Bacon Macleod

B3 Chapter 393: Winter’s Scorn, pt. 1

Another bonus to Authority control? Kaius hoped it was a simple indicator of importance — and not future difficulty.

He pored over it quickly, pleased with what he found. At the very least, they were in the first five and had a solid chance of being the ones to reap the rewards for sharing. Likely, they were first — Xenanra had certainly implied as much.

“What now?” Porkchop asked from behind him.

“Well, my first thought is that we have a beast to...

B3 Interlude 16: Soothsayer

Scrying nets were useless fucking things at the best of times. 

Now that she was forced to rely on one, Ro had to physically restrain herself from hunting down whoever had invented the damned things and throttling them.

They detected magic at a distance. A handy thing, if not for the limitations.

It looked like the table of a war room — a magic-wrought relief of Deadacre and its surrounding lands for a hundred leagues in every direction, with the rendition growing fuz...

B3 Chapter 392: A Cycle; an End, Finale

Under the guidance of an alien will, Kaius cycled. Together with the rest of his team, he’d suffered under the discomfort of his Authority being overruled.

There was a holiness in the air that offset some of the unease, instinctively crawling up his spine. As the Ascendant herself had said, it was an ancient rite, and Kaius could feel the weight of tradition deep in his bones. A mirror, to the halls of a long dead people they sat in.

It was bittersweet — to have the unvarnishe...

B3 Chapter 391: A Cycle; an End, Pt. 4

"You have all done well. Walk with me," Xenanra said.

The Ascendant rose from where she floated and drifted down, leaving the fire they had circled still burning, and the cushions and rugs where they had lain.

Kaius shared a look with his team. He hadn’t expected them to change locations — they had only just managed to master utilising their Authority to consistently flare their Aspects at will.

It had been a gruelling process, and a lengthy one — two days and two nigh...

B3 Chapter 390: A Cycle; an End, Pt. 3

Clasping his hands in his lap, Kaius eagerly awaited for their lesson to begin. 

Shortly after revealing the nature of cycling, Xenanra had shared that the realm they were in now was one where essence naturally accumulated — that, for the entire time they had been in this final trial, she had been holding it back with her own authority. It was the source of the strange reinforcement he had felt — the quiet wind, and the overly strong soil.

Apparently, by her standards, it...

B3 Chapter 389: A Cycle; an End, Pt. 2

Xenanra’s pure white, six-dotted eyes flicked straight to him. A smile spread across the Ascendant’s face, revealing her pointed fangs.

The soft silence that followed them since they had entered this strange realm seemed to amplify, until Kaius could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart. 

A single finger on the Ascendant’s hand twitched. Kaius felt an ineffable power swirl and twist through the air around him. It brushed up against his Authority for a bare mom...

B3 Chapter 388: A Cycle; an End, Pt. 1

Kaius woke to a sharp crack, his eyes snapping open. He sat up with a start, blinking away the blur of sleep as he searched for a threat.

Instead, he found Xenanra hovering over them with a grin on her face. It was hard to tell who she was looking at, her pure white, six-pupiled eyes watching them all equally.

Kaius sighed, relaxing as soon as he registered that they weren’t in danger. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he threw his cloak off and stored it inside of his ring. ...

B3 Chapter 387: Tales, Finale

Kaius stretched out and relaxed.

It was nice, hearing what his teammates had experienced during their own journey through the Crucible. To little surprise, their trials matched up with what he expected of them as people — trials that not only would have challenged them, but were also well suited to pushing them in the way they needed to be pushed.

That was something not always obvious; it was clear the personalization of their trials ran deep. They’d each found some sort of sa...

B3 Chapter 386: Tales, pt. 5  

Atop a peak that brushed the sky, Ianmus grit his teeth and reached for the mana deep within himself, leaning on his Glass Mind as much as he could.

He split his pool into two streams; great deluges that washed out from muscle and marrow. His grip slipped, as the power bucked and writhed — channeling like this was almost beyond him.

It wasn't normal weaving, not the kind where he split his mana into multiple threads to work on a complex spell structure. That was doable....

B3 Chapter 385: Tales, pt. 4

Kenva stumbled through the portal, and suddenly she was somewhere else.

She got her bearings quickly. Someone like her, with her upbringing and the life her people lived — moving on the road and seeing new sights every day — was long used to taking in what was around her in an instant.

She was not, however, used to finding herself in an empty void.

A pale blue-grey nothingness stretched out around her, with an endless road floating beneath her feet. It shot into the dist...

B3 Chapter 384: Tales, pt. 3

Ianmus stumbled, the heels of his boots clacking across a hard ground. He looked down. It was clean and polished:something not quite stone, a washed out grey varnished to a clean sheen.

Before he looked around and got his bearings, Ianmus processed the whirlwind experience of the last few hours.

A mere moment ago he’d been in the entrance room to the Crucible, surrounded by black glass that was covered in burning runes. He’d met an Ascendant! He'd heard the stories from Kaius ...

B3 Chapter 383: Tales, pt. 2

Kaius sat at the edge of the blanket they'd laid over the grass, enjoying the warmth of the midsummer sun that was high in the sky. His cloak was wrapped tightly around him. A thick, warm thing, more for comfort than for any need to keep the weather off.

When a divinity said to rest, you listened. And so they did. Sitting and doing as they always did when they traveled: enjoying each other's company and swapping stories.

As he was wont to do, Kaius took on the role of cook. Largel...

B3 Chapter 382: Tales, pt. 1

Kaius stumbled forward into a clearing that looked identical to the one he had just left, alone once more.

If it wasn't an exact clone, it was a close one. The grass was luscious, filled with fronds and seed pods; the scattering of pretty white flowers with yellow centers reached up to his mid  thigh. It was a meadow, surrounded by a ring of dense trees and thickets that looked almost impossible to pass. Somehow, he knew that his meagre strength wouldn’t be enough to break throug...

Interlude 14.2(slash 16, pretend this came before Arc’s interludes lol): Old Debt

Clasping his hands in front of his waist to stop from balling them into fists, Old Yon didn’t bother to suppress his scowl as he walked down one of the few short hallways in his temporary bolthole.

The bunker was austere, even by his standards. Really it was just a collection of blocky rooms that he had paid an earth mage to carve deep into the bedrock a couple dozen leagues northeast of Deadacre. 

It was utilitarian enough: he had a storeroom under stasis with enough food ...

B3 Chapter 381: Temperance, Finale

The rough stone tore at his hands and knees as Kaius threw himself back from the edge. Reeling from the disorientation of being himself again, he stared into a darkness that hissed and bubbled. It called to him; demanded he reach out and sink into a temptation he barely understood and only vaguely remembered. 

His heart slammed in his chest as his breath came heavy and hot.

Light burst over the inky black, so bright that it seared. Radiant and golden, it fell upon th...

B3 Chapter 380: Temperance, pt. 2

A wave of confusion, disorientation, and isolation washed over him, like he had been translocated out of time and space. His very body and mind ripped from one place to the next — twisted into something unrecognizable.

Who was he? 

Where was he?

When was he?

An attosecond later, the feeling passed and Gesren furrowed his brow in confusion. 

Flexing his quintessence with a flicker of his Authority, he sealed himself from the void around him, a...

B3 Chapter 379: Temperance, pt 1.

Shimmering like oil, the pool of black at the center of the room boiled. It reached upwards like a living thing, tendrils and droplets questing. 

Kaius felt magnetized towards it. It was as if it was calling to him; reaching out to somewhere deep within him and ushering him forward. Unwittingly, he took a step back and clenched his fist. His nails dug into his palm, the stinging pain bringing clarity. 

He looked at Xenanra, worried. There was no break? 

But he...

Chapter 378: Fog, Finale

Kaius grinned as he read the description of his final Aspect.

It was largely defensive in nature — bolstering his resistance to all forms of injury, but especially soul related effects thanks to his Seed. What that would mean in truth, he didn’t know.

Maybe he would get lucky, and Vos would fall under that purview, but he wasn’t sure. The damage he sustained from his insight into the great rune was odd. It didn’t feel like he was getting attacked — more like his being it...

B3 Chapter 377: Fog, pt. 8

Kaius narrowed his eyes at Porkchop, running a mental tally of how long his challenge had taken him. Time had gotten away from him in the flow of the fight — it was easy for it to slip by when your mind ran fast enough for seconds to stretch several times over, and a battle moved so quick that a heartbeat’s delay could mean death.

Still, he couldn’t have taken that long — he’d still had a quarter of his stamina by the end. He was pacing himself, but still, it couldn�...

B3 Chapter 376: Fog, pt. 7

Porkchop watched with a smile on his face as his brother vanished into a miasma that stank of contagion and forest fires. By the Matriarch’s, Kaius could be stubborn. 

Still, it was endearing how long he’d fought to keep them together through the trial — even when it had become blatantly obvious that they were getting nowhere.

He’d been suspicious after three crossroads, and all but certain after the fifth. Still, he’d let Kaius come to terms with it on his...

B3 Chapter 375: Fog, pt. 6

The heat within him grew, a burgeoning pressure that would ignite. 

Not quite yet though.

Kaius ran, toxic fog billowing in his wake. He had a grin plastered on his face as he turned from side to side, listening for approaching dangers. Time had long since lost meaning for him, but with his constant efforts to pierce the gloom, Truesight had grown — pushing back the darkness by over a stride. 

The simple dirt trail he had been following was long gone —...

B3 Chapter 374: Fog, pt. 5

Yet another crossroad, yet another choice — though this time it would be a decision he wouldn’t enjoy making. Kaius knew it was a little petulant, but he couldn’t help but feel bitter that the trial was pushing him to split up from Porkchop.

It felt cruel, after two back to back trials of endless struggle in isolation. 

He did not shy from the challenge, but it did feel lonely to lack that ever present fortress of warm support in the back of his mind. Even no...

B3 Chapter 373: Fog, pt. 4

A chitin monstrosity with swords for legs rocketed towards him, kicking out so fast it looked like a silver half-moon blinked in and out of existence. 

Kaius had swung his own blade to intercept before it had even moved, reacting the instant Uncanny Dodge fed him a premonition of danger. 

Truesight called them butcher locusts. Grasshoppers the size of his thigh, mottled brown — though their legs shone with a steely glint. Gods scorn were they...

B3 Chapter 372: Fog, pt. 3

“I hate you.”

Kaius grunted, holding on to the rope with a white-knuckle grip. Almost horizontal from how far he was leaning back, the only thing stopping him from flying over the edge of the cliff was a raised lip of stone that he’d braced his feet against. 

Dipping low into his crouch for a moment, he hauled backwards — arms shaking as he pulled the rope in with his right and reached for more with his left.

Sweat poured from his forehead, as ...

B3 Chapter 371: Fog, Pt. 2

The fog was heavy, hiding all in its swirling depths. Even sound was eaten whole: though the grass rustled in a gentle breeze, it was muted and dull. Like he’d plugged his ears with wax.

It made the trial feel timeless — endless, like reality itself simply stopped outside the bounds of Kaius’s senses. 

Despite that, he was having the time of his life. Porkchop was here. They were on the path to discovering their final aspect, together. The trial itself...

B3 Chapter 370: Fog, pt. 1

This time Kaius was ready for the jarring transition, staying steady as he stepped through the crucible portal.

A wall of tumbled boulders surrounded him, set deep into the grass. Fog shrouded everything, each stone looming over him through the haze.

They did look natural, even if the formation was unlikely — closer to a keep’s wall than a random outcropping. Dead ahead of him, there was a break in the barrier where two natural plinths had toppled towards each other, ...

Interlude 15: Conviction and Truth

Dust hung like a smog in Grandbrook’s temple library, clinging to every surface like a thick packing of the winter snow he found so uncomfortable. High vaulted like everything in the church was, the roof was dominated by crisscrossing beams that would have been old a century ago, and Arc found himself penned in on all sides by stacks so tall and rickety that he wouldn’t be surprised if they had killed more elderly holymen than he had beasts.

It had been an ordeal to even reach this ...

B3 Chapter 367: Warm Haze, Finale

Animus. The aspect of the soul. It had eluded him for so long — a mystery that had remained just out of reach. 

He’d felt a few reverberations from that truth, but there’d been nothing conclusive — nothing strong enough that he could begin to narrow down what it related to. He’d gotten a slight indication that it was broadly related to his other Aspects.

That didn’t surprise him — not with the deep interconnection he could now feel between Mentis and Corporus.&n...

B3 Chapter 366: Warm Haze, pt. 2

There were many things that Kaius thought of asking the ascendant who accompanied him on his forest walk. 

The obvious answer was anything and everything she would share about his next trial. It was also what he was least inclined towards — it could wait until he was actually ready to move on.

Nor was he particularly interested in finding out more of how his last trial had functioned. Xenanra had already delved deeply into it. Any further, and it would likely delve into the...

B3 Chapter 365: Warm Haze, pt. 1

Kaius sat in the sun, taking another sip of the odd drink that Xenanra had offered him. The ascendant had offered to talk, and he wanted to, but about what? He felt like he was swaddled in stride-thick blankets, yet his mind felt clearer than it ever had been before — a purifying fire burning within him.

All together, it left him feeling muddled.

He didn’t know how to start, or where to go. 

Still, the drink was cold and the sun was warm. It was nice to just bre...