Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

Scheduled Break

As we approach the holidays--and continue building a more comfortable lead time between posting and writing--we're announcing the next scheduled breaks for the holidays. ^_^

There will be posting breaks on these dates:

December 12-16, 2022
January 2-6, 2023

We'll post a reminder for the breaks over the coming weeks as well, just in case.

Thank you so much for being with us this second year of the series and we hope to be able to finally get more of our plans for the...

CoESC Book 8-18.2: Instincts

It took Yuriko and the others about half an hour to pack up camp. The horses whinnied as they were saddled, stubbornly reaching for the scraggly tufts of grass they grazed at. Sheamus and the twins had fed them using bags that contained some mixture of oats and other grains, and even though water was scarce, they were given more than enough out of the condenser canteens.

“The air is a bit dry,” Gwendith admitted even as she used her Anima to gather as much moisture as she could. The...

CoESC Book 8-18.1: Instincts

Fragmentary visions assaulted Yuriko’s mind. Snippets of lives, conversations, emotions…and then bursts of light, swirls of Chaos, and then…a strange gestalt.

Everything was in balance so that nothing moved. Each constituent part was evenly matched…but not in strength, in weakness. One should have been ascendant. One should have devoured the rest and made it part of its new whole. But now, they could only struggle. Each one tugged in a different direction, occasionally tipping t...

CoESC Book 8-17.3: Chase

Kadrac City was vastly different from the other cities Yuriko had been to. Rumiga City was tiered and built on a mountainside, Lucenti City in Bella plane, the capital of the snake-kin, was built atop a swamp, on the trunks of humongous trees. Realmheart was arguably a planar metropolis, with striations of structures and natural preserves encircling the palace, which was itself, larger than Haveena City two or three times over.

Kadrac City, from what she could see even across several le...

CoESC Book 8-17.2: Chase

Getting the gunk out of her hair was simple. Yuriko simply sluiced it with water and all the vomit flowed away. Getting it out of her poncho and pants was another matter entirely, and with the river water still a muddy brown, and with what just happened, there was no way she was going near there again. At least for a day or so. Thankfully, her backpack was sufficiently waterproof and whatever managed to get under her poncho at it was also easily removable.

As for the rest of her friends...

CoESC Book 8-17.1: Chase

The initial moments after they left Haveena City were heady and thrilling. Yuriko felt as if they had escaped a squalid prison. It immediately helped that the stench of horse dung, urine, and sewage, had been swept away by the breeze. Unfortunately, they were too close to the city, and the road they were on was also littered with horse dung and urine, which became immediately apparent when the wind shifted.

Wrinkling her nose, which she had thought numbed from the few days' stay in the ...

CoESC Book 8-16.3: Odd Happenings

It was late at night by the time Yuriko and the others left the Weyr household. Izna’s mother had broken down at the news that her son had been brought to the Traitor’s Gate, which was the name of the prison in the northern district of Salazha. It was the same name as the First Councilor simply because her family was one of the Great Merchant clans that have ruled Haveena since its founding. According to Orrin, anyway.

After her husband and daughter brought her away from the antecha...

CoESC Book 8-16.2: Odd Happenings

Gwendith wouldn't stop hugging Yuriko and clung like a leech while Yuriko headed towards the mattress. She collapsed on the bed, well, floor mattress now since the combined pallet beds proved unstable, and stretched, all while Gwen sniffled on her shoulder.

“Why were you so worried?” Yuriko asked once Gwendith settled down. She also saw Asami staring incredulously at Gwendith, her current expression so at odds with her usual self that Yuriko couldn’t help but chuckle.

“It�...

CoESC Book 8-16.1: Odd Happenings

Legate Jiro Segawa leaned back against his command chair. The fleet had been stationary for the last hour while they waited for something to happen. The Solamnus Court wasn’t usually hostile, but this act of ripping them away from besieging a fortified Waypoint on the path to Rumiga was certainly an act of war. Only the fact that they hadn’t done anything else made this a bit less annoying.

Another hour of preparing his troops to fight, and still nothing…ah. A creature came out of...

CoESC Book 8-15.3: State of a Nation

Izna Weyr stared down his ale mug and avoided looking at Braden Foster’s friends. The taller woman, Yuriko, was particularly unsettling, in his opinion. For one thing, she could somehow perceive things even though she had that hood over her head, covering her eyes entirely. That was…creepy.

From where he was sitting, the only parts of her face he could see were her jaw, her lips, and a bit of her nose. And what beautiful symmetrical features she had! He always liked looking at beaut...

CoESC Book 8-15.2: State of a Nation

At first, neither Yuriko nor Desire realised that something was happening. Mornings were always crowded, especially near the markets. There was a marketplace for each district and they were usually full at dawn, and so were the streets that lead them.

Yuriko thought it was the usual crowd, though it was actually less crowded than she expected. It was only when she passed the market that she saw it was nearly deserted, and the tenants and customers looked preoccupied. Certainly, the loud...

[Jade] Update

The chapter releases for this week have been reposted in the correct order. Thanks for the alert!

- L&R

CoESC Book 8-15.1: State of a Nation

“Welcome to Tackles and Bits!” a cheery voice said as soon as Yuriko entered the shop.

She still had her poncho’s hood over her head, leaving her face in the shadows. The young man behind the counter didn’t seem to mind that, and in fact, there were a few other customers who were concealing their faces, too.

The boy’s eyes shifted to the twins who entered behind her, and his eyes widened in recognition. “It’s you! Been a while, eh?”

The inside of the shop was...

CoESC Book 8-14.3: Haveena City

“Really? Here?” Gwendith glared at Braden Foster, who shrugged.

Yuriko huffed. The song wasn’t actually that bad, but it was the combination of the singer’s clothing plus the hooting and rowdiness of the audience that surprised her. Most of the people in the common room were men, with only a quarter being women. And those ladies shouted with similar glee, too.

“The Flower House’s got the best rooms for their price point,” Braden said. “‘Sides, they weren’t like...

CoESC Book 8-14.2: Haveena City

Yuriko’s malaise lasted well into the next day, but they continued to press on. Desire didn’t sense any of the nameless, but that was only to be expected. Yuriko thought they must travel through the main roads and since her group used the backroads, there was little chance of overlap.

Still, by the afternoon of the next day, on the 61st Day of Water, they had little choice but to take the Faron-Haveena Road. Closer to the city, the surrounding landscape grew more and more cultivated...

CoESC Book 8-14.1: Haveena City

The One Who Watches and Waits had his attention divided several ways.

His Anima was powerful enough to occupy a dozen Corpi at a time, but each Corpus he occupied reduced his overall power. Most of the time, those bodies were built to stay unseen, undetected, and observant. Very few of his bodies were for battle, although, with his powerful Anima and connection with the Chaos Sea, it was a matter of minutes to convert an observer Corpus into one for war.

The core of his being was ...

CoESC Book 8-13.3: Heading South

It didn’t take long for the others to finish exploring the hamlet. It was abandoned, as they originally thought, but Yuriko was mistaken in thinking that there were no signs of struggle. There weren’t any signs in the house she checked, but there were in the square.

A dozen houses were all along the dirt road but right smack in the middle was a gathering square. There, they found churned-up earth, spots of blood, and the burnt remnants of one of the houses. So there were thirteen ho...

CoESC Book 8-13.2: Heading South

Barnabei Rill had swollen from the constant rainfall. The river ford was barely passable with the middle being deep enough to go over someone’s head. The current was fast enough that the waters were muddy brown and frothy. Even at its narrowest point, the Rill was roughly forty paces wide.

“Is this too far for all of you to jump across?” Yuriko asked quietly.

“Uhm, yeah,” the people her age muttered while she saw Sheamus rolling his eyes. He reached into his pack and pul...

CoESC Book 8-13.1: Heading South

“The Implacable Jade will bombard Cierra Village the day after tomorrow,” Veran Jake said casually as he walked alongside Yuriko, who blinked curiously down at the man.

“Why?” she asked.

“To help with your cover,” he answered. “His Highness anticipated that just crossing the border between our territories isn’t that difficult, but continuing within would be. So by bombarding the village, he hopes to prompt the civilians within to evacuate.”

“Oh.”

...

CoESC Book 8-12.3: Looking for the Source

Legate Iola Melanthos Brygos heaved a sigh of relief. Tribunus Kaspar delivered a load of Nyctferrum items, mostly odds and ends as well as a ceremonial dagger from the Kinnocks, and a statuette from the Esras. All told, that was just under a Jin of pure Nyctferrum. She had to smelt the impurities out of it, but thankfully, the metal had a higher melting point than iron and steel, so a simple application of heat was enough to slough away the dross.

She reshaped the resulting Nyctferrum ...

CoESC Book 8-12.2: Looking for the Source

Yuriko sat in a meditative trance on her bed. Desire’s words had been surprising, but thinking things through, she realised that it wasn’t that surprising after all. For one thing, Desire herself had been human before. She was Ashley Gin, plus a few bits and pieces of other people. As grotesque as that was, it was how the Chaos Lord described herself.

The newborn part…that was the more disturbing aspect. Putting aside the fact that the nameless were more than capable of taking car...

CoESC Book 8-12.1: Looking for the Source

“The Fortified Waypoints are stacked together,” Spellweaver Blodwen reported. “The Interdictor Sphere is within the stack. We’ll have to push through all of the intervening Fysalli to get to it before we can move on.”

Jiro jiggled his leg in irritation.

More delays. They’d already spent days punching through or bypassing the occupied Waypoints, and now this. This stacked Waypoint was the closest nexus point to enter Faron’s Crossing’s Tidelands. There were two more...

CoESC Book 8-11.3: Liberation

“I got careless,” Krystal said ruefully while she held a bloodied hand on her side.

Yuriko found her friend next to the encampment’s assembly field, next to the other wounded. And dead.

Yuriko’s perception aura examined Krystal’s injury. Aside from a stab to her right hip that skipped along the hip bone, the other girl also had several bruises down her right arm and side. Her face was pale and she was shivering from the cold rain. Other than that, she was healthy.

...

CoESC Book 8-11.2: Liberation

Koinos Litai, Azavi, and Galad quickly overtook Yuriko’s position, their four-pace high frames combined with focused Animus was more than enough to provide a speed boost that allowed them to cover the intervening longstride in half a minute. The hills blocking the Federation encampment were no barrier and actually turned into a springboard as the Colossi climbed the hill in several large steps. As soon as they reached the crest, as one, they all leapt off.

Brakoom!

A th...

CoESC Book 8-11.1: Liberation

Yuriko rose an hour before dawn. The battle that would decide the fate of Faron’s Crossing would happen in a couple of hours, and she felt nothing but anticipation. Definitely no fear or anxiety, nope.

Her Anima undulated with the turning of her mind. Her reach had grown by a few more inches, nothing like the growth it received right after the True Refraction, but still somewhat significant. Three hundred twenty-five inches from her skin. Compressing all of that made her feel as if sh...

CoESC Book 8-10.3: Pushing Forward

“Finan. What a surprise,” Yuriko said flatly when the prince entered the Knight’s Council chamber along with his entourage.

The young man answered her with a small smile.

“Yuriko.” He looked at the rest of the Knights. “Knights of Faron’s Crossing, good afternoon”

Yuriko glanced over Finan’s entourage, finding Swordmaster Kinohara there, as well as a stocky man who she presumed to be his chief bodyguard and three other bodyguards. They were all men, were qu...

CoESC Book 8-10.2: Pushing Forward

The siege of Faron’s Crossing dragged on for several more weeks. The rain didn’t let up at all, and if not for how the town had dredged the river Caradec, Yuriko was sure they would have flooded everything already.

The battlefield had gone from being a mud plain to a pond. Or a lake, more like. A shallow one with water a dozen inches deep. There were even dartlings swimming in the water, and tadpoles, frogs, tiny little sharp-toothed fish, and a few of Zarek’s descendants, turtles...

CoESC Book 8-10.1: Pushing Forward

“Land gods!” Zagara swore as she leapt away.

Yuriko was still stunned, and the miraculous feeling continued to exist within her perception. If she struck like this, with the shards, Zagara would be forced here or there. Counter with a strike on either trajectory and no matter her movement, she will be struck. Counter her defensive manoeuvres by attacking at this angle, here and here, then circle behind with more shards. Position them in such a way that whichever way Zagara dodged or...

CoESC Book 8-9.3: Stalemate

They met in the open battlefield, a hundred paces from the wall, as stipulated by Yuriko. The woman, who called herself Zagara of the Manifold Blades, readily agreed. Zagara came alone, and even with Yuriko’s Chaos Sight, she didn’t see any attempts at subterfuge.

Zagara had her helm in hand, leaving her face exposed. She had an arming cap on, a conical steel cap with mail curtains for the back of her head. But the cap had six holes on top, about an inch across, evenly spaced on eit...

CoESC Book 8-9.2: Stalemate

“After Founding 3000

5th Day of Water

Tribunus Agatha Seran Kaspar

Agminis Head Office

Rumiga City

Tribunus,

Allow me to restate the urgency of the need for Nyctferrum items. The Gemheart’s innerspace’s corruption has reached 10% of its surface area. The Nyctferrum nails and amulets you’ve sent have been helpful in delaying and destroying the corruption but I am fighting against a Chaos Duke, one who is a level higher than I. His persistence is madd...