Chapter 2.11: The Search
I slept for fourteen hours that night. I still awoke with a headache, because apparently the universe has a cruel sense of irony, but it turns out that’s just what happens when you go fourteen hours without drinking any water.
A bit of hydration later and I was pain free and clearheaded for the first time since we landed on Ilirian.
Threads, it felt good.
After a meal that could charitably be called brunch and realistically called lunch, I st...
2023-10-04 19:53:47 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.10: It Doesn’t Go Away
It was technically morning by the time my work began in earnest. The faintest glimmer of predawn light yet to breach the canopy as I sat crosslegged in Lucy’s clearing. The gloom proved little help.
I didn’t waste time, preferring to launch directly into what had once been my evening routine with a renewed vigor born of urgency. I was ready for the blinding cacophony that greeted the opening of my spiritual sense, prepared for it, by now, if ...
2023-09-28 21:12:59 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.9: New Objectives
“Xavier, what in the ever-loving fuck was that?”
I froze. My brows shot up in surprise, less at the anger in Charlotte’s voice than the fact she’d actually cursed.
“It was a good deal,” Xavier said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Like hells it was,” Charlotte snapped. “At the very least two of those three exchanges were a net loss. We could’ve gotten an ebbstrix feather ourselves inst...
2023-09-12 21:00:35 +0000 UTC
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[Hey everyone. I-um... originally intended to be publishing book two right around now. That obviously hasn't happened. Since January really I've been struggling a lot with keeping up my routine, and my productive has suffered for it severely. I'm sorry. I wish I had an excuse other than just all of my good habits falling apart at the seems, but that's really it. I know I can do better. I'm trying to do better.
Today was a good day. I sat d...
2023-09-11 22:50:45 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.7: Kindred Spirits
“Where did you find it?”
“About three hours northwest of here,” I answered Charlotte’s question. “Some half dozen ebonleafs are just withering away, like they’re eating their life-force directly.”
I’d found Charlotte and Xavier sitting around the breakfast table when I returned, the suns already an hour into the sky. I never made it to my bed. Instead, I’d sat across from them and displaced their scrambled eggs with my far mor...
2023-08-01 19:34:31 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.6: I’m Worried About Cal
Hope is the first real casualty of sleep deprivation.
People talk of dwindling energy, of drifting through the days as little more than a specter, a ghost that haunts the abandoned wreck of the person you used to be, but that all comes later, after the will to fight has long eroded, after the future has faded behind the haze in which you live.
The hope goes first.
That’s why torturers so favor the practice. It’s one of the few t...
2023-06-29 20:07:27 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.5: Ilirian
“I got it!” Charlotte’s cry echoed across the jungle floor as she darted in to meet the argentivore’s charge. Her rapier flashed through the air as she parried its advance, sending the quadruped hurtling off to the side. With a crash the silver plate on its forehead slammed into a tree, carving a deep dent into the ebonleaf trunk.
Xavier dashed in for a swing on the stunned beast, but it whirled around before his axe could meet its flank. He aborted th...
2023-06-25 19:09:53 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.4: The Cracks in the Bureaucracy
Three weeks passed in the comfortable haze of routine, of training and meditating and studying and training some more. I managed, for the first time, to convert dark qi to light faster than Charlotte could absorb it, but the moment Xavier walked into the room the two of them far outpaced me. Still, it was heartening progress, and I imagined a day in the distant future where I eventually saturated Lucy’s soul space with more qi than even the f...
2023-05-22 19:45:47 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.3: The Waiting
I let my wooden practice sword fall to the floor as I rubbed the spot where Xavier’s axe had struck my chest. “That’s match to you.”
Xavier grinned and withdrew his weapon, offering a hand in its place. “Well fought.”
I shook it. “I could barely touch you.”
Xavier used the handshake to pull me in and clap me on the back. “But you kept fighting anyway. You have a warrior’s spirit.” He raised an eyebrow. “Again?”
I...
2023-05-09 20:23:31 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.2: Holding Pattern
“A little to the left… there. Perfect.”
I slid my palm across the poster, pressing the adhesive into the wall. A pale tendril of qi joined me, guiding an air bubble down and out, leaving the familiar image perfectly flat and centered. I took a step back and assessed our work.
It was flawless, of course. Lucy’s sense of her own dimensions made hanging things almost unfairly easy. If it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have let me help. There ...
2023-05-03 21:11:42 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 2.1: Beneath an Ebon Canopy
Micaiah Ferendin scrunched her nose against the smell as the cultivators in front of her butchered their kills. The entire process bothered her. She watched them plunge their knives into dead flesh, pull back tough skin coated in matted, bloodstained fur, dig past organs and muscles in search of the precious cores buried within. Micaiah winced, not for the brutality of the cultivators’ work, but because they were so gods-damned bad at it.
2023-04-29 16:31:57 +0000 UTC
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TL;DR at the end
Hey everyone,
This post is long overdue and probably no great surprise to any of you. Missed deadline after missed deadline month in and month out isn't how I wanted this story to go. In truth, I've always been horrible at splitting focus between multiple projects. I'd hoped the monthly nature of Dungeon Devotee would alleviate that difficulty, but it really hasn't.
Instead, for the past year, I've found myself dedicating a full week out of...
2023-04-28 17:59:12 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone! I'm super excited to announce that Book 1 of The Stargazer's War is available now on amazon. As always, I'd like to ask all of you who've had a chance to read the story to head over and leave a rating or review. They're super critical to making sure others have a chance to find it.
Two quick side notes: You may have noticed you haven't been billed for the month of April. I'm halfway throu...
2023-04-01 19:57:58 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 26: When it Rains
(Deleted this on accident. Just reposting.)
Edmund’s gear never got a chance to dry.
Raindrops pelted his body as he emerged from the darkness between levels, a gentle drizzle that blotted out the false sky above. It seeped through the gaps in Edmund’s armor, joining the lake water from the previous floor in the little pockets that trapped it.
Edmund sighed. At least now he had a camp in which to dry off, if he ever found...
2023-04-01 18:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 28: Through Biting Thorns
Edmund barely caught a glimpse of blue sky and false sunlight before a familiar voice pulled his attention away.
“Wait a minute. I know that oppressive heat.” Lucius Durne spun on his heel to face the entrance. “Edmund!”
Edmund blinked, realizing that twice now he’d discomforted the brothers in his absentmindedness. In his time thus far in the Eternal Depths, the last thing Edmund had learned to expect when entering a new level was...
2023-03-01 20:55:40 +0000 UTC
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[Hey everyone, I'm really sorry this is so late. I had a bit of a crisis of motivation coming off of the high of finishing The Stargazer's War 1 that made it really hard to focus on the story that seems to be only declining in popularity. The last thing I expected was the outflow of messages telling me how much you all like this story more, a sentiment I do deeply appreciate but that makes me more than a bit nervous about the new series I'm staking my career on.
Anyway, I've...
2023-02-17 20:54:06 +0000 UTC
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Epilogues
Maria only made it to her feet as she felt the whirr of thrusters quake the floors beneath her. Her hands shook as she moved to the window, pressed her face up to the glass to watch the soulship shrink into nothingness in starry sky.
She kept her eyes fixed upon that spot, as if even too far away to make out, she could still watch Caliban Rex fade into the distance.
Maria didn’t resent her defeat. How could she? She’d set herself against a force far beyond her ...
2023-01-20 00:05:52 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 35: Took You Long Enough
Maria couldn’t keep the smile from her face. She had him. She had him. She almost wished she’d taken a picture of the looks on the would-be fugitives’ faces as she’d emerged from her hiding place. It would’ve made a wonderful decoration for her new office.
That is, Honchel’s and Velereau’s faces. Rex simply stared at her with that inhumanly blank expression behind those sunglasses of his.
“You didn’t think I would l...
2023-01-18 23:53:39 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 34: A Penchant for Shadows
[Man, if you thought that earlier cliff was bad...]
There’s a hideous temptation the nothingness offers to those in pain.
Escape is the wrong word. There is no escape. There’s only a deadening, a sense that for now, if only for now, you’ve hidden it away, locked in a closet as it hammers at the door rabid to break free.
The tooth may be numbed, but the dentist’s drill still buzzes, still presses, still vibrates your j...
2023-01-12 23:01:25 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 33: Nick
I hope after all the ice cream adventures and the scathing quips and the grand mysteries, after all the close calls and the glorious victory, after how, for so long now, everything has turned out okay, you haven’t forgotten what kind of story this is.
I haven’t.
Cold sweat ran down my neck. Shadows crept in along my periphery, blotting out the others, the hallway, the window. I saw only Nick, deep in the throes of void-induced psychosis, standing over Br...
2023-01-11 00:19:18 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 32: Bao Long
[Cliff ahead. Proceed with caution.]
Normally, this would be the part where I tell you I tossed and turned throughout the night, plagued by restlessness and dreams of failure in the trials to come. Either that or visited by some mysterious portent I’d neither the time nor attention to properly interpret until it was too late.
Unfortunately, this isn’t some high-budget holo streamed out to trillions of people. This was my life.
I slept lik...
2023-01-07 00:36:14 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 31: Time’s Up
“I still can’t believe Xavier beat me to copper,” I muttered to myself as I stacked a handful of apple seeds with a pair of tweezers.
“How are you still on that?” Nick asked without looking up from his genetic resequencing tool. “It’s been two weeks.”
“Shit.” The tower of seeds I’d assembled collapsed—four high, just shy of my record.
Nick let out a sigh. “Some copper you are.”
“I’m trying, okay? Divine insp...
2023-01-04 21:33:17 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 26: When it Rains
[And in the greatest plot twist since the Sixth Sense, I actually have this month's chapter a day early! Enjoy!]
Edmund’s gear never got a chance to dry.
Raindrops pelted his body as he emerged from the darkness between levels, a gentle drizzle that blotted out the false sky above. It seeped through the gaps in Edmund’s armor, joining the lake water from the previous floor in the little pockets that trapped it.
Edmund sighed. At l...
2022-12-31 23:50:44 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 30: You Again
[Quick note: This chapter directly follows up on events from a chapter I intend to add but haven’t written yet. All you really need to know is that shortly after the void horde attack, Arthur takes Cal out for drinks. There, two goons accost Arthur for information on his sister Clara, who’s fled from a smalltime criminal that’s infatuated with her. Cal beats them up and they go on there merry way. I hope the following isn’t too confusing. Enjoy!]
One ...
2022-12-18 20:45:20 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 29: Trying it Out
I slammed my head into the sitting area table. The reinforced resin against my forehead made a rather satisfying thud, even as I let out a groan. “It’s not working.”
“Then try again,” Charlotte repeated for the umpteenth time. “You know how this works, Cal. You do it over and over again until you figure it out.”
With a well-executed—if I do say so myself—overdramatic sigh, I pushed off against the edge of the table to brin...
2022-12-06 00:15:25 +0000 UTC
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[This is the part where I apologize for the del
2022-12-04 00:40:23 +0000 UTC
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Hello beautiful people!
I come to you out of schedule with some exciting news: Into the Darkness, book 1 of Dungeon Devotee, is now available on amazon!
As promised, the story isn't coming to Kindle Unlimited, so it'll remain up on royalroad and here on patreon for you all to enjoy. Those of you in the Rare and Heroic tiers can expect your own personal copy of the .epub in your inbox soon.
Thank y...
2022-11-26 02:41:39 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 28: Tin
I bounded across the rooftops of Fyrion, leaping over peaks and valleys in the contiguous mass of metal that separated the city from the vacuum beyond. The dwarf planet’s gravity had taken more than a little getting used to, but now months in to my vac-welding work, I needed neither the reflexes of cycling my spine nor the stability of cycling my muscles to expertly traverse the uneven terrain.
I kept high, staying to the multilevel buildings and vaulting across ...
2022-11-23 23:30:16 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 27: Back to Work
I wish I had an interesting story to tell about clearing my brain meridian. After all that excitement, it feels wrong to just open my final meridian without a hitch, doesn’t it? Anticlimactic, even.
Sometimes life doesn’t make for interesting stories though—or even boring stories for that matter.
In this particular case, I waited a few days after my discharge from the hospital to make my attempt, used a different shower than the one I...
2022-11-16 00:34:52 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 26: Recovery
“Cadet Rex? Cadet Rex, can you hear me?”
My eyes blinked open to a bright light shining into them. I groaned.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
The light flicked off and vision slowly clarified to reveal a sparsely adorned hospital room complete with sunlight blaring in through the window to my left and refracting off the polished linoleum floor right into my eyes. Before me stood a middle-aged woman in a pale green medical apron, currently in t...
2022-11-12 00:38:12 +0000 UTC
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