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BT II - Chapter 21

“Leeka,” Micah called out, turning away from the glittering river.  The orange skinned woman jumped, a guilty look on her face and her cheeks puffed out as she stuffed a piece of fruit into her mouth.

“Wuh ss it?” She tried to respond through a wad of juicy pulp.  A second later her throat bobbed as she swallowed the food. “What do you need?”

“How do you feel about a little swim?”  Micah asked, nodding toward the water.  “We’re running a bit...

Dream - 30

- - - - -

Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 3
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Good Air 4, Embers 4, Pressure 3, Current/Flow 3

- - - - -

“I still don’t see why you’re awake,” Sam said, reaching up to scratch the scales of his neck. “There should have been enough sedative in the pigs to knock any goblin in the tribe out three times over, and no offense, bu...

BT II - Chapter 20

“He’s been in there for almost a half hour now,” Leeka observed, nodding toward the squat two-story bar across the street from them.  “Do you think he’s stopped by for an after work ale or?”

Micah squinted into the darkness of the empty street.  They were deep in lowtown, what the locals called Jakint’s forgotten slums.  The poorly maintained cobblestones that made up the road had long since disappeared, replaced by packed dirt that turned into a river of mu...

BT II - Chapter 19

Micah glanced up at the wooden sign adorning the building before pushing the door open and stepping inside.  The business didn’t even have a proper name, just a picture of a pair of dice next to a crude drawing of a glowing sun.

As soon as he entered the building, Micah was assaulted by a wall of sound.  A table near him was clustered with desperate looking men and women, all of them clutching small ivory rectangles with markings on them.  An employee of the casino poin...

BT II - Chapter 18

The sun was just beginning to set as the barge pulled into Jakint’s empty and mostly silent docks.  Outside of the Amelia which stood empty and anchored closer to where the river met the ocean, barely anything moved in the wooden network of piers and gangways.  Even the otters, both of whom had been playful to the point of distraction on the journey upriver, were strangely subdued.

Their ship slid into the docks, thumping against the straw filled burlap sacks that s...

BT II - Chapter 17

Grass, half again as tall as Micah swayed gently on either side of the Amghul river.  Only by looking over the quickly flowing water could Micah actually make out the light blue of the early afternoon sky.

Jakaw sat on Leeka’s shoulder as she led the way, more or less useless from the moment they left the towering trees of the jungle behind and entered the swaying expanses of the Grass Sea.  The strip-tail clambered up her neck to perch itself atop Leeka’s head where it pr...

Dream - 29

- - - - -

Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 2
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Good Air 4, Embers 4, Pressure 3, Current/Flow 3

- - - - -

“Are you sure about this?”  Dussok asked hesitantly, his bigger body easily bearing the weight of the trough filled with wood alcohol.  “What if one of the goblins wakes up and raises a fuss?  I don’t like t...

Somnus III - Epilogue

Kat stood still on the tarmac.  To her right were Bell Donnst, Jasper Haupt, and Ricardo Waggoner, the shareholder that had supported her bid to join GroCorp’s elite.  Wind blew through her hair, heralding the eerily silent descent of the egg-like spaceship as it touched down on the boiling blacktop.

Behind their party, Whippoorwill stood uncomfortably with a group of executives, looking as out of place in a suit as any of her more dignified companions would in an alley hold...

Somnus III - Chapter 41

The hiss of air escaping was all the signal Kat needed to spring into motion.  The heavy steel rolled to the left, barely making it a third of the way across the opening before Kat’s body squirted through the gap and into the room beyond.

There were three stallesp, all wearing heavy indigo suits that covered them from feet to neck, and given the barely visible glimmering bubble around their heads, Kat could only surmise that they were some brand of space or environmental suit. &n...

Somnus III - Chapter 40

“No your other left Kat,” Whip whispered urgently, pointing with a gloved hand.  “The stallesp network has that hallway covered in warnings about failing structural integrity and radiation leaks.  I don’t think we want to head in there unless you want to come out the other side glowing.”

“Fine,” Kat replied sheepishly, turning to her left.  “Sorry about that Whip, it’s just that the inside of this place is a mess.”

She reached out, touching the s...

Somnus III - Chapter 39

The tank thumped as its main cannon fired.  Kat clutched onto the harness strapping her into her seat as the world vibrated around her, the hum of the tank’s antigrav engines picking up into a whine as it compensated for the force of the shot.

On the monitor in front of Baker, the slug skewered an armored personnel carrier, punching a fist sized hole in the front of the vehicle and annihilating its rear half in a gout of flame and plasma.  Lasers flickered, flashing dark pur...

Somnus III - Chapter 38

“Are you sure about this Baker?”  Kat asked the nondescript silhouette sitting next to her in the dark of the hover tank’s cab.  “A lot of your people might die if we do this.”

The end of the white cylinder in Baker’s mouth glowed cherry red as they inhaled.  For a moment, the inside of the tank was silent other than the whine of the service elevator that was bringing their vehicle toward the surface.  Then baker exhaled, filling the tank with a cloud of ...

Somnus III - Chapter 37

Kaleek planted his foot in the chest of a stallesp, kicking the creature with enough force that it went skittering across the galleon’s deck, the maul in its hands flying from its grip.  He reached down, scooping his greatsword from the ground in one smooth motion before lunging toward a stallesp.

The mole squeaked, backpedaling away from the charging desoph only for Kat’s Pseudopod to snake down, grabbing an ankle and yanking to the side.  It tumbled over backward, slammi...

Somnus III - Chapter 36

The crossbow thumped against Kat’s shoulder, unloading its payload into the furry body of a stallesp.  The blot slipped past the creature’s half-donned armor and buried itself in its shoulder.  It squealed and stumbled backward, hatchet dropping from its hands as it clutched helplessly at the arrow.

Its confusion only lasted for a half second before a lokkel thrust forward, spitting it on a war spear while blocking another stallesp’s wild swing with a warhammer on a meta...

Somnus III - Chapter 35

Kat ducked, loading her crossbow as a volley of spiked metal balls flew overhead.  Below, a pair of smaller, single-masted sailing ships strained against the wind as the moved past the huge lokkel galleon.

She popped up, taking aim for a brief second before firing a crossbow bolt at one of the stallesp on the back of the other ship.  Her quarrel hit the mole in the shoulder, spinning it slightly and shaving off a good portion of its hit points.

With a click of her tongue...

Somnus III - Chapter 34

“Slow down Miss Kat,” Dorrik said evenly, one of their blades flashing through the air to slap her spare dagger out of her Pseudopod’s grip.  “You only have a week or so of experience with the Dancing Blade specialization.  Your skill with a second knife is improving, but you shouldn’t try to force it.  Right now you’re trying to pattern your attacks at the same speed you would a knife in your hand.  At least for the moment, your reactions are insufficient.”<...

Somnus III - Chapter 33

GET EVERYONE UNDER COVER, YOUR ENTIRE REGION IS ABOUT TO SUFFER AN ORBITAL STRIKE.  JOIN ME IN THE DREAMSCAPE WHEN READY - D the words burned themselves onto Kat’s smartpanel as she was relaxing against a concrete wall, watching the 3445 survivors unload box after box of military equipment.  She didn’t hesitate.

“Chiffon, I need an outside link to the getaway car and the Chateau in the canyon, right now!”  Kat shouted, jumping up and grabbing the napping Whip by t...

Blog Update 2

Hey guys, gals, and assorted pals,

I'm trying to keep everyone at least sort of updated on my activities so I figured I'd try to write these things at least twice a month.  Speaking of months, this is National Novel Writing Month, so that is going to make things a bit... different.

I'm not starting a NEW story (too many irons in too many fires for that unfortunately), BUT I do want to recapture that NaNoWriMo feel.  As such, now that the big Dream chapter I dropped yest...

Dream - 28

Samazzar could feel Dussok and Takkla’s gazes on his back as the three of them strode toward the feasting pit.  Technically Grimmshold and Chief Grolm called it a pavilion.  Theoretically the pit had a roof made of crude timber with a combination of straw and leaves layered across it in a haphazard and lazy facsimile of thatching, but Sam had seen how little the covering actually did to stop the rain.

Moreover, the goblins hadn’t seemed to figure out that water flowed down...

BT II - Chapter 16

Waves of energy undulated around Micah as he sat cross-legged in the center of a ritual circle.  To his left lay the river kraken, barely alive and only sustained by frequent applications of wood magic.  To his right was a tree so tall that he could not see its upper branches.  The plant radiated age and majesty.  Through his ritual connection with it, Micah could sense its roots running deep into the soil, drinking from the water table itself before anchoring themselves i...

Dream - 27

Sam watched on as Dussok and Takkla sat cross-legged by the fire, a glowing coal cupped in each of their claws.  His sister’s face twitched, and the smell of burning meat reached his nostrils.

He winced apologetically.  The oils Samazzar had made for his siblings should have protected them from the actual burning heat of the embers, but apparently there still were some gaps in his knowledge.  Of course, there was a pit of dead goblins that could attest to that, but the ...

Somnus III - Chapter 32

Dorrik leaned back in their duty station, taking a long sip from their glass of gweerma, before sighing wearily.  When the Undaunted had arrived in Earth orbit and fought the Meritorious Industrial Harmony it had seemed like the backwater solar system was going to become the flashpoint in a massive war between the stallesp and the lokkel.

Then, everything just ground to a halt.  Dorrik had stopped paying attention to the internal politics of the Galactic Cons...

BT II - Chapter 15

Jakaw chattered at the two of them, its tails swishing quickly back and forth in the humid jungle air.  Leeka held up a hand, stopping Micah in his tracks as she squinted at the agitated monkey.  She clicked twice at it before pointing into the undergrowth.

It chittered back before hopping to another tree and shimmying upward, disappearing into the canopy.  Micah raised a single eyebrow at Leeka, asking a question without opening his mouth.

“Jakaw reported that th...

BT 2 - Chapter 14

Torch flames crackled from either side of  Micah as he sat cross-legged in the center of a large wooden building.  On his right sat three small figures, their features obscured by cloaks made of iridescent bird feathers.  Behind them on the wall were lacquered wooden plates, stylized drawings etched into them with green ink.  One disk displayed a hammer, another a leaf, and the final one a boulder.

To his left sat three women.  They weren’t wearing much beyond...

Blog Update 1

I'm thinking of making this a semi-regular thing, but I guess that will depend upon your feedback.  First I'd like to apologize for not writing as much as I'd have liked over the course of the Summer.  This has been for a couple of reasons:

First and foremost: I had a very close family member come down with a sudden onset condition that could have resulted in death.  Like "twelve hours from healthy to gone" sort of sudden onset.  This... messed me up pretty badly, I...

Somnus III - Chapter 31

“Come on big guy,” Britt called out over her shoulder at Davis, “time’s a wasting.  Plus, we’re gonna have to uncrate the suit and get it booted up before you can use it.  No time for dilly dallying.”

Despite everything, Kat had to struggle to keep a smile from her face.  Davis was struggling to keep up with the two of them, his damaged battle suit dripping fluids with every shuffling step.

“I am moving as fast as I can young lady,” he replied in a c...

Dream - 26

Sam sat on the dirt floor of the poorly thatched hut, squinting to read the poor handwriting of the tome open on his lap.  Outside, the hooting and gibbering of goblins was barely audible over the sound of drums as the tribe finished its workday.  Soon, the town would devolve into an orgy of feasting on what food was available followed by mating.

The first time he’d seen a pair of goblins wrestling around in the muck, each trying to pin the other while slipping their loinclo...

Somnus III - Chapter 30

“You’re going to have to watch out for more of them turrets,” Baker said, leaning against a wall of the elevator.  In the depths of their hood, the end of a cigarette glowed cherry red.

“None of us know where all of them are,” they continued, pausing briefly to inhale.  The cigarette hissed merrily, flaring to life.  “There must be some sort of central control that the corpos use to disable the so that we can drive forklifts around, but it beats me as to where...

BT II - Chapter 13

A monkey chittered angrily at Micah, glaring at him as it clung to a branch.  He glanced up from the muddy footprint he was inspecting to look at the angry ball of fur.  Briefly, Micah considered bringing it down with a spell and actually having a cooked meal, but quickly he rejected the idea.  The prints in the soil were fresh, and smoke might bring unwanted attention.  If he was going to find his mysterious neighbor and make a good impression, the time to do so was now.<...

BT II - Chapter 12

Micah was in the water in a flash, only delaying the handful of seconds necessary to slip on the armor.  For a second he held his spear, frowning at it before glancing at the endless expanse of choppy waves.  He wouldn’t have any way to hold the weapon, and the idea of swimming across the entirety of the Emerald Ocean with just one arm made him shudder.

He abandoned the spear and sprinted to the water.  It had served him well for years, but he was out of time.  It ...