If there was anything that could be said for Sev's team, it was that they didn't hesitate to act when it counted.
All they needed to hear was the Shadesplitter trying to speak.
Sev directed the light towards the Shadowskitter. Misa appeared in front of the Shadesplitter, putting her back at its mercy in order to defend it from the Shadowskitter. The air shifted around Derivan as he called Shift into play, creating a layer of separation between the Shadesplitter and the re...
2023-09-18 17:33:10 +0000 UTC
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There's a certain amount of existential horror that comes with having your allies picked off right in front of you, with little you can do about it. In that sense, Ahkelios is right — being able to shrug things off is an important skill for someone looping through time.
My thoughts flicker back to the moment every so often, but I'm doing a pretty decent job of not focusing on it, I think. Best to think about the next loop. Best to think about how to counter them.
More likely tha...
2023-09-18 17:31:22 +0000 UTC
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If not for Quicken Mind, I might have spent a few too many seconds staring, dumbfounded. I can sense no outside Firmament at work here, and Premonition hasn't alerted me to any new danger. Whatever just happened, it's something specific to Guard.
I just don't know what it is.
I do know his Firmament is running rampant within his body. He twitches and jerks on the ground as power so thick it's almost liquid pours out of him, pooling on the ground as puddles of purple light...
2023-09-18 17:30:40 +0000 UTC
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Even if I hadn't grown sharply between my last attempt at exploring the Fracture and my current one, Guard and Tarin's presences are enough to make the first three hundred meters of the Fracture a cakewalk. Guard by himself would probably be more than enough — the more I watch him fight, the more I appreciate that me pushing him into the Fracture might have been nothing more than luck.
That, or something else was at play.
[ You have defeated an Abyssal Cicada (Rank A)! +...
2023-09-18 17:29:17 +0000 UTC
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Cosmic was kind enough to draw a rendition of She-Who-Whispers, and I'm working with him for a DRR cover now! The second piece is He-Who-Guards, designed by Tooie ...
2023-09-13 22:17:35 +0000 UTC
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Ahkelios doesn't tell me what happens, exactly. He can't — not with Guard there. Instead he sends filtered images and impressions to me, enough that I have a decent idea of exactly what happened, and everything about it makes my blood boil.
It takes everything I have not to run right back up the stairs. She-Who-Whispers' command was to leave. It said nothing about whether or not I could go back. Her Whisper has already loosened around me, enough that I can make my way back up...
2023-09-11 06:17:44 +0000 UTC
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She-Who-Whispers calls her home a palace. She isn't wrong.
Her home is the highest shard in Isthanok. It floats above the city like a mirrored citadel, though with far less regal majesty. Instead, it's a mess of silver fragments that spike into the air, like debris from a meteorite strike caught and frozen mid-explosion.
I'm not sure what that says about her aesthetic sensibilities. Maybe She-Who-Whispers is making a statement, living in what looks like a frozen disaster dangling ...
2023-09-11 06:16:57 +0000 UTC
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About three minutes after Thys leaves — it takes a lot of convincing, and makes me wonder briefly if Thys actually has any other friends besides his siblings — someone attempts to murder me. I almost wonder if this is intentional and a part of Tarin's training, too, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. Mostly because the would-be-assassin is almost laughably weak.
Or maybe it's just the fact that Premonition and my Firmament sense trivialize that particular method of assassination. Premoni...
2023-09-11 06:16:15 +0000 UTC
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The fight ends quickly and without fanfare. The crowd, I can tell, is disappointed. Me, I'm just grinning like a madman. I made sure to make my victory look like an accident, too, so Tarin should still be able to bet against me in the next match. I wonder how many people he can convince to go double-or-nothing?
It's almost funny how easy it was, too. All I needed to do was maneuver myself into the right position, and then use Accelerate when the golem hit me, letting myself get flung ju...
2023-09-04 16:01:23 +0000 UTC
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"So she's holding it hostage," I say.
Miktik's apparently been checking the core's position every day she can, and she finds it at the same place every day, trapped inside a vault. It's part of the reason she was so devastated when She-Who-Whispers destroyed her pocket oracle — slim crack though the damage is, that crack is enough to render the whole thing inoperable for the next few days.
It's apparently not the first time she's done it, either. There's a deep bitterness in Mik...
2023-09-01 11:35:01 +0000 UTC
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We learn a few things over the next couple of minutes.
One, Rotar and Ikaara are both safe — or at least as safe as they can be. Being half a step out of phase with everything else comes with downsides, obviously, but it also comes with the upside of nothing being able to interact with them. We first notice this when we realize that their feet aren't quite touching the ground, and it becomes more obvious when a stray dust breeze blows a cloud of dirt right through them.
2023-08-29 12:20:00 +0000 UTC
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I made a bunch of changes to Book 2, mostly in the first half of the book to tighten up the characterization and descriptiveness. It should feel a lot better to read now. No real retcons, I think, but some details are more relevant/less forgotten about. Here's the revised manuscript if you're interested!
2023-08-25 02:32:00 +0000 UTC
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It's hard to describe exactly what Miktik does.
She feeds her Firmament into the orb — that part I can read easily enough with my Firmament sense — but imbued within the orb is a blob of Firmament that looks nothing like any imbuement I've seen so far. It looks almost like a spiderweb. Small strings of Firmament reach out and connect to one another and to the edges of the orb.
Miktik's will acts as something like a filter. The orb itself passively pulls on all the ambient Firm...
2023-08-25 02:27:18 +0000 UTC
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In retrospect, a quick discussion with Tarin about information security would probably have been a good idea, although I understand that he trusts Miktik implicitly. My understanding doesn't stop me from putting a hand to my face, nor does it stop Ahkelios' own incredulous groan.
"Tarin," I say. "You can't just tell people that."
"Why not?" Tarin asks. "Miktik friend!"
"He's right though!" There's entirely too much cheer in Miktik's voice, for all that she's agreein...
2023-08-25 02:26:37 +0000 UTC
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Here's the pre-final manuscript (meaning it has all the changes I want but hasn't been through a line/copy editor yet) for Die Respawn Repeat. Changes are mostly in the first 20 or so chapters to improve plot and character consistency. Some minor retcons:
- The number of people pulled into the Trial is now 3,021, rather than an even 3,000; this better reflects the Integrators' actual purpose and plants a better seed of doubt for Ethan
- The three stages of imbuement are now called...
2023-08-25 02:25:15 +0000 UTC
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Hey all, I'm really sorry about this, but this week's chapters are delayed as well - a lot happened over the past two weeks and suffice to say it burned me out something fierce. I have written some, but I'm not currently happy with the state of the chapters and I don't really want to put out something subpar - it affects too much of the book down the road.
I'm also doing a bunch of editing on DRR's Book 1 as well to clean up consistency errors and tighten up characterization, e...
2023-08-14 13:49:46 +0000 UTC
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The Great Cities, Tarin explains, are a set of seven cities situated inside the Barricade, which is apparently their name for the massive wall that encircles this section of the planet. The cities are numbered one through seven, though the numbering is unofficial — officially, the city we're headed to is called Isthanok. The City of Broken Glass, they apparently call themselves.
I can see why. As more and more of the city comes into view, I find myself squinting agai...
2023-08-05 03:31:37 +0000 UTC
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I appreciate the silence as we speed through the scenery. Both Ahkelios and Tarin can see that I'm not in the mood to talk, and while they seem like they want to ask me what's on my mind, they've both chosen to give me space for now. I appreciate it — I'm not sure I'm ready to confront the whirlwind of thoughts that are still running through my mind.
Naru mentioned that the Hotspot we encountered was from the fifty-seventh Trial. That implies that Ahkelios was the fifty-seven...
2023-08-05 03:30:49 +0000 UTC
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It turns out that Mari knew what she was doing. Sort of.
Tarin can still move fast while he's... drunk. Or high. I don't exactly know what those berries did to him, but he seems to be enjoying himself a lot. The key thing here is that the traveler's berry — as he called it — does slow him down. It just puts him mostly on par with me in terms of speed.
It's a little embarrassing, but without me straining my Firmament to its absolute limits, we actually make be...
2023-08-05 03:29:38 +0000 UTC
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Hey guys! This week's chapters might be a little late - I've been trying to figure out everything regarding the Edge Cases launch and additionally need to work on the Edge Cases Book 2 manuscript for submission, since I'm making a bunch of developmental changes - cleaning up continuity, adjusting dialogue/scenes, potentially adding new scenes. I'm also doing this for DRR Book 1, so it's been a really busy week.
I'll be focusing on writing chapters for a bit, but they might still end up ...
2023-07-30 14:15:19 +0000 UTC
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The book series I've been working on for the past year and a half is finally out - or, well, the first book of it, anyway. Really love the cover, super excited to have it narrated by Travis. You guys don't have to buy it, of course, but I'm sharing here anyway in case any of you are interested. I'd appreciate any support I can get! (Especially because the first rating I got on each after launch was a 1 star rating.)
I'd also love to give away an audiobook code! Podium didn't really give...
2023-07-26 14:03:44 +0000 UTC
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The village of Halis was disturbingly empty.
Sev's heart sank as they wandered cobblestone streets, looking into every building to see if they could find any survivors — and more and more it was looking like there weren't any, despite both Derivan and Vex claiming that they could sense life here. Misa's own attempts with her skills had turned out nothing. She'd tried searching all the realities generated by her alternate selves, sending them down different streets and into different h...
2023-07-23 23:08:10 +0000 UTC
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Days passed. Sev was still waiting on a response from Novice, who had promised to get back to them and then gone silent for several days in a row; from what he'd heard from Misa, Novice was fine, but incredibly busy managing the intricacies of Fendal and Teque. Apparently, their request would take about a week to process, which... sure.
The evacuation to Anderstahl was somehow still proceeding smoothly. Sev was surprised — he'd expected a fight to break out by now, or for the rising t...
2023-07-23 23:06:51 +0000 UTC
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Sev was worried.
This wasn't anything new. He was always worried. But his worry now was something that gnawed at him; he looked out at the world and he saw that it was wrong. Flashes of old memories ate at him, telling him how different everything should have been. Everywhere he looked, he saw dreams and ambitions and cultures that had been cut out of the universe, leaving only ghosts behind.
In a way, he was happy that he remembered any of it at all. Whatever trick Onyx ...
2023-07-23 23:06:09 +0000 UTC
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We're making very good time. We've had to stop for a few breaks, mostly because running at this speed costs a lot of energy even with Firmament. We've had to stop a couple of times for the crow equivalent of energy bars — which are long, very hard sticks packed together with Firmament that I've been assured are edible and that taste like dirt.
I'm not a fan. Tarin, on the other hand, devours his eagerly. Ahkelios just stares at them and then makes a face. "Glad I don't need t...
2023-07-23 23:04:35 +0000 UTC
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Tarin's packed up and ready by the time I get back. Mari shooed me off after our conversation, telling me she needed to go visit some of the other crows in the village to get our supplies ready. I don't question her — this version of her doesn't know me as well, and I imagine she still wants some time to herself.
Tarin, on the other hand? The old crow looks surprisingly excited.
"First time you've gone out in a while?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.
"No! I went look for...
2023-07-23 23:02:52 +0000 UTC
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Rotar is missing.
Tarin and I went to check out his hut, and no one was present. None of the other crows around report any memory of him leaving, and they all seem equally worried. I'm just as worried — I don't know if Rotar was missing at this point in time in any of my other loops. I didn't meet him until much, much later.
There's a chance he's just not around, but...
No. This stinks of another loop anomaly.
"Do you know where he keeps his pocket oracle?" I ask.
2023-07-23 23:01:42 +0000 UTC
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Author's Note:
There are a lot of tough chapters in this book, and I keep underestimating how much time it'll take me to get it written in a way I'm satisfied with. I'm sorry I'm taking so long on chapters - I'll keep trying to catch up.
—
Vex glanced at his father, a small crease of worry making itself known between his brows. Derivan sat next to him, a comforting presence and a reminder that he wasn't alone in all this. He'd come so far in the last three...
2023-07-17 14:53:28 +0000 UTC
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"Ethan!" Tarin squawks at me, dusting himself off like he hasn't just been tossed like a cannonball directly into monsters that could kill him with a glance. I know he's strong, but I don't know that he's strong enough to survive a direct blow from any of these. "You here!"
"Where else would I be?" I ask. I honestly haven't fully processed the situation yet. Thankfully, the chimeras appear to be just as stunned by Tarin's appearance as I am, and they're looking at each other like they d...
2023-07-17 04:14:18 +0000 UTC
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Before I can react, Premonition activates again, and I leap out of the way just in time; the monster crackles through the air, static Firmament bursting out of every scale in a cloud of bristling energy. I try to ignore the way the cactus cracks, and wrack my brain to understand what's happening.
[ Warning: New anomalies detected in loop. ]
That has to be it. I'd assumed those anomalies were directly related to the actions I took in the last loop — evidently, th...
2023-07-16 02:10:06 +0000 UTC
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