Curselock is going on a break for the time being. Thanks for all of the support and time you all have invested in me, it really means a lot.
I have recently signed a ghost writing agreement for an undisclosed litrpg trilogy, and, unfortunately, that will take up most of my time.
I also have recently signed a contract with Aethon Publishing for my new World Walker Park serial (which is already being uploaded here, though I have a backlog of chapters to upload. 78k/120k)
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2024-03-22 03:54:56 +0000 UTC
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Soaring through the wide, open sky, Zeke found his target after nearly two days of nonstop flying. If there was one good thing about being a summoned creature, having your summoner as an energy source was it. As long as Leland was healthy, so was Zeke. Finalizing his descent, he allowed the air to lift him gently down, his wings ruffling along with the wind.
Attached to his leg dangled a rolled piece of parchment, one that Leland had carefully written and tied to Zeke. And while the cro...
2024-03-14 18:10:47 +0000 UTC
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After his nap and long after the sun had set, Leland stepped out of the igloo-cave and spread his wings. He had explained to his friends what he was going to do, and after telling them he was doing it alone, one particular friend felt the need to ignore his desire for privacy.
“I really don’t need you here for this,” he muttered, knowing Isobel could hear him.
She was a dozen or so yards away, her dragonfly wings flighting to keep up with him speeding through the da...
2024-03-12 18:29:20 +0000 UTC
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Leland pursed his lips and looked off to the side, hoping the gesture would make Captain Curtain stop staring at him. It was the age-old notion of “if I can’t see him, he can’t see me.”
This, of course, didn’t work.
“What happened to Seer?”
Shifting his gaze to his friends, Leland knew he had to take charge. “I… killed him?”
“Is that a question?” Curtain asked, his entire body stiff like a board.
He sat behind his desk, a few band...
2024-03-11 06:18:09 +0000 UTC
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Jude’s heart triumphantly thumped, a heat unlike any other warming his frozen skin. With Floe’s blessing frosting his armor, the blood of his enemies had become additional weapons. Spikes of frozen red jutted from his bone and metal armor, each as sharp as his axe and far more pointy.
With unyielding confidence, he whipped across the battlefield, a restless spirit of war within his bones. Each breath he drew was one more monster dead, each rallying war cry, another dead Witch. The o...
2024-03-08 19:00:06 +0000 UTC
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“So it’s like fire-slime?”
Elin blinked a few times. “I guess…”
“That’s kind of cool, actually.”
She looked at Leland. “You made a pillar of purple fire that reached the clouds—”
“It went further than the clouds,” Gelo added helpfully, frost forming a few inches in front of her snout. With a flash of teal and a blistering cold swirl of wind, she let out a rousing growl, firing off her magic.
All eyes of those standing on the battlement...
2024-03-07 06:20:07 +0000 UTC
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“So what was that?” Glenny asked, stepping up beside his friend and eyeing the added thickness of his grimoire.
“That, my friend,” Leland began, “was ether – what Walker talked about.”
“Purplefiresoulsuckingheart?” Jude asked, combining all descriptors of Circle of Souls.
“Nope. Just ether-powered Circle of Souls.” Leland watched the last purple wisps of flame dancing around in the sky disappear. “So, I guess you two and Gelo better get to le...
2024-03-05 19:55:32 +0000 UTC
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Leland’s head flicked over. “What?” he screeched, a hole clamping within his stomach.
Lodestar didn’t answer.
With a growl, Leland’s hands rocketed toward the parasite, grabbing the cold white metal halo. Uncaring of the searing pain across his palms, he shoved Lodestar into Gelo’s wall of ice. Cracks split from the impact, an unholy quake radiating.
“Don’t do that,” Lodestar said with more than a hint of bite, a clawing wake pulsing from where his pure dar...
2024-03-03 07:43:02 +0000 UTC
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“I think I missed something,” Elin announced, cutting the silence.
The group – Team Fluffy Bear – and Elin were sitting before the red, crackling hole in reality, feeling the breeze of another world against their skin. Here, in their world, the temperature was nice. Despite the sand, the sun had yet to make the place into a proper desert. Rain clouds hung overhead, dotting the landscape with plenty of shadows.
“Missed what?” Glenny asked, pulling his head up from the o...
2024-03-01 07:14:52 +0000 UTC
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The sounds around Leland drained away until only he and his breathing remained.
In – air filled his lungs, drawing his chest out like a balloon. He held it, cycling mana and lifeforce around his body like he had done so many times. In fact, mana cycling had been one of the first things his parents taught him way back when.
Even back then, before becoming a Legacy, he was studying to be a mage. Manaless, powerless, just a kid with a textbook and a couple of eage...
2024-02-29 03:28:18 +0000 UTC
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Captain Curtain was a very unremarkable looking man. With hair that pulled back across his skull and not a single scar across his face, the man walked and talked like a stressed out father more than a Captain of the army. When he spoke he made little gestures with his arms, and when he studied someone he squinted a little.
But despite all of this, Curtain stood straight and tall. When people tried to push him, he pushed right back. His codename, which most people thought simply referenc...
2024-02-27 07:29:49 +0000 UTC
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“And?”
“And nothing, I haven’t done it yet.”
Isobel incredulously stared at Leland, the boy who possessed two key parts of understanding Archons and traversing past memories. Back in the Valley, an Archon had said something to him, something in a language no one understood, wearing a face that perfectly copied Sybil’s.
“Why haven’t you done it yet?” she asked, the question somehow needing to be asked.
“Because,” Leland droned, as...
2024-02-25 05:19:16 +0000 UTC
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“Elin.”
The woman jumped at Isobel’s voice, freezing like a statue made of ice, her hand stretched out with two gold coins slipped between her fingers. A beat passed, and she quickly curled her hand back, palming the coins as if they were never truly there. Mouthing “run,” to the merchant, Elin briefly glanced at the man’s naked upper lip. Something had changed… she just wasn’t sure what…
The man looked between the woman he was selling to and the woman a...
2024-02-23 06:15:04 +0000 UTC
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The group – including Isobel – sat around a table at an outside tavern situated within the bastion. While Jude quietly plucked at his guitar’s strings, everyone ate salty snacks and drank overpriced mead.
“One thing is for certain,” muttered Isobel, “drinking in the sun sucks.”
Leland looked around their surroundings, finding most, if not everyone, constantly brushing sand off the tables or removing layers of armor. It wasn’t hot, but sitting in the sun we...
2024-02-21 02:52:19 +0000 UTC
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Leland and Isobel exited the Captain’s quarters. Both looked at each other, shrugged, then left the administration building.
“I expected… more,” Leland muttered. “Captain Tar tested us. But he just let us in?”
“It’s the Witches and monsters. For whatever reason, they keep coming. Guards, adventurers, even soldiers in the reserves are volunteering to come out here and fight.”
“I just don’t get it. Even if the Witches win and take control of the ...
2024-02-20 19:19:53 +0000 UTC
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Isobel slipped out of the shadows, stepping across the Captain's quarters like a cat stalking along the edge of a riverbank. But instead of hunting for fish, Isobel was hunting for paper. Reports, to be specific. The kind the Captain liked to try and keep hidden from her. The kind she specifically told him she’d see one way or another.
With a rough punch to the locked drawer in his desk, she ripped the whole drawer out, sending papers flying. This wasn’t her first time doin...
2024-02-19 06:46:50 +0000 UTC
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Mason woke to a blue sky with drifting clouds. He groaned a bit, stretching his legs in that special way that made his spine shiver and his brain melt. He smiled, smacking his lips. He loved the sun on his face, the wind in his hair, the soft bed he laid on. Releasing breath after breath, he contemplated his life up to this point.
A soldier from the age he could join the military, a Legacy of the Garrison since he was nineteen. It wasn’t the most glamorous role, but he thrived well en...
2024-02-17 22:35:38 +0000 UTC
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With a grand total of eleven days traveled from Sand Castle, the boys and Gelo made it to the start of the second Tear. Instead of the Tear perfectly splitting a forest as if a Lord had placed it between trees, this Tear divided a mountain range. To the east, the peak of a mountain sat isolated, its connected range now a black desert away.
Unlike the first Tear they visited, this one was heavily populated.
From the journey, the boys and Gelo learned of trading routes spli...
2024-02-16 07:04:42 +0000 UTC
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For Leland and Jude, traveling had become much more fun. For Glenny and Gelo, not so much.
Having a friend to fly with, Leland felt reminiscent of his time traveling home with Isobel. Back then, the pair flew mainly to dodge wanted posters and anyone looking to bring in their bounty. Getting home faster was a plus, but one outweighed by safety and the nagging sense that someone was following them.
And while that would never ruin the fun of flying, now it was even mo...
2024-02-15 06:32:27 +0000 UTC
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Leland found himself sitting on the wagon with Jude and Gelo. He blinked a few times, reacclimating to the brightness of the sun.
“Where’s Glenny?” he asked.
Jude opened his mouth to answer, but a voice beat him to it.
“Here,” Glenny said, appearing beside them.
The others flinched, Jude staring at his friend with his lips pursed. “How long have you been there?”
“Since we got on?”
“That was hours ago!”
“And I’ve been here the...
2024-02-12 19:38:59 +0000 UTC
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The rhythmic bumps of a wagon on a dirt road went completely ignored as Leland focused internally. With his eyes draped in the telltale signs of magic – a side effect of powerful spells or cantrips – memories were forged and replayed. Walker had stated that looking at one’s core-Heart properly required an eye technique. But Leland didn’t have one nor knew how to train in one, though he figured his memory cantrip worked well enough.
Collecting dust and shoving it into the hol...
2024-02-11 07:51:08 +0000 UTC
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Walker came to while everyone was eating dinner. The boys and Gelo were sitting outside Sand Castle, Captain Tar not allowing them to enter. Though, she did force Bulldog to drop off an extra cot for the sleeping immortal. Bulldog did not stick around to meet him, however, instantly dashing back to the safety of the fort as soon as Leland waved her off.
Before Walker could so much as ask where he was, a plate of moist brisket and baked beans was thrust into his hands, a mug of mead was ...
2024-02-09 19:42:22 +0000 UTC
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“What do you mean?” the man asked.
Leland scratched the back of his head. “My Lord deals with curses.”
“I see. You are a… noble?”
“Not quite.”
“Ah. Then you are a steward?”
“No…? I think there may be some miscommunication here. The patron of my power deals with curses. She’s more godly than nobility.”
Now it was the man’s turn to look perplexed. “Your power derives from more powerful beings? Are they immortal?”
“M...
2024-02-08 07:11:06 +0000 UTC
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The air around the Tear was filamented with sparks of red. Like an isolated thunderstorm, the Tear made way for rolling layers of preserved depth. Look at it one way, and your sight continued across the horizon. Look at it in another, and the world stretched for eternity.
The boys and Gelo stood a safe distance away, eying the redness.
“I don’t like it,” Leland said quietly, as if the Tear could hear him. “Feels strange.”
Jude was making a face at the sky of the ne...
2024-02-05 22:25:58 +0000 UTC
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“Report, Vagrant Warden,” Captain Tar demanded upon her arrival.
Everyone was standing within the battlefield, the severed leg of the parasite lying beside them like an ottoman in a sitting room. Knight Giant was waving at his summoned creation, the amalgamated flesh creation dissolving from the movement. Knight Grain, meanwhile, was repairing the damage to Sand Castle while trying not to look at Leland.
Everyone had seen it, the parasite punching him with enough force that hi...
2024-02-03 19:59:21 +0000 UTC
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Fueled by the Lord of Chameleon’s contract, Leland’s sight enhanced. The rising sun muted in color, the dark sand deepened to near pitch black. In the distance, the trees and life brought on a white tinge, but he hardly cared about any of that. Instead, he trusted in the contract to show him the way.
And it did. He found her.
Sprinting through the sand, a dark dust cloud formed behind her. She moved across the flat landscape in mere minutes compared to the hours it to...
2024-02-02 04:40:23 +0000 UTC
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Asleep, Leland moved through his dreams like a gnat through jelly. With a singular goal in mind, he pushed and pulled, shimmied and twisted, any and everything to make the pieces fit. To him, they appeared like droplets around the brim of a mug. Small, almost insignificant, pieces of a whole. He named these pieces dust.
The dust hovered around that presence he found in his soul. The presence was empty, and what better thing to fill it with than dust, he questi...
2024-02-01 05:48:23 +0000 UTC
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The Captain strolled down the stairs, Zeke on her shoulder. At her presence, the grunt triplets and Brigadier Dis hopped to attention. They stood stiff, like stone walls, until the Captain signaled to cut it out. Everyone relaxed, going back to whatever it was they were doing.
It was then Jude, Glenny, and Leland stood from their seats. Gelo was sniffing at a stained cooking pot, her snout crumpled like a shriveled apple.
“I’m Captain Tar.”
“Jude.”
“Glenny....
2024-01-30 21:50:52 +0000 UTC
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“Sand Castle” was just as small on the inside as the outside. Leland was hoping for some space magic shenanigans, maybe a spell that made the inside of something bigger than the outside. But there was no such luck. If such a spell existed, he supposed it would be under a highly specialized Legacy. Though he couldn’t help but look at Gelo when he thought this.
Maybe he should make a suggestion for the Legacy of Dungeons. But that was for later. Right now, he had hands to s...
2024-01-29 06:10:26 +0000 UTC
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Apparently the group was not “in” the Tear because after an hour, nothing at all had happened. That wasn’t to say things didn’t happen. Monsters were prevalent, the increased mana making them frenzied and the flat landscape making them easy to kill. What good was a monster the size of a horse if the monster was killed from dozens of yards away by a bolt of ice?
But besides occurrences such as that, nothing happened.
Eventually, the group found th...
2024-01-27 23:03:03 +0000 UTC
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