Voracity

1.3 For Yuri, I Sell My Soul to Aliens

Mere seconds after becoming a witch and I’m already burning alive. I would call it just my luck, but this is excessive even for me.

Bright green fire erupts spontaneously and swirls around my body like serpents of living flame. It gathers around my hands and courses up my arms, over my chest, and down my legs, until the whole of me is su...

1.2 For Yuri, I Sell My Soul to Aliens

Agreeing immediately would make me come off as desperate, which I am and it probably knows I am, but it’s bad form to admit that.

I do really, really want to become a witch. It’s exciting! It could solve all my problems! Sure, it means becoming a bloody-handed champion of darkness sworn to the service of unknowable alien horrors that l...

1.1 For Yuri, I Sell My Soul to Aliens

It was my evilest, cleverest, wickedest scheme yet, and I almost believed it wouldn’t fail.

Of course, my evil scheme was what more grounded commentators might call “sharing a hobby with a friend” or “going on a date with a girl I like,” but I’ve had years of experience ignoring such ignorant naysayers, treasonous dissidents, a...

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Alice steps through the mirror and wakes up on an autopsy table in a sterile workshop.

She’s seen this room before, in her visions, but it’s not really the same room. She pushes herself off the table and steadies her knees. Breathing has become a chore for her, a sudden frailty taking our heroine, and she reacts to this revelation with...

Garden of Memories X

I’ve seen the inside of this tower before.

It’s a strange revelation. At first I think of the tower from one of Thalia’s stories, but that’s not where I’m remembering this from. I realize, after a moment of contemplation, that I’m remembering Homura’s experiences with the tower.

She came here many times, first to climb ...

NEWS: Past and Future Plans

Hello! It's time for another news update as we head into the very end of Feast or Famine. After the chapter that was just posted, there are only two more chapters left in the entirety of the story.

When I started writing Feast or Famine, I imagined this as a slow-burn story taking 6-9 books to complete. That was, pardon my French, utterly...

Garden of Memories IX

Ash falls and blood rains over the ruins of Fata Morgana.

The last war has already ended as we pick our way through the hole in the city wall. The air is stagnant with death. Dark clouds hang low, obscuring any sight of the Labyrinth. The gods are all gone, fled to their homes to rage against the dying of the light. Dragons lie dead by the...

Garden of Memories VIII

I smash the clay heart that used to be a sin eater and scatter the shards with my feet. The catharsis isn’t quite as satisfying as I’d hoped, but it’s still pleasant to consider how far I’ve come from the scrappy twig that snapped and broke as often as it scored a kill.

Now I’m untouchable. Well, at least to the likes of this. I�...

Garden of Memories VII

“We have to save Reska.”

Thalia rolls her eyes at my blurted declaration. “Be serious. We’re not really going to have this argument, are we?”

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“For a long list of reasons,” she scorns. “That girl is a lost cause who doesn’t want to be saved, and nothing is getting saved i...

Garden of Memories VI

My attempt to barrel on without thinking about what I just went through is, surprising no one, a huge failure. The sullen silence just gives my brain more chances to barrage me with memory and emotion until I begrudgingly turn my thoughts to what happened.

Using the necklace was a gamble that paid off, but it wasn’t without cost. With my...

Garden of Memories V

With our party gathered and the world beginning to collapse, we venture forth on the road to the glass tower.

I would have liked to get there by any means other than walking, but we have little luck with that. Reaching out and “touching” the tower, which I’d been warned ages ago was a surefire way to get caught by it, does nothing. K...

Garden of Memories IV

Exhaustion and invigoration war within my soul.

I am human and monster, demon and divine. I am the Intercessor. I am the Red Queen. I am Morgan, Malice, and Maven. I am Mordred, Kiana, and Veseryn. I am Alice. I am more than the sum of my parts, and I call that greater sum Hastur. I am the queen behind the curtain. I am the devil of the st...

Act Zero: Intercessor & Adversary (3/3)

The next loop of the cycle was another Veseryn world. In a world full of magic, her only power was the ability to usurp control of magic items. The start of her story was structured to mirror a previous work, with Veseryn bargaining for the means to become a lich and botching the ritual thanks to a curse from the entity she had bargained with. S...

Act Zero: Intercessor & Adversary (2/3)

Prevara and I each had our part to play in Melpomene’s script. Prevara nudged Kiana from afar and set itself up as the monster behind every mystery. I took the closer role, playing the part of her closest friend, the healer girl Clary.

Our starting scenario was simple: Kiana, blessed and chosen, believed that she deserved more than to be...

Act Zero: Intercessor & Adversary (1/3)

Once upon a time, and then again and again and again, a bitter and lonely woman cut a piece of herself and named it. I was the first.

Senses came to me in waves. Taste and smell brought the iron tang of fresh blood to linger on my tongue. Someone had bled to create me, and I knew her name before I knew my own: Melpomene, my Creato...

Act Zero: The Girl Who Stood Alone

Once upon a time, our Creator played a new kind of game. All the pieces had been seen before, but never so many of them brought together. From the very beginning, I knew this was my chance.

The Demiurge painted a realm of wonders and called it Pandaemonium, but in truth the whole of the world was a few kingdoms around a glass tower. That�...

Act Zero: The Girl Without a Name

Once upon a time, there was a stupid girl who tried to be clever. It cost her everything.

Veseryn was born to a world of countless secrets and terrible powers, and she was born to nothing. No gift of sorcery, no bloodline of eld to grant her unique abilities. Others could wield power, a world of wizards and warlocks and blessed of sky and ...

Act Zero: The Girl in the Tower

FEAST OR FAMINE

ACT ZERO

Allow me to set the stage, one final time, as the curtains rise on a bonfire soon to blaze.

THE GIRL IN THE TOWER

Once upon a time, in a land of dreams and demons, there was a girl in a tower that wished for a hero to save her.

The girl and the tower were both made of gla...

Still Alive

Still struggling. My sincerest thanks to everyone who's stayed with me. I appreciate all of you more than I can say. Writer's block has kept being brutal, but, I'm making a tiny bit of progress. For the next chapter, I think I'm going to post it in installments as I finish sections, since it's a very strange one. I've read that some people have ...

Interlude: Once & Future IV

I leave Achaia to her suffering, my poison coursing through her veins as my shadow binds her limbs, and I turn to face the man who caused me eighteen months of grief.

Time and emotion are excellent at distorting memory. The Dante who lived in my head in all my fantasies of revenge doesn’t really resemble the Dante standing before me with...

Interlude: Once & Future III

Eighteen months, hundreds of hours of labor, and seven billion souls. That’s what it cost me to get back to the Labyrinth. That was the price of my return.

It should feel like triumph, so why does it taste so bittersweet?

I step out of the portal clad in black robes and breathe in cloying air thick with death. The tea party is over...

Interlude: Once & Future II

I am haunted and I am ruined. This I know.

In weary days beneath a sunlit sky I toil against a world that hates my breath and footsteps. You do not belong here, the world tells me, and I must agree, but I cannot escape it. The world will suffer me, I insist, for we are all of us bound in suffering.

There is...

Interlude: Once & Future I

CONTENT WARNING: This chapter contains graphic and depiction of suicidal ideation and self-harm. I am not exaggerating when I call it graphic. Viewer sensibility will determine whether it is actively upsetting or merely uncomfortable, but it is certainly the darkest content that has appeared in the story so far. This chapter also plays with unre...

Garden of Memories III

Two monsters test their mettle within a city that doesn’t exist. Flagstones crack, the air shudders, and shadows thicken. And I, unharmed and harmless, vulnerable and frail, am left with thoughts that idly twist.

Hey, gobbet: do you know I have opinions about aphorisms? Of course you do, you’re me! But I’m going to tell you anywa...