elizabeth_oswald

An oops and a day 'off'

First, I just realized that I've been mixing up the Stoneborn and the Bronzearms for the last several chapters. The Stoneborn are the tribe Kaz was with when the woshi grabbed him. The Bronzearms are the tribe that came up from the Deep and drove out the Stoneborn. There are too many kobolds in my book about kobolds.

Also, Chapter Fifty-two is the last chapter in what I'm thinking of as 'book one'. Now, this won't matter to anyone but me until it comes time to publish, but yay ...

TBK Chapter Fifty-two

Kaz woke to the sound of a loud chime, echoing through the den. He sat up and stretched, feeling surprisingly well-rested. Li, who had moved to his side at some point during the night, nearly tumbled off, but managed to catch herself by tooth and claw before clambering up to his shoulder and hissing into his ear.

Raff groaned, then reached up to pull his sleeping pad up around his ears, muttering, “To Pellis’ pits with Gaoda and his ‘baijiu’. Next time, I’m pouring it out, and...

TBK Chapter Fifty-one

A human was leaning over a table. He wore a plain black robe with worn sleeves, and his pure white hair and beard were so long that they trailed down over the chair and table in front of him. A scroll lay stretched out on the table, overflowing the edges, a thickly piled section coming to rest against one stone wall, while the other end vanished beneath the table. He held something like Lianhua’s ‘pen’, and ink stained his fingers and the side of his hand as he wrote. There were blotche...

TBK Chapter Fifty

Kaz decided to focus on the smaller, shorter shards first. They should be the safest ones to pull out, and with Li’s help, he could take his time to recover after each sliver. Once he was ready to try again, he first had Li release her grip on the mana shell, making sure that the damage wasn’t getting any worse. So long as he didn’t try to force his core to produce more mana, but only used the natural flow, everything seemed to stabilize again, so he proceeded.

It only took a doze...

TBK Chapter Forty-nine

As soon as Kaz entered the dim interior of the hut, his shoulders slumped. The last time he slept was before he entered the Copperstriker den, and since then he’d battled a horde of monsters, watched what amounted to an execution, and had a chief declare her intention to take him as mate. It was far too much for a single day to hold comfortably, and it wasn’t over yet.

Kaz saw that Raff’s bedding was laid out in the center of the hut, but that was fine. The human was much larger t...

Chapter Forty-eight

Washing with warm water was a novelty to Kaz, and he surreptitiously watched the females as they pushed ki into the water to heat it. Some of them were better at it than others, and he noticed that the ones with more orange ki didn’t look as tired afterwards. Was the orange related to heat or fire, then? There was usually a great deal of black ki in and around water. Did that mean black was related to the water itself somehow? What did blue, white, and yellow represent, then?

As Lianh...

Little delay

I will have a chapter today, but my kiddo is home sick, so I won't be releasing TBK on RoyalRoad yet. I'm reading through the earlier chapters, and there are some inconsistencies with the later story (not surprisingly). I totally forgot I gave Lianhua healing magic in the beginning! 

Anyway, I was going to write a quick(ish) chapter today, and then work on editing, but I need to take care of the munchkin instead, so I won't have enough chapters ready to go. I plan to do fi...

Collections?

Patreon recently started something called collections, which allows me to put posts in different groups. I haven't gone back and done all the books, but all of TBK is in the Broken Knife collection. I'm hoping this will make it easier for you to find them, since unfortunately Patreon isn't really set up for reading books.  If anyone wants to check it out and let me know if this is helpful to you, I'd appreciate it!

TBK Chapter Forty-seven

Despite the ‘feast’, the mood in the Copperstriker den was far from festive. The bodies of two males lay in caves nearby, already wrapped in jejing as they awaited burning. A single female who had fought on Litz’s side had also succumbed, and she would lie in her hut for the required three days, as a pile of jejing and firemoss smoked nearby , so mourners could come to say their goodbyes. No one but her mate and pups would visit, of course, for fear that Pilla would ju...

TBK Chapter Forty-six

Only six of the rebels remained, surrounded by Pilla’s most loyal kobolds. Five were females, including Litz, and the sixth was Golik, who sat, slumped against a wall, unable even to kneel. All six were injured, and Kaz could tell that three of the females probably wouldn’t recover on their own, while two others had cores that blazed bright enough to rival Pilla’s. The badly wounded ones would serve as an example without costing the tribe anything, while the others were too powerful and...

TBK Chapter Forty-five

The first order of business was getting Pilla back to the den. She had managed to pull the zhiwu jaws from her leg, but her long fur was matted with blood, and her body shook with tremors every few minutes. Still, she insisted on walking, and Lianhua refused to leave her behind, which meant they all had to make their way through the tunnels at Pilla’s limping speed.

The first sign of trouble came a short distance from the den, when Kaz’s sensitive ears picked up the distinc...

Cover for The Broken Knife

A new release requires a new cover, so I spent (as usual) way too long making one. Hopefully, you like it! I plan to start releasing on Friday, hoping to pick up some people over the weekend.

TBK Chapter Forty-four

Kaz wasn’t really worried about the humans, not even Lianhua. Bites and blows from barbed legs alike skid from the male’s skin, leaving only red marks or shallow scratches. Lianhua was reinforcing her own skin, and her shell was actually more effective in protecting her, for at least as long as her ki lasted. Pilla’s shield, on the other hand, had already been reduced to an arc in front of her, rather than a complete dome protecting her on all sides. Only someone who could see the power...

Chapter Forty-three

When Kaz ducked out of the hut, he had to blink against the blaze of light. Unlike the gentle radiance of Lianhua’s orb, and the orange glow that kobolds used to light their dens, Gaoda’s ki light was a brilliant, burning fire. Either it was brighter than it had been before, or Kaz now saw it differently, because he was utterly unable to look directly at it or Gaoda.

Which explained why it took him so long to realize what the human male had just pulled from the pouch at his waist. I...

TBK Chapter Forty-two

Apparently, Gaoda and Raff were bored enough that they decided to go hunting, leaving Chi Yincang to protect Lianhua in the den. They were supposed to return sometime before dinner, but in the meantime, Kaz and Lianhua had some relatively private time during which to speak.

“You were right. The stairs were all so close together that it was a simple matter to hire a local kobold to show us the way.” Lianhua told him, settling back on a fluffy thing she called a ‘pillow’ as she si...

TBK Chapter Forty-one

Kaz went in howling. He returned to the den, found the main entrance, and waited until a large group of gatherers was going in, then ran after them, baying and barking as loudly as he could. On his shoulder, Li let out tiny, hissing roars that translated to squeaks somewhere between his brain and his ears.

The two guards at the den entrance, and the two watching over the returning pups all turned toward him, drawing their weapons, and Kaz thinned the ki keeping his channels intact, lett...