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Matabar. Book II. Chapter 18 - Taisia Shpritz

As he was stepping out of the taxi for which he had paid an outrageous thirty-seven kso, Ardi found himself in the midst of a veritable storm of sounds, voices and smells. He had the strong urge to glance back to confirm a suspicion, but he refrained… Instead, he walked unhurriedly down the sidewalk.

The New City greeted him with the chaos and cacophony that was so familiar to the locals—one far more motley and “colorful” than in the central districts of Old Town. This wa...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 17 - New deal

Finding Bazhen Eorsky turned out not to be so difficult after all. Ardi didn’t even have to enlist the help of the Black House messengers

Finding Bazhen Eorsky turned out to be simple enough. Ardi didn’t even have to enlist the help of the Black House messengers, which was lucky, since he intended to discuss the matter with Bazhen without drawing their mutual employer’s attention.

The very next day, Ardi found himself in Baliero again. He’d been here just last night, amid ...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 16 - Harsh Medicine

As soon as the rust-speckled key scraped into the lock, Ardi felt a stationary Star Shield brush against his consciousness. It was so intricate and complex that only a specialist on par with Professor Talis an Manish could have set it up. Edward Aversky had possessed considerable knowledge of defensive magic (understandable, given his primary specialization), but he had never had such capabilities personally.

This construct was capable of instantly entombing an unwary Star Mage...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 15 - "Metropolis"

The Metropolis greeted the train from Shamtur with the familiar clamor of the platform crowd and the sharp, slicing whistles of the guards d

The Metropolis greeted the train from Shamtur with the familiar clamor of the platform crowd and the sharp, piercing whistling of the guards directing the flow of departures and arrivals. Some of the citizens were already embroiled in verbal altercations. The segregation of platforms for humans and the Firstborn had been abolished at the end of las...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 14 - "The Half-blood"

Carriage after carriage, vestibule after vestibule, Ardan followed Mshisty. The man was of an unremarkable height, clad in a black suit that matched Dagdag’s severe patterns, yet the fabric spoke of a different story—of an expensive atelier and materials that were far from common.

Among those who knew him, Mshisty might have been called a maniac, a man obsessed with the bloody art of battle, but he was a Senior Magister all the same. A possessor of five Stars, their radiance a testa...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 13 - "The Mother"

“Bless you, Ard,” the Governor-General remarked offhandedly. To anyone unfamiliar with the Fae tongue, the curse had probably sounded like a sneeze or a stifled cough. “Young man, perhaps you should go get some fresh air.”

“I-”

“My colleague can stay,” Captain Mokretsky cut him off, and without any courteous pretenses, he settled into a chair, its legs scraping across the floor. He swept aside the tails of his leather cloak, revealing the hilts of curved daggers an...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 12 - "The Duke"

Once again, Ardan was sitting in a comfortable armchair, reading a newspaper. Not because he had suddenly become deeply interested in politics, the news, fashion, or court gossip (or whatever else the paper might cover), but simply because there was nothing else available to read in the Governor-General’s waiting room. He had only a few freshly-rolled newspapers resting on a glass side table, and two potted houseplants of some exotic variety—judging by their overly sharp, broad l...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 11 - "Poplar"

Ardi was sitting in an armchair, watching the flames cavort in the fireplace. The firelight cast daring reflections that scampered through the room’s acrid gloom before beginning their intricate dances across the surface of the slightly murky windows. They weren’t murky because the windows hadn’t been cleaned—the room, in fact, practically sparkled—but rather due to the perpetual dust stirred up by the winds that swept clear through Shamtur. Situated on a plain riddled with trenches...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 10 - "Shamtur"

Aside from an encounter with one of the Princesses of Winter, the journey to Shamtur proved to be nothing particularly memorable. Even the High Forest didn’t leave much of an impression on Ardi.

Throughout it all, however, he supported Tess’ childlike excitement as best he could. The red-haired beauty would often lean against the window, nearly pressing her nose against the glass.

The train made no stops in the forest, for very obvious reasons—the High Forest was not conside...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 9 - "Allane'Eari"

Ardi watched the platform recede into the distance—if you could even call it a platform, since it was little more than a small wooden staircase leading from the station to a similarly wooden landing. Because of its meager size, it couldn’t accommodate all the people who had come to see the travelers off on its chipped, rough boards that had long forgotten the feel of lacquer. So many well-wishers had turned up that they were now crowded on the station’s balcony, spilling out onto the du...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 8 - "Aror did what he did"

“Two tickets, please,” Ardi said, producing two banknotes and a few coins.

Tickets for the cinema cost an astronomical amount of money—one and a half exes for an adult and sixty kso for children. But firstly, Ardan had promised Tess, and secondly, ever since the first cinemas had opened in the Metropolis, he himself had been curious to see what this thing called cinema was all about. In the capital, tickets cost even more, in fact, starting at three exes and only going up from the...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 7 - "Larr'rrak"

Zbig was leading the way, with Percy Kenbish an

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 6 - "By tonight"

“I’ll be back by tonight,” Ardi whispered, pulling Tess into a gentle hug.

She was holding a length of fabric she’d bought yesterday at a shop near the Lake Port of Delpas. Shaia had promised to sew Tess a light summer dress before Ardan and his fiancée left for Shamtur. It was a blue calico cloth with white spots that resembled tiny clouds.

Tess had volunteered to help with the sewing, so she was now heading toward Ardi’s mother’s workshop, which was located on the f...

Matbar. Book II. Chapter 5 - Thank you

Ardi was settled in a wicker chair, his back pressed to the cool brick of the house, watching the sun bleed out across the west. There, at the very edge of the horizon, its last light was just catching the peaks of the Ralsk mountains that loomed over the Theocracy of Enario. That land, once no more than a chapter in Ardi’s textbooks, was now forever linked in his mind with Lady Talia, the Flame of the Sidhe, Sergeant Mendera, and all that had unfolded in the Metropolis.

But he would ...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 4 - Blueprints

The door opened, and a young woman appeared on the threshold—someone Ardi remembered as a little girl. They shared a friendship that had, for a moment, been overwhelmed by a sense of peril still ringing in their ears—carried in distant gunshots, the clash of steel, and the gnashing of fanged wolf jaws. Tangled in their own feelings and the sensations of growing up, they had lost themselves in the evening winds by the creek in Evergale.

The last time Ardi had seen Anna was in passing...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 3 - Pillows and talks

Ardi watched the chimneys of No. 17 on Stonemasons’ Street draw slowly closer, brick by familiar brick. The last—and, in truth, the first—time he had seen the house was in winter, when it appeared as a big, roomy, three‑storey dwelling, warm to the eye, with a broad yard. Back then, the smaller touches—along with the garden—had been hidden from view. Now Ardi could read the details as plainly as letters on a page.

He saw that the carved pine columns holding up the porch ha...

Matabar. Book II. Chapter 2 - The Gardener

They skirted a broad field and rode out onto the crest of a once-tall hill that had collapsed hundreds of thousands of years ago, forming a rocky bluff that hung like a brooding, furrowed brow a kilometer above Blue Lake. Here, just to the west and higher up, stretched the rails of the new branch line connecting Presny Junction with Delpas, which allowed travelers to reach from the Empire’s capital to the central city of the country’s largest province in relative comfort and equally relat...

Matabar. Book II. Prologue + Chapter 1 - The Marshals

Prologue

The spacious study welcomed the warm summer sun, which briefly visited the normally gray and unwelcoming Metropolis domain. Broad windows spanned from the gleaming, freshly scrubbed, lacquered parquet floor to the moldings that concealed the ceiling’s high cornices. The windows were so immaculately clean that they practically blended with the view of the blooming garden beyond, revealing it to the room’s sole occupant. He sat at the piano, slowly and calmly...

Matabar. Chapter 120 - THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK

“So for almost half a year, you were under the

Matabar. Chapter 119 - The Harvest

Ardan watched the multiton stone slabs grind shut with a ponderous clang, sealing the grotto’s roof above his head. A hulking demon, several Cloaks, the Grand Magister, the half-orc, and the dwindling echoes of a battle gone mad were all left behind.

Ard found himself standing in the middle of… a meadow. A small, flowery meadow where, among the tall grass that brushed against the torn fabric of his trousers and tickled the skin of his knees and thighs, blossoms strained toward the s...

Matabar. Chapter 118 - The truth

Some time ago

“And what were you two chatting about so sweetly?”

“Ella invited you and Boris to a party,” Ardan said with a shrug.

Elena’s eyes narrowed even further, her expression growing more amused by the second.

“Me and Boris?” She asked in a tone akin to a fox coaxing a hare to join her for lunch in her den.

“And me as well,” Ardan added with another shrug. “I guess she fe...