tobiasbegley

Primal Soul, Tamer's Heart (PSTH): Chapter One

Oh great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes [audio indecipherable]. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn. World serves its own needs, don’t mis-serve your own needs… 

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Recording of a prophecy that foretold the return of magic, circa 75 Pre-Arrival.

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I let out a long sigh as I thumbed through the public post of temp jobs on my augpad.

Mrs. Sullivan needed help with her gardening? Nah, gardening was boring. Besides, one of t...

What Do?

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Ephemeral Rebirth flared to life within my mana-garden, and my soul lifted out of my body. It was strange, looking down on the ruined wreck of a body that I’d been born in, and even though I knew that the spellbound would produce a new one, I still felt something of a sense of loss. It had taken a lot of effort to look the way I had, and now it was nothing but fertilizer. 

I didn’t have long to think, however, as a golden spiraling tail reached out from within the asomatous...

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Six

The barking came again, louder this time, and a second dog joined it, and then a third. I focused on the thought of the barking, and of the fact that Dawn was missing. Then another thought joined those two: my Ephemeral Rebirth. If I really was bleeding out, dying on the cold ground in the mud, then it should trigger. 

That was enough for cracks to begin appearing in the world around me, and then the illusion shattered like breaking glass. I had fallen, but I wasn’t alone. Standi...

The Empire of Death, Part Three

Ignatius studied the scroll closely, the small light burning in the oil lamp flickering softly on the box above him. 

Spending the night in a warehouse wasn’t the safest place in the world, but the shops on the ground floor were long closed, so as long as none of the Enforcers made a trip to check on the sacks of grain at night, he should be fine. He had been the past week, at least.

That week was… complicated. Ignatius supposed he should be glad to be alive, and he was, ...

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Five

We raced along the ground, following the path of the hounds, tracing the location of the asomatous through tracking magic that the strongest Arcanist of the pack was using. 

At least, Kene, Siobhan, and I raced. Dusk’s powers of flight had grown to the point where she would have easily been able to blast past us. I could have passed faster as well, if I’d used some of my teleportation spells, but that would have left everyone behind, and corralling the dogs into and out of Dusk...

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Four

Since you all got a short story on Wednesday, here's the chapter to make up for it! I'm gonna go make that short story public. There will still be three chapters Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday this upcoming week as normal.

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“On one hand, the Flock is bound to this side of the forest. It’s never left the cordon and gone to hunt innocents. There’s a very real case to be made that it’s simply protecting its territory from humans, invaders to a wil...

Orykson's Duties

One of the timers that was normally hidden in Aerde’s spirit appeared in the Layered Visual Output spell that Aerde and Orykson shared. It hit zero, and an alarm blared within the display for a moment before ticking over to another, much shorter counter, this one only measuring a few weeks. 

“Have they?” Orykson asked. Before he could even finish vocalizing the thought, Aerde sent a divinatory spell out. When it returned negative, Orykson nodded slowly. He rose to his feet an...

What Does Malachi Do?

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Three

The golden light slammed into the form of the Flock, and the ancient asomatous let out a ear-rending scream. It thrust its hand down, and birds dove in, intercepting the wave of light as it ripped through the air and pounded down on the spirit. The Flock flared its wings out, curling them in around itself like a shield of spiritual feathers, and Dawn continued to unleash a wrathful beam of justice against the spirit of hate. 

The cwn anwnn arcanists arrived then, their hunting spel...

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Two

I nodded to Siobhan and snapped the portal to Dusk’s realm shut. The enfield spread her wings and leapt off the tree branch, turning the dive into a glide, and I followed – not through the air, I just teleported to the ground. Even as the Flock screamed behind me and more birds across the forest started to scream with it, I couldn’t help but wonder what the negative cultural connotation with spatial magic was here. 

I didn’t have long to be distracted, as Siobhan landed nex...

The Restored: Chapter Fifty

Twenty years later…

Maryam Johnson took a deep breath and adjusted her robes one last time in the mirror. She didn’t even know why Bronzelight University bothered with the silly ancient mage robes tradition for all its graduates – she wasn’t even a mage, not really. Sure, she might have the aura generation tattoo that let her practice a bit of magic, but everyone had one of those. To say she was a mage just because she had a tattoo that gave her aura wa...

The Restored: Chapter Forty-Nine

One month later…

Chiyo didn’t really understand exactly what had happened the last several days. She didn’t know why her mom had shoved them both into the closet, and why they’d had to be very, very quiet. She didn’t know why the city was wrecked, why all the buildings had fallen over, and why they’d had to leave their home underground for the too-bright streets somewhere else. 

Of course, she understood some things. She was only six, but...

The Restored: Chapter Forty-Eight

Despite the excitement of Hadiya’s news, and the fact that I was certain that she’d have continued working herself to death on them in the mere hopes she could get her plans in working order, the efforts of the city didn’t end there and then. I forced her to go take a break and have her foot looked at, and even had to make it an official order and get a pair of constables to guard the piles of her work before she was willing to listen to me. 

“There are good odds they’ll ...

The Restored Question

I've wrapped up the last few chapters of The Restored. Would you all rather have them tomorrow or have them distributed next Thursday and Friday

The Restored: Chapter Forty-Seven

I cut the power to my spell, and lowered the piece of metal to the ground. Rhys gave me an approving nod, and I smiled at him. 

“For a first political speech, it wasn’t bad,” Rhys said. “It was a bit short, but I think that’s what the country needed right now.”

“Sir!” a voice called, and I turned to see a demon racing toward me. For an instant, I began to shape spells, before I relaxed as the demon slowed and bowed deeply. 

“The current Throne of ...

The Restored: Chapter Forty-Six

Telling my story didn’t take me nearly as long as I had expected. Though the fight had been long, tough, and brutal, it had been fairly short. All said and done, the invasion had lasted less than an hour, despite feeling like it had lasted for days. 

“Interesting. So you were finally able to make full advantage of your biological modifications,” Jessica said, tapping her chin. “I did always wonder why yours were so… passive… compared to mine. But you’re a combat mage ...

Do What?

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-One

The sensory boosting potion that we had made had a duration of around a minute and a half. We could have made it last longer, but we’d have needed to sacrifice the degree to which the range was boosted, or reduce the overall number of potions we were creating so drastically that it would have looped right back around to having a lesser overall duration again. 

But with each one only lasting for a short while, and with Seven League Step requiring ten minutes to cast, we couldn’t...

The Third Step: Chapter Twenty

Just as Kene had said, by the morning, the liquid in the cauldron had condensed into a thick, maple-syrup looking mixture. It even smelled oddly like maple syrup, which was especially strange to me, as honey had been used in the creation process, not maple syrup. 

We bottled it up, forming eleven potions – a good yield, given we’d only had nine beans – and then placed them along the shelf. While Kene gathered his equipment, I swung by the kludde to see how it was doing. It ha...

The Third Step: Chapter Nineteen

After quickly healing up and washing my clothes, then setting them in the pile of battle damaged clothes that I needed to learn how to repair, I met up with Kene and Meadow, who were sitting out front of the house. The moment I stepped through the door, Kene squinted at me. 

“What did you do?” 

“Nothing!” I protested. “Just… Aimed a spell poorly and ruined some pants. I’ll wash them and find somewhere to get them mended soon.”

“You should look int...

The Empire of Death: Part Two

The skull flashed red, and the mana tester dropped the quill he’d been holding. A blade flashed into his hand from nowhere, and he swung for Ignatius’ neck. 

“What happened?!” Ignatius asked, his breath coming quick and shallow. 

Rather than answer, the man whipped a blade from seemingly nowhere. While most of Ignatius’ brain panicked, a part of him wondered. The tester was a space mage? That would make sense, to store his mana samples and scrolls and the table...