Salas was not polite enough to wait for Dorian to come up with a plan. The machine kept piling on shots, which was tremendously annoying, not only because it kept breaking up his thoughts, but also because each shot was aimed exactly where it’d be most uncomfortable for him to defend. Dorian was constantly making of his body a pretzel, crossing his legs, bending backwards to thrust the tip of a wing at an arrow aimed at his exposed heel. He had no chance to find his footing. No chance to co...
2023-06-10 20:57:26 +0000 UTC
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“The Trial of the Fist,” said Coldheart. “That is next. And of the four hundred and sixty two who have made it past the third trial, all met their ends at the fourth. Dorian the Heartless, pass through the Fourth Door!”
As he stepped through, the door vanished behind him. A pocket dimension.
Dorian found himself in a wasteland.
The ground was all ash and soot. Anything that’d once lived on it had been cooked into a bleak sameness. It was ...
2023-06-09 14:47:51 +0000 UTC
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The Door of the Heart led to a room much like the other two. All gold, with another pedestal at its center. But this time 10 vials sat atop it, ranged in a circle. They were filled with an elixir of murky white, like if forgetfulness was a color.
“Drink,” ordered Coldheart.
“What are they?”
“Draughts of Infinite Remembrances,” said Coldheart. “Each vial contains the memory of a life. That is all you need to know. Drink!”
Dorian picked up the first vial,...
2023-06-08 07:45:23 +0000 UTC
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“So,” said Dorian brightly. “About that Inheritance?”
“Ah,” stammered the Priest. “Ah….yes. This way.”
No ‘young one,’ this time, Dorian noted. Before they set off, a shadow stretched across them. Gerard, in Roc form, bore the dragon Dorian had just chucked. He gently dumped the creature at their feet.
“Are you alright?” asked Gerard to the dragon. It nodded slowly, looking somewhat traumatized. “You seem slightly nauseous. I have an elixir that m...
2023-06-07 12:56:22 +0000 UTC
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“Who are we?!” squeaked Sun at the top of her lungs.
“The resistance!” shouted Dorian.
The two dragons flanking him did too. Then the dragons behind them in the V-formation, then those farther back, until the words rippled down their whole fleet, all the way to the clumps of Gods in the rear.
“What do we do?!”
“Fly fast!” shouted Dorian.
“Fight hard!” shouted the dragons in the middle.
“And never surrender!”shouted the drago...
2023-06-06 08:26:08 +0000 UTC
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“What is this?” snapped Slickclaw. “You would mock me, little dragonoid?”
“Not at all!” Dorian smiled like the Buddha himself. He spread his arms.
“Go on. Have at it!”
Slickclaw stared at him for a few heartbeats, and Dorian got the sense the dragon was trying to decide whether Dorian had something up his sleeve, or if he was simply an idiot.
“Very well,” said Slickclaw, voice soft as a snake’s hiss. “I will play this little game of yours.”
2023-06-05 05:37:11 +0000 UTC
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Dorian stood atop the Glassy Mountains and squinted into the distance. The sun was peeking over the horizon, pinking a sea of fluffy clouds. Mountain peaks poked through them. There was a nub of a mountain peppered with tiny sakura trees. There was a mountain right out of a classical painting, dotted with bonsai trees, with a pretty blue stream winding from top to bottom. There were mountains spurting fire, mountains belching smog, mountains pimpled with crystals and riddled with greenery. Yo...
2023-06-04 04:35:07 +0000 UTC
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Sun chewed thoughtfully on her carrot. “So… heist? Again?”
“Not this time. I signed a pact with Fate, unfortunately.” Dorian sighed. “In return for his help we’re not only retrieving my bodies. We also have to destroy Jez’s Infinity Hearts on the planes along the way. And if his forces are headquartered at Mt. Tai…you can bet the Heart’s there too. There’s a very slim chance we can steal an object with a Godking’s aura out from under their noses...
2023-06-03 04:06:34 +0000 UTC
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It had been a while since he’d last visited the Dragonrealm. But despite the sour terms on which he’d left he found himself eager to visit again.
No-one did grand like the dragons. Their plane was the most mountainous in all the Multiverse, and they made the most of it—if you saw a peak you could bet a dragon had made it its home. Carved deep tunnels into it, tunnels spilling with gold and silver and crystals and elixirs, Technique manuals galore! If a dragon valued it, or knew it...
2023-06-02 03:17:28 +0000 UTC
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2 days later…
“I’m not an invalid,” grumbled Dorian. Sure, he might’ve been halfway to a mummification and hog-tied to a sick bed, but Fate’s healing elixirs had worked wonders. At first after Yama’s Godking qi ran roughshod over his insides he would’ve put his odds of survival at a coin flip.
But now, after chugging Fate’s most potent healing elixirs day and night and letting his Torchdragon Bloodline do its work, he was nearly feeling like hims...
2023-06-01 04:35:23 +0000 UTC
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Realm of Endless Seas
The Ever-Serpent floated peacefully in the midst of an empty expanse, as he had for ten thousand years.
Water, clear as you like, ran from horizon to horizon all about him. His massive form—even he wasn’t sure how long he’d gotten—trailed out behind him. Too many fathoms to count. He wasn’t certain how he’d even do it. Commission one of the cartographers who lived in one of the kingdoms on his belly, perhaps? One of the kingdoms t...
2023-05-31 05:32:34 +0000 UTC
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There was a deep black smoldering scar carved into the hillside in the shape of a crescent moon. It went so deep you could see a glowing line of red at its furthest depths where it broke into the lava flows. And of Fate there was no sign. Not even a flicker of aura.
Jez breathed in, and breathed out, ash fluttering on his breath as his vessel flaked away. It was done.
This body had little time left. He wondered if he ought to be feeling so much satisfaction in this moment. So much...
2023-05-29 18:17:38 +0000 UTC
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The Orc Chieftain’s axe bit into Yama’s meaty arm, splitting it at the seams. Howling, Yama swung for him—but not before an Empyrean Jiangshi stabbed at the tendons at his knees. Gods were crowding all about him now, firing with all they had, a circle of vicious light. Individually they were nothing. But stacked one atop the other, pouring in from all sides, even a Godking was made to struggle. They took him in the chest, the legs, the arms; roaring Yama fended off a sweep of t...
2023-05-29 04:31:38 +0000 UTC
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Hey all! Think I'll do one of these every month or so. Feel free to leave feedback on how the story's going, questions, whatever in the comments below and I'll read and/or reply.
Writing Update:
So far, so good. Dailies are going pretty smoothly. Burnout-o-meter is at about a 5.5/10, which is solid.
At the rate I'm going Speedrunning will probably finish sometime in late summer, early fall (August-September ish?). I'm playing around with a ...
2023-05-27 19:35:30 +0000 UTC
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A/N:
Early chapter :D
//
Dorian flared his aura. He spread out his wings. He put on his toothiest grin. He made damned sure the poor sods in the valley below got a good eyeful of him. And indeed a good quarter, maybe half of the army was now turning to face this strange new threat! He always was a head-turner.
Now that he had their attention—
[Supernova Fist!]
He made sure to put some real oomph not t...
2023-05-27 19:03:07 +0000 UTC
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Breath of the Ashen Sky.
Dorian remembered the last time he’d encountered a wild Torchdragon. Ages ago, back when he was Salas Godhunter, tasked with tracking down a particularly ornery one that’d run wild over the countryside. Some Godking’s child had been playing with fireworks, and then hit a mountain which had been there for ten thousand years, and then found out that mountain was, in fact, a slumbering Torchdragon. The Godking hadn’t been able to put it down, and i...
2023-05-27 03:08:58 +0000 UTC
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Fate looked left and right, and then leaned in to whisper. “I may have a path to get your old bodies back.”
“Oh?!”
“It won’t be easy!” stressed Fate. “But when I moved to save Gerard from the Unstuck Space I pulled him from your hidden estate. I was forced to pull some strings—in a literal sense! And though Gerard I managed to pull through… the rest were snapped in the spatial passage. Spun away. Lost.”
“But they’re not in the Unst...
2023-05-26 03:47:52 +0000 UTC
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Everyone on Fate’s side seemed to harden, all at once. Bracing for impact.
Some creatures cringe at threats. Others rankle at them, and it was clear which kind the Phoenix were. They always were a proud sort. A great big one took a break from batting at a wraith’s hand to rear up, screeching at Jez.
“Do I have the honor of addressing Erlo, the Prince of Phoenixes?” said Jez mildly.
Dorian knew the name, and it was a weighty one. Where had he ranked in the Empyreans l...
2023-05-25 02:20:43 +0000 UTC
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Fate bowed. “Sorry! Sorry,” he said, wincing under Gerard’s stare like he was some fresh serving-boy who’d made a silly mistake his first day on the job. “I’m here now. You’re safe—you have my word!”
It was poor timing that a bomb—maybe the loudest thus far—rocked the city at that moment. In the distance plumes of thick smoke spurted up.
“You should know,” breathed the Auctioneer. “That Jez is in the city. He will be here shortly, and he has no
2023-05-24 04:04:20 +0000 UTC
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“I’ll play up. You give support,” breathed Dorian. Gerard nodded grimly.
“What about me?” said Sun.
“You—I don’t know. Do something! Make yourself useful!”
“Okay!” She scurried off.
Dorian frowned. Godkings. The highest tier of cultivation truly stood apart. Even the highest-ranked Empyreans were only on par with the typical Godking. Godkings were masters of their domains—the common wisdom, even among Gods, was never to challenge one on...
2023-05-23 05:14:01 +0000 UTC
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It was unfair.
In open terrain things would’ve been more even. There would’ve been room to maneuver. To strike back with explosive Techniques. But here, trapped in such close quarters, there was no getting away. Especially not with Gerard on the other end, whipping up a literal storm.
His fists fell upon them the way a rockslide falls upon a herd of unsuspecting deer.
Knuckles. Sinking into cheek of a lizardman. Feeling the bones groan and bend and give, seeing an eyebal...
2023-05-22 03:24:31 +0000 UTC
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Jez gave a sad chuckle. “It occurs to me we’ve never truly held a conversation. As ourselves, I mean, with all our pretenses stripped away. And yet our lives have so deeply affected each others’. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
“Not really! Frankly I’m happy keeping it this way.”
A sigh.
“You are about to be locked away, Dorian. In a prison in the Labyrinth, forever, where you can harm no-one again. The Infinity is about to join every plane of the Mult...
2023-05-21 03:47:38 +0000 UTC
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Dorian bent down and inspected the mystery elixirs.
“Drink me!” was written in Sun’s distinctive scrawl. And there were exactly seven vials here—the same number of Kinzo’s elixirs on offer at the Auction. He picked one up and gave it a little swirl, saw the liquid flow slow. But it was subtly different from the way sludge or mud moves slow. It seemed rather that there was a delayed reaction inside the glass. The liquid was of its own time.
Millennium Elixirs, in the ...
2023-05-20 04:03:38 +0000 UTC
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The theater was silent, waiting, all eyes on Booth One Hundred and Twelve. The Auctioneer marinated in the tension, working his meatball fists around one another as though trying to congeal them into one giant meat club, smiling his oily little smile all the while.
But soon it was clear no response was forthcoming.
The Auctioneer gave a little sniff. He had little cause for excitement in his daily routine. In fact he’d done his very best to legislate the excitement out of it. Th...
2023-05-18 06:05:08 +0000 UTC
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“Lot One Hundred and Twenty! This auction’s crowning items…. Godking Kinzo’s Millennium’s Elixirs!”
There was a chorus of creaks and shuffling fabric as the whole auditorium sat upright at once. All eyes were on the Auctioneer now, and by his oily smile he was soaking it all in, a sponge for attention. Each glance puffed him up little more.
“Starting bid… five thousand high-grade spirit stones.”
More money than most Gods would earn in a lifetime. Who would ...
2023-05-17 03:24:21 +0000 UTC
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Gerard tapped his conch as he strode a tight gait, felt it heating up under his palm. When he spoke, his voice came out tight too.
“Fate,” he said. “I need you.”
“What is it?” To his credit Fate did not bother with the ‘why’? Or the ‘how’? He heard the urgency in Gerard’s voice. He knew something had gone very wrong indeed.
“Dorian has allowed himself to be captured. To make certain your plan succeeds.”
“What?!”
“He langui...
2023-05-16 05:47:26 +0000 UTC
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Dorian felt oddly calm as he was shunted into the void in chains, a small legion of Empyreans clustered about him. His body was brimming with energy but his mind was crisp and still. The world filtered in clear, sharp, bright. He felt in control, somehow. Despite the preponderance of evidence otherwise.
They emerged at a windowless cell, equipped with a grand total of one bench. Nothing else. A holding cell. Impossible to tell where, but he suspected they were in the Royal Pala...
2023-05-15 02:48:11 +0000 UTC
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“I think I have a way to crack the vault,” breathed Dorian. “Well—not exactly. Indirectly. The way Sun describes it, going in straight-up is probably impossible—”
Gerard had a look of twitching horror, cracks tickling the edges of his mask of calm. It was a look Dorian was used to getting from him. But seldom in situations quite as dire as this.
“Now?!” said Gerard. Which for him was the equivalent of, ‘have you lost your fucking mind?!’
2023-05-14 05:05:19 +0000 UTC
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Warding qi wrapped the cargo boat in giant cobwebs as it wound up the channel. Guards shuffled about on the deck, scowling at nothing and everything. Looking straight on. People seldom remembered to look up, even those paid to pay attention. And even if they looked, what’d they see? Specks of dust and smoke and ash floating about! Nothing to worry their precious little heads on.
So maybe one of the specks was a little bigger. And if you squinted maybe you could make out some ...
2023-05-13 05:33:49 +0000 UTC
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Sun found herself bouncing a peach core off a wall, chucking it with her feet and catching it with her hands. Peach cores weren’t very elastic, as balls went, but you worked with what you had.
And she had Gerard. Reading, as he always seemed to be. Nice enough, but he didn’t seem the talking type. And there was his toad Gerard Jr., looking as though its greatest ambition in life was to sit still and stare flatly ahead.
“I’m bored,” she said at the air. And then ...
2023-05-12 00:17:20 +0000 UTC
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