BleedingTears

Arcanist - Chapter 109

Warm air splashed hard against his face. Lights gleamed painfully bright all around him. Golden lights. Stabbing lights. Lights meant to kill rather than illuminate. The hymn of the Priests echoed deep in his ears.

Valens’s chest rose in the heat of it, crawling and creeping chills over his back. He cast his gaze around and saw young faces there, by the giant gate of the Golden Cathedral, peering with questions in their eyes toward their group.

Screams tore through his ears. Wai...

Arcanist - Chapter 108

Valens bolted through the streets, one hand over his burning chest, feeling his mana pool fast recovering as the ground fissured across their path. Nomad and Celme carved a path open while they followed with Selin from the back. The Berserker did seem she got some new moves, but nothing was more stark than the change that happened to Nomad.

He’d grown to be a monster in human flesh, and the Shifters fell one by one under his sword.

They were getting closer to the Golden Cathedra...

Arty Art of Templars

Never been much of a fan of AI images, but a friend did this one after reading the last chapter, and it just so happened to align with the image I had in mind of our dear Templars. Figured I should post it before the next chapter. Here's Edric in the middle, with Mas and Dain keeping him company.

Arcanist - Chapter 107

The mere light of Edric’s inner flame was enough to force the tides of the undead to cower senselessly back to the skirts of their Liches where they stood, shivering, blinking, sucking deep breaths from the Everfog to stop their bodies from twitching.

There were hundreds of them pressing into the main gate of the Golden Cathedral, which was cloaked in wavering lights of the Blessed Father that resisted the battering of the Liches’ foul magic. Now and then, a hole opened up around th...

Arcanist - Chapter 106

Valens didn’t know how he patched the end of the street with Gravitating Earth, raising a giant block of soil to block the rush of the endless horde. He adorned it with spikes to make it difficult for Shifters to climb before turning back to the scene.

Damp air burnt a painful path down his lungs. His fingers tingled. His chest heaved. But none of them was enough to silence the nostalgia that settled around his mind as he gazed at the back of that solitary figure.

There were som...

Arcanist - Chapter 105

Burning flames blasted the creatures into pieces, scorched the rot out of them, and scattered their blood hissing against the earthly walls rising about him. Dozens, hundreds of them rushed toward him in mindless fury, red eyes scathing, the tips of their claws gleaming, the fog churning and rolling around him.

He sucked in a deep breath and beat on, a boat against the tides, forcing his way through the waves, never lingering long enough to give them a chance to pin him still. He couldn...

Arcanist - Chapter 104

A lump of rotten meat clad round a skeletal frame came stumbling closer to him, bony fingers clasped tightly around a sword. A bastard of a sword, Garran reckoned, reeking of death and wrong. Something very wrong as the straps of his golden plates flapped against his chest. He ducked under the weapon, lunged in, and caught the fool by the torso, hauled him off, and slammed him across the ground, planted a plated foot down on the Heartstone.

With a click, the stone gave in and splintered...

Arcanist - Chapter 103

When Valens was about to open the clinic door, he caught a subtle shift in the Resonance. It was early in the morning, the sun's first lights barely flashing from beyond the thick swarm of clouds, the air foggy and the paved roads slick with dew. He’d left Selin in the house since it was still early, and told William on the way that she’d be coming in their usual hours.

He rushed to the clinic at this hour because the penicillin would be ready soon. He wanted to prepare the first ba...

Arcanist - Chapter 102

Martha Bell breathed in the fog seeping through the shutters of the house, an old place by the Knuckle Alley that hadn’t seen much use for the last few years. She breathed in the fog, then turned and smiled widely across the living room.

Red eyes gleamed in the dark as the Hemlings faced her.

“This is a celebration,” Martha said, gently opening the shutters of the room and revealing the blood moon hanging clear over the sky. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other wo...

Arcanist - Chapter 101

In the following days after opening the clinic, Valens found himself in a monotonous rhythm of healing patients and trying to spread his image amongst them. He made a point of coming across as shady, noisy, and a touch crooked in the mind to fit the image of a Healer hiding from the Church in plain sight.

Garran, Dain, and even Mas took turns acting as guardians inside the clinic while Captain Edric demanded daily reports from Valens. Those generally consisted of the names of particular...

Chapter 100

 Nomad blasted through the front gate, Heartstone thumping in his chest, the leathery handle of the sword scraping against his bony fingers. He ducked down as an arrow whizzed toward him, stretched a hand out, and caught it as it passed by over his head.

He caught it hard in the palm of his hand and turned and stabbed its pointy tip into the Undead Soldier who came swinging a giant sword. Saw him stumbling back with a hand over the arrow, growling through a set of yellow teeth. Fin...

Arcanist - Chapter 99

Foggy morning time, and Valens was busy handling the mold gathered from the box of bread laid by the side. He had already distilled the alcohol and prepared the rest of the ingredients for penicillin, which would be ready in a few days' time.

The monotony of the work lifted the great weight settled across his mind. Working in the silence of the morning helped, as well.

That done, he went back to check on Selin, who sat calmly in the welcoming hall, tidying up her table and her cha...

Arcanist - Chapter 98

Vireth pulled at the chains around the doorknob, checking for one last time to make sure she would be left alone during the Assembly. Her collection of shadows, lined across the shelves in the room—each one placed neatly in vials bound by her [Soul Threads]—stirred slightly as she lay over her couch.

She counted the days for the last week like a child promised a big surprise for her sixth birthday, even if she got odd looks from the cult members who seemed baffled to witness the Nin...

Arcanist - Chapter 97

The edges of the portrait creaked and shifted as Mr. Gray stared at his own image displayed magnificently between the shelves. 

“I appreciate the intent here,” Valens broke the silence a moment after. “Keeping to a certain air of mystery. I have found in my time here that almost everyone likes this sort of arrangement, but I’m not sure if that is entirely plausible, as it seems like you’re trying to leave me in the dark for no particular reason. We don’t know each other...

Arcanist - Chapter 96

The Hexsurge threads flashed along the wavering lines of void-tinged flames, pounding over them like beasts out looking for prey, the fleshy walls of Valens’s chest stinging in response. One by one, the ethereal threads tore apart the outside influence and cut short their desire to reach Valens’s chest cavity.

Since the battle was fought between forces of Void, the aftermath scarcely made a dent in Valens’s body save for the echoing remnants of pain. He came to himself with a whee...

Arcanist - Chapter 95

The young servant led him through a set of colorful corridors, down a pair of spiraling steps, across the under halls of the mansion where portraits of important-looking men and women dotted the walls. He was silent through all of it, with only their steps resounding about the walls.

And yet Valens knew, due to prior experience, that the longer the march went on, the more it meant the person he was being guided toward would be more important.

So this Mr. Gray, the rich patron ...