WarbyPicus

Apologies everyone- I posed tomorrow's chapter today

Fixed now, but... yep. Strong, STRONG return. Strong. Capable, and wise. mmmhmmm.

Vol. 4 Chap. 81 Thug With A Spell

The maintenance crew was fighting now, all against all. Crude, clumsy swings. The suits were stifling, like trying to fight underwater. It must have been a nightmare. Can’t see. Can barely feel. Danger everywhere. Everywhere. Can’t run- job’s not done, and this is Starbrite. You get the job done, no excuses. And then the Phoenix, screaming. Shaking the poison air with its cries.

They fell over. Their suits  were built to resist the heat, to withstand abrasion. But this much h...

I'm Back!

A good time was had by all, I trust? 

Panama was beautiful. I usually head down to a little island near Panama City, one of those strange little tidal pools where history occasionally washes up, then drains away again. Leaving behind fossilized evidence of significance. 

If you are reading Slumrat Rising, there is a decent chance you are familiar with the genre known as Magical Realism. Most famously written by Garcia Marquez, he posited that you can't really write it ou...

Vol. 4 Chap. 80 Into The Light

Truth watched the squad of workers going into the tunnels on the scrying mirrors arranged on the supervisor’s desk. The supervisor wasn’t keeping a close eye. This operation happened several times a day, every day. Not much to see after the eightieth or ninetieth time. Trut was watching eagerly. He didn’t know anything about what was going on out there.

As they marched through the gate, he spotted one bump into another, shorter, one. The shorter one violently recoiled and the body...

Vol. 4 Chap. 79 Rocks, and Their Discontents

Truth looked over the ritual space. After careful examination, looking closely at the micro-engraved gems, the achingly precise line arrangements, the Enochian cyphers written into the floor then filled with mythril; after a detailed forensic examination he reached a firm conclusion.

I don’t have the faintest goddamn idea what goes on in here.

In his defense, he consoled himself, there were clearly big pieces missing. There were several engraved circles, squares and tri...

Vol. 4 Chap. 78 A Flawless Plan

Truth had an unusual problem. Well, he thought it was unusual. It hadn’t ever come up for him before, but maybe he was underestimating the challenges faced by other people. He nodded to himself, as he wedged himself up into the corner of the wall and the ceiling, relying on his inhuman strength and conditioning to hold him in place.

Yes, other people had their own struggles, their own burdens. Who was he to assume what problems they did and did not face? Perhaps this was just one of t...

Vol. 4 Chap. 77 Violent Improvisation

I have so few mental gears left to slip. You wouldn’t think there would be any left still touching each other. But here we are. And there it goes.

Truth crouched like a gargoyle or a particularly malevolent pigeon or perhaps just an over-ambitious rat, on the metal gantry over the Prototype Lab. The Shattervoid girl was laughing now, an awful sound in his head. He wondered just what those curse tablets were doing to her. If it could be worse than five years of abuse, isolatio...

Vol. 4 Chap. 76 Awkward

Truth thought his refusal to shriek and fall off the gantry spoke well of him. Most people would have shrieked and fallen the three stories to the ground, he felt. A multistory tube of led curse tablets suddenly having a girl’s face and talking directly into your mind is inherently startling. But he was made of sterner, yes, sterner stuff-

*You talk to yourself a lot, don’t you?*

Truth nodded. He did. Will you hear me if I just think at you?

2024-02-19 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Vol. 4 Chap. 75 Upright Young Lady

It was an oddly quiet moment. The PMC soldiers were sharp and Level Three. The recording talismans, plural, covering the waiting room were pumping out Level Four Power. The Blessing   of the Silent Forest could handle it. He wasn’t leaking a speck of energy, and besides. If something did pierce his shroud of unnoticibility, he had a perfect identity lined up.

Sergeant Truth Medici, Starbrite PMC, seconded from Harban. Still waiting on that back pay.

The mercenaries wer...

Newsletter for the Week of 2/16/24 AWAKENED MEMBERS, READ THIS AS IT CONCERNS YOU SPECIFICALLY

Only news edition: Hey everyone! I'm off for my long threatened vacation. I am leaving my frigid woods for somewhere decidedly more tropical. Gonna take a week with the family. Admire some fish. Spend quality time in a hammock and actually catch up on some reading. Maybe drag Starling kicking and screaming over the finish line. At the very least, a hell of a lot closer to having the first draft done. But mostly R&R.

Now, because I am not a monster, I will load up th...

Vol. 4 Chap. 74 Common as Muck

Truth snuck through the lowest level of the once secret, now besieged volcano lair with a loopy grin. All the blessings, the concealment magic, the specialist training, and what does it take to evade the world’s best mercs? Stand behind the door. They’ll never find you.

No trolls so far. That was a relief. They were uncomfortably sharp. The doors on this floor were, for lack of a better way to describe them, more heavy duty than the ones on the second floor. They had the solidity of...

Vol. 4 Chap. 73 Alone in the House

There really should be a word for when you know you have never been someplace before, but when you go there, it all feels eerily familiar.

Truth walked silently down the long corridors. Brightly lit, clean, with enchanted windows showing views from various Starbrite resorts from around the world. Look out one, and it was a tropical beach. Look out the next, and you were watching laughing kids learn how to ski. It felt like half the offices he had visited on the job. Even some o...

Vol. 4 Chap. 72 Internal Volume of a Volcano

Truth was in. The heavy steel door had been reduced to molten slag by the blast. Still hot enough that his clothes started to charr and smoke just by being near it. Truth mitigated this by moving even faster. He went through the melted away top right corner of the vault door at a speed more commonly associated with spellbirds, and dove into the volcano.

This was a choice that reflected his keen appreciation for the vital moment to strike, a willingness to take calculated risks and, it m...

Vol. 4 Chap 71 Up and In

It looked like the end of the world, and he had to wait. It wasn’t the end. It wasn’t even the end of the beginning.

The Jeon Army never thought it could win an open field battle, so they didn’t bother trying. They dug into the mountains and built bunkers in the forests, bastions where resupply could be delivered by tunneling demons or airlifted in by spell birds and summons. From there, they deployed summoned angels and demons, sent out swarms of ghosts, sent out waves of talisma...

Newsletter for the week of 2/9/24

Newsletter for the week of 2/9/24

Sorry about dropping off there. As you may have picked up, things are getting busy.

News: Vol 1, on sale right now over on Amazon. $2.99, go check it out! Audiobook for Vol.2 has finally reached me, and is completely screwing my focus and work schedule. Todd did an outstanding job, especially with all the Siphios accents. Really great stuff, and it becomes weirdly addicting to listen to. Like, I know the story. I wrote the story. ...

Vol. 4 Chap. 70 Cascading Contingencies

Truth lay on a tree branch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but he wasn’t paying attention to that fact. He was just… there. Being there. He was playing the fool. He was being loud, and obviously provoking. He was relying on the terror and paranoia of others to trigger a proxy war. This was a low percentage play. A smart person didn’t rely on the emotions of others. They made things happen on their schedule. This was dumb. He was being dumb. Which fits playing the fool, but maybe too much...

Vol. 4 Chap. 69 Nature and Nurture

On the way to the town of Boxiliu, a town of no particular importance to anyone outside the commercial slate production industry, Truth made a marvelous discovery. In addition to producing a rare reddish colored slate, Boxiliu had a zoo.

The zoo was a small, sad affair. A few dispirited looking monkeys, tropical birds wishing they weren’t in the northern mountains, snakes, lizards, an insect hall, a few comatose looking foxes, and pride of place- a “Husband and Wife” pair of tiger...

Vol. 4 Chap. 68 Foreign Agitator

Truth snagged the Major’s cap and wallet on the way out the door. The cap went on his head, the wallet into the sack with the rest of the loot. He rushed down the hall. If he saw a policeman or internal security type, they got a needle to the head courtesy of Major Tsu’s needler and Graeme’s arrow.

Graeme's arrow punched through skulls and cinder block walls with equal ease. Truth’s Level Four Cultivation made overpenetration a serious problem. Which was fine. Overkill was kind ...

Vol. 4 Chap. 67 The Innocent Have Nothing To Fear

Nilfu was, according to his now badly abused road atlas, a long way from the middle of nowhere, which is where he currently was. Or about a three hour run. Truth did some completely unnecessary stretching, and set off. Wasn’t going to get any closer if he stood around, and there sure wasn’t much in the way of passing traffic.

System, could you put together a new spell for me? We have to have loads of spell models from all the research we have done.

<<What, l...