Tsaimath

Chapter 323

“You are looking purple.” Lenore’s amused voice pulled my awareness to my surroundings, something I had mostly ignored, trying to regain both my mental and physical equilibrium.

My only answer was an annoyed groan, trying to convey that help would be appreciated, without actually saying it, partially because I wasn’t sure if I would be sick if I opened my mouth. Looking around came with a similar problem, my eyes were tightly shut to limit the sensory information I ...

DLM, Bk 5. Ch 7

•  AN: Too warm... I had to retreat to an undisclosed, underground location to be able to focus on writing. 

“So, what is it that you actually want to accomplish?” Technica, in her civilian guise as Andrea asked. We were sitting in one of the many cafes around the UN buildings, enjoying a good cup of coffee. I had decided that asking her for advice was a good idea, partially because Karen, Sophia and I had started to argue in circles and partiall...

Chapter 322

It was a curious dichotomy, the serenity of the forest. On the face of things, it was peaceful, a gentle wind, playing with the leaves of the trees, insects buzzing and birds singing their songs. But that was only on the surface, if one looked deeper, there was an underlying struggle for survival, the creeper-vines trying to choke the trees, the predators looking to make a meal of the happily chirping bird, maybe right as it managed to attract a mate and other predators, seizing ...

Interlude: Profiles of Power I

Official Road to Purgatory-Beta Forum

• -Kelgarn, confirmed Beta-Account

Hey Guys

Allow me to introduce myself before explaining what I would like to accomplish, hopefully with everyone’s help. I’ve been playing since the second wave, starting as an High-elven Guild-Mage and am currently at level 57. My primary interest in-game is to gather information and curate knowledge, essentially being a librarian, if you will. Not f...

Chapter 321

After a few minutes of flying, I was able to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of guilt I had been subjected to after rejecting Dargira. It made me wonder where it was coming from, why I was feeling it. I didn’t owe her anything, she had made her decision and had to live with them, why would I want to take her with us, if there were only downsides? Rejecting her made sense, it was undoubtedly the right decision, so why was there a part of me that said I should have taken her ...

Chapter 320

The day after the feast, I woke up with a very light headache and an overall soreness that wasn’t all that unpleasant. Especially remembering what Sigmir and I had been up to after the feast to get said soreness, with that in mind, it wasn’t unpleasant at all. Our plan was to have breakfast in Ashenforge Hold before starting out again, travelling roughly south-west again, not following the path we had taken here. Sure, the Pegaeae had been overall friendly but also a little p...

Chapter 319

After a long day of napping, shopping, lazing around and relaxing, mixed in with a comfortable leisure-flight in my Hallow, the dwarves served up a feast. Sadly, there was no way the other would be able to be comfortable in the dwarven feast-hall, their architecture simply wasn’t built to house people above a hundred and seventy centimeters but that was no reason to despair. Instead of trying to shoehorn the others into a hall not built for them, they decided to simply use the ...

Chapter 318

After we had been presented with the last of our rewards, there wasn’t much that needed to be done in the dwarven town but the idea to replenish our supplies, especially those things that couldn’t easily be found in the forest or on the road. To do so, we had to link up with the quartermaster of the dwarven hold, they simply didn’t use a normal system of commerce internally. Essentially, their economy and division of labour was organised from the top down, in a system that ...

DLM- Bk. 5, Ch 6

•  AN: Not terribly happy with the chapter, might re-do it at some point. 

“So, what are we going to do about Tanisha?” Karen asked, looking from Sophia to me. 

We had located an empty table in the Pancake House and ordered breakfast before sitting down, allowing the slightly overworked staff complete our order. Looking around, I thought that this had to be one of the best jobs, if one could get up early on a Sunday. Nearly everyone present ha...

Chapter 317

After receiving my new clothes, I had excused myself for a moment to change into them. Wearing them felt just as marvelous as I had hoped, snug without being restraining and pleasantly chill. Just to see how well I could move in them, I started a simple set of martial art-forms, stretching my body to see how well they truly fit. And they stood up to the test incredibly well, fitting like a glove. I even felt the supplemental effect, making it easier to absorb Astral Power, especi...

Chapter 316

After three days of studying in the dwarven library, I had a reasonable grasp on their way of shaping Astral Power to perform their magic, with quite a bit of material to study. More time would have been helpful but, at the end of the day, I was glad that I had been allowed the opportunity in the first place. During the evenings, I had explored my Hallow further, trying to better understand the mechanics of transferring into the Hallow, both for Lenore and myself. 

In ...

Chapter 315

Once Lenore had landed, she gave me a gentle, mental push to leave my Hallow, so she could return to hers. Mentally reaching out, I looked out, making sure that I had an accurate mental image before pushing my mind out, pulling the rest of me with it. It was a strange feeling, a brief state of incorporation that I wanted to explore and understand more, and after a moment of vertigo-inducing travel, I was back out, this time sticking the landing. Before I could fully orient myself...

Chapter 314

Late in the afternoon, with my mind a little woozy from the tomes I had read, I emerged from the underground library. For a moment, I just stood there, letting the wind flow around me and watching the shadows around me, cast by the sun, slowly vanishing behind the mountain-ridges. It would take a few more hours before the sun would truly set, creating a calming twilight.

Part of me had desired to stay in the library longer but after reading three of the dwarven tomes, Lenor...

DLM- Bk 5, Ch 5

A low groan brought me out of my happy place, my curiosity making me investigate. Half my night had been spend looking at reports and summaries send over by Technica, she had asked me to read them, in preparation for eventually succeeding her. It was a mix of interesting, disheartening and plainly boring, to read about the various proposals and machinations, thought up by politicians all around the globe and sent to the Guild, looking for support. I had dug into some of them, cho...

Chapter 313

As I put down the book I had been reading, I let out a slow breath. I had spend most of the morning and early afternoon with the first book Gelorin had given me to read, a thick and heavy tome, each page more akin to cardboard than the normal paper I was used to. 

It had taken Gelorin just a few moments to realise I was able to read their words on my own and started working on a project on my own, telling me to ask any questions that came up, before handing me what he ...

Chapter 312

It was a doubly good thing the dwarves had discovered the advantages of proper plumbing and even installed showers in their guest-quarters, sized to allow pretty much anything smaller than the average elephant a comfortable experience. The first advantage was that, after Sigmir was done with me in the morning, I was quite sweaty and sticky in certain places. The second was that I managed to get Sigmir into the shower with me, allowing her to make sure those certain places were sq...

Chapter 311

Flying was everything I had ever imagined it to be and more. Even if I was only a passenger in Lenore’s body, if I let go of my notion of self and simply allowed her physical impressions flow into me, it was almost as if I was flying myself. For the first time, I felt Lenore’s instincts at work, the small, subconscious mental processes that allowed us to use our bodies with proficiency. There was a lot more to flying than flapping your wings, concepts I half-remembered from p...

DLM - Bk 5, Ch 4

Going out with Sophia was a curious exercise in frustration. Personally, I did not like crowds of people, preferring the company of select friends, if any company at all. Sophia, on the other hand, had started to thrive in a social setting. That resulted in various people coming up to us, either to talk or even to replace me as her dance-partner, something she generally rejected but still, there was a small core of jealousy, sitting in my center, a feeling that I wanted to have h...

Chapter 310

I should have expected it. The overwhelming force, the tortue, I should have seen it coming. The dwarves, their whole character, it should have tipped me off, long before walking into things, before foolishly agreeing.

The dwarven craftspeople were relentless in their pursuit of information for the items they wanted to craft for us, probing, prodding and interrogating with a fervor that scared me, just a little. Especially the burly tailor, he seemed to be almost offended b...

Chapter 309

The accomodations the dwarves had built for visitors some time in the past were similar to the rest of their architecture. A square, rather solid-looking, block that held the entrance into an underground living-space. There was no difference on the outside, even the door was so small that everyone but me had to duck to get in but at least the underground space was high enough for Sigmir, allowing her to stand tall. 

Once again, I was quite impressed with the dwarven ar...

DLM- Bk5, Ch 3

Changing out of our costumes together took quite a bit longer than it would have, if we had done so separately but neither of us was terribly worried about time. We moved through one of the many secret passages into the complicated United Nations Building, using it’s maze-like structure to hide just where we had been coming from. It was more out of habit than serious need but there were procedures to be followed, even if there was little actual danger.

The air outside was...

Chapter 308

It took me a second to comprehend her question and that she shouldn’t know about it. Still clad in my personal cloud, I looked over to her, feeling my brows furrow.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, relatively sure I never told her about my connection. But I did tell quite a few natives about learning from the Grandmother, including a reasonably full tavern in Kolyug.

“There was a thread, about some town named Kolyug being under siege, incredible stuff. A...

DLM - Bk5, Ch 2

“It looks marvelous.” Mordred admitted, his hands gently roaming over the silver-focus, feeling the symbols and the object in general. I seriously doubted that he would be able to detect the tolerances with a tactile inspection, what he had given me had stated tolerances of the tenth of a millimeter, something that would need a clear contrast to be detected by a human without tools. But still, the hand-off had been successful, so he could do with his rod whatever he wanted an...

Chapter 307

Reporting to the Thane demonstrated that he was an intelligent dwarf. After sending Helmaic on some errands, including one to bring tea and some snacks, he made himself comfortable and let me speak. The only interruption was from a servant, bringing the ordered snacks, otherwise he let me fully report, without interrupting, before asking his questions. And those questions demonstrated that he had experience in the field, had walked to walk and was now able to talk the talk. Not o...

DLM - Bk 5, Ch 1

A dim, red light illuminated the bare concrete around me. It was coming from an array of screens, set above and around my desk, allowing me to observe, without danger. It had taken me a few days to get everything as I wanted it to, even if my part of Technica’s underground domain had, as she put it, all the aesthetics of a war-time bunker, crossed with the lair of a mad scientist. She had, on more than one occasion, joked that there was some truth to it. 

Part of me ...

DLM - Prologue, Bk 5

•  AN: I fully expect the chapter to be controversial, please remember who is talking.

There is a soft din of noise, caused by thousands of people, talking to their neighbors in hushed voices. Each voice, a whisper but together they fill the park where they’ve gathered. Few features are common in the crowd, but one thing unites them, a thin, black brassard worn around the right biceps. 

Waiting for the speaker to take the stage, set up in fro...

Chapter 306

• Skill increased
• You increased your skill: Athletics [2/100]

The blue box that had popped open, just as we climbed the last set of stairs and stood in front of the Thane’s seat, the High Hall of Clan Ashenforge, seemed to mock me. I had gained the Athletics-skill a long time ago, when Sigmir and I had just met and been forced to run away from her tribe, running for days on end, pushing me past my limits. It had devolve...

Chapter 305

The next morning, after breakfast, the dwarves broke up their camp, while we casually sat around, relaxing a little before we would move. We had no need to break camp, once the dwarves were ready, I waved my hand for effect while invoking a mix of shatter and diamond-dust runes in my mind, channelling them through my Ice-Magic into the structure, letting it burst into a flurry of snow, that I quickly dispersed in the surrounding area. With that taken care off, the dwarves formed ...

Interlude: Kolyug under Siege

Official Road to Purgatory-Beta Forum

• -Tarrin, confirmed Beta-Account

Hey Guys

In my last thread, I asked about the events around the northern city of Kolyug and, oh boy, have there been developments. When I made the last thread, things were weird. They still are, but with an added dose of “wtf” and “holy hell, get me out of here”. For those not nearby, meaning pretty much everyone, I don’t think I’ve seen anothe...

Chapter 304

“So, you made it back…” Helmaic greeted us, as we climbed the hill we had made our camp on, some ten days earlier. The cottage I had built was still there, standing solidly, if a little thawed, making me want to take a closer look. In comparison, the dwarven camp looked a little more build-out and I was reasonably sure that a few of the faces had changed. A quick head-count confirmed that idea, there were simply more dwarves than there had been when we had left, milling aro...