Tsaimath

Scarlet - Chapter 15

“Do you want to take first watch? I don’t think we should both sleep at the same time.” Scarlet asked, some time after their training.

“Nightwatch?” Keera asked back, but a yawn cut her question short.

“Well, I guess that answers it. You go ahead and try to get some sleep, I’ll wake you in a few hours.” Scarlet suggested and Keera, seeing the point went ahead, rolling out the tarp and crawling into her sleeping bag, taking off the overall once she was ...

Interlude - Highlight Reel 4

AN: Slightly lazy chapter, too hot to think. 

Deep in a forest, where only little light reaches, ten people and their horses, nine on them, one walking next to his horse, follow a path. The one on foot, clad in leather, holding a bow and having a quiver on his hip leads, keeping his eyes on the path, going down to check the path with his hands. The one slightly behind and next to him is clad in similar armour and holds a long spear with a cross-piece a hand be...

Scarlet - Chapter 14

“Food’s ready.” Scarlet called out to Keera, who had been digging their Latrine behind a conveniently dense bush. While Keera had been busy there, Scarlet had prepared a few primitive eating utensils, borrowing from the idea of chopsticks, even if her version was just a short, sturdy branch, stripped of its bark. But it would allow them to eat without burning their hands, which was a great plus. To Scarlet, every bit of resources that they could scavenge meant a tiny bit of...

Chapter 170

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast, we headed out again, into the drab, grey town, covered by a dreary grey sky. Again, I was wondering how anyone could stay in this grey hell, even after just two days, I was starting to feel depressed. At the gate, I experienced a bit of a surprise when Kelgorn, the hunter who had taken quite a bit of time to explain the terrain around Kolyug to Adra, was already waiting. He greeted Adra in a happy and friendly manner and I learned that ...

Chapter 169

After my information acquisition in the magic store, we continued walking around Kolyug, partially to sight-see, not that there were any, and partially to restock the few items and products we could not acquire while travelling, salt for one, and quicklime. On advice from Drega, we kept to the merchant and craftsman parts of town, something easily done thanks to the rigid grid-pattern. We were staying well away from the are around the castle, where the the truly wealthy and the r...

Chapter 168

The magic store was, surprising absolutely no one, another, drab grey building, built out of the ubiquitous grey stone. I wondered if the city was deliberately built that way, to promote depression or if the trolls simply had the aesthetic sense of a blind mole. Personally, I had a feeling that if I tried to stay for more than a few days, I would start to paint the walls and the streets, with blood if no other colours were available. Better not risk staying too long, I had no des...

Scarlet - Chapter 13

Back at the camp, Scarlet gave Keera enough time to make herself halfway presentable while planning the next steps. As she sat on a fallen log, Cyca jumped, unbidden, from the spot where she had made it sit and landed on her lap, again acting very much like a domesticated cat and demanding to be scratched and petted. The action of her crystal monster made her rather curious, she would have taken almost any bet that Cyca had never interacted with a domesticated cat, so why would s...

Chapter 167

“So, what do you want to know? Or rather, what do you know about clerical powers?” Drega asked, after I had finished my food and was contently sitting with the others.

“Nothing really. I have seen some of the things possible with them but that’s about it.” I answered, hoping to learn more.

“Oh, dear. I guess I should start at the beginning then. Priests, or clerics in general, pray to their gods and we imbue our prayers with the Astral Power our bodies gen...

Scarlet - Chapter 12

 AN: Yay for Lunar Eclipse!

The two of them started back, towards the river, and at first, Keera went along, her mind in too much turmoil to realise what was happening with her, but after a minute or two, her whirling mind slowed down enough for her to make sense of the situation. And the situation greatly confused her, Scarlet, the hateful pixie, was gently leading her along, speaking baby talk in a strangely calm voice. If Keera previously had suspected to have a nightmare, now s...

Chapter 166

I awoke the next morning, sleeping sprawled over Sigmir in our room, wondering how I had gotten there. My mind was rather fuzzy and indistinct but I remembered talking with the others and telling my story to Drega but I didn’t remember much of the telling, nevermind what happened afterwards. When I started moving my head, I felt as if a band of dwarves was trying to mine my brain for ore, using pickaxes, hammers and all sorts of tools to crack open my head, without regard for t...

Scarlet - Chapter 11

After her success at spear-fishing and seeing the fish flop around at the tip of her spear, Keera had been in shock for a moment, the reality that she had just killed another living being, with her own hand, seeing it suffer and feeling its mind dim and fade, it had been something she had not been prepared for. But the soft laughter coming over from the spot Scarlet had watched from, it brought reality crashing in and caused her to bolt into the forest. 

As she ran, he...

Scarlet - 10

 AN: Some experimentation with point-of-view, please give some feedback. 

Armed with the crispys critter’s carcass, Scarlet went back to the river, Cyca trailing behind, almost hiding behind her as they approached the room. After making sure that there was some blood seeping out of the electrocuted squirrel, Scarlet threw it into the river, close to the presences she felt.

The result was incredibly underwhelming, the squirrel floated for a moment before sinkin...

Chapter 165

Far too soon, the bowl of stew was emptied and cleaned, using a piece of bread, and I sat back, content with the world.

“Finally finished with stuffing your face and able to listen?” Lenore asked, her voice snarky.

“What do you mean?” I questioned, unsure what was going on.

“Do you even remember how our host has thrown everyone in a mental loop and thrown a few guys out?” she asked and I realised that I had indeed ignored my own thoughts in favour of...

Scarlet - 9

Watching her crystal monster scurry towards her, Scarlet decided to act as if the image she was seeing as a representation of the outward existence of the core inside and treat the being as such. It helped that relating to it as if it was a living being was far simpler than trying to relate to its crystal form.

When it reached her, she crouched down, gently taking the crystal it had brought over from its mouth and, in turn, scratched it behind its ears, copying what she had...

Chapter 164

“How nice of you to join us.” Adra said as we stepped up. “I think I need to use the tub as well, the two of you have such a glow, the bath must be a real pleasure.” she continued, causing my cheeks to heat up.

“You certainly can do that, but I doubt that you alone would find it as pleasurable as we did.” I answered, refusing the let my embarrassment defeat me. 

“Yes, you are probably right.” she admitted with exaggerated sadness before continuing...

Scarlet - Chapter 8

After everyone’s scanner had been calibrated, the doctor unceremoniously kicked the four newcomers out of town, telling them that they had about four hours until dusk and that the area in an roughly ninety degree cone in front of the gate should be devoid of crystal monsters for about a kilometer, as it had been the area where they had captured their current crystals. 

Keera and I had announced that we would form a team, with Keera taking the shovel and me taking the...

Chapter 163

We left the drab Guild-building and crossed the road to get to the inn, an inn that seemed just as cheerful and happy as the rest of the city, grey stone without even a dash of colour in sight. The inside was a lot better, it was pretty much what I had expected from the common room of an inn. Long wooden tables with benches, a wide stone hearth with a happily dancing fire and a bar behind which the innkeeper, or in this case, innkeepress, stood, waiting for customers. It was afte...

Scarlet - Chapter 7

At the front of the building, the Doctor was waiting for Scarlet, Mendar and Nedri to join him and Keera. Scarlet noticed that Keera looked a little rattled, maybe the situation they were all in had taken until now to fully seep in. Once they were assembled, the Doctor looked them over and spoke.

“Now, you all have your first crystal. To warn you, the strength of the projection is limited, you saw how my monster attacked the wild ones before I let you try to dominate them...

Scarlet - Chapter 6

Using her mind to push the cat back into the crystal, Scarlet picked it up and followed Doctor Oak back to town, again, cloaking herself and stepping carefully. What had previously been a challenging exercise in psionics was now one step harder, due to the need to constantly keep the crystal under control, making her realise that the control of the crystal needed to become something natural to her, as natural as breathing, a process that didn’t stop, even when she was asleep. I...

Scarlet - Chapter 5

The Doctor led Scarlet to the town's gate, a massive piece of metal set onto rails, but not to the gate itself, but to a small door set into it. Through that door, the two of them left town. 

It gave Scarlet the first, unobstructed look at the forest outside, it might have been on almost any Gaya-planet during spring, the trees were carrying leaves and some buds and on the forest floor, underbrush made it difficult to move about. But despite that familiari...

Chapter 162

Walking the streets of Kolyug made me realise how little I had seen in the months I had played Road to Purgatory. Kolyug was the first city I was in and I felt like a rube from the boondocks, seeing the bright lights for the first time. Not that the lights were bright, but the city was solely constructed out of grey stone, almost certainly with magic and the uniform nature made it clear that it was not coincidence that it looked like it did. This city had not grown organically, w...

Scarlet - Chapter 4

AN: Miraculously, the planet was left too long in the dryer and shrunk, making it roughly the same size of Earth, even that is more than enough space for everyone and I won’t need to resort to too strange things later. 

When they got back to the building Scarlet had woken up in, the doctor was waiting with two others, one a female of amazonian build, tall, broad in the shoulders and muscular, the other a guy of average build, making him look a little weedy n...

Scarlet - Chapter 3

Doctor Oak had shown Scarlet a couple more videos and images of the strange monstrous beings on Verdun, before he started to shut down the workstation again.

“Well, those are the monsters out there. Your job, as I mentioned before, will be to dominate a few crystals, permanently, and use them to harvest more. The more you use the consciousness in a particular crystal, the stronger your hold on it, so you can even hold it after it gets stronger by devouring the consciousne...

Chapter 161

Thanks to the old, imperial road, we managed to travel hundreds of kilometers over the next few days. After the first day of travel, we tried to make stops at the small villages close to the road, seeking information and work. We spent the second night in a village-inn and learned something. Just because there is an inn, it does not mean that staying there would be a comfortable or smart idea. I almost left the inn, running screaming into the night, when I got a good look at the ...

Scarlet - Chapter 2

With a groan, Scarlet opened her eyes, blinking away the film that blurred her vision. Not that there was a lot to see, a white ceiling, apparently made out of cheap plascrete, some light filtering in from a nearby window, nothing that gave her an idea where she was. It took her a moment to remember what had happened and she almost chuckled at the prudence Psycom had shown. She had played with the thought to learn more about the Verdun-System and possibly giver her minders the sl...

Scarlet - Chapter 1

Planet Pandora

Psychic Command [Psy-com] Main-Training Facility

Holding Cells

“Now, I’ve done it…” Scarlet thought to herself, looking around the stark interrogation-room. Maybe, just maybe it had been a bad idea to reject the advances made by one of the other trainees so… vehemently. But there was no way that she would let anyone do that to her, not against her will. Growing up in the slums of Nova Yor, she had lear...

Chapter 160

After two days that we spent using the forest to hide ourselves, we finally decided that we had put enough distance between us and those we had angered, meaning that we felt secure in using the old imperial road.

Leaving the forest and moving onto the road, I got my first, good look at it, when we were in Yaksha, I had not really looked at it, just seeing it as an old brick road, even if it was in relatively good condition.

Now, I was really looking at it and noticed ...

Scarlet - Prologue

Twenty years ago…

FSV Satoshi [Deep Space Explorer]

In a system, far, far away from Earth, the entry-burst of a Federation-ship bathed a small segment of the sky in radiation as it broke through the barrier between hyperspace and real-space. And then, silence, while the ship and its crew were busy listening, interpreting the light that started hitting their passive sensors, telling them about the past, a past that was the present when the light sta...

Scarlet - Intro

 On a remote planet, life had always been the same. The same cycle of birth and death, over and over.

That is, until one day, the world changed. Beings from out there, out of the endless beyond came to the planet and nothing would ever be the same. The cycle would be forever changed.

- That is the current intro to Scarlet. But what is Scarlet?

Scarlet is a (hopefully) fun combination of Sci-Fi and an idea that I had for years, taking a much beloved concept (and franchis...

Crown of Thorns - Hiatus, for now

This is only about the Crown of Thorns-Project, so keep calm.

Sadly, I have been almost unable to get anything written for that, apart from the work I have done over two months ago, during two nights of insomnia. Since those two nights, I have maybe written fourhundred words for it, what you read was all written during those nights.

So, instead of banging my head against a wall I decided to take another route and write something different. I might revisit Crown of Thorns, I wrote ...