SHAD POV
"What's wrong?" Alpha asked as I stared at the head. Amber had raced along the branch and severed another five.
"Nothing," I said before forcing myself to pick it up and put it in my inventory. Sure enough, it showed up there as a soul token for Major Devin Waters, Proxima Corporation Contractee.
I ...
2024-09-27 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostSorry - somehow my posting schedule got messed up. This chapter was supposed to come between Chapter 18 and Chapter 20 (which got labelled as 19). I want to have this one before we switch POVs for a week so you get double chapters today!
Chang-li had been stripped, scrubbed, dressed in a plain linen tunic and...
2024-09-26 14:29:05 +0000 UTC View PostI messed up posting order - Chapter 19 got skipped, I will be posting it here shortly. So there's two chapters today! Chapter 19 doesn't have to be read first as it's different locations but I did want it to come next in the story, before I swapped back to Joshi
Joshi assembled with the other Young Maste...
2024-09-26 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
The gamer squad were fairly ungrateful, considering I had gotten them out of purgatory.
"I want a rematch against those turncoats," Rose grumbled. "They ganged up on us, four to one. It wasn't fair."
"Colin would have found some way to turn it around," Sam said.
Rose whirled on him. "I thought you were...
2024-09-25 12:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe last hour and a half had been the worst of Min's life. Fai-lan City guards, under the command of a man dressed in black robes with the Gem Court icon around his neck, had dragged her and Chang-li from the inn. She'd thought of calling out for help in the common room, but her people stood silent, watching her in horror, and there were more gu...
2024-09-24 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostSHAD POV
Veda stood there watching me, a half-smile on her face. She hadn't changed much in the last few years, still giving off the impression of being a snow queen—tall, slender, white-haired, wrapped in a pale blue dress. It was more obvious, surrounded by the elves, that she was a different species than them, closer to human, ...
2024-09-23 12:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Chang-li had been expecting quite a bill, but the total staggered him. “One thousand, two hundred and fifty kwan?" he demanded. That was three months' wage for him.
“Do you have the coin or not?" the official droned. There was no sign of Inspector Ji’in, for which Chang-li was grateful. He sighed and dug out his pu...
2024-09-21 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostVeda stood there watching me, a half-smile on her face. She hadn't changed much in the last few years, still giving off the impression of being a snow queen—tall, slender, white-haired, wrapped in a pale blue dress. It was more obvious, surrounded by the elves, that she was a different species than them, closer to human, though her long finger...
2024-09-20 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Min watched Chang-li disappear up the stairs before turning to the clerk at the desk. "Now then," she said, "I require some information here."
"Of course, lady," the scribe said, bowing. "How may I serve you?"
Min strolled away from the desk deliberately, letting her fingers trail along its edge before stepping out of re...
2024-09-19 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSage, Rok'gar, and I assembled with our group of volunteer personalities in the center of our camp. Our little outpost hummed with activity as our units went about their patrols. I felt unaccountably nervous. Gambler was right. We were running out of time.
"Are we ready for this?" I asked my team.
Sage and Rok'gar nodded.
Chang-li found himself in a vast room. The sky above was lost in fog. He could feel the chamber stretched out all around him, but the haze grew thick about ten paces or so from where he stood. Yet it had the feeling of being a vast enclosure, like the way he had never been able to forget he was inside of a tower, even o...
2024-09-17 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostI had a very hard time telling the passage of time in this place. We didn't need to eat. We rarely slept. Occasionally, we'd get a message from Gambler that one or more of us were at a limit for cognitive power and needed to enter a recuperative coma. The coma was absolutely nothing like sleep. We didn't dream, and whoever was in the coma would ...
2024-09-16 12:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Somewhat to his surprise, Chang-li found Min waiting for him the next morning, just outside the Hall of Records. The doors were closed, but already there was a line ten people deep. He and Min joined the end. She was wearing her noblewoman's robes with the red stripe, her hair pinned back, and she kept her chin elevated as she looke...
2024-09-14 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostI had a very hard time telling the passage of time in this place. We didn't need to eat. We rarely slept. Occasionally, we'd get a message from Gambler that one or more of us were at a limit for cognitive power and needed to enter a recuperative coma. The coma was absolutely nothing like sleep. We didn't dream, and whoever was in the coma would ...
2024-09-13 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostFor the second time in the day, Chang-li froze in a doorway. Min was sitting in the crowded common room of the inn, a mug in front of her at an otherwise empty table. Since the other booths and tables were packed, he guessed that she had used her position in the Brotherhood to keep her table open.
Her eyes fixed on him, and she crooked a f...
2024-09-12 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
I was standing in the antechamber of an ancient progenitor structure with Patriarch Kvaltash and his team of archaeologists, arguing about whether I'd provided them adequate security, when the call came in. It was from Juana.
Shad, you need it ...
2024-09-11 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Min found the familiar bustle of the Mayor's Palace comforting. She had never visited the Mayor's residence here in Fai-Lan City but had spent enough of her life in the company of her grandfather Guo, the Governor of Riceflower Province, to be at ease in the chaos.
There were many similar...
2024-09-10 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostI was to meet with my civilian expert squads in Assembly Bay 14. On the way I passed by a bunch more Assembly Bays where ETF soldiers were getting ready to receive their orders.
The ETF uniform was solid green, harkening back to the look of the old US Army World War I style. In a reality engine, there was no point in camouflage patterns, a...
2024-09-09 12:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Chang-li arrived in Fai-Lan City at dusk, and then spent a good hour going from inn to inn, only to find most of them full thanks to the governor's tax tour of the province. Finally, with nowhere else to turn, he had tried the Royal Peacock as Min suggested. The bouncer at the door, the woman behind the bar, and the gir...
2024-09-07 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe ground rumbled beneath our feet.
"We're under attack," Gambler warned, as though I couldn't tell. I ordered our units back to the base as Sage prepared for war and Rok'gar started pulling gear out of his inventory and distributing it to our units. He was able to equip all of the spearmen with leather cuirasses and gave the archers quiv...
2024-09-06 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostChang-li sat cross-legged on his pallet, watching the other scribes as they snored and turned over in their sleep. When he was certain they were all gone, he focused on Scribe Wulan's pen case, thinking hard of the ghost of the dead scribe, urging him to come out.
Nothing happened. All of the other times Scribe Wulan had appeared had...
2024-09-05 12:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
The shattered fragment was in a den carved into one of the enormous violet hexagonal pillars. The pillar itself stretched up over our heads until it blurred into the purple background. I was getting a little tired already of this Protoss hell and hoped we'd get some different landscapes soon. What sort of good strategy game only has...
2024-09-04 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostAs his mouth dried, Chang-li was ushered into the reception room by one of Moon Whispers’s functionaries. He was wearing his best set of robes, though that wasn't saying much. The robes were badly in need of replacement. The black had faded to gray in places, and there were a couple of rips he'd had to sew up himself. Considering he had destro...
2024-09-03 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
We were in a vast, glowing purple-blue cavern. It felt as though the chamber stretched on for kilometers in every direction. I peered up and could make out the ceiling far overhead. Hexagonal stalactites hung down, their edges glistening faintly. We stood atop another hexagonal platform about three meters on a side. Below us, the ca...
2024-09-02 12:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post"I like the feel of your body now," the querulous voice of Scribe Wulan said.
Chang-li jolted awake. He stared up in horror to find the ghost of the dead scribe hovering over him, sitting cross-legged in thin air.
The room was dark and quiet, the other scribes sleeping on their pallets. Chang-li managed to stifle a gasp at Wulan's ap...
2024-08-31 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostI stared at the wall of my silent quarters. Pictures of Sage lit up the display in front of me—a couple of our salvaged pictures from back home of Sage and me when we first came to live with Grandpa and Abuela. Me, a scowling dark-haired boy of 12. Sage, a chubby toddler with pigtails. A bunch of shots of Sage after we'd reached the reality en...
2024-08-30 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Chang-li spent the next few days feeling as though he was poised on the edge of a precipice. One push, one wrong step, and he would fall to his death. There had been no word from down the mountain, either from Min's people or the messenger that Magistrate Bao had sent to speak with Inspector Ji'in. He hadn't seen Joshi,...
2024-08-29 12:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe Ad Astra's briefing room could be configured to accommodate whatever we needed. Right now, we had a long slate-gray conference table down the middle with swiveling chairs set around it and walls of screens on all sides. Grandpa seated himself at the head of the table with me and Major Armstrong on his left.
On the right-hand s...
2024-08-28 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostMin sent Chang-li off with three members of the Oaken Band Brotherhood who were particularly good at letting themselves into places they weren't supposed to be and then back out again without getting caught. The young scribe looked miserable. That was all right. By tomorrow or the next day, when he'd had time to reflect on w...
2024-08-27 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
It had been a really long day and a half in our shared cargo pod, with Rok'gar glaring daggers at me every time Sage had her back turned, and Sage expressing an overly-intense interest in everything I was doing. Admittedly, when I shared some of my thoughts about initial strategies on the rogue engine, they had valuable...
2024-08-26 12:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post