“Nice job, Ripp!” Alex shouted. “Now, let’s get the hells away from here!”
“Way ahead of you, bosses!” The swiftling cried, racing from the hill and leaping into the air then soaring well above the treetops.
‘Claygon!’ Alex thought. ‘We’re finished, get out of th...
2022-11-17 23:47:05 +0000 UTC View PostAlex was more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs as Theresa, Claygon, Brutus and Ripp swooped toward the snow-covered hill.
The huntress’ hands were already blurring, loosing arrow after arrow into chitterers as the group of four attackers went for the R...
2022-11-17 00:15:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe fae roads weren’t what Alex had imagined, not what he’d imagined at all.
On Baelin’s map of Thameland, they’d appeared as golden glowing lines, shedding sparkling light like sunbeams snaking above fields, forests and hills. It was a captivating image, and—when Alex’s little ...
2022-11-16 01:38:14 +0000 UTC View Post“Hey, Khalik, I need your help,” Alex said suddenly, dragging his nose out of the immense tome of demonology lying before him.
The prince held up a finger as he jotted down a note, frowning at a certain passage. “Hmmm, I would have thought the air in the Domain of Cawarthin would have...
2022-11-13 00:30:19 +0000 UTC View PostIt was perfect.
Power bled from it in waves touched by a hint of the aeld’s natural warmth. A mound of snow nestled beneath the branch melted away from its touch, and its golden-green light sparkled in the melting rivulets.
“Oh, by the Traveller.” Alex reached toward the gift, f...
2022-11-11 20:41:03 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a beautiful day in Greymoor; a lovely winter’s morning where it felt like all the world was at peace, almost as if the rivers of blood spilled on the Research Castle grounds in recent days had never been. The wind was uncharacteristically warm, the sky uncharacteristically clear: perfect...
2022-11-10 23:15:16 +0000 UTC View Post“Sixty-five thousand would be a very fair price, I would say.” Govert’s eyes narrowed as Troy tottered back into the room, bearing two hot cups of cider.
He carefully placed them on the table away from the contract.
“Your drinks, sirs,” the assistant said stiffly before retu...
2022-11-09 23:26:01 +0000 UTC View PostTo say that the living quarters were in an even worse state than Alex had feared would be an understatement…Troy hadn’t been exaggerating. Dust clouds rose in mounds, provoking fits of coughing and sneezing as the baker led him through a doorway that was covered in suspicious looking stains i...
2022-11-08 23:31:15 +0000 UTC View Post“My name’s Troy,” the baker sighed, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He was bent so low over a table, that he looked about ready to collapse. “Troy of Tauberurg, from the Rhinean Empire originally, and now the very last person employed at the Mermaid’s Cakes Bakery....
2022-11-05 19:56:48 +0000 UTC View PostAlex Roth, the very first Junior Crafter ever hired by Toraka Shale, emerged from the workshop with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. Tucked away in his satchel, he carried a writ of employment with a promissory wage clause included of fifty gold pieces per shift, with three shifts pe...
2022-11-04 22:49:04 +0000 UTC View PostI am…coming…are you safe, father?
“I am safe,” Alex said out loud.
“Hm?” Shale frowned.
“Oh, sorry, I do that sometimes,” he chuckled. “I was talking to Claygon.”
“Oh?” Toraka Shale’s eyes shone with curiosity. “You can communicate with...
2022-11-03 23:50:29 +0000 UTC View Post“Before you say anything, I want to dispel all notions that this is a ‘hollow tower’.” Toraka Shale leaned forward on her desk, tenting her fingers. “I don’t tolerate such trash practices in my workshop, unlike some of our competition here in the city. Many of them are associated with...
2022-11-02 23:26:24 +0000 UTC View Post“Agh, you couldn’t have brought him a little later?” Lagor complained, glaring at the crowd as they slowly closed in on Claygon. Little by little the ring of curious onlookers surrounding the young Thameish wizard and his golem shrank, people pressing tighter and tighter ag...
2022-11-01 23:31:05 +0000 UTC View Post“So, I’ve been doing some thinking in the last day or two.” Alex leaned forward, elbows pressed to the table, glancing over his shoulder at the room his sister and his girlfriend shared. “You’re getting bigger, Selina. A lot bigger.”
He looked at Claygon. “You’ve changed a l...
2022-10-29 22:07:07 +0000 UTC View PostSelina looked at Alex solemnly, earlier warm feelings draining away as she thought about the story her brother had told. What he’d said was horrifying, a tale of monsters she could barely imagine, invisible dangers and enemies so powerful, they’d even given Baelin pause.
And she...
2022-10-29 00:09:19 +0000 UTC View PostSelina was tingling with excitement as she took the stairs two at a time. From somewhere behind and above her, she vaguely heard Shiani calling her name.
“Selina, be careful you don’t fall down the stairs!” She warned. “Your brother will kill me if you do!”
“I’m fine!”...
2022-10-27 23:27:35 +0000 UTC View Post“—and so heat rises, travelling as high as it can go,” Shiani was saying, pointing to the flame. It was a tiny, controlled flicker caged within an oil lamp in the table’s centre. Glass walls surrounded the small fire, caging it in, giving it no opportunity to grow and spread to the books ...
2022-10-26 23:36:17 +0000 UTC View Post“Professor Jules is not going to like this,” Alex murmured. “I’m not sure I like it.”
Baelin, his eyes sparkling while he remained floating in mid-air as he schemed for the future, looked at Alex with incredulity. “Truly? Now you wish to turn coward? B...
2022-10-25 21:11:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Ah, Alex, Claygon, welcome.” Baelin looked up as the young wizard and his golem stepped into his office.
The ancient wizard was bent so low over a map table, that his beard-braids threatened to scrape the painted surface of Thameland. Across a tabletop made of cork, a map was carved sh...
2022-10-22 19:57:20 +0000 UTC View Post“Ooooh I like the sound of that.” Hart snarled, his large eyes twinkling in anticipation. “You said you went from being a skinny baker’s boy a year ago to turning into…well, you?”
“Aye, is true, he’s bloody hard to recognise now,” Cedric said. “He went from look...
2022-10-21 21:26:47 +0000 UTC View PostAnd so the Fool, Chosen, Champion and Sage planned their future.
It wasn’t the first time they’d talked like this, but this time—at last—they spoke with all their secrets out in the open.
Or, at least, most of them.
Midnight had come and gone, but no one’s eye...
2022-10-20 17:58:08 +0000 UTC View Post“—and then I came here, and you punched me in the face,” the Fool finished his tale. “And that’s it. That’s the whole story, and I swear I’d rather box a behemoth than tell it again.”
‘Father…you cannot punch a behemoth. It would squash you, unless I protected you....
2022-10-19 18:27:18 +0000 UTC View PostAlex had met Cedric in Coille Forest a long time ago.
The Chosen was as boisterous as he was friendly; the type of fellow who made even Alex—who’d desperately wanted to avoid all the Heroes at the time—want to sit down and have an ale with him.
He wasn’t anything like...
2022-10-18 17:23:56 +0000 UTC View PostAs days went in Alex Roth’s life, there were few as important as the day he received the Mark of the Fool. That day had altered his lifepath forever, and the only other that could compete was the night his parents’ alehouse burned.
But this day?
This was close; the dungeon core at...
2022-10-15 23:29:38 +0000 UTC View PostIt took him longer to tell Drestra than it had to tell Baelin.
Though, he supposed the tale had grown longer since that day in the chancellor’s office. Perhaps he’d be well served to write it down and have it ready in some sort of pamphlet to hand out to the next person who asked.
Alex Roth exploded.
Or at least, his mind did.
Thoughts and emotions clashed within, leaving him paralysed, yet filled with an overwhelming desire to burrow into the earth and disappear. Through all of the panic sweeping him up, one thought kept recurring, screaming through every cell...
2022-10-13 22:50:55 +0000 UTC View Post“Hello to you too.” Alex gave Drestra a surprised smile. “Can this wait for a while? We’re kinda in the middle of something.”
“I’d really rather it didn’t,” she said, her voice holding a gravity that wiped the smile from his face.
Behind him two heavy footsteps moved...
2022-10-12 23:35:55 +0000 UTC View PostAlex burst into the entryway with a smile so wide that his jaws should have been aching, but even if they were, he wouldn't have noticed anyway. As the doors burst open and the cold night wind billowed his cloak around him, every eye in the room turned to him.
Blood mages looked up fr...
2022-10-11 20:19:41 +0000 UTC View Post