Four fully-sized Templar souls dissolve within me, pulsing my body full of fresh power. Oh, yes. Yes. That's the good shit.
It's about fucking time.
I step through the now-open exit to my cell, reaching down to rip off the helmet of one of the deceased Templars that has been torturing me for the past two fucking years. I dra...
2021-10-20 22:05:43 +0000 UTC View PostAs my diplomat body fills itself with pleasure and tunes out from the stress of actual diplomacy, I'm still very busy on the surface optimizing my living space. I think I'm preferential towards relatively small bodies for now, which is what I've gone for when designing my digger. I didn't want to make them too big to fit in pre-existing Sthrensl...
2021-10-18 21:31:31 +0000 UTC View PostTears start to fall from my face, splattering on the plastic box I'm clutching tightly to my chest as I flee from the Arby's and the overwhelming embarrassment within. I try to keep the presence of mind to avoid hitting the air holes with my waterworks. This bug—or whatever it is—could somehow be important to the question of how Tara got...
2021-10-16 19:33:25 +0000 UTC View Post"…So then she claimed she killed Inquisitor Paris because he discovered a working method to extract the souls from her body, and heavily implied she did so via spellcasting, despite the collar."
I finish my verbal report to Warden Manus, a full four days after I penned and submitted a written report on exactly the same subject. His stern...
2021-10-15 18:35:38 +0000 UTC View Post"Yo, Jelisa! Wake up!"
My mind sputters and screams as I'm jolted awake by yelling voices and pounding on my door, the cacophony mixing with a brutal assault of sights, smells, feelings and sensations. I'm vaguely aware of the stiff immobility of my body, seized up and ignoring the quiet remains of rationality in my mind trying to keep tog...
2021-10-13 18:42:49 +0000 UTC View PostSo Sthrenslians don't have chairs, but it turns out they do have tables. Rather than being independent pieces of furniture, however, they are just kind of carved directly into the room. Sthrenslians aren't big on interior redecorating, I guess, because all of their furniture is incredibly permanent. They don't seem to build much when they can ge...
2021-10-11 18:38:43 +0000 UTC View Post"Um... hey, mom," Hsthressis mutters awkwardly, shifting her weight back and forth under the pressure of her mother's silence.
"Hsthressis," the chieftain intones, a complicated mix of doubt and hope dripping from the name. "Come here."
It's difficult to not think of the chieftain's audience room as a throne room, despite how Sthrens...
2021-10-09 22:03:41 +0000 UTC View PostI grin smugly at the slack-jawed vrothizo sitting on my operating table, rapidly flexing my internal spellcasting muscles to sterilize her severed finger before it finishes dropping into my stomach. While I certainly admit to some personal satisfaction at eliciting this response from young Lark, there is some practical purpose to my sudden carni...
2021-10-08 18:02:30 +0000 UTC View Post"Welcome to your first day of combat class, trainees. Each and every one of you knows how to fight, but here you will learn how to fight like a Templar."
As planned I ended my torpor this morning an hour before first light, waking my grumbling roommate despite her displeasure and ensuring the both of us get to the courtyard well before the...
2021-10-06 15:23:38 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: I'm going on a two-week break. After completing volume 2 I need some time to recharge. The next chapter will be released October 6th.
My new roommate and I stare at each other. She pops another fried meatball into her mouth, chewing loudly without breaking eye contact until eventually, she swallows.
"W...
2021-09-22 18:06:39 +0000 UTC View PostFull plate armor is really, really uncomfortable. I do have to admit that it's a much better disguise than a robe and a mask, though.
Apparently, there's a uniform for Templar trainees, which High Templar Galdra described as 'just like a normal Templar uniform, but significantly worse.' Except that, um, instead of 'significantly worse' she...
2021-09-20 17:08:13 +0000 UTC View Post"So… this is the surface, huh?" Hsthressis asks, scuttling around. "I have to admit, I imagined the home turf of the demons to be a little less… blurry."
"Yeah, your echolocation didn't really evolve to comprehend open-ended spaces," I tell her. "It makes sense for your culture to demonize the area of the world in which you are extra v...
2021-09-20 02:31:44 +0000 UTC View PostEven the outside of the Epsilon-Class prisoner's cell is different enough from every other to set me even further on edge. All the way at the bottom floor of the facility, where I know I will probably be killed by my own allies if I try to walk too far down the hallway, I follow Vicki to a heavy-duty door set in the wall. Two Templars flank eith...
2021-09-17 18:17:39 +0000 UTC View PostPounding footsteps. Voices. Ragged breaths. Heartbeats. The instant I return to consciousness I am assaulted by the all-too-familiar cacophony of nonsense garbage forcing its way into my ears and to the forefront of my attention. I keep my eyes firmly shut, my breathing quiet and even, as I set about the process of consciously sorting through th...
2021-09-15 19:13:17 +0000 UTC View PostToday is the one-year anniversary of the day that I ate my father. It’s an inauspicious day to finally find myself at the island’s edge.
The forest doesn't grow near the edge, for reasons I don't know. When I finally found it, I was hesitant to leave the relative safety of the trees. A road runs between the forest's edge and the island...
2021-09-13 17:30:38 +0000 UTC View Post"I hear if the teacher doesn't show up in fifteen minutes, we can just leave," Samantha eventually says.
I've been back to school for a few weeks now, having classes during the day and hanging out with Tara all evening. I hardly interact with anyone else anymore, at least outside of classes, but that's more than okay. I was ne...
2021-09-11 22:01:19 +0000 UTC View PostI regret to report that today's chapter will be pushed back to Monday.
The chapter in question is both the final chapter in volume 2 and it is also currently the longest, despite the fact that it's not even close to finished and I deleted an entire page worth of it earlier today. I considered releasing the chapter into parts, but I genuine...
2021-09-11 05:10:04 +0000 UTC View PostSo. A perception event has occurred, Skyhope has been reduced to rubble, my mother, father, grandfather, and all my other relatives have been killed, my fiancé has been killed, the girl I love has been convicted with charge of animancy before getting taken Watcher knows where, and as a result I have been under investigation as a potential witti...
2021-09-09 00:15:56 +0000 UTC View PostThis is probably a bad idea.
There are… I would have to guess over two thousand people in the range of my soul sense. A quarter of them are dead. No doubt that percentage will increase significantly the closer I get to the impact site. I have no idea where I should start, if I should focus on retrieving dead souls before they are devoure...
2021-09-06 06:52:34 +0000 UTC View PostWrapping up my wet hair, I speed around the room, trying to scrounge up some clean clothing. I've spent the last few days chatting with Tara, showing her some more of my favorite stories, answering questions, getting bugs, chatting some more, and just kind of hanging out. It has been incredibly, impossibly cool, but…
"I'm re...
2021-09-04 20:51:20 +0000 UTC View PostI gaze out on my lake of shit and corpses, basking in the calm familiarity of it all. Heads bob at the surface of the lake, wearing the faces of friends and family, twisted in grotesque expressions that my eyes mostly slide right off of, not noticing or caring. It's nice here. Peaceful.
"Peace is fleeting," croaks a frog....
2021-09-03 16:47:51 +0000 UTC View PostLyn appears in midair, and I feel my heart halt in terror. Capita may be crazy, but damn her she's sane enough to be smart enough for this. Lyn twists as best she can, but there is a hard limit to the kind of movements possible with nothing to push off of, no way to turn force into speed. The chaos implosion is already starting, and while ...
2021-09-01 18:17:43 +0000 UTC View PostIt's time to attack.
After learning that Sky is most likely going to attempt to cause a perception event, we pulled out all the stops. The last tenday has been nothing but plans, intelligence gathering, and preparation. Penelope bought about three dozen tracking dogs, which I then killed and put inside the bodies of rats. Risen are pretty ...
2021-08-30 22:12:42 +0000 UTC View PostI want to be the one and only me, Hsthressis concludes. If that means you keeping my soul, at least in part, so be it. You don’t seem all that bad.
I figured that might be the case, but for some reason I dreaded that answer. Perhaps that isn't fair. I dread every one of the options before me. There is no good way to mak...
2021-08-28 19:11:40 +0000 UTC View PostIt’s weird to sort of have a girlfriend.
After cuddling for a while underneath a tree, some monsters eventually got brave enough to approach, so we had to stop while I killed and ate them. Then we spent another day heading deeper in, maybe even deeper than I've ever been in the forest before. The speed at which the souls around us starte...
2021-08-27 22:30:40 +0000 UTC View Post“Would you consider a relationship with me?”
The very words fill me with fear. No. No, I don't want that. I just want to be friends. Best friends, maybe, something special I have with no one else, but every aspect of dating, everything that I know of what a relationship is just isn't me.
But I can touch her. I c...
2021-08-25 21:13:08 +0000 UTC View Post"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that you don't have any fiction? At all?"
I'm doing the dishes after feeding Tara. Again. She really eats like crazy! After I fried her some crickets she asked if I had any more crickets, and if she could have them raw. I don't have any more, but I will be sure to catch extra later for h...
2021-08-25 19:26:01 +0000 UTC View Post"Look at them twitch!" Penelope crows, barely managing to speak coherently between her gasping breaths as she tries not to roll off the giant undead beetle we're both sitting on. "This is the first onset! It starts with muscle spasms, so pretty soon they'll—"
Her words are cut off as she erupts into gleeful laughter, the colony of little...
2021-08-23 21:19:05 +0000 UTC View PostI don't understand, I think to myself.
No. No, that's what Hsthressis thinks to me. At me? At herself. She's just thinking, and I know what she's thinking. It's not really at me at all. It's not really not me either.
I can't feel anything. I can't hear anything. Was there a voice? I want to answer it, but I can't talk. 2021-08-21 20:06:03 +0000 UTC View Post
I take a deep breath and hold it, pulling in mana from my ocean. The warm waters of my true self wash through me, calming and reassuring. I am more than what I seem to be, and this truth is unassailable.
Regretfully, I return focus to my meat, specifically my hands as I move and shape the mana into intricate patterns. I open my eyes, let o...
2021-08-20 17:55:41 +0000 UTC View Post