Ad Astra

89. The Parts of a Heart (II)

After Eudora left the room was utterly silent.

Then Feiyang let out a bestial roar. One of the crates exploded, scattering a plume of tangy dust onto the floor.

One part of him wanted to run out, grab her, and fuck her ‘till she was so sore she was stumbling over herself. Hold her down by those long, soft legs and fuck her till that proud, smug look on her lovely face was replaced by a lolling tongue and eyes rolling back and those high, quivering moans she let out on nights he ...

88. The Parts of a Heart (I)

A/N: have you ever thought ‘screw that adastra fellow, I hate his dumb face and I hope he never writes another chapter again?

Well today’s your unlucky day! Bc here’s the first of 2 bonus chapters which kinda popped into existence outta nowhere!

//

Eudora flipped off the ledge, planted her feet on the side of the granite tower, and dashed toward the bustling street below, dodging windowsills and flagpoles, kicking off sandstone cornices. The wind howle...

87. An Old Nemesis

Dorian was at the open market, a smattering of stalls in a marble-floored plaza which seemed to stretch endlessly, its loose rows wrapping around itself like the lively intestines of some massive beast. Its stalls were all strung with white-cloth tarps more specialized than any Dorian had seen in the Festival’s market; he passed a rolling food-stall hawking twenty flavors of custard, with more cooking in a tiny artifact oven bolted on its side. He passed an ornate-looking stall selling only...

86. Borrowed Power (IV)

A/N: This chapter was 2300 words, but then I added a scene in the middle. You’ll know exactly which scene I’m talking about when you get to it. It is the sort of scene which miiiight not be the best thing to add, but once you have the idea you can’t not follow through on it

I’m not sorry. Actually I’m kind of sorry

There’s a decent chance I edit it out tomorrow

Anyways, uh

enjoy?

//

The Alchemist’s Guild was unlike an...

85. Borrowed Power (III)

A/N: Sry this chapter’s late—it took quite a bit of finagling, but I’m pretty happy with how it ended up! Next chap is back to regularly scheduled Dorian programming

//

Kaya frowned. “What are you meant to be, a shaman?”

“I am a Priest. A Priest of the Order of Jez, at your service.” The old man bowed again.   Kaya wasn’t sure what this weird old coot and his pointy hat were up to. “You don’t want me in your—whatever ...

84. Borrowed Power (II)

A/N: this is not an incest story, peeps!

//

Kaya woke two hours before the sun rose. She donned her new loose gray robes and snuck outside. Lights still dotted the walls and the city beyond; there was the cranking and whirring of metal, but it was as dark and quiet as it ever got around here.

She staked out a spot between the walls and the campgrounds, distant enough from both that she wouldn’t draw attention. This time of day the air was cool, a light bla...

83. Borrowed Power

She rushed into a standoff.

On one side were the bronze-skinned fighters of the Narong Tribe, dressed in dark-brown smocks; Young Master Narong stood at their front. His forearm was slicked with blood.

On the other was a gang of men cloaked in dark-yellow robes; cowls left shadows over their eyes. A dark-red symbol, like the laughing face of a devil, was etched in the center of the hoods. Heading them was a bald, musclebound man with silver studs running up one ear. His smile was ...

82. Drifting

The air seemed fresher as Dorian strolled out of the doors of the Guild. Humming to himself, he took stock of the sun in the sky. That whole jaunt had gone faster than he’d expected—there was still an hour or two left, it seemed, before he’d be kicked out.

Would he be kicked out, now that he had an Artificer’s badge? Pebble had said Guild membership was an avenue to citizenship. But if this Oasis worked like any of the bureaucracies Dorian knew, there was likely still a...

81. Artifice (VIII)

A/N: Last artifice chapter! 

//

Kal mulled it over. There were a few possibilities.

One. His longer career as a prize-fighter had finally caught up with him. He’d taken one too many blows to the head. His brain had been tenderized to mush, and now it was cooking up some fantasy that the reincarnation of Jani fucking Zhang had strolled in in the guise of a savage-boy. A grinning, very annoying savage-boy.

Two. He was dreaming. Or someone had snuc...

80. Artifice (VII)

A/N: Slight delay to this chap bc it turns out I had 2 more midterms (yesterday + today) that I just found out existed! … Im not an exemplary student, as you might guess

//

He flipped open the Compendium of Artificing - Tier 1. It was a very long volume, sorted by popularity. On the first page were qi-powered clocks, lanterns, small-scale machinery… he kept flipping. Soon he arrived at the page he was searching for. He pointed.

Kal leane...

79. Artifice (VI)

The testing room was spare. Blank sandstone walls. A workbench, with a small box of assorted screws and hammers. Blocks of raw material. A furnace. A bookshelf stacked with reference materials. An anvil. A clock. All made of a dark-gray metal. That was it.

Dorian waited, legs crossed, as the clock ticked slowly by. There was no sign of a proctor for the past quarter-hour. He was starting to think one might not materialize. Outside of one prominent exception, Guild didn’t seem very fon...

78. Artifice (V)

A/N: Midterms are over, huzzah! I can go back to rapid-firing chapters!! Don’t know if I can promise dailies, but I’ll sure try for it.

//

“Will you behave?” said Dorian, frowning.

Leo nodded, goggle-eyed. “Really?” Dorian shot him a stern look. “You’re not just saying that so I’ll let you go, are you?” More frantic nodding. “Fine.”

Dorian released the restraints and Leo leapt back to his feet with an instant.

He dashed to Lin’s side, sp...

77. Artifice (IV)

What was this girl about to do to him? Dorian was a little perturbed.

She seemed a normal sort when he first saw her. Then she’d gotten steadily more unhinged.

His eyes trailed to the Furnace; qi-flames licked at the edges. The way she was looking at him sent a cold draft down his spine. Either she wanted to stab him to death or devour him whole.

He glanced around the room, searching for something to distract her with. It was a bare, blocky room with walls of a porous blac...

76. Artifice (III)

So this is the part where she gently crushes my dreams.

Dorian fought to keep himself from snorting. “This,” said the girl, sweeping her arms out like a bad actress, “is artificing!”

A herd of fools sweating it out over basic metalworking? They don’t even have free-hand Inscription? And my goodness—where are the heatproof gloves, the plated helmets? Have they no regard for their hands or eyes?  She may as well have shown him a tribe of c...

75. Artifice (II)

“Call me Io,” said Dorian softly. He blinked fast, watering his eyes a smidge as he looked up at her.

“Io,” she repeated, and her voice made the syllable a song. She smiled as she held out a gloved hand. “Come with me.”

He eyed the hand warily. Then, with the cautious slowness of a frightened animal, he reached out and took it.

“He’s your issue no longer,” she said loftily to the receptionist. “Off you go.”

“Y-yes…” With another wai...

Chapter 74. Artificing

Pebble chose a direction. It was the wrong direction.

Half an hour and much scampering later, they came to a stop before a gold-domed basilica, easily the most impressive structure in its block.

It was a behemoth of metal and spinning cogs; its pieces were in constant motion. There were the nodes on the roof, cackling with qi like oversized light-bulbs. There was the massive regal clock, nestled against domed roof and whose wind-up tick-tick-ticking set a metronome heard for miles...

73. An Energetic Tour

Very quickly they found out two things about Pebble. He knew his way around here with such familiarity it was like he was following a sixth sense—and he wouldn’t shut up. He seemed an excitable sort, and utterly oblivious to the fact that neither Dorian nor Kaya was much in the mood for talking. Kaya especially. Her face was dark as a midnight storm.

“So you’re from the Outside!” He gushed, eyes shining. He turned around, started sizing them up, and kept walking backwards at t...

72. Rats

Kaya was stupefied—by the stench or the sights, Dorian didn’t know. He grabbed her wrist. “Hold on,” he warned. “And don’t let go.”

“Ah?” was all Kaya got out before he dragged her into the disheveled swamp of a street.

Personal space was a foreign concept here. Bodies scraped and brushed and slithered by other bodies, all unkempt, all soaked in grime. In a minute Dorian had been jostled, shoved, pushed, and bumped into more times than he could count. Every step ...

71. Azcan

Time Elapsed: 1 Month, 1 week.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” said Kaya, panting.

“Not at all,” said Dorian. He smiled at her. “Not this time, nor the last hundred times you asked.”

Kaya huffed, collapsing to the sands. She was drenched in sweat. “That’s enough for a day,” she gasped.

“Really?” Dorian smirked. “We’ve only been running half a day. Are you sure you’ve crossed mid-Vigor?”

She gave h...

Interlude 2. The Ones Left Behind

Another Plane, Another Time…

Dorian ascended. He was a rapture of light and blistering fire, a newly-born star rising to take its place in the firmament. He was the only light in a dark, splintered world. Then he was gone, rushed to another realm. The darkness dropped again.

The sky was a thick, mournful purple. Black splotches, void of light or color, blotted it down its length—where chunks of the very soul of the world had been punctured in the battle. But n...

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Don’t tell RoyalRoad this, but I’m *much* more likely to read and consider patron feedback than I am an RR comment. If you’ve got feedback of any sort, please feel free to let me know—constructive criticism included! I only ask that you deliver it kindly (we authors have feelings too). 

70. Breaking Point

“What did he say, child?” To stand in the presence of a peak-Profound Realm master like Patriarch Yalta would’ve wobbled the knees of most Vigor fighters. Dorian bore the pressure with a grimace.

“He threatened me,” said Dorian, feigning a cringe. “He said this was a message to the rest of the Desert that today was only the beginning. He said the Ugoc send their regards.”

“Impudent!” yelled a man from behind. From his lavish gray robe he looked to be a clan leade...

69. Red Solstice (V)

“I…” Kono appeared to wrack his mind. “Maybe it isn’t under control.”

Dorian glanced back, frowning mightily. “What?”

“Look.” He gestured to the Dragon. “It’s not moving stiffly or in set patterns. It is simply enraged.” Kono tilted his head. “Besides, wouldn’t it take a master of Profound strength or higher to command it? Such a beast heels to few men.”

Dorian shook his head. This Kono was either a very good actor or a very ...

68. Red Solstice (IV)

What was this All-Seeing eye? A few explanations had been swirling in Dorian’s mind. One was that it was a trite metaphor for a celestial body—the sun and the moons might be all-seeing eyes, always above and gazing upon the plane. Another was a magical beast; he’d known many a flying critter with supernal senses. Or a technique—though the the Eyes of Almidas, were limited in scope, but enough of them could be all-seeing.

Or maybe the answer was much simpler. Of everyone here, wh...

67. Red Solstice (III)

Beasts crowded in from all sides, snapping off stragglers at the edges. The mass of humanity contracted as hundreds of men and women fled inward. But they couldn’t flee very far—the Frost Dragon waited at the very middle, its neck ablaze with cruel qi as it charged an attack. Everywhere blood gushed in fountains; bodies fell in droves all around them, speared by Wyrm-fang or Vordor’s beak. The ground had stopped shaking but hysteria raged strong as ever; the emotion pulsed through hundr...

66. Red Solstice (II)

At first it was a low, slow rumble, lost in the roar of the geyser. Dorian, on the border of sleep, didn’t register it, not at first. Only when he heard the click-click-clicking of jostled glass did his eyes snap open, just in time to see a beaker of healing elixir topple from its perch to land mouth-first in the sands. There it trembled with the ground, all its red gushing from it in spurts.

Kaya was still inert on the ground. He bolted upright, leapt to his feet, and burst out the d...

65. Red Solstice (I)

The Festival was sound asleep. It was that time of night, so deep and so late and so silent that the ambiance felt like a physical thing, a thick wool blanket lain atop all the tents and huts and stands. A few revelers slouched home on wine-weak legs, but that was that. Even the geyser’s roars were subdued, seeming more to Dorian’s ear like snores.

Dorian sat wide awake. There’d be no sleeping tonight, and not just because of Kaya’s ground-shaking snoring. What was there to make...

64. Fate

“Finally finished!” Hu sagged back against a pillow. “Thank heavens!”

“Shouldn’t you be upset?” said Dorian as he trussed up some canvas. The elixirs had been put away, the shelves stored in trunks which were then stored in Interspatial Rings. The rest, which couldn’t fit in Ring-space, needed to be bundled up and hauled back by Rust tribesmen. “Today’s the last day we can sell. Our profits are over.”

Hu leaned against a sack of posters. “I, for one, have h...

63. A Killing

Two hours ‘till the Markets open and Dorian had run out of bodily fluids to sweat out. He’d been given a rib-crushing celebration hug by Kaya, a thorough interrogation about what’d just happened (most of which he answered with some variant of ‘I don’t know! Just did it!’), gotten a Tribe-wide ovation, and fended off Kaya again (‘we’ll celebrate tonight,’ he’d said. ‘I have to prepare.’ To which she’d called him dry as a hide and went off to drink with the other Rust ...

62. Trial of the Soul

The Golden Roc reached godhood in maturity. After a century-cycle each Roc ascended to a higher plane, but not before leaving offspring behind. Zhang was not wrong to call it a creature loved by the universe; in that egg lay a hint of the divine.

It wouldn’t only sharply raise cultivation. It’d also purify his body and add a fire affinity to his Vigor Physique’s innate death affinities, meaning it’d supercharge all fire-aspect techniques. It’d drastically enhance his talent: t...