Tsaimath

DLM, Bk 4 Chapter 24

The rest of the evening and the parts of the night during which I did not sleep, I spent finishing the design for Technica, making lists of parts to purchase and even starting on the eventual assembly-plan. For the headsets, I went one step further, designing a relatively simple robot that would take over than task. 

In addition, I started to consider the best way to get my own, offensive robots without alerting Technica, she had already told me she would consider such...

Chapter 201

Four shrubs. That was the entirety of vegetation that we had seen peeking out from the snow over the course of the last two days of travel. And calling them shrubs might be overrating them, more like brambles with pretensions of grandeur. At this point, I would have welcomed monster attacks, anything to break the monotony of travelling across a seemingly endless, white expanse, permanently exposed to the harsh winds blowing down from the north. But even the Ankhegs were disappoin...

DLM Bk 4, Ch 23

“So, what was this about?” I asked once the elevator-doors closed.

Sophia started pouting at the question, “What you don’t like it when I hug you? There needs to be something deeper going on? Maybe I just wanted to hug you.” she asked, trying, and failing, to sound hurt.

“I enjoy it when you hug me, a great deal. But that does not answer my question, especially what you said about ‘staking your claim.’” I pushed, before repeating my question.  2019-10-14 14:44:57 +0000 UTC View Post

DLM Bk 4, Ch 22

After I finished my presentation for Technica, she once again invited me to dinner. At first, we talked about the designs I had shown her, which exact parts to use where, how to get them and even a few improvements I had not considered. It was interesting, she clearly showed that, while she took the Powered-operations and such seriously, she was a scientist and engineer at heart. Part of me wondered if she had been happier without her power, or rather, without the responsibility,...

DLM - Bk 4 Chapter 21

“Data-Management.” Galatea stated, her voice resolute and convinced. And I had to agree with her, it was the one ability that set me, us, apart from other beings, the ability to seamlessly integrate with a computer and coordinate large amounts of data.

“Agreed. That means our job would be to facilitate and coordinate individuals or groups to work on a problem. In addition, it would be good to have aerial surveillance capabilities, similar to the drones we used to keep...

DLM Bk 4 Chapter 20

I tried to figure out something that I could take pride in, with the added objective that it had to be something not risking large-scale political conflict if revealed, until it was time to head to breakfast with Sophia. Both of us kept well clear of any important topics, merely talking about Sophia’s class-schedule and her attempt to make up the differences in curriculum between her old University and the new one. It did not help that the old one was designed to churn out teac...

Scarlet - Chapter 45

For the next few days, Scarlet and Keera continued the routine of the first days, travelling west along the brook, slowly making their way towards the far distant mountains. As they travelled, Scarlet focused on gently teaching Keera, helping her to better control her Crystal Monster while hunting down as many crystal monsters as possible. 

On the second day, Keera finally got curious enough to ask how Scarlet was able to suddenly veer off into the surrounding forest, ...

Chapter 200

Part of me wondered what future travellers, either with a capital T or without, using the ancient road would think. After spending some much needed time in the real world, I had returned to Mundus and spend some more time improving our igloo and the surrounding wall, adding a spikes, walkways and similar features to the wall, creating a small but quite defensible fortress, complete made out of ice, right next to the road.

Sadly, my efforts would most likely go unobserved, I...

DLM Bk 4 Ch 19

“So, what is really going on?” Tanisha asked me when I got back to my dorm-room, after dropping Sophia off.

“What do you mean?” I asked, just managing to suppress a yawn, it had been a long, emotionally exhausting day, the talk with Sophia just being the latest bout. After my story, neither of us had felt a need to disturb the comforting sounds of the forest, the rustling leaves, the creaking trees and the occasional sounds of a bird, flying by, instead simply prefe...

DLM Bk 4 Chapter 18

Soon, we had stashed Sophia’s stuff and met her two suitemates, Zahra and Josie. It turned out that Lenoa had played up the overdramatic theater-major when meeting us, simply for the fun of it. In normal interactions, she was more subdued and, while curious, less intrusive. She clearly noticed that there was something irregular about my left arm, mainly thanks to the black glove permanently covering it, but she did not try to pry into it.

At that point, Sophia and I both ...

Chapter 199

“Wake up, sleepyhead.” I softly pressed a kiss to Sigmir’s forehead, causing her to mumble in her sleep. While she was incredibly adorable, I worried that the events of the night had caused lingering damage, as she was normally not one for staying in bed alone. I added a second kiss to the first, while stretching my magical senses into her body, looking for damages. The only thing I found was that her muscles seemed to be in a state similar to mine, sore and tired, but that...

DLM Bk 4 Ch 17

Dealing with things at the post-office went smoothly and just a few minutes later, we exited with Sophia easily carrying a box sent to her by Glenna’s husband, containing what she had stored in her dorm room.

“What do you think they will tell people?” I asked, curious how her former school dealt with the fall-out of the events.

“I’m not sure, Galatea, could you look that up?” Sophia asked, making me smile. Back when Sophia and I had lived in the bunker, th...

DLM - Bk 4 Ch 16

The formalities in the hospital were handled faster than I had anticipated, normally, paperwork and bureaucracies have a habit of dragging things to the point of nausea but here, we were done within half an hour. Isleen and I were mostly just along for the ride, apparently protocol let Powered make their own decisions, regardless of age. Likely for the cases when a Powered was staying under their masked name, for example, if I was treated as Metis, what age would I be assigned an...

Chapter 198

When I woke up in the morning, my body felt as if I had tried to block an avalanche, only to be buried by it. While there were no outward markings anywhere, I felt as if I had bruises on my bruises, or maybe as if I had run a few marathons, back to back. Everything hurt.

The night before, after I had managed to get Sigmir’s heart beating in a steady rhythm, we had exchanged just a few words before falling into a deep sleep, still clinging to each other, as if the other wa...

DLM Bk. 4 Ch. 15

“That went well.” I mentally told Galatea, after leaving Doctor Sunters office.

My statement was only partially sarcastic in nature, I had managed to explain simple facts of my background to the Doctor, mostly thanks to the fact that my life as Alexandria seemed so far away. Intellectually, I knew that the identity, with the added baggage, would remain with me for a long time, but I did not feel like it. Alexandria was dead, so talking about her seemed easy. I was quite...

DLM - Bk 4 Ch 14

With a deep breath, to quell those pesky nerves fluttering in my stomach, I knocked on the door in front of me. Doctor Sunters was working in the same complex Sophia was treated in and I was planning to visit her afterwards, for that, I had enough of my costume in my bag to change. For the visit with the Doctor, I had made the conscious choice to go with civilian dress, at least partially to convince myself that openness was the only way for therapy to work. But to allow myself t...

Scarlet - Ch 44

After Scarlet had prepared breakfast, she waited for Keera to keel over, surprised that it hadn’t already happened. But it gave her a minute or two to consider her actions in the future, how to behave to make the seed she had planted in Keera’s mind to sprout in the way she wanted to.

Ultimately, she wanted to have Keera bound to herself, convinced that she was following and obeying Scarlet because it was what she wanted. An invisible cage, anchored deep within her cons...

Chapter 197

I woke up slowly, clawing my way back to consciousness. The first sensation assaulting me was pain. I felt as if someone had opened a construction-side, complete with jackhammers and heavy machinery in my head and now they were working away, trying to dig a tunnel from my forehead to my spine. For some time, that was the only thing that I felt, my whole being dominated by pain. Finally, I managed to get a bit of a grip on the pain, managing to subdue it a little, allowing me to n...

DLM Bk 4 Chapter 13

Things had gone back to normal over the past week. After the emotional release I went through in Sophia’s arms, we had talked until I was kicked from the hospital and the next day, I had talked with Technica about getting some professional to work on my mental issues. Her immediate reaction was interestingly mixed, a curious mix of guilt with a side of shame and joy. Galatea and I had talked for some time, why my request had evoked those emotions, finally settling on the hypoth...

DLM - Bk4 Ch 12

We stayed up on the roof for some time, sharing little talk but, for the most part, enjoying the simple fact that we could be together without feeling a need to fill the silence with useless noise. To me, that was something I had missed a great deal, with my other acquaintances, there was either a need to talk or it quickly became uncomfortable, but with Sophia, I could simply be. 

But no matter how comfortable it was to be in her company, she was still recove...

Chapter 196

After fighting with the Ankhegs, we quickly left the scene, not wanting to face more of the creatures. While they were not a big problem in a small group, as we had just faced, I had that creepy feeling that they were more like ants and images of being swarmed by hundreds, maybe thousands, of dog-sized insectoid monsters, looking to devour our flesh were quite effective in spurring us on.

It was only when dusk forced us to slow down that we did and, for a moment, I was cons...

Chapter 195

We finished our rest, refreshed and warmed up, not quite looking forward to the next leg of our journey but it was also not looking as bleak as before. We had just left the igloo I had conjured up when I noticed the snow beneath us shift and shake a little, as if there was a small, localised earthquake below us.

“Watch out, I think we’ve got incoming!” I called out, causing the others to look around in alarm. Preparing for the confrontation, I quickly drew the runes f...

DLM Bk 4 Ch 11

I let out a long-suffering sigh when I stepped into Technica’s bunker for the second time that day. When Tanisha and I had headed out for dinner yesterday evening, we had run into Karen and Ru Shi, with them tagging along. Both had been curious where I had been, but accepted that I could not speak about it. The rest of the day had been quite pleasant, mostly filled with smalltalk, or rather teasing Ru Shi. I had been a little out of the gossip-loop and there was something thera...

DLM - Bk4 Ch 10

When I opened the door to my dorm-room, silence greeted me. Not a huge surprise, it was just late afternoon after all, so the others might still be in class. I was not quite certain about their schedules, especially as they changed quite often. I took a moment to consider what to do next and decided to bury myself in mundane tasks, namely, I got the scripts from the lectures I had missed out and went through them with a fine-toothed comb. My dual-major meant that I had more lectu...

DLM, Bk 4 - Ch 9

It was strange how fast things can change in your mind. It had not been more than about forty hours that Galatea had awoken me with the news about Sophia’s kidnapping, but in those forty hours, I had worn my Powered clothes almost exclusively and now that I went back to civilian dress, it felt a little strange. But I knew it was more than just the clothes, now with changing back into my old clothes, I realised that. I had pushed it away from me, focusing on different things, ma...

Scarlet - Ch 43

 AN: By popular request, I'll try to write a chapter or two each week. Enjoy ;)

When Scarlet stalked off, quite obviously in a mood, Keera was left flabbergasted. Her diminutive companion had never talked much about herself, or anything, really, mostly just giving orders or explanations about the tasks at hand, but there had always been an air of danger around her. It had been that air of danger that made Keera question what she had done to be on Verdun, t...

Chapter 194

Arriving at the border of the windswept steppe was a little strange. While I could see no reason for the sudden demarcation, it was certainly there. Within maybe a hundred meters, almost in a straight line, the pine-trees got smaller and misshapen, as if trying to stand against the wind was pushing them down. They gave ways to brush, and then even that brush vanished, leaving us on an endless seeming, white expanse. What gave me the willies was that the sky was cloudy and roughly...

DLM - Bk 4, Ch 8

Sophia and I had managed to get our conversation back to lighter topics, mainly relating stories about our different roommates and people we had met at college. It came of little surprise to me that neither of us had managed to fully trust others, that she had never told the people she met about being Powered and where her scholarship came from. Both of us had been used to hide that part of us, even if I had been forced to reveal it, thanks to Clark.

But not all was light, ...

DLM, Bk 4 Ch 7

I stood there, looking at Sophia like a fool. Despite the bandages, she looked good. Physically she had not changed all that much, that I had seen the day before, but now that she was no longer as exhausted has she had been, she looked better. Gone was a lot of the harrowing, sorrowful look that made it seem as if the world was pressing down on her. It was then that I realised that maybe I should not try to draw her back to my side, even if there was a part of me that had despera...

DLM Bk4, Ch 6

I followed Technica into a small  eatery, similar to the one we had been to before. Just like the previous one, this one seemed to focus on providing discrete service to high-level customers and I could easily imagine the ambassadors of the nearby UN-building using locations such as this one to conduct clandestine meetings. I had to grin a little when I noticed the sign out front, telling us we were entering the Wicked Witch’s Kitchen.  

They recognised Technica...