Electra Rose

Swordpoint Diplomacy ch 9

CHAPTER 9

Camp flew by in a blur of smoke and lights. The warm night air was full of laughter and the tantalizing scents of the dinner that he’d been interrupted before eating. It seemed like a different lifetime that he had sat down to an uneventful dinner. The people he ran past didn’t know yet to be afraid. Kian caught the white of someone’s eyes as they turned to see him pass. He was in good enough shape that all he felt so far was his breath coming harder. He could keep this ...

WAP CH8

The sun was beating down on her neck. Hana felt sweat begin to trail down from her hairline onto her brows. She grimaced and heaved her weight into her work again. Her arms were shaking with the strain of grinding.

"Good morning," called out a cheerful, male, and unfamiliar voice.

She flinched and looked up with wide eyes. How-

A young man was standing far too close for comfort. She stared up at his grin, confident and calm despite his status as an intruder in her villag...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8

Rose ran a hand down her braid and frowned at the empty paddock. She'd lost her good mood as she ran around unsuccessfully looking for one man in a military camp of hundreds.

'Looks like there's no page training today, and he's not near the officers' area. Is it meal time? Maybe he's in the mess.'

She padded through camp, avoiding eye contact and giving bland smiles to anyone who looked at her directly. She was thrumming with energy but she forced herse...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY CH 7

Rose stomped through camp with an extremely sour attitude after she parted from Kian. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she had been the one to behave badly.

Technically, he hadn’t done anything wrong by answering her questions. She had to admit that to herself. And there was nothing wrong with having clever subordinates. The fact that he understood the shape of her thoughts probably meant she wasn’t imagining a connection to him. She’d liked him from the instant she’d seen...

WAP Mayumi Excerpt

Mayumi gripped the tree trunk. Her fingers dug into the rough bark.

The priestess was walking slowly down the path. Her dark eyes were fixed ahead at the cloud of dust heralding men on horseback.

'She looks the part,' Mayumi thought regretfully. 'It's going to be a shame to watch her die.'

The lack of urgency in Aiko-sama's body language made Mayumi feel even more anxious. She gnashed her teeth. She hated this, she hated watching.

Movement in the left...

Vote for what you wanna read tomorrow

Hi, I have life whiplash. Left my job, sold my car, and moved out of my apartment in 48 hours. Please clap now.

This will probably translate to an update tomorrow of at least two things. I'm editing the next Swordpoint Diplomacy so that's locked down, but would you rather have a Wolf Moon update or an outtake from Mayumi's perspective in WAP?

WAP Chap. 7

There was really only one option, and she was fast enough to take it. Dirt swirled around from the force of how fast she'd moved to be in front of Tanjiro. Aiko smiled directly into the child's face, hands cupped on both sides of his cheeks to block his peripheral vision. Even on her knees, her body was big enough to block him fully.

Thud.

The force shook her chest and made her jolt forward. A rain of blood plinked down in a staccato behind her. Her expression didn't chan...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY CHP. 6

"You don't have to come," she said. The words came out raspy. The effort to talk her advisors through a potential frontal assault on the gate had taxed her voice. Rose cleared her throat. She didn't look over at Kian. She knew he would still be waiting in a neat "at rest" position while she redid her hair and changed around her traveling kit. "Lord Harrod rather volunteered you."

"He is, as you say, my Lord." Kian sounded perfectly composed. "I would be remiss to disobey."

She hum...

You may have noticed writing frequency going up and posting becoming more regular

That's because for some reason I'm way less depressed now. (I'm leaving my job, the reason isn't very mysterious)

However I am extremely busy moving house so I'm personally very pleased with myself for all the writing I'm doing.

I'm aiming to post original fiction on most Mondays (4 times per month), and update either/both Wolf Moon or WAP 2-3 timesish per month. 

Thanks for being here, I hope you like the increase in regularity. And if you wanna help with that I love c...

WAP CH 6

CHAPTER 6

That week, she started her school. Aiko began gathering the children too young to work and teaching them hiragana in the mornings. Their minders were obviously interested as well.

She started holding classes in the evenings for adults. One night a week was open for anyone to learn the first syllabary. Two nights were reserved for Hana, Fumiko, and Shinji. She needed someone to staff the clinic and teach eventually.

It felt a little wrong to assign them a career pat...

Chapter 5 SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY

CHAPTER 5

She swept in, trusting that he would be at her heels. She gestured at a chair across the table as she sat.

He sat without any hesitation, as if it was normal for him to be in a princess's personal tent.

Her lips quirked up. "I'd offer refreshments, but it's hardly tea time."

"As you say, princess." He looked directly at her, with no apparent interest in the surroundings. The cheekiness was gone from his expression. He looked as blank and profe...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY 4

CHAPTER 4

There were three prisoners to question, but only two made it until morning. Rose waited at the command tent with freshly washed hair and tired, resentful eyes.

"Celestin," she greeted, the second he entered the tent.

He gave her a cursory bow. "Princess," he rasped. "Forgive the delay."

"I understand," she said, wishing that polite society involved less apologizing. She wasn't interested in rushing his work, especially because she knew she didn't understand h...

WAP CH 5

CHAPTER 5


It took a few days to tiptoe towards making something that might put her village on the map as a religious site of importance. While her little flock was doing their regular seasonal work, Aiko put up another building to serve as a clinic, and then one for a school. She gradually outfitted them both with the materials that she could manage. When no one was looking, she dug out a hole to make a lake. It would look nice, but it would also be a source of water to use in sani...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY ch3

In the morning, scouts managed to track the blood and other signs. Whoever she'd hit had basically dragged themselves a truly impressive distance before signs disappeared.

At a guess, Rose would say that her injured friend had met up with an accomplice who had slowed the bleeding and carried them to safety.

'They're probably alive,' Rose thought, despite all the blood. 'Whoever that is, they're more like me than the average person. Just the fact that they could see well enough in ...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY CHAPTER 2

She moved. There was no conscious thought involved, only her desire to survive and the heightened instincts that her family was known for. The assassin adjusted quickly, lunging around her cot. Light glinted off a strange, short blade.

Rose rolled under the cot. In the same motion, she grabbed the sword that had been left by the side of her cot. She danced backwards, buying time to pull the blade out of the hilt. She let the hilt fall, since it wouldn't serve as any kind of shi...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY CH 1

They began encircling the city the next day. By her calculations, they did have enough soldiers to do it, but it was a close thing. The tactic spread her army thinner than she wanted, but there was no way around that. This was one of the largest walled cities on the continent.

The biggest saving grace was that it had no access to the sea for resupplying and movement. Rose wasn't optimistic enough to think that the city had no secret tunnels for resupply. If she was lucky, they'd be too ...

WAP chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

"Woodworking or stone carving?" Ichirou the bald sucked in a deep breath. "No, I don't know of anyone with those skills. I could give carving a try, if you like…" He trailed off uncertainly.

Aiko gave him a smile. "I would appreciate that." She smoothed down the front of her red miko pants. "I was hoping to visit neighboring villages and offer them talismans, perhaps to confirm that they do not struggle unduly."

The middle-aged man gave her a look that sa...

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY PROLOGUE

SWORDPOINT DIPLOMACY  PROLOGUE


The twins took their first hard look at war from a flowering hilltop.

"It seems cruel," Etienne said in an undertone. In his discomfort he shifted, lowering his head. The sunlight glinted as it caught on the distinctive golden hair that their family was known for. "And it'll take a long time. There's no other way to do this?"

Rose grabbed his bicep and pulled him away. She didn't realize her intuition was screaming at her until aft...

WAP Chapter 3

She rested that afternoon, idly dragging her fingers through the plush fibers of a rug that Orochimaru had once purchased for his bedroom. Aiko was lying on her back with her arms sprawled above her head. She straightened her arms and stretched, feeling it lengthen her back.

Her ankle was totally fine by that point. The bigger concern was bloodstains. She'd stripped out of that set of clothing and had set it to soak in two separate buckets.

"The Daimyo is probably not going to be ...

WAP Chapter 2

The first test of Aiko's self-assigned status as the protector of a tiny mountain village came in the form of hoofbeats.

She held a hand to shade her eyes as she came out of her shrine to see the visitor. A heavily armored man alighted from his horse and looked around before heading to the village community center. He walked with one hand on his sword hilt and the other guiding his horse.

Aiko followed, frowning slightly.

'A samurai? Why is he here?'

From the ...

AIC Warring And Peacetime (hereby referred to as WAP)

Ok I got sick of trying to write the practical things that are glue for a story and I am just skipping to the good parts, the fun parts I have been wanting to write. I remembered that AIC was never supposed to be a big serious story with serious expectations of coherency and I have actually found the serotonin I was looking for. I hope you like it.

Chapter 1

Madara first heard about the woman who would ruin his life from his terrible little brother, of ...

A Note

Thank you for your patronage and patience, we truly appreciate it. The Lilliad will be continually updated until the book (and yeah, it's already over 200,000 words long, why did I do this to myself) is finished. AIC is in process, the draft chapters will be updated within the next few days with the final chapters. At some point those will all be edited as a whole and released as a more final version, in what I, Maehem (Miko in Discord), hope will be a format that's easier for reading such a ...

Lilliad Chapter 42 (draft)

Lorit clenched his teeth and braced himself. The sickly feeling from before was rising in his belly, and ringing in his ears.

The bundle began to shake and unfold on the ground, quickly gaining mass and muchness that a simple cloth bundle should never have possessed.

Lorit felt sick to his stomach. He’d brought this monster in. It couldn’t have gotten in without him. And if this necromancer did get hold of the body of a god, he would have doomed countless people to the fates o...

Lilliad Chapter 40 (draft)

Lilli felt, all things considered, that this was going pretty well so far. Elathor had not in fact been murdered, no one had noticed that she was just as much of a thief as they were, and most importantly- she didn’t have to go up the creepy death mountain again.

The crunch of old bones underneath her feet somewhat undercut her relief, however.

As dangerous and odd as the Sorceress Mairi was, she was right to accuse the ruins of having “bad vibes”. The plague that had ravage...

AIC preview

The spectral wolf stopped at a giant stone, larger than even Aiko could ever hope to move. She glanced between the guide and the dead end, brow furrowed.

“This is the entrance to the land of the dead,” the wolf said. He shook out his coat and lifted a paw at the rock. “I cannot enter. You can. A guide will meet you on the other side.” Then the wolf sat down on his haunches, watching her with glittering yellow eyes.

“A result of your connection with Death, perhaps?”...