philtucker

Chapter 12: Kill zones

The fireteam met them two hours later at the apartment. Hackworth had called James and Serenity an Uber, surprising James, who’d thought they’d have to catch a bus. But it was clear that the major wasn’t a stickler for formalities; he saw his goal and went for it.

In this case, his priorities included keeping James and Serenity happy and open to cooperation.

“What are we going to do with them?” asked Serenity, looking down at the street as the tan Humvee bounced up to pa...

Chapter 11: No time for this BS

They didn’t get to see the mayor.

Instead, Williams dropped them off outside the NYCEM Headquarters after getting waved through the security checkpoint. The place was a madhouse, with all kinds of army vehicles, news trucks, and emergency tents set up on the neighboring park space around a fountain. The building itself was a great cube some six stories tall, a fusion of gray paneling, blue reflective windows, and creamy vertical stone accents that made it look like something out of Mi...

Chapter 10: The National Guard is here to help

James lay on the couch staring up at the letters that hovered three feet from him. Futile questions ran through his mind. How was he seeing them? How did they track with his line of sight if he could interpose his hand and block them out? Pupil tracking? How did something so high-tech correlate with the vicious, demonic evil of the Nemesis 1? How did the Nemesis 1’s materialize so close in the first place? Was teleportation a thing now?

More importantly, why?

Why send a...

Chapter 9: What a shit show

They got a ride back to Serenity’s apartment from a grateful survivor who called their mom to come pick them up. James passed out in the back, leaving Serenity to fend off the excited questions from the teenaged girl in the passenger seat.

He awoke when they pulled up outside the laundromat.

The place was closed, the lights out, the blood smears on the sidewalk black in the street lights.

“So amazing,” said the young woman as James got out. “I’m going to get ready,...

Chapter 8: Sexy Lumberhomelessjack Dude

James piled into the oncoming gremlins. Swung his skillet once but didn’t bother drawing it back. He ran on a carpet of dread bodies, small, scaled forms that shifted underfoot, making purchase hard, making it so that his blind charge turned into a dive.

His aura flared to life. He barged into the gremlins and they lit up. Smoke surrounded him immediately, screeches.

James crashed to his knees. He was roaring, screaming hoarsely as he rose, gremlins swarming him, falling right o...

Chapter 7: I want an 8 Ball

“Shit!” James pounded the steering wheel. “Shit shit shit shit!”

Serenity whipped about, trying to keep all the gremlins in view. They were all over the car. Slamming their fists against the windows, head butting them, causing small cracks to spider into existence.

“They’re going to get in!” she shouted. “Go faster!”

“I can’t go faster!” he yelled back at her. “The car’s fucked!”

He tried swerving from side to side to dislodge gre...

Chapter 6: Stay informed. Watch the news. Stay alive.

Shadows were starting to lengthen. It was cold. James pulled the caramel-furred coat tighter about himself and tucked his chin into his neck. Kicked at a berm of filthy ice that lined the edge of the pavement. Looked around.

The city was changing fast. And in only twenty-four hours. Mixed messages were everywhere. Lines around the block at gas stations across from tiny public playgrounds where kids still shrieked and played. A body lying in the gutter, torn all to shit, a handf...

Chapter 5: Honey, guns cost money

James yanked on the cargo pants Serenity had left in a pile by the bathroom door, and still soaked ran into the living room.

Serenity was yanking open drawers in the TV stand, and pulled out a compact, dark gray pistol. With quick efficiency she ejected the magazine, slammed it back home, and then looked to James, eyes wide. “What do we do?”

In response he ran to the front door, caught himself, then looked around for a weapon. There was nothing good, so he snatched up the heav...

Chapter 4: Two Million Dead

The next hour was spent watching the news, checking social media, and fighting off exhaustion for as long as possible. Little changed, though the outbreak of mystery dog attacks was the main story on every station and news site. Any and every theory was put out there, ranging from frequencies beamed by the Chinese from spy satellites to enrage canines to an outbreak of medieval-styled mania leading to madness and self-mutilation.

James found his focus slipping. He knew he needed to slee...

Chapter 3: Arete

James reread his personal statistics. They reminded him of the Dungeons and Dragons game he’d played back in high school. But none of the rest made any sense.

“Definitely Catholic,” murmured Serenity. “All this miracle and benediction shit? Man am I relieved to have been born into the right religion. Sucks to be you, rest of the world.”

“You got ‘none’ next to everything?”

“Except for my rank and Aeviternum Points, whatever that is,” said Serenity distr...

Chapter 2: This Makes Total Sense

James emerged smoothly from his sleep. He was propped up on a clean bed. There were people around him, doctors, nurses, but they were paying attention to other people. He was groggy. He’d been given anesthesia, he realized. Bright lights overhead, that old, familiar smell. An Emergency Room.

He forced himself to relax. To work his thoughts through the fug of chemicals and exhaustion. Not in the Day Surgery Unit, so it couldn’t have been too serious. Then again, how many patients wer...

Chapter 1: Nemesis

60,000-year countdown has ended

Nemesis 1 released

Please acknowledge

James blinked blearily and swiped his gloved hand at the glowing letters. They didn’t disappear. He frowned, turned away, and they tracked with his line of sight, bright green against a subtly darker rectangle, hovering in mid-air at a distance of some three feet from his face.

He tried to turn away again, but the center arms on the wooden bench we...

Chapter 116: Endings and Beginnings

The temples burned as if starved for fire. The black wood cracked and warped and erupted into flames that were more blue than anything else, going up so quickly that in moments all four buildings were wreathed in shimmering curtains of azure.

There was surprisingly little heat until the flames spread to the wood stockpiled over and under the corpses; this burned with normal crimson and lurid orange hues, so that for a brief while the pyre was a crown of blue with a core of red and woole...

Chapter 115: Aftermath

There were far fewer people living in Kaldrborg than Skadi had expected. They seemed to haunt their own settlement, proud yet reclusive, scornful yet melting away from all confrontations. For the most part, they remained hidden within their homes, while their remaining warriors were put to work demolishing the dock walls and carrying the timber to the temple courtyard.

Skadi never ceased moving from one location to the other, ensuring that she remained highly visible, ensuring that the ...

Chapter 114: A cursed tree

What followed was the longest day of Skadi’s life.

She’d suffered moments of bleaker anguish. Riki’s murder as Kalbaek burned. Yri’s death. Finding Begga, Kofri, and Ulfarr arranged amongst the Kráka dead. But those moments had been acute and then fallen away, giving her time to retreat into grief and numbness.

Not so this day.

Kvedulf’s sternum was broken. Each breath hurt, and but worse, something deeper within him, a force that had sustained him ever since they...

Chapter 113: The cycle of destruction

“No,” Skadi called out. “This is between you and I. Leave my friends out of it.”

Afastr smiled. “You are the one who involved them. Who made this all so complicated? But if you wish. I am nothing if not considerate of my wives.”

Skadi began to pick her way toward him. “So you admit it?”

“That I have been married before?” Afastr propped Dauðakoss on his shoulder. The very sight of the cursed axe caused Skadi to shudder. Its blade was spattered with brains...

Chapter 112

Dauðakoss.

Skadi took a step back. Her uncle’s words were loud in her ears as if he spoke to her directly from the past: “None may parry or block its blows. It cleaves through swords, shields, chain, flesh, and bone. All will fall before it.”

“We’ve lost,” she croaked.

Baugr stepped to the fore, his mail rent, his wounded left arm held against his chest. “We defy you, Afastr! I thought to give you a chance, but no more! For Kráka, you die!”

�...

Chapter 111: Time to get to work.

The space beyond the Raven’s Gate swarmed with Kaldrborg warriors. They hadn’t been ready for Aurnir’s explosive entrance, but reacted with violent surety, screaming their defiance and throwing themselves at the half-giant with suicidal bravery.

Aurnir bellowed in return, the sheer volume of his voice drowning out the enemy cries in a great stertorous blast, and swung his dire flail.

Shields shattered, arms broke and were torn off, chainmail shredded, and bodies were hurled ...

Chapter 110: A single imperative

There was no time to think, to weigh the moment and decide on the best course of action. She had to decide, make a choice, and own it with everything in her spirit.

To run with the others to do battle with Afastr? To turn and face the half-giants? Or to continue sprinting toward the walls?

An image flashed through her mind: their forces bunched up against the palisade, the ladders rising even as the half-giants cut through their ranks like a scythe through barley.

Was it the...

Chapter 109: Battle

The army marched along the mountain road all afternoon and into the evening. Almost five hundred strong, they formed a huge snake five men wide, many sharing the weight of ladders that extended down the flanks, eight or ten men resting its length on their shoulders.

Skadi walked close to the front with her uncle and his hird. Some thirty scouts fanned out ahead, searching the forests on either side for ambushes and watching the road ahead, but each time they looped back to report they s...

Chapter 108: Return

They arrived at camp as the sun was dipping down toward the mountain peaks, weary and exhausted but fired with such bleak determination that Skadi felt nothing but scorn for her physical frailty.

The jarls had not been idle. A great swathe of trees had been stripped in a raw crescent about the stone beach, branches hacked off and piled up in great green mounds, while the trunks were split and shaped and lashed into ladders, bound into bundles of firewood, and two large trunks fashioned ...

Chapter 107: Death

Skadi felt her true thread, her life-cord, bend as the norns somewhere far away placed their shears about it.

Hjörþrimul drifted into view once more, every line of her eager and burning with anticipation.

Skadi lowered her chin. Stared hard at the linnorm, Natthrafn held down and away.

The linnorm’s coils undulated, its whole body gathering itself to leap at her. Pale purple blood washed down its chest, seeping from the deep wounds in its neck.

But none of them wer...

Chapter 106: Whatever I request, no matter the cost.

The cliff face uncoiled.

Breath caught in her throat, a storm rushed through her mind, and Skadi took a step back, drawing Thyrnir from her belt without thinking about it.

Sinuous curves, glossy scales of slate blue, spines running down the central ridge, its stomach great bands of pearlescent white. Massive enough in the chest where two clawed arms emerged for her to perfectly envision it swallowing a grown man with ease, but otherwise tapering into a great tail that was impossib...

Chapter 105: Again-Walker

The challenge lay in the dying of the day. Their original plan had been to travel south immediately after scouting out Kaldrborg, traveling through the wilderness at night with a linnorm on the loose was suicide. But nor had they brought equipment with which to survive the cold without being on the move.

In the end, Skadi resolved to move south at a slower pace and higher altitude, conserving their strength as they followed the contours of the rocky slopes high above the mountain road. ...

Chapter 104: Kaldrborg

They got out of there fast.

Glámr led the way, rushing further up the mountainside in the hopes that the linnorm would naturally move down the slopes instead, and then they ran at a fast jog for an hour, wending their way along barren rock-strewn expanses, through gulleys and leaping the occasional ravine. It was treacherous going, but Glámr seemed to have a preternatural instinct as to how best to navigate the terrain, and after a while Skadi ceased to worry about the ground falling ...

Update on next steps

Hello everyone,

We're drawing to a close on Skadi's Saga. The first arc will finish this Friday (9/9/22) with Chapter 116. I will then transition to Dawn of the Void, which has proven far more popular on Royal Road, and which I hope will translate into a large and enthusiastic audience here on Patreon.

What does this mean for Skadi? Her adventures are only beginning...

Chapter 103: Perils in the Wild

Her companions were ready before dawn. Aurnir rose to bid them goodbye, and it took Skadi a while to make him understand why he couldn’t come. Morose and uneasy, he watched them leave the camp, pacing back and forth as they followed the stone beach to crack in the escarpment through which they could climb.

Skadi hadn’t slept. She’d been too aware of the importance of the next day, the responsibility she’d claimed, the need for success. Her mind had endlessly revolved around fact...

Chapter 102: Scouting Party

Even as Skadi stood amongst the rest of the crew on the Sea Wolf another beacon kindled to life farther up the coast, a crimson flicker a score of miles away.

“A curse on that man,” said Marbjörn, his frustration sharp. “Is there nothing he’s not thought of?”

Skadi grimaced. The sun was setting. There wasn’t enough time to search for an ideal campsite, and there were too many men on the ship to sleep at anchor.

Kvedulf clearly understood this as well. �...

Chapter 101: Storms at Sea

Baugr arrived upon the Wave Flame late that afternoon. The longhall yet gave off a plume of ashen black that wound its way up into the gray sky, so that there was no surprise on the Havaklif jarl’s face as his dragon ship drifted up to the pier. He was followed by the Cold Dread and Sea Ox, with Einarr’s Gold of the Seabringing up the rear.

All four ships docked in silence.

The waiting warriors stared in silence as Kvedulf moved to stand bef...

Chapter 100: North to vengeance

When at long last Marbjörn deemed the longhall ready, dozens of warriors raised burning brands and approached the stacked piles of kindling.

Skadi had watched in a stupor, the night seemingly endless, unable to act, to think, to move. It felt as if her grief filled the cup of her heart to the brim; if she exerted herself in any way, it would overflow.

But as the men approached the longhouse, a realization galvanized her into action. “Wait!”

She ran up the steps and into...