"You don't need to do anything, Theodora. You just need to watch."
Ironically, the person least excited to be performing animancy is one of the two people here who happens to be animated by it. Theodora seems to quite enjoy the biomancy research she and Penelope have been getting up to most of every day now, but messing with the living man's soul crosses a line for her, apparently. Penelo...
2021-08-19 04:42:50 +0000 UTC View Post"Capita," I growl, spear still raised. "What are you doing here?"
She doesn't feel hostile, but emotionally, Capita is one of the most complicated people I’ve ever tried to read. Something about being two fragments of a person spliced together makes it difficult for me to understand her as a singular entity, as her emotional responses are spread between two souls that demonstrate those ...
2021-08-16 19:06:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe sight of my body being ripped apart in front of me is different when it's not a simple bug. I designed Evelyn Tinkerbell, after all. Those deaths and the resulting macabre horror show I witnessed as they got disemboweled was terrifying, and are certainly memories I will always dread, but it is so similar to watching an insect back home get picked apart. It is the kind of thing I have done b...
2021-08-14 17:55:42 +0000 UTC View PostAbout a tenday later, as I sit through the incredibly surreal experience of eating breakfast with my family, I'm mildly surprised to hear a knock on the door.
Not in the sense that I don't see it coming, since of course I can feel a person approaching our house from anywhere within a thousand yards and this is especially notable when that person happens to be Penelope, but in the sense th...
2021-08-13 17:01:53 +0000 UTC View Post(Hey everyone, Thundamoo here. This cha
2021-08-11 23:42:42 +0000 UTC View PostObviously I pull my blow on Lyn, not wanting to hurt her or myself. I'm not moving as fast as I can, I'm not stabbing as directly at a vital as I might otherwise. Yet when my mom flashes me a contemptuous grin and easily steps to the side, I start to wonder if I'm about to once again get a lesson on arrogance.
Even with the way my soul's core grows much denser than a human's does, I have ...
2021-08-09 21:13:41 +0000 UTC View PostMy hill looks exactly the same as when I left it, which I suppose is only to be expected when all of my enemies live underground. Now, however, I have new ways of seeing.
It doesn't take long to find a hole, and I saunter up to it as Evelyn Bork and stick my tongue down inside. Yes, extending my prehensile tongue down a dirt tunnel doesn't sound very tasty, but I've placed the same whiske...
2021-08-08 17:30:55 +0000 UTC View PostAfter all the crap I've been getting lately about not looking at people, finally someone is looking at me. Two people, actually, and they feel the same way about the sight.
I feel very differently about each reaction, however.
The response from my Revenant is to be expected. They love me and they are in awe of me by nature. It is a comforting and happy feeling, one that mak...
2021-08-06 18:48:29 +0000 UTC View Post"So, Penelope," Vita tells me, speaking up as soon as I finish weaving a bubble of silence around us. "I think the two month mark is a good time to betray him. What do you think? I want to fuck up his plans but I figure he probably gave himself a buffer."
I glance down at my short little companion, at her smooth, unblemished skin. At the toned muscles growing underneath it. Her frame, her...
2021-08-05 05:44:55 +0000 UTC View PostReal quick before we start, I actually added a few paragraphs to the prior chapter. I'll post them here.
"What the fuck am I, Mr. Mooshi?" I hiss.
"You're Evelyn, last time I checked," he answers.
Which means what, exactly? I’m not even surprised by this. It almost feels like some part of me, some little bit in the back of my brain knew I wouldn’t die all ...
2021-08-04 18:22:07 +0000 UTC View PostDay arrives too soon, light oozing in through the windows and frustrating my body enough to force it awake. I lie motionlessly in bed for quite some time after, however, not paying attention to my soul sense or meditating or cycling mana or thinking or planning or anything at all. I just stay still, holding Rosco and wishing that I was still unconscious.
I haven't done this sort of thing ...
2021-08-02 20:23:27 +0000 UTC View Post"W-what did you just do?"
Bently stands shaking, so overwhelmed by confusion and terror that he denies the obvious reality I made sure to keep explicitly clear. Norah's corpse lies face down in the grass and dirt of the forest, collapsed like a doll after I cut her strings. The inflexibility of her armor forces her into an awkwardly slumped-over position, her knee caught under her belly a...
2021-07-30 20:42:41 +0000 UTC View PostOkay. Okay! Things are progressing nicely! Evelyn Bork has managed to catch a decent amount of food with which to get her impending sister, Evelyn Bork 2, quickly up to speed. Then, I'll see how the pair of them do against the weasels plaguing my home. Evelyn Experimental continues to get me a steady supply of fish and Evelyn Tinkerbell is just really fun to be. I'm not totally sure how having ...
2021-07-30 03:15:45 +0000 UTC View PostI explode into motion, fueled by panic and terror. As is our habit, I sleep when most of the rest of the team is awake to ensure that while best scout is down, we are at our best versus potential ambushes. This time, I had been in a particularly deep and comfortable sleep thanks to Mateo curling around me like a loyal snake-monster cocoon. I think I was even having a nice dream for once, though...
2021-07-29 01:33:14 +0000 UTC View PostIt always feels nice to do a good deed.
I walk away from the storage shed with a spring in my step. I admit to being a bit leery to let Lark go, but I'll trust my instincts on the matter. Ultimately, isn't our job as hunters to protect people from monsters by any means necessary, not specifically by just killing them? That kid isn't going to bite another person. No way, no how.
Fran...
2021-07-26 20:03:40 +0000 UTC View PostWaking up is a procedure of increasing confusion, wherein I slowly begin to acknowledge the uncomfortable position of my body parts, certain that each one could not possibly be more absurd than the next, and repeatedly being proven wrong.
I am woken first by a mild pain in my shoulder, which is rightfully protesting having to support the weight of my entire body. I try to adj...
2021-07-25 17:41:17 +0000 UTC View PostI don't know what I was expecting this fish to be, but it definitely wasn't a jet engine. Not that I'm complaining; whatever it was I had in mind, this is definitely way cooler.
Rather than acquiring propulsion through lateral water displacement, this aquatic alien—which I'm going to call the piston fish—possesses a series of hollow body cavities running down its full length. Opening ...
2021-07-25 05:38:35 +0000 UTC View PostDripping tears mix with black splotches of blood as I sob quietly on the floor, one lower arm clutching the stub of my other in a half-hearted attempt to prevent myself from bleeding out. My fight with Vita left me broken, and I know her biomancer ally will heal off all the damage I managed to do to her. This isn't even accounting for the rest of her team, any of which could easily slay me now....
2021-07-23 19:34:40 +0000 UTC View Post“Rawr! Got you, Lark!”
“No you didn’t!” I protest. “I dodged!”
“You can’t always dodge, Lark!” one of the other kids protests. His name is Danny. "It's no fun that way!"
"But I'm the hunter!" I protest. "The hunter gets to win! Pchew pew!"
I fire some more invisible arrows at the menagerie of whiny monsters before me, many of whom...
2021-07-21 23:02:44 +0000 UTC View PostUgh... what's going on? Where am I? Oh yeah, I’m in bed. Nice and warm. Actually, it's kind of cold. Where are my blankets? What time is it? Oh shit, what time is it!? Damnit, I was up too late last night playing with Blubie and I slept through my alarm! I can't miss ANOTHER day of class! I burst out of bed and sprint all the way there...
2021-07-21 18:32:34 +0000 UTC View PostPanic shrieks through me, and I have to take a split second to confirm which of my bodies actually got injured before I understand what just happened. It's Evelyn Prime, my original body back at the cave! Evelyn Experimental is potentially about to free a giant angry space dinosaur, which maybe isn't my best decision of all time, but even more immediately is the sharp realization that I a...
2021-07-20 23:55:51 +0000 UTC View PostA nightmarish beast towers before me, reeling up on its snake-like body. It must be over twenty feet long from tip to tip, with a tail ending in a wicked spike and a head fused seamlessly to its main body, jawless and horrifying. The monster’s mouth extends well down its body, opening sideways like a valve to reveal rows and rows of vicious teeth. Surrounding the lips of the...
2021-07-19 23:38:48 +0000 UTC View Post"Blubie… did you just talk!?"
I'm more than a little incredulous about the prospect of a talking arachnid. They don't even have lungs, at least not ones that expand or contract or otherwise make any noise. Mr. Bubbles hisses by rubbing her pedipalps together, not by expelling air.
And yet.
"Klukie," the creature deliberately parrots. "Chid. Hyo...
2021-07-18 06:29:45 +0000 UTC View PostWell. That happened. Nothing remains of the creature I smashed with a rock. I have to give myself this: if nothing else, my body is not wasteful.
I dismount the best of all Mooshis and walk over to myself. I've got a lot going through my head right now. I still feel like me, mostly. But I am more than me. I'm thinking in parallel, more rapidly and more convolutedly than I ever have before...
2021-07-18 06:28:02 +0000 UTC View Post"Blubie!" I chastise, lifting the huge bug from the terrarium I scrounged together for it. Mr. Bubbles wasn't happy I took her big tank, but she is never happy so she can deal.
"Blubie, you can't eat that much, you'll get sick! Give those back!"
Blubie is profoundly uninterested in giving anything back. The huge, beetle-like arachnid immediately devours everyth...
2021-07-18 06:26:14 +0000 UTC View PostA rush of ecstasy fills my body, one that is quickly becoming all-too-familiar. The grass’ fuzzy fronds tickle my tongue as they dissolve, decomposing cell by cell, protein by protein to tell the story of how they germinate. It's pollen, kind of. The fuzz holds the gametes, which pass their way onto the ankles of animals, brushing through the fields and pollinating as they travel, none the wi...
2021-07-18 06:24:14 +0000 UTC View Post"I can't believe my pelvis unhinged itself," I mutter, too shocked to care very much about how I'm clearly suffering from shock. "A pelvis isn't even supposed to have a hinge, Mr. Mooshi."
And as intellectually interesting as that is, the process of experiencing it probably ranks higher on the Trauma Scale than nearly getting eaten alive, so it's probably best that I don't think about it ...
2021-07-18 06:20:43 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a bug.
That's right, I found a bug that day. Of course I did. That's normal, I find bugs all the time. It's why I go out to the forest, after all. But this was a very special bug. A kind I've never seen before in all my life.
It looks like a beetle, colored a stunning pale blue. On closer inspection, though, it can't be a beetle. Maybe an arachnid? It cl...
2021-07-18 06:16:50 +0000 UTC View PostI hit the river with a crash, opening my eyes underwater to find myself face-to-face with a lamprey-like maw of teeth. The creature's mouth is wide open, two long, thin tongues protruding from its gullet and strangling me. I manage to catch panicked glimpses of whatever has me dead to rights. It’s probably much too small to swallow a Mooshian.
...But it can certainly manage me. My split...
2021-07-18 06:07:55 +0000 UTC View PostThe rest of my unnatural, smooth-bored cave is entirely uninteresting. There's nothing else to note inside its dull, grey walls. In many ways, this is fortunate. No critters are hiding within. I'm no closer to getting a source of food or water, though.
No sense sticking around, then. I head out of the cave, stopping only to look for and pick up a nice, sharp rock. I doubt I can really fig...
2021-07-18 06:07:00 +0000 UTC View Post