Ears ringing from the screeching of saws and the dinging of hammers, Navigator Tramais steered the Nervidia down the throat of the Laughing Cat. Sculpted into the rockface by warlocks’ chantry, the stone-fanged maw of the conspicuous cove arched about a gallows’ height above the royal yard of the ship’s mainmast. From the crow’s nest, the ship’s Daybreak Lookout forever joked that he narrowly missed the hangman’s noose, whenever the ship passed between the Laughing Cat’s most prominent fangs…
Tag Archives: magic
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Sixteen
Melihrene galloped eastward, beyond the scanty evergreen wood, into a lush, tropical greenwood. The threshold between these woodlands perpetuated a foreshadowing but invisible fog; felt but unseen. With each eastward hoof stamp, the crisp and cool air of the early morning heated incrementally, like the stagnant water in a soup pot. The environment grew mysteriously hot and humid. The horse’s mane and tail frizzed. Uuinora’s dampened clothes clung to her skin. The leather patches of her armor sweltered. These would have sunburned her bluish skin, if there had not been a cotton suit between her armor and her Elvish hide…
The Shadows I’m Seeking: Episode Two: Turbulence, Part II
In the hours leading up to Okemia’s funeral, Master Yoshihiro recalls and laments his role in the disaster that befell the world. Will his apprentice, Tsukiya, overcome the torment of his loss? Or will history’s darkest day repeat?
The Shadows I’m Seeking: Episode One: Turbulence, Part I
Outcasted and feared for harboring the magical prowess of a bygone era, two extraordinary children board the same train. Little do they know how significant that accident of fate will prove to be for themselves and the dystopia raging against society’s barrier.
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Fifteen
The sun ducked behind the ridge and tossed a wave of shadow over Talsis’s stranded horse. The horse twitched its ears and flicked its tail, as the evening chill bit into its fur and lapped the warmth of daylight from its skin. The horse grunted, craned its neck, and sniffed the groundcover. Its snout rifled through spikey, almond-shaped leaves and lean, bristly stalks for sweet, coastal strawberries, but the bushes were bare. The horse impatiently scraped the soil with its steel-shoed hooves and nervously ground the bit wedged between its flat teeth. Finally, it lifted its head and peered out to sea. Somewhere, either floating atop or sinking beneath billowing rolls of sea foam, its rider tarried…
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Thirteen
Kimio kicked the carriage door open. Since his stay in Glaiven’s fishbowl prison, he ailed of entrapment as starkly as he ailed of cabin fever. He gripped the doorframe and leaned out the doorway, until only the tips of his toes met the floor. The moist spritz that hitchhiked across Zaliradai, via its chilled winds, pelted Kimio’s uniform in prickly droplets. Delivered at the exhilarating speed of charging horses, the watery acupuncture revitalized him. For the first time since his kidnapping, Kimio felt lively…
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Twelve
The farther her horse galloped, the faster her heart pounded. The closer the twins’ mother, Nica, came to the land of her birth, the louder her internal flame roared. It fanned the flames behind her irises, and its warm light shimmered in her long, wild hair. Surplus embers ignited the uneven ends of her roguish, red mane and burned holes into her cotton shirt. She pressed her heels into her horse’s belly and pulled tightly on its reins. The horse slowed to a trot, and then stilled before a jungle hot spring. As it dipped its head and lapped the warm water of the geothermal pool, its flaming rider dismounted. She waded into the pool, squeezed her nostrils closed between her fingers, and cupped her palm over her mouth. She closed her eyes, and then she submerged…
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Eleven
Talsis dismounted along a moist, dirt path. The deer-trodden trail passed through an evergreen forest, down the jagged rockface of a ten-foot cliff, and into the soft, white sand of a small, hidden beach. The forest’s last line of defense against the encroaching sea was a row of crooked cedar trees. Their roots fought to sap nutrients from the thin soil that topped the cliff; they competed for space and sustenance. The trees appeared as a row of poorly trained archers, cowering between the parapets of a sylvan fortress. Beneath the forested cliff, loud, violent waves splashed onto the shore, inching closer to the rockface with each pulse…
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Ten
Early in the Even’morn, Noveirn knocked on Fruyr’s door. He took a moment to rouse himself from his dreams, and in that moment, the cleaned and altered outfit that the vampires expected him to wear was shoved through a mail slot in the door, which priorly, he had not known was there…
Sons of a Soul Split: Chapter Seven
As the infernal core of a world pulses against the bedrock and warms the sea above it, Kimio felt heated from his heels to his scalp. His empty stomach churned from hunger and wrath, like ocean waves that beat against the hulls of sailing ships. Kimio was angry to be alive and yet deprived. Some time ago, Glaiven revived Kimio with a serum containing powdered unicorn horn, and then left him to rot under the tyranny of his cellmate. Each time the prisoners were fed, the siren snatched Kimio’s portion. Her fattening fishtail had started to look as delectable as it was shiny…
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