We traveled through the night, and I began to think that we’d escaped safely–that the merchants wouldn’t find us or guide others to our trails. The faint rumblings of thunder on a clear day the next afternoon disabused me of that notion. As night fell, I was about to push my people to continue trekking through the night...
2024-08-22 06:11:58 +0000 UTC View Post[Tariel POV]
As soon as he saw what Lierthan was so angry about, Tariel stood tall and began to rush forward to the head of the damned Alniyh’s tortoise. He couldn’t stop himself from jumping down from the massive shell and even before he hit the ground, Tariel began a Windcalling that pushed him forward at a bliste...
2024-08-21 05:36:45 +0000 UTC View PostNaddarah,
You have spoken appreciatively of the mild winters and temperate summers of Viertaal. You have wondered why it is that the salt witches of our people do not wrest control of the weather from the Great Albatross’s wings and the gods’ will. Naddarah, read my words and re...
2024-08-20 06:28:51 +0000 UTC View Post“Thank Nievtala.” I breathed out thanks to the goddess, but they were almost more of a curse. Not towards Her, of course, but instead because of what Rulac and Foire had found.
In the distance, I saw the skeletons of forgotten towers and walls, but not for regular buildings. Instead, the walls were built and r...
2024-08-18 07:11:05 +0000 UTC View PostAs the swarm passed through the hills that grew taller and rockier by the day and the gray smudge that I’d seen across the horizon became clearer and clearer to me, I finally realized that what I was seeing was something I had only heard about as a boy–mountains. I’d always thought that “mountains” wouldn’t be any...
2024-08-17 08:08:06 +0000 UTC View PostWhen last I’d sparred or fought with Wisterl, I had been a khatif and she a keelish. Though I had enjoyed a significant advantage in stats, I still found myself struggling in combat against her while I held myself back from using more deadly means. In fact, the only time I had even nearly matched her in combat, I’d taken ...
2024-08-16 05:12:02 +0000 UTC View Post“The monster’s found you! Flee before it devours you whole!”
Trai’s screams echoed across the watching members of my elites as I stomped exaggeratedly towards her with my eyes shut tight. The little one couldn’t quiet herself as she stumbled and rushed to the other side of the circle to avoid my approach. Unfo...
2024-08-15 05:45:19 +0000 UTC View Post“Nievtala give me patience and wisdom. Nievtala bless me with understanding and strength. Nivetala give me victory and power. Nievtala make me whole. Nievtala give me patience and wisdom. Nievtala…”
Repeated enraged prayers brought me no peace, and I only felt my fangs grinding harder and more frequently as ...
2024-08-13 04:59:14 +0000 UTC View Post[Fen POV]
Doluk was boring. Though she couldn’t talk as good with him as she could with Varali, Fen could still have something like a conversation with a creature as intelligent as Doluk with the soul magic she was developing, something the [System] called “Soul Sympathy”. Even though she’d asked a couple of tim...
2024-08-12 05:54:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe crocodiles’ hissing roars and the keelish’s defiant screeches filled the air, but I paid them no mind as I focused on the new notification from the [System].
[Skill: Quaking Claw; an active Skill that sends a concentrated flow of sonic magic to a specific location. The sonic magic’s vibrations cause the affect...
2024-08-10 06:11:15 +0000 UTC View PostThe swamp lizard’s scales along its back were different from our own–they protruded proudly from its spine all the way down its tail, and each scale was so thick that they felt like either armor or stones under my feet. However, it didn’t seem that its belly was quite so armored, and I grinned in fierce satisfaction as ...
2024-08-09 04:43:35 +0000 UTC View PostLet the Inkulu’aka’s voice be heard. Let the Inkulu’aka’s call be answered. Let the Inkulu’aka’s will be made manifest.
Those who have desecrated our lands, hunted our game, and trampled our grasses will not be permitted to live. Those who have dared to disregard t...
2024-08-08 04:53:05 +0000 UTC View PostPanic surged through me as loud shrieks filled my head. I sat bolt upright, something hitting my shoulder as I rose and looked for the threat. The suns had begun to rise, so I’d been asleep for several hours. Had the swamp lizards struck while I slept? Or was there something else, something I didn’t know about? Had the Ve...
2024-08-06 05:16:50 +0000 UTC View PostI strained my arm, then shoulder, then back and legs as I struggled to wrench the creature’s body out of the waters, but it refused to give up trying to get a bite of me. My khatif face had narrowed, but still I, like all keelish, had a large snout with thick, sharp fangs filling my mouth, but my jaws couldn’t begin to co...
2024-08-05 06:22:42 +0000 UTC View PostThe words shot adrenaline through me, forcing me to fully shake off the grogginess of sleep and the confusion ofdivine conversation. I stood tall, my spine crackling from the base of my skull to the tip of my tail as I stretched. Sybil and Trai cuddled closer together on the wolfstag pelt beneath them, and Trai continued her ...
2024-08-04 06:44:20 +0000 UTC View PostAt last, I am able to meet with Drolick, and his face remains as craggy and crotchety as ever, the lines carved into his face from long decades of his pure stubbornness protecting his people. My memories say that he was an old man when first I met him, some twenty years prior, but the only change in his face (the ...
2024-08-02 06:00:32 +0000 UTC View PostAs I listened to the cries of my keelish, I was again tempted to shift my vision to perceive heat signatures, but with a force of effort, instead I strode forward, my magic bubbling within my throat. The “mere lesser” keelish continued to scream around me, and a part of me wanted to delay reaching out, delay helping them ...
2024-08-01 04:57:29 +0000 UTC View PostDays continued to pass, the journey difficult and somehow easy at the same time. There wasn’t anything unusual to do, simply to continue on our path while hunting enough prey to keep the swarm fed. With nearly 1000 individual carnivores needing to eat enough to sustain ourselves on long days’ travels, we devoured everythi...
2024-07-30 21:21:08 +0000 UTC View Post[Varali POV]
A week had passed since Varali and Fen had left Stonestep, and the journey continued to be a strange conglomeration of tranquil and infuriating. The jungles remained beautiful and safe, so long as you knew how to treat it, and though Varali had been a fool in a dozen ways a day since her parents’ death, s...
2024-07-27 22:16:59 +0000 UTC View Post[Mualtir POV]
Mualtir had been stationed as the High Colonel of the Thnufir River’s Fort Thnufir for nearly a decade now, though before that she’d spent most of her whole life here as a soldier’s daughter, then a trainee, then a soldier under her grandmother’s command before a brief stint in the Alniyh family’...
2024-07-26 05:36:30 +0000 UTC View PostImmediately, I raised my head and began to search for the source of the confusion, though I couldn’t see far or clearly in the dimness of the setting suns. I could at least be sure that Arwa’s reaction and the keelish’s shrieks were somehow connected, but the specifics were still unclear. Before I allowed myself to thin...
2024-07-25 05:38:17 +0000 UTC View PostThough Drolick and I had interacted several times in the past, I wouldn’t have called him even an acquaintance. The mayor/guard captain/spiritual leader of the insular community lives his life in his heavily enchanted armor, so far as I know. Surely he steps out of the armor sometimes, but for any nonresidents o...
2024-07-23 05:55:09 +0000 UTC View PostI wasn’t sure how, I wasn’t sure when, and I wasn’t sure why, but what I did know was that Took literally held Rulac’s life in her jaws. She had dragged him back to the rest of the swarm, his throat and most of his neck retained within her maw, and it was painfully obvious that Rulac was absolutely livid but willing t...
2024-07-20 07:21:58 +0000 UTC View PostAnd there should be another chapter tonight!
[Took POV]
Took had long become accustomed to being the largest around, and she liked that. It helped her to feel like there was at least something she was in control of. Sure, Sybil was smarter and a real Beta to the Alpha, but Took was taller and stronger than her! F...
2024-07-19 22:24:01 +0000 UTC View PostMy brief visit to the New Empire complete and the Republic of the Indlovu’s city-states behind me, I made my way into Shandr once more. In the years since my last visit, nothing had seemed to have changed. Still, the city was surrounded by magically reinforced stone walls that are constantly manned, and still, a...
2024-07-18 06:12:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe arrival of Private Varali served to guide us more directly and immediately to our goal, and her continued presence among the garrison has been positively impactful, especially for the youngest and least hardened of our soldiers. If I am to be removed from command, I do request that her enlistment, though earli...
2024-07-17 05:46:47 +0000 UTC View PostWARNING: much of this chapter is super [Skill] focused, since I don’t think there’s ever been a full run-down of every [Skill] and its evolutionary possibilities as of yet. Here, there finally is. Of course, throughout it all are Ashlani’s thoughts sprinkled around, so, yeah. If that kinda crunchy element is...
2024-07-16 05:40:17 +0000 UTC View PostHigh Colonel Mualtir di’Thnufir:
High Lord Leialt Alniyh is only half a day’s travel away from Fort di’Thnufir. Upon his arrival, he will accompany you on your mission, and with his Bound beasts, you will have no issue in wholly annihilating the entirety of the murderous pests...
2024-07-13 07:10:51 +0000 UTC View PostFoire was immediately smitten with his daughter and couldn’t seem to be bothered to look at me, though I didn’t care or even want him to. Though, looking at her, I wasn’t sure how Trai would be able to learn how to work with other keelish since she was the only egg at the time and would have a brood to grow with. But, I...
2024-07-11 05:34:41 +0000 UTC View Post[Foire POV]
Since Treel’s death, all that Foire wanted was the next assignment. He’d always just wanted the next thing to do, but now… the quiet moments were the hardest, the longest, the most painful. The fight against the “humans” had been good for him, since he’d been constantly scouting to see where they...
2024-07-10 05:55:16 +0000 UTC View Post
