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69 - Warrior-to-Warrior Discourse

On his forehead, right between the eyes, he had a metal inlay seemingly embedded into the very skin, perhaps even bone - it was a circular symbol, comprising a circle in the middle, from which pointed outwards eight tridents with curved prongs and three lines each across the shaft.

The man had a similar symbol drawn on his chest in blood, though the smell of cooking chicken made it clear this wasn’t human blood - at a glance, Zel saw that each prong was more elaborate, but this could�...

68 - Descendant of the Tundra-Striders

Zef piped up, “...Is there a betting limit?”

“We run on a ratin’ system, the maximum bet ‘gainst a given fighter is the fighter’s ratin’ or the house limit, whichever’s higher,” affirmed the old man, pointing to a chalkboard behind the bars. “Just so happens that we ain’t got the board out today, got damaged last week, I’m pretty sure you should be good to bet up to two-hundred gelt or equivalent ‘gainst him, an’ the house limit’s fifty. If y’want t’be ...

67 - How to Get a Homunculus Drunk

“You’re that sure I’ll win?” Zel grinned again, raising the glass to her lips to take a sip. The smell of fruit hit her nose like a hammer, amplified by the sugary syrup and near-overripe black cherries that made up the kompot portion.

Not-Quincy smiled back, cleaning a tankard with a rag, “No, I just doubt you’ll come away from it with less than four gelt. Even losers usually make at least ten or twenty from what folks toss into the pit, unless you’re a particularly bad s...

66 - Fruit Right Hook

The room was somewhat of a donut design, with an outer floor-level layer and a large pit in the center, as well as a domed ceiling, and another side portion in the back whose depth could not be ascertained, as it seemed to have been repurposed to serve as a hybrid bar and kitchen. In the pit, a pale-skinned, scarred old man and an equally-scarred tan youngster were busy beating the daylights out of one another, their chests bared and their fists wrapped by linen. On the ceiling was a flaking-...

65 - The Red-shingle Path

Kitchen cooking implements, pots and pans, tools, glassware - such things had no place being carried around in Zel’s Fog Storage. In the field, there was no use for a full-sized cooking pot; a small field one alongside its tripod was what a beast-slayer needed. So they went, sorting through the length of the list and pulling things out that weren’t sufficiently described by their titles, only to return most of them back to storage anyway.

After hours of pulling thin...

64 - Emberthorn

The Sword… Oh, the sword. Alcerys looked upon it and couldn’t help pacing in front of the thing, even squatting down next to it to get a good look. After a few minutes of simply observing and taking in its details, she resolved to finally pull it out. She wrapped her hand around the handle, feeling the cold metal beneath her fingers as the crossguard’s own inward-facing briars receded ever so slightly. With a breath of Fog and a simple, upward pull, it slipped free from the gap between ...

63 - The Fiery Eye of Judgment

The Ex-Inquisitor gave a slow nod, observing as the Confessor walked away before she allowed herself to slump back onto the cold marble, staring into the ceiling as myriad thoughts and questions roiled about in her head and the icy stone beneath soothed the ache of her cuts. She looked up at her sword, wedged between the chapel’s marble floor panels, the dungeon fuel gem staring at her from its chain like an eternally judging eye. Something inside Alcerys was reluctant to grasp it, to take ...

62 - Grievous Miracle

The candles went out all at once, and the smoke that filled the room vanished into nothingness. The Confessor’s form doubled over, wracking coughs gripping her as she struggled to straighten herself. One by one the candles came alight once more, and neither smoke nor sparks now issued from them, and their flames burned blue more clearly than any lightgem.

As she struggled up off the floor the old woman’s hood fell back, her shoulder-length hair hanging in a loose mess, her prolonged...

61 - Metamorphosis

It burned, and boiled, and bubbled, and Alcerys saw clear as day as it burned away the inquisitorial symbols upon her armor and melted smooth the holy etchings, as it utterly annihilated her guns until naught but fingernail-sized pieces were left, as it reached her sword and melted the aquila away, leaving but a twisted, heat-distorted crossguard of brass and cold-iron wiring, the very circuitry that permitted the blade to come ablaze as it did.  There was another lightning-strike. Anoth...

60 - Judged in the Name of the Omniudex

The ceremonial mat's pitch-black surface glimmered and pulsed with golden, silver, and blood-red reflections tracing patterns that had never been described the same way twice. Its function had never been disclosed to Alcerys or any other Inquisitor, and she wagered she would never learn it regardless. The ceremonial mat, just as the robes and the candles, was entirely a matter of the Confessor.

On the Confessor’s side of the mat were laid out many holy tools - files, knives, chisels, ...

59 - Awake

A slow nod. The Seer shifted to a sitting position, crossing his legs without regard for decorum or respect.

“I was a soldier with the twenty-fourth. A lowly aethermancer. Our battalion was wiped out down to a tenth of its strength, and we were stranded in enemy territory, even before the Wall went up,” he began, and the Emperor listened. There was no accusation, no supplication, no hate or condescension in the Seer’s voice - just pure, familiar serenity. It was a welcome break fr...

More advance chapters starting today.

See title. In light of recent events, I've added another two extra advance chapters to the Patreon, accessible to all Patrons. Further expansion in the future is very much possible, I want to eventually get to a week of advance chapters.

58 - Tapestry Unraveling

As the recording sped by hour by hour slowly closing in on where the target was, the divination tapestry shifted about and changed rapidly as the predictions of all three-hundred and seven participants honed in on particulars or simply changed altogether due to circumstance.

The entire ritual’s results condensed into minutes still accounted for a considerable while, and so the Emperor chose to prod the eunuch for his own amusement.

“I find it to be nearly as impressive as it i...

57 - In the Hall of the God-King

They walked down those stairs into the basement of that apartment building, and were met with a bustling establishment - at least considering its diminutive size. A little over a dozen customers at most, with a single waiter plus the owner himself, who stood behind the counter observing the room, chopping meat and attending the grill with the same effortless, yet unparalleled skill as that first time.

He double-took at their entrance, stopped for a moment, and beckoned them over.

...

56 - Anima/Animus

“Long arm,” Zef answered.

“D’ye have any particular gun you’ve used frequently? A service weapon?” Collier continued the line of questioning. Zef answered with a simple nod.

“Bring it to me. I will stabilize it, seal the unliving soul in a particular part of the weapon, that it might be transferred to a new form,” the gunsmith explained, crossing her arms. “If there’s any arcane features you’d want out of the thing, bring ‘em up sooner rather than later, an...

55 - Re: Draw Against the Reaper

A/N: I'll be taking a day off tomorrow, so no chapter either. No particular reason, for once - I just feel like taking a day to relax and do some planning.

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Stomping footsteps were heard and Collier walked out into the space behind the counter, clad in a metal-plated apron covered in burn marks, wearing what looked like a visor ripped off a suit of plate armor with dark-blue gemstones in the eyeholes...

54 - Air Like Gunpowder

Another, and another, in the time it took his compatriots to move one barrel, the old man had moved three… Only to double over in pain clutching his lower back, barking something about how he would have to sit out the evening, much to the other old men’s chagrin. They half-jokingly said how they’d buy him a healing potion if he fought, how it was his duty to get better or their bets would be wasted.

Yet more walking. Yet more small details pulled at both Zel’s and Zef’s attent...

53 - Relics of History

A few minutes of walking, and it was already clear that something was brewing. Not just the everpresent civil unrest, but something foreign. They kept seeing foreigners that didn’t belong, wearing foreign clothes, acting so inconspicuous it looped back around to being conspicuous if one looked for it. Many weren’t trying to hide at all, just casually walking around, shopping, one even had a carriage food stall set up. Zef dragged Zel over to it, bringing up how she’d bought a kind of Ka...

52 - Restlessness

In simple words, what is termed as “Bladeshine” in Demons Might Weep is analogous to an aethermancer throwing a fireball through the use of some focus or another, merely extrapolated to the connection between a swordsman and their blade. There is also the matter of naturally-occurring Bladeshine-like phenomena such as swordsmen cutting enemies just barely out of their blade’s reach that could be used to explain the feat, but I suffer from the unfortunate plight of feeling the need t...