zreshicaia

Where the Arrow Halted

Kylas rested his elbows against a steel railing, which ringed the main deck of the Larkspur and prevented tipsy or otherwise clumsy sailors from toppling over the rim of the deck to a laughable, untimely death. Officers of the Cloaked Hive—the specialized militia Kylas served—cared little if one of their worker bees drowned. Stupidity, like weakness, was best uprooted before it could sprout into full-blown incompetence. The officers of the Cloaked Hive installed the railing only to appease inspectors and to protect the company’s public image. Renowned for its ruthlessness and its effectiveness, clients hired the Cloaked Hive to sweep the most dangerous fields clean and leave not a trace of themselves behind. If worker bees met laughable deaths en route to one of those fields, they disgraced the company; tainted its public record as a one-stop solution to scheming aggressors…

The Aftermath of Ordera

Wondering what came before? Curious about the nature of untamed magic? The prehistory of Interrealmeus and the legend of Forgotten Matriarch Ordera is summarized in this lore post.

Mourning the Moonlight Switch

I pity those who cross my path / When the moon insights my wrath / I never plan to wound my friends / I cannot say what the wolf intends…

House of the Maddened Son

When a second son was born, the D’Nier household grew cold to its heir. Annias was more amicable than his elder brother. Edward closed himself off to the world, locked himself in his bedchamber with charcoal and parchment, and sketched haunting images from beyond the grave. Edward’s attendants recounted what they saw as the guise of demon possession. Lord Rastan D’Nier collected his son’s sickening sketches, tied the boy to a pillar in the ballroom, and set the sketches ablaze. Edward writhed against the ropes that bound him, shouted, and screamed…

An August Confession

In August, the clouds disappeared from the cerulean sky. The vibrant sun scorched the grass, which grew atop the cliffs that lined the riverbank. The sun’s reach dipped to the river below, evaporated the upper half of the river’s winter-accumulated depth. Tips of formerly invisible boulders peaked out from the surface of the water. Where the river calmed, the water was lucent. An aesthetic array of smooth, colorful stones decorated the sandy riverbed. Sturdy crawfish scampered atop rocks or burrowed beneath them. Glistening, rainbow-scaled trout spawned in the calmest, underwater pools. They swam the length of the river, braved the rapids, weaved in and out of the rocks, but never acknowledged their crawfish neighbors. They scattered only as the sandaled feet of two fourteen-year-old adventurers cut the water and steadied against the slippery riverbed…

Tale of a Sputtering Spark

A deceitful act encapsulates, / Taints, represses, and destroys / Innocent eyes and trusting souls / Color drains and greyscale paints / Across the once blissful dreamscape / That encouraged joyous naïveté…

Erring Near the Elder Tree

A young Relaunkatheer leapt from the branch of a tree. Fayren ducked beneath his peer’s descending feet and somersaulted over the roots of the tree. The Relaunkatheer landed and laughed. Fayren stood and inspected his scraped limbs…

Katheermor: The E.E.B.

Are you curious about the Katheermor (elves)? Are you unsure what the prefixes to their names mean? The answers can be found within this illustrated encyclopedia of the Elvish Elemental Bonds.

Ember the Feral

Ember was a flame-tipped, white-coated Turkish Angora. Her fierce, green eyes stalked a brown rat. The rat slid out from the drainpipe of one of the oldest houses in the city. Ember watched as the rat shook itself, and as it scurried up the side of a metal wastebin, which the residents of the house left one drawstring bag too full. The lid of the wastebin sat atop the extra bag. The residents of the house hoped the presence of the lid would appease the sanitation services provider and prevent an additional bag fee from appearing on their monthly bill. Regardless, the loose lid failed to dissuade pests from raiding the wastebin. Ember eyed the brown rat hungrily, as she watched it settle its nerves, and chew a thimble-sized hole in the extra bag. Once the rat settled on a prize, it no longer twitched its head from one interrupting sound to the next. Ember curled her lips and narrowed her eyes…

The Twin Terror Realms

The deepest dread / Hides among the dead / Clawed fingers, gnarled hands / Scrape the mists of the Shadowlands / Grasp adventurers’ ankles / Trap them either above or below / Until the darkest door devours / Or the raunchiest ranch ravishes / Their valorous souls…