Potato Nose

Marked Chapter Twenty-Four

In my concern about the recklessness implied by an eagerness to explore the internet, I somehow managed to completely overlook that I was escorting two intellectuals and bibliophiles into a city library. Despite the lure of the unfamiliar and tantalizing internet, I lost them completely when they saw rows upon rows upon rooms in two floors of books. I manage to convince them to follow me just long enough to establish their escape route in a hallway not far from the bathroom on the ground floo...

Marked Chapter Twenty Three

"Taylor. Calm down."

"That's easy for you to say," I respond plaintively. "You don't even know the dangers you have no defense against here."

"You could enlighten me," Naxylotriam responds. 

How do I do that without flicking her ego? "I don't even know where to begin! Nobody goes around openly armed except law enforcement. It's usually pretty safe not to, even in Brockton Bay, and unless you have a license it's il...

Marked Chapter Twenty-Two

As Naxylotriam retrieves me from Eranil Thumblethumper something or other... from his teaching tent, I'm suddenly reminded that I haven't eaten since breakfast. "So... how long before I disappear?" I ask. 

"The magic used to anchor you here past your initial manifestation is still imprecisely calculated. As I said, I do not know for certain when you will depart, and it is diminutively unlikely but not impossible that you may remain here." 

...

Marked Interlude D

The sound of conversations, ware hawking, dray animals, and bustle were a sussurant backdrop to what the dig team was coming to refer to as Muckertown. It was a tongue in cheek nod to the scornful nickname 'mucker' that the orc tribes of the swamps had for archaeologists in general; the druidic traditions of the locals held no love for those who would dig up the landscape in search of history. But knowledge was a treasure more precious than gold or jewels to a well honed mind, and ...

Marked Chapter Twenty-One

By sunset I'm well and truly sick of walking. My calves feel like they're on fire, and the soles of my feet feel like they've been beaten into pudding. "Alright, seafood deluxe on the way," I say as I use Magnificent Mansion. With how Naxylotriam has been unwilling to discuss concrete details while we were traveling, I key the doorway to only the two of us as part of its initial creation. "I can have the minions of the mansion start serving immediately."

Nax doesn't immediately reply a...

Marked Chapter Twenty

I'd been peripherally aware of the fact that I'm not what anyone would think of as physically fit. Today's little march through the swamp, however, fairly well illustrated to me just how far from it I am. Even with my energy restoration ability-- and I need to think of something to call it that doesn't sound completely lame-- I struggled to keep pace with Nax, and now that we've stopped I feel ready to fall over. As she returns to her normal size, I use Summon Sustenance, filling the table wi...

Marked Chapter Nineteen

I emerge from the fetid water and wipe the runoff from my eyes. It smells terrible. My first view of the valley is a field of muddy browns with scattered greens in spiny jags that make them look not at all touchable. Thin, nasty weeds stick up from the murky water, surrounded by tiny bugs that flick the surface of the water into unsteady ripples as they go about their bug business. 

The air at the mouth of the cavern is so humid I feel like I could che...

Marked Chapter Eighteen

The feel of the cavern is different when I arrive this time; there's a buzzing sensation across my skin as I come to awareness of my surroundings. The smell of the cavern is more visceral, and intense. Moss, damp earth, damp stone, and something that brings to mind starchy roots invade my senses, and I take an unsteady step to land awkwardly and painfully on my butt. My pained cry brings a response of a scaley rasping across metal.

"Ah. There you are, Taylor." The voice i...

Marked Chapter Seventeen

The stabbing, shrieking pain in my arm has died down to a jarring throbbing that flares in time to my pulse by the time I'm back at St. Bosco's. I don't really feel the cold but I'm sort of sluggish by the time I get there, and both those factors strike me as probably not good. I knock on the door as firmly as I can with my right arm, my left still not wanting to do much of anything. It's disheartening to hear how feeble it sounds.

Still, it must have been loud enough. About ten second...

Marked: Chapter Sixteen

My nap is fitful and restless; for some unfathomable reason I don't see Naxylotriam. I nap, and wake, and nap a little longer, unable to stay asleep and unable to stay awake. I dream of tall, skinny bald men chasing me through a maze of junk, metal edges and rebar catching on my sleeves and pants legs. I don't stay asleep long enough to find out why I'm running or where I'm running to. But when I can finally keep my eyes open for longer than a few seconds, I find myself feeling marginally bet...

Marked: Interlude C

Interlude C

"Hello, Colin," a digitized voice announced, cutting into his attention. Under ordinary circumstances, Colin might have resented the interruption. This, however, was someone whose values reflected his own more than a little, something of a kindred spirit-- and who Mouse Protector insisted on referring to as his Canadian girlfriend, much to his everlasting annoyance. Thankfully, of his former Wards team, he had much less contact with Mouse Protector than Miss Militia, who at...

Marked: 15

Chapter Fifteen

I've never personally been to the junkyard before. From what I've overhead through students gossipping at other desks during Mr. Gladly's class, it's a cheap place to find parts for virtually anything mechanical if one has the time and interest. And doesn't mind wandering through a creepy maze of junk cars, piled electronics, ancient appliances, and vintage household furniture.

The walk is surprisingly pleasant; in broad daylight I find myself feeling less expos...

Back To Roots 1 (working title)

Space-time is like a crystal. I've spent a lifetime proving it; it has a flow of development, a source it springs from. It's a multilayered, multidimensional object, but the natural architecture of spacetime itself crystalized from a sort of flashpoint we once thought of as the big bang.

The mystery, of course, lay in our understanding of what dark energy was, and how it related to dark matter, as the startling answer that, in fact, they had very little to do with one another at all. ...

World on Pause

Today is the thirtieth of March. Online, I see tense, slightly anxious jokes about what may come in April, May, and further on into what many are starting to see as the Year of Disaster. It's a grim humor, a joke told with a wince, and each accompanying laugh is laced with nervousness, because it IS what it's feeling like. Humans are creatures of pattern recognition, and the pattern thus far for this year, to shamelessly butcher a collection of metaphors, has been an albatross carrying a brok...

Like There's No Tomorrow

This is an inherently terrifying article for me to write. When I came down sick almost two weeks ago, all the symptoms paraded across my mind with the current thing on everyone's minds: Coronavirus.

I learned a lot about coronaviruses. A whole family of respiratory infections including the common cold. This one is insidious. Slower. More complicated. More tenacious. So when I first caught whatever I have, I thought it was a cold, or maybe just the same seasonal allergies I get every y...

Refuge in Audacity, Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Precept Gaxter came back over, and grabbed Gretchen not particularly gently by the chin, turning her face to the right and left. "Hmf. You've been practicing here for four fortnights and haven't gotten a mark on your face?"

"I've split my lip, my brow, cuts over my cheek, bruises, bumps, and scrapes. No serious wounds." And she hadn't kept account of her injuries after the first fortnight. She'd been too tired, too stubborn, too adamant about refusing to give Aunt....

Danse Macabre 22

Chapter Twenty-two: Inopinatum Liberandum

I'm invisible before I even hit the rooftop I'm dropped over; Ordis tags tags eleven people inside forty-eight meters red within two seconds of my feet touching the concrete. There's a lot of armed men here, and alert enough to consider them hostile.

The easiest means of entry would probably be the parking garage, if I'm reading the echo and seismic mapping layout correctly. The occasional vehicles passing in the street provide plenty o...

Doubts

They creep up on you.

Noticing that I haven't posted anything directly to the Patreon in a couple months, and felt a little ashamed of myself. But then, so much has happened and I barely keep up with regular writing.

Feeling doubts creep in.

Thinking to myself, do people actually believe that I can do this? What if I'm not as good as I think I am? What if I'm filling myself? What if I end up letting down the people who believe in me?

What if I'm already letting the...

Throwback

I am an evolutionary throwback. It's not easy for me to admit this to myself; I'm proud of my mind, as it is the tool that best serves me and will stay sharp the longest as I age. But there is no permanence, and all tools dull, chip, and break in the fullness of time. And my mind is the result of billions of years, untold millions of generations of living things that have survived long enough to reproduce. I call myself a throwback because after more than four decades of life in coming to re...

In the dead of night, you hear things you don't by day. Part of it is the lack of light; you notice more of what your ears are telling you when there's nothing visual to distract you. Part of it is that caveman that lets within us, the lizard hind brain, call it whatever you like. The part that knows there are night time hunters out there. The part of our instincts that tells us that we're weak, edible, and vulnerable. The inner child fears the dark, and even the adult in is is nervous. I was ...

Danse Macabre interlude A

Warning: unpleasant ahead. Animal testing is exceedingly disturbing even relatively sanitized like this, but it's also a vital component of modern medicine. Interlude A: Soft Sell As he, Armsmaster, and the new cape waited for the inevitable filling out of electronic paperwork, Robin took the time to look around the waiting area of the Parahuman Response Teams 'Office Sixteen' building. It wasn't something he did often; weirdly enough he usually didn't have time for it in the few occasions h...

Danse Macabre: chapter 3

Chapter Three: Caveat Amicus I have one flaw above most others: I want to know more. The Lotus has scolded me over it; Ordis has expressed frustration. Simaris and Cephalon Suda have repeatedly touted it as one of my redeeming qualities but it prompts me to sometimes hesitate when I should act, to wait and watch when I should strike, or to dally and investigate when I should move on. Right now, though, I'm glad I decided against deploying to eliminate Skidmark or Squealer without giving the mat...

Danse Macabre chapter 2

Chapter Two: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes I eye the breads dubiously. "Are you sure these are actually safe to eat, Ordis?" "Analysis of the foodstuffs suggest high caloric density, along with complex proteins and simpler amino acids generated by yeasts. The caloric density is mitigated, however, by the relatively low overall density due to vacuoles in the finished 'loaves'. A small portion should be adequate to test compatibility with your digestive system." "Maybe I should j...

Chapter One: Exquirere Cognitionem

Chapter One: Exquirere Cognitionem Of everything I would have guessed to get in my way, I should have supposed that the language would be the first. "Ordis, can you decipher a thing they're saying?" Ordis's answer is anything but comforting. "I do not have enough data, Operator. From my preliminary assessments the language they're speaking has elements of a sort of proto Grineer, but it's quite far removed. I need more to work with-- and freeing up resources from the combat HUD for analysis ...

Danse Macabre: prologue

Prologue: Itinerantur Interruptus Blue and grey. Calming, relaxing colors, like the supposed tones of a storm cloud. I've seen holovids of them, in old Orokin archives extracted from some forgotten derelict overrun with Infested. I don't know how much veracity to credit those old files, though-- the Orokin were notorious for taking artistic license when depicting reality. "Ordis, time until jump?" I ask, my Loki parked in seiza at the front of the Liset attached to the front of my orbiter, w...

A Slowdown in Work

Right, so there is a medical thing in the family coming up that I need to devote attention to; I won't go into details but someone needs surgery and I will be busy in the aftermath of it. It's not a major surgery but there will be a recovery period. Expect updates to be coming slower for a month or so. That said, you are not forgotten! I'll make it up to you guys, promise!

The Creation Myth of Tyey Malaaq 2

Harken to my words, ye now, as we rest on the knuckle of Tyey Malaaq, gathered about the daughter of Her sister, Cuix. Naltova's gifts fill our skins, as O'veednyr's grace crosses our lips and cools our brows, truly, the Four have given us Their blessings. So speak we, now in Their presence, as we recall Their earliest times, in the time before there were days. For it was that Tyey Malaaq held Her sister and brothers to herself, even as Tzlodt gave His glare unto Them, and Tanmy'ey turned Her f...

A Bad Name 58

Chapter Fifty-Eight Three 5 gallon water bottles, a medium sized pot, a bag of onions, and two bags of potatoes. That's what a trio of gun toting guys took from us.  In retrospect, I'm surprised they even got away with that much water. Each bottle is forty pounds full, and unless they were closet crossfitters, the best they could expect to manage is a walk for a couple miles. We still have enough water for today and tomorrow, according to Silas, we just need to ration it. Compared to th...

A Bad Name, Ch. 57

Chapter Fifty-Seven I jerk awake, almost falling out of the bog chair I'm reclining in. Despite being essentially two pieces of flat lumber, one of which is sticking out of and through the other, it's far from uncomfortable. Looking around, I blink the sleep from my eyes with a barely suppressed yawn. Around me, with literally no input from me, people are using things they know to make life easier on everyone else. One hobby camper is teaching people how to use tinder, punk, and bird's nest t...

Off the Rails

So, occasionally my muse betrays me. I'll get an idea of the flow of events in a story, move it through interaction in the direction I plan, conversation happens, and... Then suddenly, in the flow of the writing, one of the characters does or says something that completely derails my plans. Case in point: my original idea for the camp raid was to have Spurt/Peter wake up, disrupt the guys timing then, and an unnamed member of the Curtis Brighton shelter promise to colder for him. That's what w...