not in any clear direction that he could tell.

“You haven’t heard anything from her? Or from those Urghat she had following her?” Issa asked.

“No. It’s not surprising with regard to the Urghat, though. They’ve made themselves sca...

M76

Morgan sat behind the desk in the tower’s study and frowned at the little alchemy book. Gaerwolt’s Secret Recipes was half recipe book and half love letter. Each recipe was prefaced with a love poem or essay about a memory Gaerwolt had with the woman for whom he’d intended the book. Still, it was filled with a dozen or so very promising-sounding recipes, especially one near the b...

Victor 21: Greatbone Mine

When the wagons creaked to a halt that evening and the wooden door at the back rattled with the efforts of someone to remove a heavy lock, Victor sat up, painfully, to get a good look outside. His efforts were largely wasted, though, as a man, broad in girth, stood in the doorway. He set down a basket of hard rolls and a bucket of water with a ladle and said, “If ya don’t share, I’ll beat...

Victor 20: Fractured

Victor felt like the lord that the guard had gone to fetch would arrive any moment, so he lay there tensely, his mind providing detailed fantasies about what kind of hell was waiting for him. He lay like that for a long time, tense, sweating, even twitching with nerves. When long minutes went by, then hours, he thrashed about, trying to get even a tiny amount of wiggle-room in his wrists so tha...

Victor 19: Private Party

“You know, I really didn’t think much about escaping until they put this fucking collar on my neck,” Victor said, trying to squeeze a finger between his skin and the thick metal band; he had an itch developing that was fast becoming a new source of rage Energy for him.

“Why didn’t you ask for the tag?” Belsa sat up from where Victor had tossed her, trying to teach her to manag...

Victor 18: Cultivating

Victor sank back into the cushions of the coach, the scents of perfume, sweat, and old smoke wafting up around him. As he swallowed the fruit, which hadn’t tasted like a plum, more like an orange with the texture of a banana, warmth pulsed through the flesh that it touched, and then in a wave from the center of his belly out to his limbs. He felt a buzzing sensation all over his body, and the...

Victor 17: Prizes

The liveried servant led Victor down another pathway through the gardens to yet another lawn, where a fighting pit had been dug and lined with fresh wood; the smell of sawdust and paint still hung in the air. The Lady and her guests came in twos and threes to find spots around the pit's edge while Victor stood off to the side, waiting for instructions. Yund appeared after a few moments, a clutc...

Five more chapters of Victor's story

These are the last 5 chapters in "Part 1: Pit Fighter" - I'm going to start pushing them to RR this weekend, so here's an advance look for you, my dear Patrons!

O26

On Monday morning, Olivia sat next to Veena, as usual, in their Enchanting lab, and while they waited for Professor Brince to come in, she asked, “Isn’t it odd that there are seven days in your week and on my planet we also have seven days in a week?”

“Yeah, that comes up quite often. You know Fanwath was formed from the merging of four other worlds by the System, right?”

...

O25

The next few days ran together in Olivia’s mind. She followed a simple routine of exercising, cultivating, eating, studying, eating, visiting with a cohort member, eating, cultivating, studying, and sleeping. Her studying consisted of reading texts and practicing her Energy weaving. She was pleased with her progress; so far, she’d gotten fast enough to complete three meta-element patterns b...