Grimloch and Theresa shot toward the xyrthak.
The huntress was the faster of the two; she hefted her spear and closed on the monster, and Grimloch followed close behind. He’d always been able to cover a lot of ground with his enormous strides, but Life Enforcement had begun to increase hi...
2021-08-26 22:40:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe air rushed past Alex’s ears as he fired himself toward Malcolm’s fallen body. He kept the modified Potion of Flight in his Wizard’s Hand, which was poised to squeeze at his will.
Spells fired at the xyrthak from behind him, drawing its attention, but the creature now seemed intent...
2021-08-25 20:41:50 +0000 UTC View Post“Shit,” Alex swore. “Do the others see it?”
He squinted, searching for the other group until he finally spotted them. He didn’t know if they’d seen the xyrthak and gone to ground, or if they'd already been lying flat, but they were pressed to the dusty earth, moving slowly.
<... 2021-08-24 21:13:01 +0000 UTC View Post“My, my, well aren’t you all prepared.” Baelin said admiringly.
And he was not exaggerating.
His class had come looking like they were ready to go to war.
The entourages of every student were bristling with weapons.
Hogarth, Svenia and Eyvinder all had longb...
2021-08-21 23:19:56 +0000 UTC View PostTheresa ducked, avoiding The Watcher’s strike as his sword passed finger-widths above her hair.
Her great-grandfather’s sword whipped up like a snake’s strike, and her opponent barely got his staff up in time to parry. He yelped in surprise when her hunting knife suddenly shot forward...
2021-08-20 23:24:34 +0000 UTC View Post“Bring that over, Tertium,” Alex said to a construct holding the black dungeon core remains.
He heard the scrape of chair legs behind him followed by the click of Baelin’s cloven hooves moving across the tiles. “And so it has come to this point,” the chancellor leaned over. “Exc...
2021-08-19 21:52:12 +0000 UTC View Post“Ah, you are early,” Baelin’s voice said from behind him.
“Argh! Oh holy shi-” Alex startled and whirled around to see the towering chancellor in the hallway. Alex’s force disks—filled with papers, notebooks and more of the dungeon core’s sample—seemed to shudder with him....
2021-08-18 21:46:27 +0000 UTC View Post“Ooooh, careful with that part," Alex said to Selina as they worked on sculpting the massive foot on the golem’s left leg. “If we sculpt too much filigree in this area, then the foot could get caught on stuff when it's walking.”
“Hm, that makes sense,” Selina said, reshaping som...
2021-08-17 21:46:17 +0000 UTC View Post“My learning?” Alex asked.
“To be blunt: I think if I were to help you power it now, then that would rob you of some very, very valuable learning.” Baelin flipped the pages of the golem-crafting notebook to Alex’s diagrams. “See this? This is advanced work. I am sure that this M...
2021-08-14 18:56:15 +0000 UTC View Post“Before I speak on that,” Baelin leaned forward in his chair, watching Alex closely. “Who else knows of this?”
“Um, just Khalik, Theresa—her parents—and my sister, Selina,” he said. “No one else has found out, and the only other person I’ve told is you."
“Good, v...
2021-08-13 21:36:50 +0000 UTC View PostBaelin was as still as a statue, seeming like a flesh-coloured gargoyle that someone had draped rich robes over. He wasn’t breathing and—in a moment of wild imagination—Alex thought he might have somehow died right before his confession.
Then he saw the chancellor’s eyes: they were ...
2021-08-12 20:56:34 +0000 UTC View PostTheresa’s jaw dropped. “Holy…Alex, this is big. This is a big, big, big decision you’re talking about here.”
“I know,” he said emphatically. “I know, I know, I know. But you know what keeps going through my head?”
“What?” she whispered.
“What hap...
2021-08-11 17:24:44 +0000 UTC View Post“Dead?” Alex blinked, his brain slowing down until it felt like he was trying to think through tar. “Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t joke about something like that,” Carmen said. “The investigators arrived about half an hour ago and have been asking all of us questions.”
... 2021-08-10 14:34:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe entire class went quiet at the mention of the word xyrthak. Alex, Thundar, Khalik and Isolde glanced at each other from where they were sitting side by side.
Murmuring could be heard throughout the class.
Since this class rarely had a lot of applicants, the classroom Baelin used f...
2021-08-07 18:45:50 +0000 UTC View PostIn Alex’s experience, people tended to treat ‘opportunists' like lepers. And he couldn’t really disagree with that treatment most of the time.
An opportunist tended to be bad to be around: they’d wait for any chance to advance themselves—often at someone else's expense—while pre...
2021-08-07 01:02:42 +0000 UTC View Post“So, you’ll be following my lead,” Lagor said as he and his three assistants drew their mana conductors. “I’ll go in first and use my mana to jump start the mana process. Carmen, I want you to power up the section that controls its movements and Minervus, you’ll empower the section th...
2021-08-05 21:26:53 +0000 UTC View PostOne thousand and five hundred gold coins.
The number made Alex weak in the knees, and he stood in the street pondering it as Minervus made his way through the crowds to get to work, though there was still quite a bit of time before their shift started.
Alex watched the flesh golems pu...
2021-08-04 23:35:42 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone! Here at last, Fool has a discord Server! I joined up with several other authors in order to have a server that was nice, full and where people could try multiple stories out.
In the Mark of the Fool channels, there's a general lounge and meme channel as well as a patron lou...
“What do you mean we need to make the hole bigger?!” Selina demanded. Her face tensed as though she wanted nothing more than to climb up on a stool to reach her brother’s throat so she could strangle him. “That means we’d have to re-draw all the armour-looking stuff around that part!”...
2021-08-03 22:45:20 +0000 UTC View Post“Five…four…three…two…one,” Alex counted down as he watched the timekeeper.
The footsteps were closing in. He thanked whoever designed the building for making it so large: the hallway was long enough to give him some extra time.
The mana spectrometer finished and he quietly...
2021-08-01 00:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry!” the grad student called as he rushed down the hall, already fumbling with his keys. “The tutorial went too long again, and there were just so many questions to answer and…my apologies!”
Alex sighed, using his meditative techniques to keep himself ca...
2021-07-30 23:19:37 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you mean?” Alex asked, suddenly feeling very afraid for Theresa, Isolde, Khalik and the others. “Do…do you think the demon summoner is down there?”
Baelin continued to watch the horizon. “I don’t know. Again, the magic existed for a mere heartbeat or less. Then it was...
2021-07-29 22:51:08 +0000 UTC View PostAlex thought back to the illusion that hid the pressure plate in the spike room. He also remembered what Baelin had said about haunts.
He glanced around. There were no other entrances to the room, so why would a wounded Theresa drag herself in here and stand beside some ominous giant doors....
2021-07-28 23:16:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe world was a whirlwind of rocks, fur, pain and vertigo.
Alex and Thundar slid into the deep for what felt like hours, but must have only been a few heartbeats. The one thought on Alex’s mind was that he didn’t get impaled on Thundar’s horns as they tumbled down.
Finally, the ...
2021-07-27 22:31:39 +0000 UTC View Post“Shit! Rayne, help Thundar!” Alex cried. “Blast them! Thundar, hold the line, I’ll help Brutus!”
“I’ve got this!” the minotaur roared, raising his mace.
Crunch!
The sound of metal crushing bone filled the tunnel behind them as Thundar slammed his mace in...
2021-07-24 21:42:28 +0000 UTC View PostBrutus whined, turning around in place as he looked for his master.
“I’m sorry, boy,” Alex said, approaching the big canine and gingerly reaching out to pat one of his heads. The head glanced at Alex for a moment, but didn’t move away as he touched it. Brutus kept whining, still loo...
2021-07-23 21:06:28 +0000 UTC View PostAlex concentrated on moving his force shield in time with slow, force-directing motions of the Cleaning Movements.
As he did, he kept some of his concentration on the movements and meditative practice, but split the rest of his mind to focus on his surroundings and where imaginary opponents...
2021-07-22 21:45:43 +0000 UTC View Post“Well met, Alex!” Isolde smiled at him politely as he poked his head into the new classroom.
He gasped.
If he thought Professor Jules’ class had gotten smaller between first and second semester, then Val’Rok’s had been devastated between first and second year.
“Welcome to a new semester,” Professor Jules said from the front of the class as she drew a diagram of the viscometric device on the obsidian board. Turning around she gave them all a solemn look. “Welcome to you all, whether you’ve transferred from other schools, or are from here at Gene...
2021-07-20 21:39:23 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t something that a first year or even a typical second year student would recognize, and the only reason Alex knew anything about it was because of helping professor Jules with her experiment.
The dungeon core—or at least the part of it that the mana spectrometer had broken down...
2021-07-17 20:48:54 +0000 UTC View Post