elizabeth_oswald

TBK Chapter Forty

Kaz backtracked toward the den, looking for an area with evidence of recent gathering. Gatherers usually went a little further from the den each day, until the earliest patches of plants had had time to recover. Then, they started over again, working in a pattern. If Kaz could figure out where they’d been the day before, he could simply wait nearby, and they would come to him.

This was a much, much safer plan than either entering the den or following the gatherers when they left, and ...

TBK Glossary

I gave the kobolds their own words for a lot of plants and critters, so I have a little glossary of the ones we've met so far (and a few we haven't met yet). There are no real spoilers, so I thought you might like to have it! They're mostly in order of when I wrote about them, but I'll try to organize it more later, and will probably include it in the book.

Beasts

Stun moths/jiyun - the grubs are a tasty treat that make your mouth tingle slightly, but the powder on the ...

TBK Chapter Thirty-nine

Kaz ran as fast as he dared, nose twitching as he tracked the warm, sweet scent of things that didn’t belong in the cool, dank caverns and tunnels of the mountain. Someday, he would have to ask Lianhua what made those smells, and why their scent hung so heavily around her. Someday, someday… when he found her again.

The smell didn’t grow any stronger, but it wasn’t noticeably weaker, either, and he could only hope he was running the right direction. Eventually, there would be a b...

TBK Chapter Thirty-eight

Kaz crouched by a totem made of a pale gray skull whose eyesockets were filled with hundreds of tiny copper teeth. It was familiar, but he thought he’d heard of it, rather than seen it with his own eyes. He didn’t know how many tribes of kobolds there were, but they likely numbered in the hundreds, and many of them preferred using skulls and bones to make their totems.

Glancing toward Li, he shook his head. “I’m still not sure. I think… maybe this is another tribe like the Bro...

TBK Chapter Thirty-seven

They ate what they could find, and drank when they followed the sound of water to tiny pools or glittering droplets slowly falling from the ceiling. Twice, they ran into lopo, but in Kaz’s new vision, they burned with shades of yellow ki, and none of them were large enough that their hooked tongues could reach him as he circled around.

He slept, briefly but deeply, while Li remained awake, and the dragon slept as he carried her ever onward into the mountain. Though the path w...

TBK Chapter Thirty-six

Li was staring at him. Her wings were pinned tight against her sides, and her ribs protruded beneath her dull scales. She had always been slender, but now she seemed emaciated. Her eyes were deep pools of pure black, watching him as if he was a deadly predator, but also the only chance she had of survival.

Kaz’s eyes felt hot as he choked out, “Sorry. So sorry. I won’t…” He trailed off, still not sure exactly what he’d nearly done. He hadn’t physically attacked the dragon....

TBK Chapter Thirty-five

At first, it was difficult to block out everything else demanding Kaz’s attention. Each time he tried, his heart would pound, his head would throb, or his abused muscles would cramp. Surprisingly, it was when he focused again on his breathing that he was able to push the intrusive sensations away. This time, however, instead of looking outside his body, trying to sense the elusive mana, he turned in. As his lungs swelled, his core grew larger in his mental vision, and each time he released ...

TBK Chapter Thirty-four

The monster dragged Kaz down the passage, before it turned sharply, readjusted its grip on his arm, and began to slither down a slimy, narrow crevice. Jagged rocks tried to catch and pull at Kaz’s flesh, but they had no more luck than the sharp teeth that clung tenaciously to his arm.

Kaz pushed more power into the flickering golden sheath covering his arm and, more thinly, his body, struggling to maintain focus as he pulled hard on his core. Ki flowed out like thick strands of firemo...

What do you think?

I'm a good chunk of the way into The Broken Knife now (a book will be about 50 chapters) and since I'm not posting it on RoyalRoad, I need to know...

Is it good? Is it okay? Should I ditch it and do something else? Do you want to find out what happens with Kaz and Li? Would you, in fact, pay to read it and then feel that it was a good investment? (After it's edited, of course. First books in a series are always rougher.) Is it TOO rough, and you just don't really care?

Be honest (...

TBK Chapter Thirty-three

The loud ringing of a bell woke him, and he, Nadi, and even Yumi scurried to gather up the littlest pups and lead them to the eating area. Their meal was a simple bowl of cooked meat with fungus, but it was well-seasoned and filling, Kaz was even able to openly feed Li, which the dragon clearly appreciated. Yumi was amazed by how much food such a small creature could eat, and begged to feed the ‘fuergar’ a few scraps. Kaz was a little worried that she might decide she, too, neede...

TBK Chapter Thirty-two

Playing with the pups was surprisingly enjoyable. A group of them would tumble over one another, growling and snapping, right up until they all fell asleep in a pile of puppy fuzz and tiny snores. Only a few were old enough to speak more than a word or two, but they seemed to understand when he told them to stay nearby, and though they were wary of him at first, they soon included him in their games.

He was actually drowsing with a pile of pups surrounding him and Li draped in a warm, s...

TBK Chapter Thirty-one

Power flared around all the humans, startling Kaz, and he realized that he had become so used to pushing power into his eyes that he was doing it without thinking. He thought back to their meeting with the Blackbow female, and realized that he’d dimly seen her core and channels, but hadn’t even paused to consider what that meant. He shuddered as he realized that in that simple action, he could have revealed himself as bearing a core and ki, but thankfully it seemed that the female hadn’...

TBK Chapter Thirty

Behind Kaz, the humans tensed, and Kaz saw the two males in the back shift their arrows to point toward Raff. Quickly, Kaz held up a hand, hoping that would be enough to keep the humans from doing anything drastic, though he didn’t dare look around.

Lowering his chin, Kaz lowered his ears slightly and said, “I’m Kaz, of the… Longknife tribe. My chief instructed me to guide these humans to the Deep. Wejust need to get to the stairs.”

The lead Blackbow frowned, but his aim...

Can you hear me now?

Alas, I cannot. I feel like I've been giving you a lot of excuses lately, but about a week ago, I experienced something called Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss. It's only in one ear, thank goodness, but I am now completely deaf on my left side. I've been running around trying to get a diagnosis and treatment, and finally got in to see an ENT yesterday.

The good news is, I can now speak to the experience of being deaf with much more authenticity, and you can bet I'll have a character in...

TBK Chapter Twenty-Nine

Times for waking and sleeping were no longer defined by the females brightening or dimming the lights around the den, so Kaz had no idea what time it was when sounds of movement woke him. He opened his eyes to see Raff and Chi Yincang preparing a pot of something over Raff’s fire, and sat up. Something fell away from his body as he did so, and he glanced down in surprise.

At some point, someone had covered him with the piece of fabric Lianhua had been using to stay warm. Lying on the ...

TBK Chapter Twenty-eight

The passages were strangely silent as Kaz passed, without the chittering, scratching sounds produced by the things that lurked just outside the light. He grabbed a few more handfuls of lichen on the way, refilling his pack a bit, then stopped just around the last bend before the cavern where he’d left the humans.

Crouching, he wrapped his knife back in the dirty leather bundle with the broken blade, then took out a bit more of the firemoss, placing it on the ground. He repeated the pr...

TBK Chapter Twenty-seven

Kaz leaped backward just as the owner of the green eyes lunged forward, revealing the largest fuergar Kaz had ever seen. Like the lopo, this beast was larger than Kaz would have thought it could possibly grow. Its body was as long as his, with a tail that doubled that length. Its protruding incisors were copper mixed with the deep gray of iron, as was its fur, and Kaz knew from experience that iron fuergar were among the most difficult to beat. Their iron-sheathed b...

TBK Chapter Twenty-six

The deeper darkness turned out to be a tunnel, and Kaz had only traveled a short way down it when he found a totem. It was old, but in the dim light of his ki orb, he could tell it was made from the rocky skin of a lopo, dried and stretched over three bones bound together in the shape of a triangle. Two rows of yellowed fangs were sewn on it with thread made of preserved intestines.

Kaz didn’t recognize the totem, but he doubted it mattered. The tribe that made it was probabl...

TBK Chapter Twenty-five

Cleansing a wound of the lopo’s paralytic was no rapid process, and with the humans lying still and silent, Kaz soon found himself sinking toward sleep. He was exhausted after the long climb and the terror of the battle with the lopo, and his eyes drifted closed.

Within the darkness of his mind, the light rune flared again, swimming and swirling, until a few of its threads came loose and it turned into the rune Lianhua had told him represented ‘silence’. Dimly, h...

TBK Chapter Twenty-four

Kaz drew his hand along the right-hand wall, making sure he stayed close to the edge of the cave, and wouldn’t wander into range of the monster lopo. As soon as the last vestiges of light cast by Lianhua’s orb and Raff’s rune stone were too far away to help him see, he stopped, once again envisioning the light rune. He made sure to add the little swoop at the end, and then carefully filled it with ki, until the dim, flickering radiance surrounded him again.

Once he was ce...

TBK Chapter Twenty-three

Kaz’s light was a small, flickering thing. It looked like a flame, rather than the pure, clear light of both Gaoda and Lianhua’s ki. Still, it was enough. He could see his hands, and the craggy slope down which he crawled. The sounds coming from below didn’t sound quite so ominous, and he no longer felt like something lurked in the darkness, waiting.

Drawing in a deep breath, Kaz pushed himself away from the rock, resuming his movement downwards. Without Lianhua’s comforting pre...

Family emergency and writing thoughts

We just found out that my father-in-law is in the hospital. He has several issues, but is stable, but I wasn't able to write today since we went to see him and make sure everyone is okay, and see what we could do to help.

Also, I'm heading to Seattle on Friday to attend All Bethel Day, where I'm actually going to be featured (with signs and everything!) so I probably won't have a chapter that day, either.

So, here's an interesting writing thing that I actually didn't run into near...

TBK Chapter Twenty-two

Lianhua smiled brightly, hurrying forward. “Kaz was just telling me a little more about these lopo. It sounds like you and Chi Yincang shouldn’t have any problem with them.”

Gaoda’s expression cleared, and his chest puffed out. “Of course not. They’re just low-grade beasts. We’ll go down first, and clear them out before you even get there.”

Lianhua hesitated. “Are you certain, Gaoda? It seems wiser to-”

Gaoda waved away her concern. “Don’t wo...

TBK Chapter Twenty-one

Sleep was hard to come by that night. Kaz was tired, but his mind was filled with thoughts of dragons and rings, while his nose was filled with the scent of hundreds of strange kobolds. Every time his eyes would drift closed, a smell or sound would reach him, and he would start awake again. He didn’t know when he finally fell asleep, but it was long after the den had grown silent, and most of the females had allowed their lights to go out.

He woke to the scent of food being cooked, an...

TBK Chapter Twenty

Cleanup would take days, even with every available member of the tribe working at it, but explanations took far less time. Once Gaoda handed Ren’s note to the exhausted but triumphant Lignan, the chief easily extended them an invitation to rest in the Graybelly den. She also sent runners back up the stairs to let Ren know matters had been resolved, but that she would need to send warriors to let the Ironclaw non-combatants know their tribe had been defeated.

After that, Lignan, Kaz’...

TBK Chapter Nineteen

“What in the hells is going on?” Raff demanded, staring after them.

Everyone turned to look at Kaz, and he shook his head, snapping his jaw closed when he realized it was hanging open. “Idil must have declared vara on the Graybelly tribe. She used the rockfall to separate their leader from the majority of her forces, and now she’s going to kill Lignan. If she succeeds, she can take at least the two lower levels from the Graybellys, and use the captured resources to laun...

TBK Chapter Eighteen

Idil had guards roaming the passageways, and this alone told Kaz she was ready for battle. Generally, warriors guarded the den, the chief, the gatherers, and the most direct passages to the center of a tribe’s territory. Only when they believed there was an imminent risk of attack would warriors be sent out to simply wander, looking for any sign of invaders.

Unfortunately, the humans made far more noise than the defenders, so it didn’t take long for them to walk directly into a grou...

TBK Chapter Seventeen

As the party followed Ogden off the platform, two guards stepped up. One was even taller than Kaz, and they each wore a gray leather breastplate. The leather was made from the skin of a yanchong, a long, boneless creature whose slime could melt almost anything. When the skin was shaped and cleaned through a process known only to the Graybellys, it became armor almost as hard as stone. In no small part, it was this armor which had allowed the Graybellys to rise to power.

Ogden c...

TBK Chapter Sixteen

Once everyone had eaten - and Kaz stuffed half of his portion into his pack for ‘later’ - they all walked the short distance further to the passage that would take them down. They saw a few more totems, but they weren’t particularly large or threatening, so Kaz just led the group around the indicated territory.

When they had almost reached the cavern, Kaz dropped back a bit, allowing Raff and Gaoda to pass him, and waited for their reactions. He wasn’t disappointed.

Both h...

Freebie weekend!

With all the cons and summer madness, I have seriously dropped the ball on my social media and promos. I'm offering Clearing for free this weekend. If you have any friends who haven't yet been introduced to Veritas Online, this would be a great time! Sale goes live tomorrow (Friday) through Sunday on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Clearing-Legend...