Zora watched as her son opened his eyes again.
With his expression peaceful, in his sleep, he had reminded her of her late husband. Now that he awakened and looked as if he intended to go and enact violence, his face was more volatile.
Who is it that he looks like now? she thought.
Zora did not realize she was smiling until he spoke.
“Thank you for sharing that,” he said, twisting his lips into a small smile that she recognized he was mirroring from h...
2025-01-31 03:49:06 +0000 UTC
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“Well, what’s your impression so far, son?” The world of the vision paused, and Zora’s voice rolled from the sky above like a clap of thunder.
“I think these are interesting people,” James said, speaking off the top of his head without much thought. “The Panther Queen is ruthlessly effective and clearly intelligent. I think that if she wasn’t probably targeting us next, I would like her.”
“Can you defeat her, though?” she asked. “Forgetting about admiri...
2025-01-30 04:26:06 +0000 UTC
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As the Florida Panther Queen finished speaking, James saw what looked to be a hatch on the roof open up, and climbing out of it, he saw what appeared to be an extremely roided out version of Dean.
I guess he went through Race Evolution, James thought. He looks like he’s ready to be in a 1980s movie or something…
James wondered what the Race was. But he guessed he would never have the chance to find out, since there was a high probability that Dean and all of ...
2025-01-29 00:35:36 +0000 UTC
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“How much do you know about my service in the war?” Georg began.
Hansel stared at the man for a moment, baffled.
“Why would I know…?”
“I know that some rumors probably circulated, and I was trying to gauge how much I have to tell and how much you may have already heard about my past,” Georg replied.
“What does that have to do with the destruction of our village?” Hansel asked. “Some old enemy of yours held a grudge? Raiders from the Empire, perhaps?...
2025-01-28 05:57:21 +0000 UTC
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Rosslyn waited a moment before she asked another question.
What are the creatures doing? Staring at us? she thought.
No, Adon sent back immediately. For a minute, I thought they hadn’t noticed us yet, but actually, they’re trying hard not to look. Almost burying their heads underneath each other’s bodies to the extent that they can.
It is the light, Rosslyn thought. They fear the light, or their eyes cannot tolerate it....
2025-01-28 04:29:48 +0000 UTC
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Darkness gathered around the party as it descended, settling on them more thickly as they delved deeper.
Adon checked his memories of everything he had ever heard about dungeons and confirmed that they had levels, each descending further into the ground than the one before it.
This was partially a distraction from the gloom that seemed to settle around the warriors as they drew further and further from the light of day.
The butterfly himself could still see everything well e...
2025-01-26 03:21:14 +0000 UTC
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As James and the Panther Scout whose body he inhabited watched in stunned silence, chunks of the Pantherfolk who had been blown apart flew in all directions, spattering everyone in the vicinity with blood and guts.
The other Pantherfolk froze, looking back and forth between each other and Viktor’s crew, suddenly afraid to advance, waiting for someone else to make the first move.
They aren’t much braver than humans either, James thought. Intelligence has killed som...
2025-01-23 20:55:41 +0000 UTC
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As James observed from the point of view of the scout, the dense jungle foliage began to part, and the sound of the drumbeat grew fainter.
It was apparent that the scout was moving out, either leaving behind the army he had come from or getting away from an army he had been spying on.
Strange that I started in the middle of things like this, James thought.
But he did not voice anything. He suspected that his mother could hear and answer any questions he might have, ...
2025-01-20 03:13:29 +0000 UTC
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As Rosslyn pointed at the dungeon’s entrance, knights all around them began preparing to explore.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering that the opening to the dungeon looked like a cave entrance, the members of the expedition had brought along climbing equipment which most of them now unpacked from their saddlebags: rope, rigging, grapples, and unlit torches, among other odds and ends that were less familiar to Adon.
A few of the Claustrian knights detached themselves from the re...
2025-01-20 00:08:35 +0000 UTC
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The route to the dungeon took them out of the city and into a valley.
Initially, once they had passed through the gate, Adon fluttered his wings, ready to take off and leave Rosslyn to herself for a little while. But he felt a gentle hand on his back, and Rosslyn shook her head slightly.
You should stay, she thought, clearly intending for him to read her mind. I would enjoy your reaction to the scenery you are about to see.
As the party moved further into t...
2025-01-17 03:10:43 +0000 UTC
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James felt weakened and slightly hollow after he had given the blessing, but it was no worse than that experience had always felt.
[Sufficient experience accrued. Blessing of the Fisher King leveled up!]
That’s nice, he thought dimly. His gaze flitted down to his mother’s face, but her eyelids remained stubbornly closed. Well, so much for that…
There might have been a slight improvement in her pulse and her breathing following his ble...
2025-01-17 02:54:56 +0000 UTC
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The first quarter of an hour of the journey to the dungeon was quiet.
The party of knights and the rulers’ heirs who led them marched slowly through the city in a tight formation, with the outer shell made up mostly of Dessians and the inner circle largely composed of Claustrians.
It took them five minutes just to get out of the palace compound.
Adon rode, along with the other arthropods, positioned at the center of the procession, sitting in a special container like a lar...
2025-01-15 05:07:06 +0000 UTC
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Mina reappeared, what seemed moments after her disappearance, in the same place where she had been standing.
But she was far from the same person she had been at James’s last sight of her.
Oh my God…
There were no words to express how James felt at seeing his wife again. Or perhaps there were too many words. Impressed was a feeble word for it. Awestruck fit more. And intensely aroused.
Mina had always been a pretty woman, especially in her husband’s eyes...
2025-01-14 18:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Reflexively, without truly knowing what she was doing, Mina reached out to the darkness with her mind.
There was nothing there, or it seemed as if there should not have been anything.
But something responded. It was as if she had turned on some vast cosmic machine.
A few stars kindled in the distance. Closer to her, several glows began to burn brightly in different colors.
One was red, another purple, one seafoam, one lavender, and one golden.
How many option...
2025-01-14 01:28:37 +0000 UTC
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As Adon finished speaking, Sir Jaren stared down at him, and the two held each other’s gaze for a pregnant moment.
Who are you, truly? Adon heard the knight thinking. What is your purpose here?
“You are not like the mystic beasts I always imagined,” Sir Jaren said at long last.
Adon felt the prickling of a slight nervousness again.
Oh? How so? he transmitted, affecting disinterest as best he could.
“I suppose I expecte...
2025-01-11 04:10:46 +0000 UTC
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Author's Note: This is not part of Ruthless or Re: Butterfly. I spent most of today and part of yesterday trying to prepare an entry in Royal Road's January magazine contest, which I will also consider making into an ongoing series. This is an idea I was already thinking about before I found out what the prompt was for the contest, so this story concept just required a slight tweak to fit (which is also how I approached the contest last year when I wrote Re: Butterfly's early chapters...
2025-01-10 01:06:56 +0000 UTC
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“James?” Mina called again.
“Oh, I’m here,” James replied in a loud, clear voice. “Sorry, I was just watching you standing there, framed against the light. Looking like an angel.”
Mina stepped through the doorway, shaking her head, slightly flustered but smiling. James lay there, clearly wide awake, watching her.
I guess I don’t need to worry about waking him up, at least, she thought.
Mina stood with a hand on the doorsill, bracing herself aga...
2025-01-08 03:03:56 +0000 UTC
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James’s body was drained almost to the last drop in terms of Health, despite Mina and Yulia’s best efforts to heal him, but his Mana pools were completely full.
He could have tried to heal himself with Laying on Hands, but considering that he had passive healing Skills already, and Mina and Yulia had spent hours using magic to try and patch him up, he guessed that the process would not be rushed by adding mediocre self-healing efforts.
Instead of wasting Mana trying to repair ...
2025-01-07 04:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Adon’s limbs snapped back to their normal positions in a second and then resumed their normal visibility.
Meanwhile, Rosslyn and William froze in position for a moment as Sir Jaren called a halt to the bout.
William’s face was stuck in a shocked expression, and his posture remained noticeably off-balance, while Rosslyn still held her teeth in a sort of battle snarl.
Then, with an almost simultaneous pair of exhales, they both seemed to relax. Rosslyn stepped back, and he...
2025-01-07 03:38:38 +0000 UTC
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Adon and Rosslyn emerged into the practice room with a dark cloud still hanging over them.
The butterfly thought for a moment that it would be obvious to everyone else once they laid eyes on himself and the Princess, but he was wrong. In fact, when they stepped through the door, no one seemed to notice them for several seconds. The group was already engrossed in their own conversations at the opposite end of the space. Frederick was talking animatedly to Goldie, while William was having...
2025-01-03 04:34:02 +0000 UTC
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A-all right, Adon sent.
Rosslyn’s tone and the haze of emotion around her made him so nervous that he did not want to see what he looked like in the mirror.
Still, Adon couldn’t very well say that. He would come across as literally afraid of his own reflection, and he didn’t want to look like that. Not right now. This was a moment when he needed to project strength as much as he could.
The moment when the butterfly imagined his botched Transformation might per...
2025-01-02 05:01:35 +0000 UTC
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The Princess’s lips parted in an expression of slight surprise.
Then she closed her mouth, looked directly at Adon, and slowly, thoughtfully nodded. He could see the beginnings of a smile playing at the edges of her lips.
“Yes, I remember we had discussed something prior to your hunting trip,” Rosslyn said. She turned to William and Frederick. “I am confident that our conversation will not take long. Perhaps you could take the spiders with you and wait for me in the traini...
2025-01-01 06:06:51 +0000 UTC
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The Fisher King found himself in a quiet, darkened space.
From the feel of the surface beneath him, he recognized that he was still lying in bed in he and Mina’s apartment.
He was not quite alone. He sensed his mother breathing nearby. Her breath and her pulse sounded stronger to his ears now. James guessed that some energy had been devoted to healing her in his absence.
He smiled slightly and then focused on his mission. Since he was alone here for the moment, there would...
2025-01-01 00:47:08 +0000 UTC
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After a time watching over the Expeditionary Force, James’s consciousness flew through the air, streaking like a shooting star back toward the Fisher Kingdom.
The sense of severance he had experienced before was gone, and he felt certain that his body was available again.
As he landed in his own flesh, it felt markedly better than it had before. The injuries, he sensed, were still crippling enough that he imagined a normal person might never walk again with them. Still, for ...
2024-12-28 22:41:45 +0000 UTC
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Adon and his passengers flew the whole night long and kept going through the sunrise. The three arthropods returned to the palace by mid-morning.
The butterfly was not particularly conscious of the need for speed as he flew.
Rather, flight was a joy that largely washed away any lingering regrets he might have still felt about the bear. His speed arose from the sheer joy of motion through the sky.
And the overwhelming sense of power that he had felt after eating the bear seem...
2024-12-27 21:23:14 +0000 UTC
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Adon and his friends consumed the flesh of the mystic bear.
The butterfly had lost much of his taste for hunting animals, but as he sank into his feeding trance, he recognized dimly that he could never lose his taste for this exquisite meat. Then there was just the rich, intoxicating savor of bear meat, gamey and strong and delicious in its flavor. Adon lost himself in the taste for a time.
When Adon emerged from his food coma, he found himself in darkness. The sun had set while h...
2024-12-21 05:30:52 +0000 UTC
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Rosslyn and William stood awkwardly outside the palace library, avoiding eye contact with each other in the moments after the servants left them.
After a moment, only Oran remained. Propriety demanded that there be a chaperone of some sort.
But he stood ten feet away, back turned to the two of them.
In the dim candlelight of the hallway, the butler could almost melt into the darkness. It would be easy to forget that he was there.
“You wanted to speak with me, Princes...
2024-12-19 22:33:34 +0000 UTC
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James felt a strange and unsettling sensation of severance as Mina pushed his physical body into her bag.
He got the impression that his astral form was somehow less substantial than it had been, and that perception disturbed him for a moment. Would he be able to reunite with his body later? Had the connection been somehow broken permanently? What sort of space was the inside of that bag? But he did not make time to sit still and contemplate the matter.
James was a m...
2024-12-18 03:04:50 +0000 UTC
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“Excuse me,” Mina said quietly, keeping her head down and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as she reentered the central part of the Fisher Kingdom, cutting through the crowd of people who remained gathered to gawk at the edge of the former Haunted Forest.
She raised her eyes and saw that her surreptitious movements had been of no use.
Everyone was looking her way. Some averted their eyes as she took them in, while others stared rather brazenly, but nearly every reside...
2024-12-16 06:52:30 +0000 UTC
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As the world exploded around him, James’s consciousness was forcefully shattered.
The last sensation he felt was that of being struck from above across every section of his body with a giant hammer.
Then darkness fell—but only for a moment. His consciousness splintered into a million little pieces, but something inside him appeared to be resistant to his mind scattering against his will.
James opened his eyes and found himself floating in the air. The first sensation he ...
2024-12-13 05:35:48 +0000 UTC
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