Caspar sits up on his sofa. His crocheted blanket, his lumpy cushions. He’s bathed in the stormcloud static of his crummy old television set. Lying on his chest is the paperback he was reading, the night before his life was taken from him.
He lifts its crinkled cover. It’s right where he left off.
Wren’s violet orbs shone in the dying sun. “I think you’ve never truly felt love for anyone but yourself,” she uttered. “Not for Harriet and not for me.” With this le...
2025-01-22 00:29:21 +0000 UTC
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“Do you like being here?”
Ajax turns his head as the platform rises through the hab block. “On this lift, or on the Pike?”
“On the Pike.”
“Nowhere else I’d want to be, Prince Consort.”
“You can be as honest as you want,” Grant says. “I’m just asking as myself.”
“I’m aware, Prince Consort.”
“Just making that clear. Sorry for the implication.”
Ajax stiffens. “There’s really no need for that, Prince Consort.”
2025-01-20 05:01:48 +0000 UTC
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They dress Grant in a black and scarlet tunic, with a high, asymmetric collar. A tight cut. He’s not sure if that’s just for the flattering drape or because he’s at least a foot taller than everyone else here. There’s no sleeves, but judging from the crewmates he sees along the way to Sykora’s cabin, sleeves are a rare commodity around here.
Two commandos in black lead him. Whispers and stares follow him. As he trudges the red-carpeted halls, he notices the clear divide in his...
2025-01-19 03:07:24 +0000 UTC
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Tonight is the night. Grant’s more grateful than ever for his guitar to keep his hands from fidgeting and picking the threads out of his coveralls.
No motion on the cameras. He waits for Batty to wake up and show herself. He’s already coming up with how he’ll describe the plan.
“Grant.”
Grant looks up from his guitar.
Drake is in the doorway. Grant didn’t hear him come in. “You mind putting that away for me?”
“Sure.” Grant leans the guitar aga...
2025-01-19 01:40:41 +0000 UTC
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Two more shifts pass.
He brings in more things for Batty. He brings her a map of Earth. She examines it with her head cocked.
“This is Earth. Uh, Home.” He taps the paper. “Earth.”
“Erf.”
“What about you?” He points at her. “Batty home?”
“Taiikari.”
He tries to pronounce it. She giggles at him. “Taiii karr eeee.” She sounds it out.
“Taiikari,” he says.
She nods. Her eyes flash. “Grantyde Batty home Taiikari.”<...
2025-01-18 19:44:38 +0000 UTC
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“Remember the 90% of your training?” Drake parks himself in a folding chair across a card table from Grant. “You’re about to get the last 10. But it’s time to sign another NDA. This is the big deal NDA.”
He pushes a novella across the table. “Read that.”
Grant takes it gingerly, like it’ll burn him. “Is this something I can, uh. Could I take it home, have someone read it for me?”
“You can’t take it home. You can’t go home, until you’ve ...
2025-01-18 04:35:29 +0000 UTC
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A month from now, Grant will remember, as he feels the cool metal of his wife’s gun kiss the back of his skull, his final days on Earth. He’ll wish he’d spent more of them on the surface, in the daytime. He’ll have trouble remembering what the exact blue of the sky was, how his old home’s sunsets look. Another reason to regret his time in those underground halls—not that he’ll need more.
Today, he’s just focused on getting the job.
“This is a night shift,” the ...
2025-01-17 23:05:26 +0000 UTC
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“I am sorry that we’ve lost Jordan. She was a good soldier.” Adaire’s voice echoes through the warehouse they’re squatting in. “And I don’t mean to imply that mine is the greater woe. But there’s a problem we need to reckon with.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s Tilliam.” Adaire jerks a thumb over her shoulder at the trussed-up archbishop. “When we were evacuating, he tried to flee me. His rebellions are becoming flagrant. He’s unpredictable and hostile sinc...
2025-01-16 19:27:56 +0000 UTC
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A burst of gunfire, so rapid that it morphs into one buzzing shriek. A chunk of the cart the size of a watermelon is sheared clean off. Each bullet hole flowers to the size of a fist. Secondary explosions spit the smell of sulfur into the close-cropped tunnel.
Jordan abandons the controls to dive for cover. The air becomes 50% lead by volume as four autoguns and two twin-linked autocannons light the cavern as if it were day.
Caspar’s head burns. His ears ring. His hands tremble....
2025-01-13 19:19:43 +0000 UTC
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“I am so, so, so, so, so sorry,” Caspar says. “Mrs. Tilliam, I never intended to harm a hair on your head. And I am so—”
Rebecca laughs. “It’s okay, Mr. Cartwright. Truly, it is. Your mistress has already apologized very prettily on your behalf. And please.” She raises her voice to include the full taphouse. “It’s Miss Wallace, everybody. Till death was what I said, and now it’s happened.”
“Understood, Miss Wallace.” Edgar keeps h...
2025-01-11 20:21:29 +0000 UTC
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Rebecca Tilliam collapses onto the hotel room couch with a groan of relief. She drops her suitcases and carry-ons in a pile of leather and canvas around her. “What a lovely room, Carol.” She shuts her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Uh huh.” Rebecca hears the shuffling of her handler’s papers, the clicking of her pen. “We were fifteen minutes overtime on breakfast. So you’re going to have to meet Paul in five if we want to keep to schedule.”
“Maybe he can wait a little l...
2025-01-05 03:16:16 +0000 UTC
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Caspar pulls the seared flesh from the bone and chews its crispy skin. A bursting pop of flavor, sumac and Northward oregano. Hot damn, that is delicious.
He holds the thin wing bone in his hand and casts about for a place to put it. A beaming cater waiter plucks it from him. His “oh, thank you” comes too late—she’s already swanned away.
He’s never been great at parties. Never been one to strike up the conversation first. When he was with Vesta, his strategy was to keep ...
2024-12-31 01:01:09 +0000 UTC
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The bathrooms in the Hall of the Pious Crusaders are the cleanest in any public building Caspar’s ever used. Marble and enamel and brass. There’s these newfangled taps that can tell when your hands are under them. They’re awful, and he needs to wave under them like a Tabarkan hand-dancer to get them to recognize his presence, but it’s more about the possibility. The dream.
Before he leaves the bathroom, he splashes water across his ensorcelled face. They’re walking around in f...
2024-12-30 00:00:41 +0000 UTC
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“So.” I scoot my cardinal out from my back rank. “Barn door. What’s your review?”
“It’s uh. Tight. It’s good.” Caspar sips his rooibos and rubs his chin as he surveys the board, which lays in front of me as we spoon. “I don’t know. Think I might be more of a peach flavored type guy. What about you?”
“I don’t know if it’s my new daily routine. But I certainly have no complaints.” I squish my butt against his hips. “Especially when my man has such m...
2024-12-17 22:19:38 +0000 UTC
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“It’s good.” Jordan chews the slice of cake. “Tastes a little beer-ish.”
“Caspar said yeasty,” I say.
“Well, he’d know. Mister house-husband.” She drops the fork on the plate and holds it out to me. “Thank Salome for me?”
“Sure.” I take the cutlery from her. “Bina?”
Bina blinks and the plate melts into a puddle of keratin. The grass beneath our feet reabsorbs it.
I still have a presence inside her sober mind as she remembers, with ...
2024-12-17 02:34:51 +0000 UTC
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My molluscan prime form flits through the air beside Bina’s hairy, cetaceous bulk. Below us, Saoirse sidewinds through the ruins of Heaven. Above us, Salome floats like a polar star. Our scout-forms and war-forms assemble around us. Shining glass, twisted metal, mossy fungus, barbed demon-flesh. A fearsome army. I wish I was confident it would be enough.
We four sisters approach Ganea’s fortress.
This ugly, crenellated cube of cyclopean black used to be the Father’s greatest...
2024-12-11 07:18:29 +0000 UTC
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“Step one is hide them bullet holes, I’d say.” Jordan puts her hands on her hips as they survey the van. “Bet a tapestry would do it. Couple saintly garlands.”
Caspar sticks a finger through the largest bullet hole, dented and sunken above the tail light. “I like it. Cruise into West Grishani, get us some knick-knacks. And some ice cream for Peat Moss.”
“We ain’t getting ice cream for Peat Moss.” Jordan folds her arms.
Caspar sees the fawn’s ears droop ...
2024-12-06 15:24:55 +0000 UTC
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Up and at em, Dee, says Niva. Packmistresses don’t sleep in.
I’m not the packmistress. I’m just your sister.
You are the packmistress, Dee. And you don’t have a sister anymore.
Wake up.
She opens her eyes. When did she end up in her yurt?
Her elf is sleeping next to her. There’s dried blood beneath her nails. My blood, Dee remembers. She lifts her fur blanket and beholds a wan bullet scar across her midsectio...
2024-12-03 02:30:54 +0000 UTC
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The warlocks are used to taking their bathroom breaks without a bathroom at this point (and Peat Moss never learned). Despite the complaints of their hostages, they avoid civilization once they’ve secured their pilgrimage papers. These will let them avoid much of the trouble they’d face as undocumented travelers, but they still don’t have a clear answer on how Jordan and Tilliam ought to avoid attention, and every checkpoint remains a nail-biter even with “Abraham” at the wheel.
...
2024-12-02 21:13:48 +0000 UTC
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Anise bends her arms inward. The little pooch of her stomach over the band of her yoga pants stretches taut as her peachy butt arches. “Now we slooowly come back to neutral,” she says. “Left palm on your belly. Left knee bent. Little farther, Evan. Perfect. Just like that. And roll toward your right side. And if you want to use your right arm as a pillow, do it. Now two deeeeep breaths.”
Dee obediently inhales. Behind her, Graila whispers something to Kell that makes them giggle...
2024-12-01 19:35:05 +0000 UTC
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“We can’t just leave him in the woods.” Caspar presses his steepled fingers to his lips. “He’s a person. He’s a child, even.”
“We have a missing fuckin’ archbishop in the van, Cas,” Jordan says. “Staying low is already gonna be a son of a bitch. We can’t bring a baby deer into the capital. That’s not where deers live.”
“What’s a capital?” the fawn asks.
“You can’t keep asking this about every concept, man,” Jordan says. “You...
2024-11-28 06:26:30 +0000 UTC
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Bina plows into Saoirse, bowls her to the ground, and with a vicious spring trap bite, tears her head from her shoulders.
The rotten flesh in her lupine mouth flowers explosively, and spreads filaments of fungus across her muzzle. They crack wide into blackened canyons of decomposition. In a moment like a carrion time-lapse, her head is stripped to bone; she collapses onto her elder sister’s corpse.
“Shall we call that one a tie?” Saoirse calls from her seat in the stands.
2024-11-22 22:12:58 +0000 UTC
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In the wake of their resounding victory at Hanem Canyon, a very nice elf in a very nice outfit—all slashed sleeves and silk—delivers an invitation to Pack Voraag and their charges. She stands solemnly by as they unroll the proffered scroll and then find someone who speaks High Kyzai to translate it.
Corvan Beiatrek, King of Hanem, requests the pleasure of their company at his palace on the occasion of their wonderful concert and the centennial of the fine city-state of...
2024-11-21 04:30:09 +0000 UTC
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Hello again, dear reader. If you’ve skipped to this chapter, welcome back. The short version is that Caspar and I admitted our love for each other and then went at it like rabbits. Humanity has really struck gold on this whole lovemaking thing. That was fabulous.
His hand lays possessively on the nape of my neck. I draw little circles on his chest with the tip of a claw.
“You’ll be my consort, Caspar,” I say. “When my sisters and I rule creation. You’ll s...
2024-11-19 01:23:32 +0000 UTC
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Anise awakens tangled in a cocoon of blankets. Nick has tossed all of the sheets from himself in the night and is starfishing, his left side drooping off the edge of the bed. A lance of light from their room’s circular mountainside porthole illuminates the graceful span of his thigh. Anise starts to sit up; the lime-green arm draped around her waist stiffens.
Dee’s voice, heavy with sleep: “Not yet.”
Anise taps her hand. “I just have to check what time it is.”
...
2024-11-17 04:51:13 +0000 UTC
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They decide to try the remote manipulation spell that Dee bought at the gate to Vatramor. Sion and Nick huddle over the sheaf of papers, puzzling out the oddball guitar part implied by its leylines.
Reconstructing a spell is equal parts songwriting, geometry, historiography, and guesswork. The first time Nick managed it, he was addicted instantly. It’s captivating to chip away all the cruft and behold the masterpiece that hid in the marble. Witnessing an expert hand like Sion’s is a...
2024-11-14 03:34:19 +0000 UTC
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Thank you as always, noble patrons. Fair warning: this one is explicit.
Caspar turns over and creaks the four-poster bed he’s awakened in. A breeze drifts across him from a window open to a scarlet sunset.
It drifts across me, too, where I’m curled on an overstuffed loveseat. It casts eddies across the gauzy lilac fabric that drapes me, what little of it there is.
I sit up. My anklets jingle. “Hello, Mr. Cartwright.”
Caspar’s eyes trace my neckline. Th...
2024-11-11 05:58:42 +0000 UTC
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Adaire sits down on a barrack bench across from Caspar, her legs wide and slouchy like a cock-of-the-walk trooper. “So, Mr. Caspar. How long have you been at the warlock game?”
Caspar’s gun rests on his lap, pointed broadly in her direction. He and Jordan have found a two-way radio, but he trusts that she’ll figure it out, gearhead that she is. “Bout a week,” he says, “give or take.”
“Just a week.” Adaire seems genuinely impressed. I’d ascertain how true her ...
2024-11-09 20:26:40 +0000 UTC
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“She didn’t…” Anise is scrambling for an excuse. “We’ve had a long trip up. And she’s hangry.”
“It’s okay.” In the dim light formed by the room’s lambent candles, Conna’s eyes are shadowed by her bangs. “We’re done here for now. But if you could tell her to at least consider coming back in for dinner once the food gets here. They do some remarkable things with beetles, our hosts.”
“Maybe it’s just shock?” Anise chews her nail as she looks at t...
2024-11-08 01:09:23 +0000 UTC
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Caspar sits bolt upright, breathing hard. His mouth hangs open. He touches his cupid’s-bow philtrum, where a moment ago my lips lay on his.
He’s back. Oh, no. Oh, shoot. Should he not have done that? Am I angry? Why else would I have sent him back?
An ineffable starspawned being from beyond his reality just got right up in his face and his response was to kiss it.
It must have been like a dog licking my face. Or a bug landing on my skin. Obviously when I said “love me...
2024-11-05 19:24:47 +0000 UTC
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