The furthest depths of the Earth’s oceans are home to many a bizarre creature, but there are few more strange and terrifying than the order of Lophiiformes, more commonly known as the anglerfish. The most distinctive feature of the anglerfish is a fleshy growth protruding from the forehead whose tip glows faintly in the deep dark. In such places beyond the reach of the sun and moon and stars, this tiny light must be a curious thing indeed. Other denizens of the oceans are drawn to the shini...
2020-12-19 12:00:16 +0000 UTC
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Coiled around the scarred steps of his great ziggurat, Rothgorad the Serpent King watched his servants stream skyward, shedding their bodies as he might shed his skin. He could do nothing for them. Their fate was preordained.
Into the vast maw in the sky their souls flowed, joining those of the last world, and the one before that; on and on to the dawning of time. The Old God Ixathi fed well this morn. Straddling the mountains from horizon to horizon, Ixathi spread wide Its...
2020-12-19 11:46:52 +0000 UTC
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Thanks for all the support, everyone!
I've suspended all monthly payments for 1 January and will do the same for 1 February. New or returning patrons will probably still be charged the initial sign-up fee (I presume that's how it works), but recurring subscriptions are paused.
Until around March-April this year, I was killing myself over my writing schedule. Between my demanding full-time job and my writing (another demanding full-time job), I had virtually no time when I wasn't w...
2020-12-19 11:30:19 +0000 UTC
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Silence stretched as they surveyed the smoking rubble and ash and crackling timber of what had once been the Vintonjorg town hall. Protruding from a nearby ash pile was a blackened hand, its fingers curled into a fist. Elsewhere, contorted shapes amidst the ruins starkly depicted the agony and terror of the victims’ final moments. The smell of cooked meat permeated the air.
“I should never have trusted them,” growled Saskia, clenching, opening and re-clenching her fists i...
2020-12-05 13:01:20 +0000 UTC
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Rising high above the town of Vintonjorg, Saskia watched as several Blightguards tied makeshift tourniquets around the severed stumps of their comrade’s wrists. His hands lay in a pool of crimson, sliced so cleanly it could have been a surgeon’s work. But a surgeon hadn’t done this. She had—with a lot of help from Padhra.
“What just happened?” asked Saskia. “The urumi’s whip-blades went nowhere near him.”
“Magic, Old One,” said Padhra helpfully.
“Now ...
2020-11-21 16:19:27 +0000 UTC
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Author's note: It's 4 am in my part of the world as I finish writing this, so apologies in advance for any mistakes my sleep-deprived brain might have missed.
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Padhra was surprisingly lively for a dead woman. One might expect someone who had just slithered out of a cocoon naked and covered in slime, in front of an audience of four overly curious demons, to curl up into a foetal position, squeeze her eyes shut, and try to wake up from this ridiculous nightm...
2020-11-07 17:00:50 +0000 UTC
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“Och how the chairs are turned,” said Ruhildi. “Methinks ’tis the right Earth expression.”
“Tables,” said Saskia with a scowl—one that went sadly unnoticed, given her present location. “The tables have turned.”
“Aye, that’s it! Though I don’t ken what turning a table has to do with reversal of fortune.”
“Believe it or not, the expression came from board games, which were once called tables. If the game wasn’t going your way, you’d h...
2020-10-24 13:07:37 +0000 UTC
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It was time.
Plunging through the silent dark, her body quivered in anticipation of the meal to come. Stronger than gravity, stronger than fate, the weight of souls was reeling her in towards the dusty marble of a dying world.
It was not the first. And nor would it be the last.
The world trembled at her approach. Trembled and died.
A single exhalation was all it took to set the air ablaze. A twitch of a tendril; a city erased. Mo...
2020-10-10 11:05:52 +0000 UTC
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The light behind her eyes dimmed. Blinking away the afterimage, Saskia found herself in a circular tunnel, seemingly made of the same kind of stone as the gate she’d just entered. There was no sign of the gate itself. Instead, the tunnel opened out into a familiar expanse of red sand. Around the entrance, the sand was strewn with bones—and among them lay a woman’s body, already beginning to break down as the magic of the Blightlands tore into it.
Saskia exhaled softly. She’d mad...
2020-09-26 12:36:59 +0000 UTC
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Saskia stared at the dome-shaped ruins standing alone amidst the featureless expanse of red sand. She spent several seconds trying to find words to adequately describe the depths of her frustration. Unable to think of anything appropriately witty to say in her frazzled state, she gave up and went with her fallback option.
“This sucks.”
Ruhildi made soothingly agreeable noises in her mind, while Saskia elaborated.
“We’ve been heading north this entire time. S...
2020-09-12 10:27:09 +0000 UTC
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Author's note: Another Undermind chapter! It's been a while.
I've actually begun to sour a bit on the other novel, Dupes. I still like the overall concept, and I have interesting plans for where I want to take it, but I feel like I've taken a wrong turn along the way. The whole fugitive aspect of it now feels like a bad idea, and it wasn't even part of my original concept.
So I've decided to take a break from Dupes for a while and focus exclusively on Undermind (bo...
2020-08-29 09:17:57 +0000 UTC
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Author's note: I said I might occasionally post new Undermind chapters while I'm in the midst of edits and writing the standalone novel, so here's one. I usually sit on chapters for a few weeks before posting them, and then give them another polish later. This one, I just finished today. So if you want to read something more polished, I suggest you wait until I remove the "(Rough)" label.
I want this chapter to serve as an entry point for people who have never read Books...
2020-07-25 08:15:04 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 8: Killing Me
My clones, understandably, weren’t too thrilled at the idea of being sacrificed on the altar of self-discovery. But surely they understood the necessity of it. Surely they knew they wouldn’t truly die as long as I, the original Fritz, remained alive.
“So,” Franz said. “Who are we gonna kill?”
Felix closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them. “Logically, it should be me.”
It didn’t take a genius to ...
2020-07-11 11:39:18 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 7: On the Run
The three of me crouched behind a hedge outside the Outside Inn. It was actually more of a motel, despite the name—with rooms that opened out into the rain-drenched parking lot. The Outside Inn had seen better days. Its walls were flecked with dirt, the paint was peeling off, and water was streaming out of numerous holes in the roof gutters.
It may be shabby, but this motel was the last hope we had for a roof over our heads tonight. A...
2020-07-04 07:17:05 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 6: Blue Murder
Bugger! I should have expected this.
More than three minutes had passed since the enforcers’ ultimatum, and they thought I was working for Quick-Load, or whoever those criminals really were. Alright, technically I—or rather, Fred—had been working for them, but that was beside the point. Rochamble’s armed responders had notoriously itchy trigger fingers, so I should’ve known I’d be liable to end up in a body bag alo...
2020-06-27 05:19:25 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 5: Blue Screen of Death
Moh looked between me and the other me. He rubbed his forehead, as though trying to knead away a pounding headache.
“Explain,” he said.
“Twins!” my new clone blurted. “We’re twins.”
“This is my brother Fr…anz. Franz!” I caught myself at the last second. I’d been about to call him Fred, but I was supposed to be playing the part of Fred right now. I didn’t want Moh to think I was the wrong twi...
2020-06-20 08:27:51 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 4: Fred Dead Resorption
I was at the Academy when it happened. A wave of disorientation washed over me, as if I’d just downed half a bottle of whiskey. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor. My chair lay on its side. Lucie was laughing at me. I looked up at her in groggy confusion.
Her laughter died, and her expression turned to one of concern. “You okay there?”
Wordlessly, I staggered to my feet, picking up my chair with trembling hands,...
2020-06-13 12:44:46 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 3: M3
I didn’t know what I was, or whether I was even a real person, but holy shit, this was exciting!
When we first determined that the other Fritz was most likely the original, and I was the copy—a clone or android or transdimensional traveller or whatever—I was more than a little freaked out. But shock and existential terror soon gave way to that wonderful feeling I experienced whenever I read a great science fiction novel or learned about a...
2020-06-06 10:45:34 +0000 UTC
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Dupes Chapter 2: Me Two
“Who the hells are you?” my doppelgänger asked.
“Fritz Baine,” I told him. “Who the hells are you?”
“Is this a joke?” he growled. “Did Jaheem and Lucie put you up to this?”
“Mate, this is weird for me too,” I said. “Just tell me who you are.”
“I’m Fritz Baine, arsehole! So obviously you’re not. Although, I must admit, you’re doing a fine job of posing as me. It’s uncanny.”
“...
2020-05-30 13:29:30 +0000 UTC
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Author's note: So here it is. The start of what I'm expecting to be a new stand-alone novel, tentatively named Dupes. You may see some ideas in common with Undermind, but I plan take this in a different direction, and at this stage I don't intend any crossover between the two projects.
At the moment, I'm still finding my way with this story. It's very early in development. Characters and worldbuilding are still in flux, so I'd appreciate any critiques/co...
2020-05-23 13:00:51 +0000 UTC
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Something was different. Saskia knew it on an instinctual level the instant she awoke. The pain was gone, but it was more than that. There was something…lighter about her. And it wasn’t just that she’d regained her strength. As a troll, and even as a human, her body carried a certain inertia that she could sense no matter how strong or fast she became. That inertia was…not gone, exactly, but greatly reduced. She felt as if she could dash up walls or leap over mountains.
But firs...
2020-05-16 13:03:34 +0000 UTC
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He sat atop the craggy peak, feeling the cool, crisp air whistle across his bark. Below stretched a wide expanse of sunlit trees and snow-dappled hills and gentle rivers wending their way lazily through lush green valleys. Garrain knew every tree, every branch, every leaf, and all the innumerable things that scurried or slithered or fluttered among them.
“Grarara!” said his nestling, Chielle, gazing up at his moss-covered face.
“Isn’t it quite?” said Garrain solemnly. ...
2020-05-09 10:45:59 +0000 UTC
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Saskia stared at the grotesque fusion of flesh and machine splayed out before her, and the shrivelled torso and head enmeshed in its core. The cybernetic monstrosity filled the room, but on her minimap, she could see that its tendrils extended far beyond, reaching deep into this steel and concrete treehouse of horror. It took all of her willpower not to vomit all over the pulsating carpet at her feet. Part of her refused to accept that this was what her father had become. Another part was tel...
2020-05-02 11:42:18 +0000 UTC
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The little girl scratched her chalk across the concrete, hand working furiously to bring to life a fading dream. So absorbed was she in her task that she didn’t immediately react to the shadow that fell across her face.
“What’s that you’re drawing?”
She scooted around to gaze up at the one who spoke: a gaunt man, grinning down at her with chipped teeth. Something glistened and squirmed inside his ear. His skin was too tight, and too thin, and she co...
2020-04-25 11:09:33 +0000 UTC
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“We are all going to die, yes?” said Zarie, ever the optimist.
“Probably,” said Kveld.
“Bollocks to both of you,” said Baldreg. “’Tisn’t the time for defeatism. ’Tis the time for boldness!”
As Garrain cast his eyes out across the seemingly endless waves of monsters and magic closing in around them, he had to concur with Baldreg. If they truly believed they were going to fail, then they would. And they could not fail. They had to endure whatever the Prim...
2020-04-18 09:37:25 +0000 UTC
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Author's note: Two short-ish chapters this week, instead of one big one.
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Saskia was getting a major feeling of deja vu. It was exactly as it had been in her dream.
The motionless flame of the seed of eternity hung in the air, casting an eerie blue glow across the platform. Sitting in a meditative pose beneath the flame was a man. Xonroth the Primordial; possibly the oldest creature on Arbor Mundi, now in possession of the power of a god.
2020-04-18 09:34:33 +0000 UTC
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Standing beneath the high stone column, Saskia peered into eternity. Atop the pillar, an ouroboros; a frozen flame. They called to her. He called to her.
For some, this worldseed was a source of life everlasting. Not her. All she would find here was an ending. And that was okay. She felt the inevitability of her fate not as a weight around her neck, but as a pair of amber wings, bearing her aloft.
Rising on warm currents, she drifted up the column, and steppe...
2020-04-11 13:58:25 +0000 UTC
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From the back of his fire dracken, Anduis looked out across the sea of Grongarg to the distant island where his master, Okael had fought his mistress, Sarthea. The latter had slain the former, but in his death throes, Okael had burned a great wound into the arbor that even now spewed fire into the sky. It needed to be sealed, or the damage to this branch would be immeasurable.
If it were possible for Anduis to do this himself, he would—even at the cost of his own life. Fo...
2020-04-04 11:31:37 +0000 UTC
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“I think we’ve found our smoking gun,” said Liz, the silver-haired Unveiler. She stood at the door of Saskia’s cabin with Vincent and John. The guys bobbed their heads in unison, as if to underscore the truth and importance of her statement. Shivering as a blast of cold air swept through the doorway, Saskia hurriedly ushered them inside, and closed the door.
A month had passed since the incident at the Unveilers’ meetup. Saskia, Ruhildi, and some of the Unveilers—the ones wh...
2020-03-28 08:59:15 +0000 UTC
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In a contest between air and fire, most rational people would bet on air. Fire couldn’t exist without air. Air could create lightning, which burned hotter than the surface of the sun, albeit only for a fraction of a second.
Most rational people had never witnessed dragonfire. Dragonfire was not like other fire. It was heat incarnate.
Saskia knew of only two things that could endure the breath of a fire dragon. The first was a fire dragon. If fire dragons weren’t at least somew...
2020-03-21 08:59:03 +0000 UTC
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