Mecanimus

Changerling part 106: Instincts

It took almost half a second for the shock to wear off, and Nestra to understand the implications. And then it was rage all the way down.

“You f-”

And then just as it happened, her anger was pulled back by a conflicting set of instincts warring in her mind. Terror smacked her. It was him. And he was S-class. Sereth could shatter mountains and make the sky rumble. He was a pagan god. Agathon was a full rank above that as well as impossibly ancient, and that was how her more hum...

Changeling part 105: Layer upon layer

The carriage passed the gates just as the sun set, coloring the pale walls crimson in an illusion of warmth. Temperatures had brutally dropped and despite her B-class body, Nestra still felt a light chill, her yellow dress affording her no protection. Naila’s manor boasted an inner garden as an extraordinary show of wealth and influence this deep in the noble quarter. Flowers bloomed even in the cold of this mountainous autumn thanks to a clever network of heating runes. Some of them shone ...

Changeling Part 104: Your Princess is in this Sewer

Makihel had picked a utility access ladder opening some distance away from an aqueduct as the safest way to her safe room. It had been torn open and the lock was now lying in two pieces against the far wall so Nestra had the confirmation Grook had been there. She dropped down the shaft, then sprinted along a dark canal made of dark gray bricks and tiles. The water mana was thick here, thick enough that she felt a spray of blood against one of the far walls. No bodies so far. A blue light came...

Changeling part 103: Palace

The graying warden visited them the day after, flanked by four of his associates. His coming had been heralded by a simple knock and nothing else. In fact, Nestra was surprised to see five wardens in full armor queuing through the door and into their merchant suite while downstairs, unpaused music and laughs gave the scene a jarringly comfortable background.

If it were Threshold and five special affairs walked into a hotel lobby, there would be silence. Those guys had probably snuck in....

Changeling Collections 6 - 8: 58 to 95

For your reading convenience. Now with fewer typos.

Announcement: delay and 108

So I posted the beginning of my next story and the reception was very encouraging. I am most pleased. Sadly, it cooked my brain so I can't finish Changeling chappie this week, sorry. I needed a little more time for planning anyway.

I'll be creating a new tier just for 108, however I cannot promise regular updates. So keep that in mind.

I'll be cleaning Changeling's collection for ease of use as well.

Thanks for your time everyone. Oh, and the artwork for 108 is in the work...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 13: The Road Ahead

There are no new corpses this time. My emotions are both reset from the weird detached hermit life and dulled by the nature of this place, so suddenly I feel more stuff but all of it is muted. I think it’s good that it’s muted. I think I’d be screaming my fucking lungs out otherwise.

Chronos waits patiently at the edge of his seat, hands crossed over a knee. I immediately grab the shot glass in front of me, downing it. It stings like hell. Gin. I don’t care. Even muted, the emot...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 12: Seedlings

I have to say the barracks here are much nicer than I anticipated. I suppose generational wealth builds up over the eons, so I do my best not to gawp like an idiot at all the fancy wall decorations on soft wood panels I spot on the way. Very neat and proper, I like it. The attendant rushes down the corridor without looking back and I realize I would have struggled to follow before the awakening but now, everything is easier. I move faster, I can anticipate other people’s gestures more easil...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 11: The Year of Judgment

We rush back to the port amidst a chaos of fast-talking coms, blaring alarms, and panicking ships. Sethri leaves with anxious officials while the rest of the crew piles in a dockside bar, stuck to the nearby screens where the apocalypse is unfolding. We don’t remove our suits.

There is an unspoken agreement between us. If the station is lost… we go. And for twenty-seven long minutes as we watch camera footage of the tide of flesh overwhelming entire districts, it looks like it might...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 10: Outlook of the Year

Working for Derelict is exactly what I was hoping for and it’s probably one of the most tedious, repetitive lifestyles I’ve ever experienced. And yet I don’t hate it. When we’re dockside, I spend most of my time either training in the gym, polishing my Kei-Sah or trying to get my soul perception under control. I’m not making much progress with that last part but I do manage to change the shape of my sphere with a lot more ease. It would be exhausting were it not for the lure of free...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 9: Enderlithian

I think I’m at the stage where I need to rebuild my life. Oh, I’m going to lose it again before the year is done but that’s not a reason not to create a temporary home. The couple drag me to a bank where I change credits against scrips used by the local bazaar, apparently a currency accepted by local food banks run by Benevolence. The dockside bazaar is the densest concentration of population I’ve ever seen, a maze of ramshackle constructions bound by stairs, lifts, ladders and some m...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 8: Respite

Floating in the vacuum of space is an odd feeling, but I think the peculiar nature of the light is what I will remember most. With the distances unblurred, everything is both unknowingly far off and weirdly neat. The greenish planet still waits below us, red dots showing the embers of a long war. The Three Thrones war if I remember correctly. Enderlith itself is but a small dot in the distance, one I only spotted because SilSil kindly pointed it out for me. I am not yet allowed to pilot my ow...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 7: Derelict Operations

I can’t keep the datasheet, or access to my accounts but I can fill and keep the chip, which has a max capacity of 500 credits. Unfortunately, I find out that the robbers’ chips don’t contain credits but ‘scrips’ from a marketplace I have no intention of finding, at least not in this loop. 

I still have an assassin on my ass. I an not sure if he has tracked me down yet but I have to assume he has since I’ve accessed my bank account. I have no illusion I could stop a pro...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 6: A Future in the Present

“Wow,” I say, a little annoyed. 

Well, I’m annoyed on an intellectual level. It’s hard to feel truly angry when lacking hormone receptors. I feel my soul failing to latch on the other two, or at all really. This place really doesn’t exist.

“I think I was killed in a bomb blast,” I declare.

“Wine?” Chronos offers.

I nod. With the delicate touch of an expert sommelier, Morag prepares a glass of white wine. She waves at the decanter, presumably to o...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 5: Mercy

If I’m given the choice between monastic life and getting killed, fine, I’ll convert. Torl lets me shadow him all day long which simplifies things. From his emotions, I can tell he’s a little embarrassed, but also weirdly protective which makes my battered heart warm up. The rest of the male refugee monks are more distant, more dismissive, and mostly self-interested, especially our shifty bunk fellow whose greed bleeds through his soul at all times. In the morning we eat a simple porrid...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 4: The Great Escape

“FUCK!”

“More tea? Another blend.”

“Yes please but let me just do something real quick,” I reply to Chronos. “Excuse me.”

I rush to the arcade cabinet. There is something I must buy. It’s not about the experience I just lived through. Died through. Doesn’t matter. It’s for the future. I am absolutely certain that what I just went through is nothing compared to what can happen to me in future loops. I will not subject myself to this if I can help it, and...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 3: Beat the Unbeatable

This is not my flat. I fling my cup and press my hand against the panel. This time, the strange energy I feel flows more freely. It takes only ten seconds or so to activate the panel. Rush right. Spook the posh bitch heading home with my pedestrian unawakened slippers. Find the lift. Coax energy into the button, which is faster. It dings open immediately because it was already there. Thank you, posh bitch. I push the lowest button.

No wait, that’s the cellar. I frown. One squiggle for...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 2: The Rules

“FUCK!”

Leather chair. Chronos. Morag. Hills. Void. Two bodies.

I died again.

“I’m going to be very rude,” I inform reality.

“Coffee?” the time god offers.

“Fuck you.”

My insult slides off them like a splattered bee off a sports car’s windshield. They wait.

“I assume you guys must be the patient kind,” I say with as much anger as I can muster, which is not a whole lot. The weird space is making everything distant again. Can a m...

Eternal Game of the 108 Chapter 1: Out of Time

Prologue

This isn’t my house. I was just turning because the kettle was whistling for me an instant before, and now I’m… somewhere else? I turn left to right. I see a door. White walls. I turn and this still isn’t my damn house.

“What the fuck?”

A flat spreads out around me, clean and empty. The light is on. The walls are white, and made of something that looks vaguely like plastic. I recognize that the thing in front of me is a door because it looks like a lif...

Changeling Part 102: Least Convoluted Heavenly Plot

Twilight had come to the capital, the hour when law-abiding heavenlies ran their last errands before heading home. This part of the city sat at the edge between the light of tiny, specialized shops and the darkness of near-legal activities. Those locksmiths didn’t ask questions, Nestra knew. This wasn’t the worst part of the city yet so the guards liked to walk around some and raiders were few, so she attracted the gaze with her Emerald Sea mercenary appearance. She had seldom been more a...

Changeling Part 101: The Heavenly Court

Makihel collapsed against a tree, her fingers brushing the ruddy bark with shaky excitement. Nestra had carried them to a nearby world of temperate forest and fields of distant pink grass. A light breeze cooled them despite the warm rays of a summer sun, in stark contrast to the midnight vista they’d left behind not five minutes before. Makihel took a few shambling steps to the side before sitting down, arms around her knees. She was hyperventilating. Grook shrugged, then walked to the side...

Changeling Part 100: Siblings

Nestra was sneaking in a portal world.

It was a disgrace. It was also a sign of maturity but mostly it was a disgrace. Nestra was infiltrating the place without killing the sentries with all their delicious, delicious power. But alas. Alas. Big picture and all that.

She couldn’t afford to get caught. She was still simply too weak to fight a protracted battle here. Her goal was a single target she would need to defeat before a squad of heavenly nobles cleared the rest of...

Changeling Part 99: In the Jaws NOW WITH FILES

Nestra’s plan to meet Sereth met the anvil of Ashii’s culture. The Aszhii abyss didn’t have a postal service. It didn’t have the internet, or messengers. More importantly, it didn’t have any unified etiquette beyond ‘mind your own damn business’. As usual, Karamahel knew what to do in this situation as one of the resident heavenlies. Nestra was more and more tempted to call them space elves. At least, humans had the decency to pick a normal name for their species. Only egotists ...

Changeling Part 98: Ruthless Manipulations

I’ve been baited, Nestra thought to herself. The claw approached at great speed so she twisted on herself, then landed feet first. Despite the pain in her right flank, she forced herself to charge back in. The feathered lizard squawked and ducked which was just as well because she wouldn’t have landed a blow and was getting her ass handed to her at the moment. Nestra landed on the red packed dirt and skid to a halt, a mistake, or so it seemed. The shimmering feathers glowed in th...

Calamitous Announcement: Much Bob.

Good news, everyone. Several news, in fact.

1) The final book of the Calamitous Bob is out on the Zon. The series is now complete and mostly error free. Mostly. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FJGT5Z7M

2) In Kazar is now out, voiced by the talented Soundbooth people. Solfis now comes with reverb!

//SOUND OUTPUT NOW COMPLIANT WITH HARRAKAN STRIKE GOLEM SPECIFICATIONS 2025-07-23 16:46:31 +0000 UTC View Post