Tsaimath

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 40

Technica paused in taking off her helmet, before continuing her movement. The look on her face was a combination of surprise, sadness and joy but it quickly vanished under her poker-face.

“Let’s take care of your friend, before we get away from here.” she ordered, getting into one of the compartments in the back of her helicopter and getting medical supplies out. She directed me on the best way to take care of Sophia, showing quite a bit of experience when it came to ...

Crown of Thorns Ch 2

 AN: Not sure if I finish Don't label me Ch40 today, it struggles a little, so I thought to throw my Dragons some fresh meat. Enjoy Chapter two of Crown of Thorns ;)

Somehow, I had imagined something different when Cassie had told me that things would work out. Getting me out of the strange, glowing circle I had been in had been rather easy, all things considered. I had been handed a bathrobe and some strange amulet from their SUV and once I had put both on, Cassie had sim...

Chapter 140

 AN: Early chapter, wooohooo. I totally did not screw up Schedule and Publish Now. No, Sir, not at all...

Hunting wind raptors was fun. So much fun that I wanted them all to spontaneously freeze and die. Even combustion would be fine with me.

To hunt them you first had to find them. Sadly, from what we had seen to this point, they lived in nesting partnerships, possibly permanent ones, in their eyries in some high and impossible to get to places, unless one had the a...

Chapter 139

After deciding that we would stay here for the next couple of days, Adra and I started to clean the cave up. Or rather, I did. At first, Adra wanted to simply use her hands to toss out the debris left behind by the bear, but I balked. Most of it was just too disgusting to touch. So, I cheated. There was more than enough snow outside and I used my magic to drag some of it inside, piling it up in the deepest part before pressing it against the ground and wall while slowly moving it...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 39

No matter what I had thought about my readiness to do whatever necessary to win fights, this one in particular, the tactic Technica laid out had floored me with her sheer ruthlessness. I took a bit of pride in ending fights as fast as possible, even if I had to fight dirty in order to do so. Fairness, honour and fair-play were great for friendly competitions but once something relevant was on the line, other things became more important.

Technica, however, took that concept...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 38

I woke after about two hours of more or less restful sleep, or rather, blessed unconsciousness while Galatea did her best to repair the damage I had done to my body by overclocking the nanites. Looking around, I was still impressed and disturbed by the helicopter Technica was flying, impressed because it was whisper-quiet, blazing-fast and both armed and armoured to the teeth. Disturbed because it was missing a couple of elements I felt necessary in technology, mainly it was miss...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 37

With the knowledge that Technica would help me, I could continue on my mental path to get Sophia back. 

“We need to find them, in order to help Sophia. Can I link to your big computer downstairs, while you try to get approval, even if it is unlikely? Send them the footage, say that it was given to you by Metis, whatever is necessary.” I blurted out, while my mind was creating the basis of a plan. 

Technica nodded and quickly showed me to a huge data-conn...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 36

After I had seen what had happened to Sophia, I knew what I had to do. Get her. Simple as that. As I was running out of the dorm, I started to plot the steps I needed to take to get there. Before I got out of the building, I tried to call Technica but I did not get through. On the way down, I sent her a message, using the highest priority-flag I had. Hopefully, her filters would wake her, even at this time of the night.

My next step was to go into my workshop, the old one, ...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 35

The rest of my testing went quite well, even if at the end, Technica made me promise not to sell my tech in bulk. It was an easy promise to make, money was not much of a motivation, not with Galatea who was excellent at financial analysis and data-acquisition, allowing her to work the stock-markets in a highly-efficient fashion, forcing her to tone it down and sometimes not make money or people would get suspicious. But judging how a stock would react if you had insider-informati...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 34

Monday evening, I met with Technica in her lair and she showed me where the various tools I had asked about were located. There were even a couple of tools similar enough to what I thought I would have to build for myself, allowing me to skip making them as I could use what was there. We also talked about my time in class but the solution came from another source. Galatea reminded me of the legions of small work-bots she had controlled while we were living in the bunker above New...

Chapter 138

Making our way over to the area the stupid wind raptors had fallen in was a lot harder than expected. The snow was shifty and treacherous, lying on the broken and rocky mountainside. Even if I was able to keep the snow from shifting under us, if I focused and used a lot of magic, the rocks below were not subject to my power and if the foundation shifted, it was seriously hard to hold the upper layers in place. After we almost fell, due to a rock shifting and rumbling down the mou...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 33

At the dorm-cluster, instead of heading back to the dorm, I went into my workshop. I had work to do. If I wanted to make a secure capsule, I first needed the material I had used for my armour. The ceramic-metal compound needed a couple of special tools to process, some I would have to make myself, others that were rare but standard. Once I had a list of tools, I sent off a message to Technica to ask which of the tools were available to me in her workshop. I would have to acquire ...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 32

The private workshop I was shown had a set of relatively basic equipment in it, nothing tremendously fancy but it was adequate.

“Thank you, I will be happy to work here.” I told Technica with a smile.

“Great. And now, let me show you one of the greatest wonders the Guild has. I’m sure you will appreciate it.” she said with a smile, before guiding me further.

Again, we had to bypass multiple sets of security, each a different mechanism, until we got to ...

Crown of Thorns, Chapter 1

AN: I'm not sure if there will be a Don't label me! chapter today, but to make sure my Dragon-Patreons don't suffer from withdrawal, you can snack on the first chapter of Crown of Thorns, the story I write when I'm feeling author's block. I posted the prologue a couple of days ago and here is chapter 1. Enjoy ;)

I never claimed to be a morning person. But something was not as it should be. Something was definitely not as it should be. My mind was incredi...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 31

Dinner with Nisha had been quite interesting. Once she was finally believing that I was accepting her and her power, she had opened up quite a bit. While she had initially been deeply curious about my new relationship with the Guild, I had also learned a lot about her past, which had some overlap with my own. Her father was a consummate politician and had been most of his life. His politics were focused on allowing India to take its place as a great nation, without throwing away ...

Chapter 137

“Let’s see what happens with normal blood.” Lenore said, when I returned with Sigmir. 

Sigmir looked slightly worried when she saw the bound lynx, but did not protest my actions. 

“Once with line of sight and once without. I just wish we had the time to try how distance plays into the equation. Oh, well, not this morning.” I answered, while making a small cut into one of the lynxes’ paws, not damaging the fur, so we could skin it later. Blood wel...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 30

“Yes?” Nisha’s voice asked, after my call had been answered. 

“Good afternoon, Nisha. This is Diana, do you have a moment?”

After a moment of pause, Nisha answered. “I do, what is this about?”

“Could you meet me at the workshop where we met yesterday? In, say, an hour?”

“Yes, I can.” her voice was a little apprehensive. For the first time, I realised that she was far less self-confident when talking over the phone. 

�...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 29

When I got back to the dorm, the other three were sitting in the common room, chatting, but Tanisha was just getting up, to go into our shared room.

“Hey, guys.” I greeted them, as I walked in.

“Hi Diana, did you have fun last night?” Tanisha asked and I thought there was just a little bit of an edge in her voice, but I might have been wrong.

“Why, what happened last night?” Ru Shi asked, before I was even able to answer. 

“She sent a fr...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 28

Technica and I discussed a few more details about my coming apprenticeship, when I asked a question that I had been wondering about.

“How do you think Clark found me? I mean, I am reasonably certain that my identity was secure, but he managed to find me. And, to be honest, I doubt he would be able to pour water out of a boot, with instructions on the heel, you know?”

“Mother, your bias is showing.” Galatea softly chided me, as I said that.

“I don’t k...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 27

My mind had taken a leave of absence for some time, so when it checked back in with my body, Galatea showed me what had happened in the meantime. It was a little strange to receive her memories but I was getting better at parsing them. 

“Greetings, Technica.” Galatea said with a polite nod.

Technica looked like she had just taken a hit to the head, her eyes wide in disbelief.

“Are you joking?!” she finally blurted out.

“No, mother, that is A...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 26

Technica showed me around her underground lair and I felt strangely at home.  A lot of the design-choices, if you could call them that, were extremely similar to the way I had built my own workshop in the bunker above New Brunsburg. There was a suite of four rooms clearly devoted to different engineering-pursuits and equipped with everything you needed to create technical marvels of mayhem. As we walked, I felt myself move back to the driver’s seat, so to speak, and Galate...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 25

“I am your mother.” …

For the first time in my life, I experienced what I can only describe as a system-crash, like a computer, displaying a blue-screen. ‘Input does not compute.’ I started to slowly shake my head, I had to be in some strange dream. Some fever dream, because of the injuries I had sustained, or some sort of hallucination.

“Mother, you are not dreaming.” I was not? In the mental space I shared with Galatea, a bit of clarity remained, while...

Chapter 136

I watched the videos posted in the thread a couple of times, even going so far to pull the video from my point of view, to get an idea which of my actions had caused what reaction. It was quite interesting, the colours they were seeing, the best comparison I could come up with were random hits on a typewriter. Getting a meaningful picture that way would be akin to randomly hitting keys and hoping to get a novel, if you wanted a specific picture, it would be akin to getting a spec...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 24

When I arrived at the tower, a receptionist quickly sent me towards the right room, a small conference room on the ground floor. I was slightly early but was already awaited by a panel of three people, one of whom I had seen before. Considering that I had seen exactly two Guild-Powered before, at least while they were in costume, that had to be deliberate. The one I knew was Metanite, dressed in his Guild-costume, alongside a second person, likely a female, in costume. The third ...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 23

I was busy, fixing my body, when the Shadowbroker called back.

“It is I.” I answered, playing the formality up a little.

“Good evening, Metis. I contacted an acquaintance who works for the Guild. If you could attend a meeting tomorrow, eleven o’clock, at the Guild Tower, conference-room E-05, they will hear your complaint and hopefully you can get satisfaction without widespread damage.” he explained, his voice still thick with worry.

“Thank you, Sha...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 22

After dealing with the Shadowbroker, Galatea and I went down into the nitty-gritty details how to get my body back into a serviceable state. It was a little strange to treat my body like any other of my tools or gadgets and make basically a maintenance manual. The biggest challenge going forward would be to integrate some sort of energy-supply into my body, to keep the millions of nanites running. Our joined minds quickly came to the conclusion that the best bet would be to integ...

DLM Bk 3 Chapter 21

Nisha took a deep breath, before she started her tale. “You know that my full name is Nisha Acharya. What we never talked about, is my family. My father’s name is Shankar Acharya…” The moment she said the name, Galatea reflexively looked it up on the internet.

“The leader of the Indian Progress Party?” I blurted out, when the results came back and flooded my mind. The whole process had taken only a split-second.

The look of surprise on her face was a littl...

Teaser - Crown of Thorns: Prologue

AN: The start of a new project I worked on when I had writer's block with my other fictions. Enjoy, Dragons ;)

Warning:

Please be advised

This fiction may contain traces of religion, myth, fairy tales, pop-culture references, cultural appropriation, sexual content and offensive language. If you are allergic to any of those topics, you may experience knee-jerk reactions.  2019-04-27 21:48:31 +0000 UTC View Post