eligos

Double-Blind CH110

<Nychta’s Veil: This seraphic boon shrouds the User’s presence from members of the divine. Along with a passive protection from scrying eyes, the User may use artifacts of other deities without alerting the deities themselves. Artifacts include items, consumables, and shrines of elevation. Like any divine boon, there are hidden complexities to the veil that may show themselves in time.>

So. It wasn’t a dream. After reading the text, I still wasn...

Double-Blind CH109

It was hard to pinpoint the last time I’d been this tired. I’d been running on minimal sleep for as long as I could remember. Found an equilibrium for how much I could push myself, before the overdraw became a credit that would undermine the next day.

There were always exceptions, of course. Emergencies that threw that equilibrium into flux. More often than not, the price was mental. But it had taken everything I had to drag myself out of that cursed tunnel. And thereaf...

Double-Blind CH108

<Probability Cascade: A forbidden advancement of Probability Spiral in accordance with the Allfather of Entropy. While the previous ability allowed a glimpse of true power, Probability Cascade pushes the natural limits of magic beyond regulated limits, allowing direct alteration of the strands between. Be warned. This meddling will likely be noticed by the higher planes.>

The vagueness caught my attention first. It was hardly the first time the system under-desc...

Double-Blind CH107

<01:03:56>

It was aggravating that the advancement had come so late. I was positive I’d received more than enough experience from Ebryli’s Trial to push me well into the ninth level, if not enough to eclipse it entirely. And almost ever since then I’d been in some form of conflict, dispatching enough monsters alone that it felt like I should have reached ten some time ago.

There were some theories that tracked. The reduced experience being an effort to...

Double-Blind CH106

The biggest advantage of a knife is concealment and surprise. Take those two elements away, and the prospect of fighting with one becomes far more precarious. My father told me something once, on one of those days, where he came home pale and stricken, and wanted nothing more than to sit in his chair and stare at the TV.

”In a knife fight, the loser dies in the street. The winner dies in the ambulance.”

Mantle reeled backwards, hand covering his bloodied ...

Double-Blind CH105

Golden light shined down through gray clouds. I squinted upwards, shielding my vision with a half-cupped hand. Synthesized pop blasted over a light-grey wireless speaker on the patio table, a kitschy, catchy beat perfectly engineered to be a hit before it ever hit the album. The opaque glass of the patio table caught a muted reflection of the emerging sun, blinding my vision.

There was an inescapable feeling, like I was in the middle of something critical and had been uncer...

Double-Blind CH104

My ears popped from the sudden change in pressure, the semi-sterile scent of the church mingled with burning fuel and blood. A chunk of something impacted my head and sent me reeling, stumbling backwards until I caught myself on a wall, blinking painfully through a wave of blinding dust so thick it acted like a smokescreen.

When it faded, Mantle was frozen in the center of the room. There was an oversized messenger bag on his shoulder that hadn’t been there before, filled with the l...

Double-Blind CH103

Kinsley hadn’t said anything else after my last message. In and of itself, that was surprising. She almost always had some snarky remark when my suggestions and requests were more commands than suggestions. Maybe her experience with Ellison had unsettled her. Or something else had come up.

I wanted desperately to be wrong. Ellison was family. Family had always represented an emotional blindspot for me, which made it far more difficult to rein in my preternatural tendency ...

Double-Blind CH102

For a few scant seconds, the neon hexagonal red square of a stop sign held my full attention. There was nothing significant about the sign itself. What was curious was my reaction to it. I’d squeezed my brakes tightly to avoid going over the white line, despite the many blown lights, ignored signs and signal-less lane changes I’d made on my way here.

But for some reason, just on the cusp of reaching downtown proper, my muscle memory had kicked in. Maybe it was subconscious experienc...

Double-Blind CH101

Thunk

Thunk

Thunk

Miles burst through the door of the necromancer’s lair, his eyes wild. His bow was at the ready, the glinting arrowhead reflecting the sterile lights above. He aimed at me for just a moment before he lowered the bow slightly. “Hey kid.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Had me going. Seemed like you were actually worried before you opened your mouth.”

“Calling you kid wasn’t bait, you paranoid bastard. You just… ...

Double-Blind CH100

“Kinsley. And my name is Vernon Fields. Not that it matters. In a court of law, I would have just given you motive alongside the smoking gun, and the assertion that I cannot stop my work. But there is no court of law anymore.” Vernon’s hands were shaking. He rotated away from me on the swivel chair.

Though I kept my crossbow pointed in his general direction, I removed my finger from the trigger. <Cruel Lens> marked everything he said as true. My...

Double-Blind CH99

Chapter 99

I positioned myself five feet away and held my crossbow to his head. Some part of me itched to pull the trigger. Necromancer, kidnapping and killing people by the dozen. It should have been clearcut, entirely justified. And I realized that for possibly the first time in my life, I was tired of granularity.

Focusing on the minutia, the complexity and imperfect lines that compose a person, was always how I’d managed to stop myself from doing something stupid in the pa...

Double-Blind CH98

When I returned, Miles didn’t ask any questions. That felt significant somehow. Either he was committed to his own plausible deniability, or he already knew. Normally, I’d say I was confident he hadn’t been watching me, but considering his background and skillset, it wasn’t a safe assumption.

Before we started to climb, he grabbed me by the arm. “Look. I know you’re trying to limit casualties. It’s part of why I felt comfortable signing on, considering who you...

Chapter 97

Astrid flinched backwards like she’d been punched in the gut. It was the first time I’d seen her act anything other than stoic or borderline hostile. That was good. The volatile reaction cemented the plausibility that she wasn’t doing this on purpose. I felt her eyes follow me to Astria as I bent down over the younger girl and checked her pulse.

“It’s low. Way lower than it should be.” I said. It would take too long to get the actual number, but Astria looked up at me thro...

Double-Blind CH96

A never-ending stream of profanity ran through my mind as I watched the fleeing man gain ground. He was out of the effective range for <Page’s Quickdraw> and with this distance, it was unlikely I’d hit him. If the mages could hold on for just a little longer—

I lost the trail of thought as Astria slipped, her face drifting perilously close to the road as consciousness nearly left her. Astrid, seeing her sister falter, fought harder.

Damn it. 2022-05-19 22:13:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Double-Blind CH95

There was a moment of shock as the crossbow bolt pierced Pat’s back. <Awareness> was so common, I’d half expected the shot would miss. Instead, he whirled to face me, surprise undercutting the clear pain written across his face.

“Who… are you?”

It only took a matter of seconds to rationalize what I was doing. I’d vaguely intuited that the suits might be here, but upon finding one had acted on instinct.

I fired off <Suggestion&g...