Auras, Part I

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I heard the sound of my mom’s footsteps on the stairs. She always acted astounded when I knew that it was her, before she even knocked on my bedroom door. I didn’t know if she truly didn’t understand that her footsteps on the creaky old wooden stairs of our family house sounded different, or if she just chose to humor me.

“James?” she called out, rapping her knuckles lightly against the other side of my bedroom door. “Listen, are you awake?”

I groaned, grabbing my pillow and squeezing it tighter against my face. I let out an indistinct grunt, hoping she’d take this as assent.

“James? Do I need to come in there? I know you’re feeling under the weather, but do you need to go to the hospital?” Continue reading →

Designer to the Villains

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“Halcythrax, Lord of Regrets!”

Halcythrax stood up from the strangely low-slung couch in the waiting room, dropping last month’s issue of “Villains Quarterly” back down on the coffee table. He’d read the cover story, of course, covering how Aetheria, the Spider Queen, managed to bring down Lucio Light-Bringer with her carefully placed web traps. Personally, Halcythrax thought that it was just another attempt at pandering towards women in villainy, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

Besides, Aetheria had her costume made here. No matter his personal feelings towards the Spider Queen, she did look absolutely stunning in the purple and black tights, covered in webbing and with cunningly designed pockets that somehow further accented her figure.

So as he followed the attendant down the long hallway, Halcythrax couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. He’d waited weeks for his appointment slot; Iris was notoriously difficult to book. Continue reading →

“Housekeeping!”

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“Housekeeping!”

There’s a funny thing that happens to lips after a couple thousand years.

You ready for this? They fall off.

Gross, huh? Yeah, that’s death for you. Or undeath, I guess. Except I never really understood that term, because I did die. I died, and then came back. So if I had to pick a word to use, I think I’d say re-death. Or post-death. Something like that. Continue reading →

This mercenary looks curiously young… [Part 2]

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Continued from Part 1, here.

Cassie frowned at the P’tchar, watching him move with such prissy, fussy little movements. She’d never actually met one of the renowned traders in real life, but the purple-tinged black exoskeleton, the long and slender limbs, couldn’t belong to any other species.

A praying mantis, she thought as she watched him carefully seat himself at her table. That’s what he resembled. A purple-and-black praying mantis, with large, worried eyes, on the verge of breaking down over some internal source of stress.

But he had money, and he wanted to hire her. So she was willing to listen. Continue reading →

This mercenary looks curiously young… [Part 1]

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J’qiqe P’char’trph’al sidled through the tavern, doing his best to not brush up against anything – or anyone. He’d never dreamed that he’d be forced to set foot in a place like this, a place so disreputable, a place filled with such… undesirables.

Even shrinking down his tall frame, however, drawing in the slender limbs of his exoskeleton, he knew that he attracted attention. After all, he was a P’tchar, and they held a definitive place in the social strata. Even these bottom feeders, these commoners, these mercenaries, understood the high status that he carried on his ornately engraved shoulder pauldrons.

Given the choice, J’qiqe would never have come here. Continue reading →

[AGttA] Chapter 10.2: The Celestial Court

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Continued from Chapter 10.1, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 10: Do what makes you happy.

The woman in the shabby little office had thrown back the curtains, blinding me with the light that came shining in.  But when I lowered my hand from in front of my eyes, I was no longer sitting in a small little book-filled room.

Instead, I sat on the same rickety chair – but it was in the middle of a huge amphitheatre, spreading out in all directions, rising up almost too high in the sky for me to see the top.

And every seat in the amphitheatre was filled by angels. Continue reading →

The Thunderstorm

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She caught me looking out the window.

All around us, everyone else seemed totally focused on the moment, the dance, the thumping bass music pumping out of the cheap, slightly tinny speakers. It was enough – almost – to drown out the sounds of an angry Nature from outside the hall, her breath howling as she mustered up her weapons to break the tenuous peace with the surface below.

She saw me looking out the window, listening less to the female singer shouting about how she needed to get up on the dance floor and more to the rolling thunder, approaching like the pounding of hooves from an onrushing stampede. She reached out, caught at my hand.

I looked up, surprised and ready to defend myself – but she just smiled, tugged me away from the dance and the other people, the sea of humanity. She led gently, but it was enough to encourage me to follow. Continue reading →

“You speak about it as if it’s human!”

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The rogue appeared back in camp suddenly, barely making a single whisper to announce his presence. “They’re getting closer,” he announced.

Sitting on top of a log, the warrior nearly dropped his polishing stone in surprise. “Dammit, man, what have we told you about making some sort of noise when you show up?” he growled, his deep baritone making his plates of armor vibrate. “Scared the dickens out of me!”

“Maybe if you pried some of the waxy armor polish out of your ears, you might manage to hear me,” the rogue retorted, and the two glared daggers at each other for a moment. Continue reading →

[AGttA] Chapter 10.1: The Moral Debate

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Continued from Chapter 10.0, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 10: Do what makes you happy.

“What?”  I didn’t understand what the woman sitting on the other side of the desk meant.

“The price,” she repeated patiently, looking at me.  “You asked what it would take to bring your friends back, to put a stop to the Apocalypse, to restore everything back to normal.  You said that you would be willing to do anything.

“And that, it seems, is exactly the price for you.”

I felt like my stomach was dropping away from me, like I was in the front seat of a roller coaster that had just plunged over the first big drop on the ride.  “I don’t understand.” Continue reading →

Cookie Clicker

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No post today.  I’ve discovered this new game called Cookie Clicker.

Have you heard of it?  It’s fun.  You click on a cookie.

Each time you click the cookie, you get a cookie.  You use the cookies to buy more things to click on the cookie for you, so that you can get even more cookies.

I’m not quite sure why this has me so spellbound, but it does.

Check it out:

http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/

Cookies.