2/4.
***
Renise thought about the 3rd Princess often.
It was hard not to. She was officially her saviour.
When Renise closed her eyes, it was all too easy to see the princess amidst the darkness, her sword shining brighter than the moonlight streaming past her as she stood surrounded by the ruin of a dryad’s ...
2024-02-07 00:43:07 +0000 UTC View Post2: The Bread & Berry Cafe
***
I sat down in one of the cafe's dining chairs, indulging in a wooden surface that was flat and varnished and not the repurposed tree branch that broomsticks were fashionably made of since the invention of the word discomfort.
I'd once querie...
2024-02-04 18:28:32 +0000 UTC View Post1: Modern Dragonslaying
***
The problem with dragons is that they always had to have the last word.
I say problem, but this really wasn’t an issue so far as humans were concerned. Us being famously squishy and prone to fleeing, we were quite willing, if not exactly content...
2024-02-04 18:27:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Synopsis:
The world is ending.
To most, that's a problem. To Elise Rowe, it's the start of her week.
With her Sword of Heroism in one hand and a jug of coffee in the other, she na...
2024-02-04 18:25:46 +0000 UTC View PostRenise Rimeaux's mini-arc. 1/4.
***
Renise smelled trouble.
That wasn’t unusual. As the informal head of the Kingdom of Tirea’s very own budding clandestine organisation for wayward misfits, trouble was less something she stumbled across and more what she voluntarily headbutted with her face.
But trouble us...
2024-02-04 02:35:30 +0000 UTC View PostHags.
Women who had sold their souls, their sanity and their mortality to nightmares which existed only in the depths of forests.
But amongst them, the hag witches did more than eschew the comforts of passable tea.
They were fallen mages whose fascination with the darkest of the magical arts was matched only by their perverse t...
2024-02-02 02:51:27 +0000 UTC View PostI couldn’t help but smile.
Why, for my assassin to be a fair maiden with a kindly exterior, all I could feel was bemusement and a slight tingling in my nose as I held back a public sneeze. Something far more harmful to me than any concoction she hoped me to drink.
After all, few things were as familiar to a princess as the aroma of...
2024-01-30 22:54:42 +0000 UTC View PostThere were fouler things than that which slept in the abyss.
Most were too gruesome for my innocent ears to be privy to. As the epitome of a fragile princess, I was shielded from the horrors which stalked the darkest reaches of existence.
But not all of them.
Even as my family bravely rebuffed the tendrils which sought to weave...
2024-01-28 04:18:59 +0000 UTC View PostAs a princess, I’d witnessed the most beautiful backdrops of my kingdom.
From the soaring heights of my bedroom ceiling as I read while lying on my back, to the mysterious corners of my bedroom bookshelves as I read while lying on my side, to the deep canyon nestled within my pillow as I read while lying on my front, my eyes had been gra...
2024-01-26 05:04:55 +0000 UTC View PostThe Gentle Princess creaked as it swayed like a giant upon a hammock.
Within the many corridors and cabins of this majestic vessel, the skull upon the black flag no longer jeered. The bright colours of the Kingdom of Tirea was now proudly displayed, each banner proclaiming the wall it hung upon as property of the realm.
And ...
2024-01-24 04:17:16 +0000 UTC View PostMy mouth widened at the sight of a single eye hazing over into a dark orb.
No … it was more than dark.
It was deeper. Emptier. Hollower.
A shade blacker than a night sky devoid of stars. It was the abyss itself. And it didn’t wait to be stared at.
Even lacking pupils, I could sense as the eye watched me with ...
2024-01-21 04:14:01 +0000 UTC View PostBarbarians.
Beyond the Fabled Realm of Ouzelia, the frozen tundras and icy mountains which awaited housed the wealthiest and most powerful barbarian clans to exist upon the continent.
Making their riches as mercenaries or tradesmen of rare furs and white iron, they were both alike and unlike the humans of other realms.
Said to ...
2024-01-19 04:26:43 +0000 UTC View PostI held my palm above me, wincing as a column of sunlight bore down upon my fair skin.
As Apple trotted at a leisurely pace on the northern road to Hartzwiese, I peered up at a blue expanse embellished by wispy trails of clouds, each twisting like its own aurora. A sweeping brush of springtime, forming a painting more dazzling than any ocea...
2024-01-16 21:08:25 +0000 UTC View PostDawn came in the form of a golden halo cresting the Loerstadt Gate.
I watched from atop Apple’s back, gazing at the sight of the sun hoping to earn a spot in my good graces by sending me off. It’d need to do more than that. I hadn’t yet forgiven it for all the mornings it’d cruelly singed my face through the curtains.
Still, ...
2024-01-14 04:50:37 +0000 UTC View PostSecond Prince Tristan Contzen was a man of few words.
In truth, there was little he was permitted to say.
To be a second prince was to be a lifelong understudy. A role which few found joy in.
Upon the grand theatre of war, politics and romance, to be the second prince was to be the bearer of duty. A shadow which must cast its w...
2024-01-12 03:36:59 +0000 UTC View PostDivination was widely derided as the least of magic.
Closely related to the bumblings of astrology, it was an ancient branch of magic relying not on study or skill, but an innate draw towards the stars.
The problem was obvious.
Stars came and went.
Mages of any prospect never gave the discipline any time nor thought. To t...
2024-01-10 00:18:07 +0000 UTC View PostI … I was in mortal peril!
Why, I could feel it like Coppelia’s elbow in the night! My princess senses were as keen as the ears of a fawn in a forest! And currently, the cracking of a twig came in the form of a receptionist from Reitzlake querying a barkeeper about the most prestigious guest he’d ever had the honour of disappointing!...
2024-01-07 03:00:36 +0000 UTC View PostMy heart was filled with trepidation upon entering the inn.
I should have been in high spirits instead.
After all, I'd sent the Grand Duchess's pets back to her waiting claws, and also deported an errant peasant from my kingdom. True, deporting that elven hoodlum to Ouzelia was a somewhat overly harsh punishment for someone whose cri...
2024-01-04 19:41:28 +0000 UTC View PostOphelia pouted as she sat upon a tree branch.
Beside her was Duck A and Duck B, both of whom were perched within a warm bird’s nest which they definitely built themselves.
Swinging her legs while holding her cheeks in her palms, she was the perfect picture of a sullen maiden after having her heart disappointed. Which was true. She ...
2024-01-03 03:58:30 +0000 UTC View PostI watched as the last of the silhouettes returned to the shadows beneath the forest boughs.
The earth shook as the armoured riders diligently made certain that any surviving wildflowers were stamped into the soil, and in the process ensure that even the periphery of their realm was as bleak as their mistress’s heart.
But it wasn’...
2023-12-31 01:54:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi there!
Thank you so much for your support over the past year. Because of your relentless generosity, we've been able to (accidentally) reach the #200 chapter milestone just before the end of the year!
If you haven't already, be sure to read yesterday's bonus chapter here!
A row of darkened eyes met me as I idly approached.
Granholtz’s finest remained mounted on their mailed war steeds, their black halberds and lances almost seeming to pierce the clouds as they rose high above their heads.
Yet it was their commander who I sent my least abiding smile towards.
He stood beside a destrier who would...
2023-12-30 04:53:13 +0000 UTC View PostI waited.
Within a small clearing dominated by nothing more than a mound smaller than the discarded pile of gifts I threw outside my bedroom window, I waited as I stood idly upon the unofficial border between my fair kingdom and the house of cobras ruled by the Grand Duchess.
All around me, the sound of a forest pressed by a quiet wi...
2023-12-29 02:26:56 +0000 UTC View PostThere were many things I expected upon my return to the group of elven hoodlums.
Being the joyful participants of my carefully designed one day rehabilitation scheme for convicted litterers, I had high hopes.
Grass so spotless I could admire my reflection in them. Trees so free of dirt they could be cut down and immediately sold as h...
2023-12-27 02:46:46 +0000 UTC View PostBwooom.
A giant claw came crashing down into the ground, turning soil upwards like a great shovel.
A pair of black wings spread out, casting a shadow even half-bent and broken. And yet of all the things to disturb the moonlight, the greatest came from the newly reattached head upon the wyvern’s neck.
But that wasn’...
2023-12-24 02:46:17 +0000 UTC View PostMy kingdom was truly beautiful.
A vista of snow-capped mountains, verdant forests and distant shores illuminated beneath the moonlight. No matter what wonders one could build with hands, none could match what was shaped by nature, time, and crushing building regulations ensuring that not even a shed could be dreamed without a contribution ...
2023-12-21 20:21:16 +0000 UTC View PostA cold sweat ran down Ophelia’s back.
She was used to getting into bad situations. Being an A-rank sword saint didn’t exclude her. On the contrary, it only drew her towards them. Mostly because she sought them out.
Other A-ranks were probably better about that than she was.
They probably got their ranks because they were ca...
2023-12-19 23:52:48 +0000 UTC View PostI looked up.
And then I looked up even more.
Where before an elven druid stood, there now towered a growing figure of colossal height.
Gone was the robed figure tattered with disheveledness and a napkin stained with the remains of food.
Instead, his body warped and twisted, skin giving away to jagged scales and ears protr...
2023-12-17 01:24:03 +0000 UTC View PostI scraped my boots across the floor of the tower chamber.
Why, it didn’t even squeak!
A true caricature of royal abodes! I hadn’t spent a single crown to view it and I still felt poorer for it!
The absolute gall of this man! Here I was striving to enrich my quality of life, and yet merely stepping foot in this parody of a t...
2023-12-15 01:55:16 +0000 UTC View PostI led the way, Starlight Grace in hand as I ascended a spiralling stairwell.
Ordinarily, climbing a spiralling stairwell was cause for joy. There was only one in my life, and it led to my bedroom. Appropriately located on the third tallest tower behind my two sisters, it was my refuge from the queues of admirers who wished to solicit a mom...
2023-12-12 18:48:14 +0000 UTC View Post