Infamous Goose

4:16 The Grand Finale

Starlit Soul 14 - Scales Like Fire

4:15 How the Tables Turn

The Capital of Art rose before the strike force. Alexander had to marvel at it, despite himself, because truly, he had never seen anything so beautiful. The entire city rose to the height of the tallest mountains, a painting made manifest. Statues of marble that looked like they may jump to life at any moment topped the tall, gleaming golden walls that surrounded the base of the city, hanging g...

Return of the Hero 13 - Calling Heaven

The Bel Air rumbled beneath him as he drove, the scent of oil and dust filling his nostrils. Lucas had the window rolled down, one arm hanging loosely out the window. Nothing played on the radio - it was dead anyways, but Lucas hummed a tune to himself all the same. Outside, forest rolled by.

Tall pines and lush greenery covered the mountainside, a cool breeze and fresh air chasing the sc...

4:14 Thank You

My friends, a good friend of mine is leaving the country for a least a year, heading to Japan for a teaching gig. You don't have to wish him good luck, I just wanted to share his good news, and wish him the best of luck!

***

He was just a little being, compared to the forces at play here. Amongst his people, the magicians and the warriors, he had once been considere...

Starlit Soul 13 - Interlude: One Tribe

Stonehide looked out over the army assembled before him. Three years it had taken to unite the tribes. Three long years of bloodshed and violence, the kind he thrived in, and it all came down to one last fight. One last brutal battle between minotaurs. Yet not once had he ever expected it to be the Greenplains who remained standing against him.

The Redclubs had fallen in the first four mo...

4:13 Retaliation

I teleported beside Elvira, as Morgan deposited Alala on the floor of her palace. The musuclar woman was convulsing, her unconscious mind fighting tooth and nail against the Rot that kept trying to take hold once again.

"Hold her steady," I said unnecessarily, kneeling beside her, my power automatically going to work. The entirety of the Four Realms pressed down upon Alala, yet her stren...

Return of the Hero 12 - Murder is On the Table

Lucas was going to bite the bullet. It had been two days since his confession with his siblings, and while things had changed a little bit, they hadn't changed nearly as much as he had feared. It was really in the little things, like how they listened to him when he talked about magic, or actually paid attention when he spoke about life. However, he also figured they were still coming to terms ...

4:12 Such Was My Rage

There was only so much I could do to help my children as they crossed the One World, but it had to be enough. My personal will reached out across the universe, still absorbing information as I was, and lifted much of the restraints being placed upon my children as the Will of the One World continued to fight against foreign invaders. Both Alala and Yueya fought me as well, puppeteered by the Ro...

Starlit Soul 12 - Death Would Not Come For Him

There were many things to remember when fighting a dangerous beast, especially magical ones, like the frost bear. Their habits, their diet, their preferred hunting methods, how territorial they are and how to escape if things turned south. And, if they were magical, what they could do. One didn’t hunt a shadow lion at night, for example, and you would be foolish to attempt to hunt a frost bea...

Return of the Hero 11 - Who He Was

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Getting out of the facility around the gate had been fairly simple, all things told. The guards had looked the other way despite their burning curiosity, and none of the equipment had registered Scathatch’s visit, thankfully. The twins then took him to a breakfast burrito truck on the way back to George's place, which was closer than Elizabeth's penthouse, and wa...

4:11 System

Author's Note: There may not be a chapter Saturday. I have a family thing I need to go to. Just a warning.

***

 I stared blankly at the box floating in front of the Celestial Empress while she, as well, stared at it. Technically I was not there. I was seeing through her eyes and through the eyes of the Will of the One World, as Curie did...well, whatever the h...

Starlit Soul 11 - If It is Death You Want

Lysander burst out of the tunnel, skidding to a halt on a ledge overlooking a massive cavern and, for the first time, beheld the salamanders’ village. Huts of stacked stone ringed the walls, forming a circle around a pool of water in the very center. The roofs were thatched, made of wood and what looked to be some sort of fungi; it was hard to tell in the dim light of the glowstone. Two fires...

4:10 The God Empress

Inesa was now watching two little babies as she sat in a chair in her garden, just outside her and Xing Wu's home in the Heaven Realm. The first was her own child, Sequoia, though she was no longer quite so little. The green-haired girl ran about like a toddler possessed, constantly giggling, constantly grabbing things and putting them in her mouth, constantly asking questions. She grew very sl...

New Stories

Alright! We've gotten ten chapters into the two tied stories, and I wanted to do a quick little poll about which ones you are enjoying so far. We've gotten far enough in each that you should have gotten a look at characters, and started to step foot into the story proper. I admit that these first ten probably read more like prologues than anything else. An introduction. An idea of what the stor...

Return of the Hero 10 - Proof

Sneaking into the gate had been trivial, as George and Elizabeth said. Though it had been less 'sneaking in,' and more them walking right past security with him in tow, ignoring all cameras and sensors and the few security guards who recognized them. No one paid George and Elizabeth any heed. Lucas kept his head down, to avoid cameras, just in case.

The gate itself was mottled green, unl...

Return of the Hero 9 - Confrontation

I'll get chapter 10 out tomorrow. After which, we'll start with the once-a-week posting.

***

It was on the news the next day. Lucas sat on the couch watching as the reporter documented one of the fastest closings of a B-rank gate ever - a whopping twelve hours of delving. Body cam footage was still being reviewed, but the actual closing itself was available for pub...

4:9 Waking

A new consciousness brushed against my own. It was familiar in many ways, though I had never been quite as close to this one as I had been to the other two of its kind. For a brief, disorienting moment, as I had existed alone here besides myself, the curse, and the two Wills for too long, I was afraid. My aura took on a defensive posture, even as I flushed the remains of the curse out of my bod...

Starlit Soul 10 - Catacombs

Three years had passed since Lysander had first started to observe the Salamanders. The time had slowly trickled by as he did what he could, learning about their culture, habits, and snippets of their language. They were fascinating creatures, and he wished for nothing more than to actually make contact with them, to do more than just trick their traps and interact with them through the strange...

Starlit Soul 9 - Storm and Dark (Observations II - Timeskip)

A storm was coming. Lysander could feel it in the air, in his bones, in the whispers of the spirits as they danced along the roaring winds. He pulled his buffalo hide coat tighter around himself, snuggling into the warmth and debating the merits of running back to his little shelter to huddle in for the rest of the day. Currently he stood far away from the salamander’s cave, on the opposite s...

4:8 Counterattack

Author's Note: I won't take a break until there's a good stopping point. Not going to leave y'all on a 2 week cliffhanger.

***

Explosions rocked Atreum's forces. Elivra watched from afar, one hand on the hilt of Father's sword He had given to her - The Sword that Does Not Cut - and watched as hell was unleashed. They had thought they could sneak forces into the Fou...

Return of the Hero 8 - The Problem

Despite telling himself that he wouldn't look into it, curiosity won out and Lucas did a brief search into Solarianism. It really wasn't anything special; just a US-based religion that worshipped the rising sun or something. Their home page and what little information he could find talked more about where to find their temples and their outreach programs rather than their theology, which is wha...

Return of the Hero 7 - Wrong Number

Lucas plucked idly at the strings of his guitar, the instrument foreign feeling and just...off. They were horribly out of tune from years of being stored, and he didn't have the tuner to fix it. That didn't stop him from plucking at the strings, however, fingers struggling to remember the movements.

Funny how sliding back into the role of brother was so simple, despite its emotional comp...

Return of the Hero 6 - Graves

It was cold out today, and it had nothing to do with the weather. Lucas shuffled forward, leaning gently on his cane as he walked through the graveyard, feet shuffling. Most of the headstones were covered in leaves and dust, the dead in the past few years piling up to the point they likely didn't have many visitors, or those visitors who may have come lay in the ground as well.

A gentle b...

Return of the Hero 5 - Penthouse

The wheelchair clacked against the concrete as it was pushed out the doors of the hospital, Lucas hiding his face in his hands as his sister pushed him out of the front doors. Just as she had warned, there were a few people with cameras, snapping pictures of Elizabeth like the celebrity she was. Even with a baseball cap on and out of costume, looking nothing like the pictures and news reels mad...

4:7 A Quick Oblivion

The Celestial Empress walked amongst the dead. A piece of white cloth covered her face, threads of silk interwoven with magic to prevent disease from spreading. Yet that did little to stop the smell of death from touching her, nor the feeling of cloying blood from clinging to her hands. The battle had been brief. It had been intense. And never before had she seen so much death, all at once.

Starlit Soul 8 - Pinecone Men (Observations I)

There was something wrong with the salamanders.

That was perhaps too strong of a word, “wrong,” but it was the only one Lysander could think of as he sat in a tree, chewing on a piece of deer jerky. Below him the salamanders were fiddling with a few traps, but there was a noticeable tension between them. Best he could tell, there were two different groups of salamanders within the sam...

Starlit Soul 7 - Interlude: The Bloodhorns

Chief Stonehide of the Bloodhorn Tribe was a massive creature, far larger than all the other minotaurs gathered before him. His shaggy torso was broad and covered in battle scars, arms as thick as tree trunks with great bulging muscles, and curling horns twice as thick as the largest of his tribesmen. Even sitting, hunched over and slowly chewing on a raw deer leg, biting through flesh and fur ...

Starlit Soul 6 - You Stay

Night had fallen.

Lysander lay in a bush not far from the entrance to the salamanders’ cave, just down a small slope and right next to one of the wooden shacks they stored firewood in. Two torches blazed on either side of the cave’s mouth, shadows dancing upon the rocky cliffside, and further in he could see the light of even more torches illuminating the cave walls. Two salamanders l...

Starlit Soul 5 - Run Back

For once, no time was wasted in getting ready to leave. The elders were notorious for taking a long time to get anything ready, spending dozens of seasons to deliberate over nearly anything. Not this time. Early the next morning Lysander found himself standing just outside of town with Alaric and his mother, the sun just starting to lighten the sky. A few people gave the little group glances as...