Scorio
The Red Keep hove into view.
It was like nothing Scorio had imagined. Cradled by huge banks of slowly roiling fog, its sanguine walls rose in stark defiance to the rough mountains around it, their faces roughened by the centuries but still bleak and stark, towering like slabs of petrified blood and clustered together so as to form an irregularly shaped fortress several hundred yards in height.
No windows. A single vast archway...
2025-08-15 14:39:01 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
They executed their escape after the next sleep cycle.
Scorio spent most of the ‘night’ lying on his nest of pink fronds staring up at the cave ceiling without dark vision. One arm beneath his head, the other across his chest, methodically working on his Dread Blaze mana control technique. The hours extended into infinity as his mana flow waxed and waned. It was incredibly dull, exacting work, but he could sense his improvement....
2025-08-13 13:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
Everybody fanned out across the cavern floor but for Xandera, who entered their customary cave and moved to the rear wall in readiness.
“How do you want to handle this?” asked Scorio. “How many fiends, what kind of support?”
Jova stared thoughtfully into the cave. “Let’s try five. Everybody stand back. You’ll know if you’re needed.”
“Five,” said Nyrix. “All at once? All right.”
Their pract...
2025-08-11 16:54:46 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
Nezzar smashed across Scorio’s face like a thunderbolt. The force behind the blow was punishing. The world flared white and silver as Scorio staggered back, but the pain of the blow was nothing to the shock of Leonis’ words.
It’s your fault we died!
They reverberated in Scorio’s mind like tolling bell, overwhelming, panic-inducing, horrifying.
No blow followed the first. Scorio blinked away his daze, the...
2025-08-11 16:53:55 +0000 UTC View PostJova
As the bronze sun descended beyond the straits into the Crimson Sea, the sky grew hazy with hues of magenta, lavender, and peach. The rough mountains that flanked the straits grew vague, details melting away, and the high wispy clouds that drifted at the top of the world took on buttery yellow tints. The waters below began to darken from their impossible azure, and the high walls of her city, Macran, were burnished by the dying light.
I'm so sorry, everyone. This isn't some asinine attempt to drag out cliff hangers, but just a truly frustrating problem with Dropbox backups and Scrivener on my laptop not opening the latest file. I've spent the past hour trying to figure out what's going on, but both the main document and both backups are only showing a version that dates from a month ago.
I am actively not thinking about some awful overwrite having killed a month's worth of writing, and have decided this is merely a f...
2025-08-08 14:23:43 +0000 UTC View PostThe Nightmare Lady
“Run!” screamed the Nightmare Lady, scampering over the dunes on all fours. “Damn it, Nox, run!”
Her shadow fled before her, angular and rippling on the ivory sands, cast by the great blazing Silverine Sun that was in the process of setting the storm clouds aflame. The air was charged with its power, and great riveting bolts of lighting cracked out with thunderous power to rend the entire sky, each deafening boom that followed hi...
2025-08-06 17:10:27 +0000 UTC View PostLeonis
They must have forgotten how echoes carried in this place. Leonis sat cross-legged before his cave, hands resting lightly on his knees, and listened to Scorio berate Jova. The man’s tone was sharp and cruel, and though his words were muffled, there was no mistaking the lashing he was giving Jova.
Leonis felt his lips curdle into a sneer of their own accord. She’d probably asked him some honest questions about their situation, or proposed a plan ...
2025-08-04 15:46:40 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
“You already know what to do,” said Scorio.
“Funny,” replied Jova, hands on her hips. “If I did, I’d be a Pyre Lord.”
“What I mean is, you know what I know. You probably know it better than I do.”
“Given your penchant for skipping ahead in line, you might be right.” Jova pursed her lips as she stared at him. Scorio saw rank disapproval in her glare. She’d never been shy about direct eye contact, a...
2025-08-01 14:24:01 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
“What?” Leonis’ shout echoed off the cavern walls. “You’re serious? You’re saying I’ve been hauling rocks like an idiot for nothing?!”
“We told you not to risk it,” said Jova, tone cool. “You’re the one who insisted.”
Leonis ground his teeth together as he inhaled mightily, obviously seeking to rein in his temper.
“Nobody’s pleased with this development,” said Scorio. “Xandera did her be...
2025-07-30 15:21:34 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
Scorio awoke to a gentle shake of his foot. Darkvision revealed Kelona crouched in the mouth of his cavern, her expression at once nervous yet challenging. When Scorio sat up, she rose smoothly to her feet, gestured for him to follow, and exited onto the ridge.
Curious, Scorio rose silently and followed her outside.
Kelona Ignited as she reached the ridge’s edge, shifted into her golden form, and dropped lightly to the cavern floor below. Bemused, Scorio simply leap...
2025-07-28 14:22:10 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
A sound tugged Scorio from sleep. Half aware, he leaped to his feet, blinking away his stupor as he glanced about the darkness.
No sign of Silverines pouring in through a chiseled gap. Instead, he saw Leonis risen to one elbow, hand to his temple, face cast into a deep frown.
Scorio knelt beside him. “Hey. You’re back.”
“What happened?” Leonis tone was gruff, his frown not entirely one of pain or confusion.
... 2025-07-25 13:32:26 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
“All right, listen up,” said Scorio as he approached the others. They’d gathered by Leonis’s side looking somewhere between tense, dejected, and on edge. “Jova and I have reviewed the situation and made a decision.”
The others stood. Kelona, Nyrix, and Xandera. It struck Scorio again how young they seemed, each looking to him for surety, confidence, direction.
“We’re in a bad spot.” He put his hands on his hi...
2025-07-23 13:42:51 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
Leonis still hadn’t woken up when everybody got into position.
Scorio did his best to not fret. The big man’s breathing was steady, his color wan but not corpse-like, and occasionally it looked like his eyes were moving beneath his lids. Were it not for the sticky gash in the back of his head, he might have been sleeping off a bout of festive drinking the night before.
But it had been a good stretch of time now. Impossible...
2025-07-21 13:33:15 +0000 UTC View PostThe Nightmare Lady
The Nightmare Lady loped along the edge of the cliff, her tail undulating behind her, talons digging into the crusty rock. She ran smoothly, fluidly, drawing on the ambient Bronze mana with ever more proficiency, feeding it into her blazing Heart without routing it through her reservoir.
He would have been proud.
As always, her monstrous face pulled into a silent snarl at the thought of him, a reflexive wave of hat...
2025-07-18 13:55:32 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
For the first short while everybody stayed close, clustered together not far from the plug, watching intently and listening for sounds of impending doom. Leonis was their center, and it was as if nobody was willing to stray too far from where he lay. Kelona found a dark gash in the back of his head, one that no doubt would have been worse if his bundled ponytail hadn’t cushioned his fall.
“Head injuries are bad,” Jova had said...
2025-07-16 13:52:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Revealed here first! You guys remember this scene?
2025-07-15 13:40:35 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
Impatient, Scorio fell into a steep dive. The wind rushed about them as he half-furled his wings, and Kelona let out a whoop of excitement. The fog swirled and parted so that the ghostly ground resolved itself into pale sand dusted over rocky outgrowths. Most rose and fell without gaining much prominence, but here and there they suddenly speared up into the sky to form freestanding walls of white rock.
Jova, who’d pulled ahead, gl...
2025-07-14 13:38:26 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
When the sanguine sun finally began to rise, it did so swiftly. One moment it lay low in the sky, causing the air to swelter and roil, the desert to be bathed in crimson hues, and then it began to climb. It rose higher by the moment, the heat abating, and Scorio had trouble not simply standing there and watching as everyone finished their first bout of training and broke camp.
“It’s going up so quickly,” said Kelona, visoring ...
2025-07-11 13:24:02 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
Flight.
Scorio never felt more free.
With his huge wings extended, he glided on the baking hot thermals that rose from the desert below, his body exhibiting a natural intuition as to how to angle his wings so as to flow smoothly over the rises and falls of air.
It reminded him of navigating mana densities while aboard a whale-ship, knowing when to bank, when to climb, when to dive.
But now, as his own self, it was ...
2025-07-09 13:32:30 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
After the Heart Oaths were sworn, Leonis and Jova departed to collect their packs, leaving Moira and Scorio to wander LastRock until they found a quiet square. They’d walked in silence the whole way, both sunk in thought. Scorio’s alternated between doubt and optimism, but he looked up when Moira turned to face him full on. She didn’t speak, and after a moment he frowned at her pensive silence.
“What? Aren’t you going to t...
2025-07-07 13:40:57 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
The light streaming through the windows was the burnished amber of midday. Scorio blinked, passed his hand over his face, then sat up. The threadbare sheet pooled about his waist.
“Hey, look who’s still alive.” Kelona sat in one of the windows. The wall was deep enough that each sill was akin to a bench. “You ready to tackle the rest of Hell?”
“Hmm,” said Scorio, scratching at the back of his head and rising to m...
2025-07-04 14:21:13 +0000 UTC View PostLeonis
A dull ache awoke Leonis from his stupor. For a moment he just lay beneath the tousled sheets, blinking up at the cracked stone ceiling. His body was sore. His back, his legs, his left shoulder. For all his sleep he still felt worn out.
Perhaps he’d overdone the exercise yesterday.
Movement by his side.
Merideva awakening, her long brown hair free of its braids and spread out across the threadbare pillow. She blinked h...
2025-07-02 14:12:52 +0000 UTC View PostJova
Jova quit Moira’s administration hall, Ignited her Heart, and rose on a slab of stone to the top of her tower. The sounds of LastRock awakening grew thin and distant as she landed on a ledge and stepped into the great chamber.
Frustration burned within her, that familiar companion, and a face hovered in her mind’s eye. Hard-jawed, piercing dark eyes beneath striking brows, his hair a ragged dark mane, his gaze steady and unyieldin...
2025-06-30 15:21:09 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
“Wait, what?” Scorio rushed to the edge of the roof just in time to see Moira land on the ruptured sidewalk and dust off her hands. “Jova? You want me to team up with Jova?”
Moira pretended to consider, then nodded. “Yes. I told her to wait in my office. Let’s go.” And she strode off down the street.
Scorio gaped. For a moment his anger and melancholy were overwhelmed by sheer disbelief. Then he clenched...
2025-06-27 13:32:48 +0000 UTC View PostScorio
An arid wind blew off the metallic desert to the south and moaned through the gaps in the wall. The light was dark and murderous, the even sky gradating from amber to burgundy as the sun descended toward the scorched horizon. Evening in the Telurian Band, as dark as it ever got.
Scorio watched the sunset from his window with anticipatory nostalgia.
It was to be his last evening in LastRock.
Time to penetrate deeper into ...
2025-06-25 14:32:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe Nightmare Lady
Nox leaped and crawled across the desert, and the Nightmare Lady followed.
At first she staggered after him on instinct. Exhausted, bereft, her mind a wasteland of grief and self-loathing, she fought to simply place one taloned foot before the other, her skeletal form weaving and occasionally crashing down to her knees.
Always Nox would stop, half-waddle around to glance back at her with his eyeless hoods, and wait...
2025-06-23 14:29:15 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone!
The fact that you're reading this means you chose at some point along the way to support my writing above and beyond just grabbing my books as they come out on Amazon. Maybe it was Immortal Great Souls that convinced you, or Throne Hunters, or The Grind Show. Regardless, you saw something in my books that sufficiently resonated for you to join this Patreon, and for that, you have my sincere thanks.
We've been on a great kick recently with Throne Hunters #4. High oc...
2025-06-23 14:08:59 +0000 UTC View Post(Quick note about a passage I've entered into Chapter 37. You'll immediately see why this was a necessary edit :P
“What do you suggest, Sam?” Harald knew his anger was misplaced, born of frustration and helplessness. “Stay here and endanger you all? Sit around till they send someone more competent who doesn’t underestimate our strength?”
“We can use my Artifact,” said Sam. “The one the angel gave me? We can just open a Portal directly to the Dungeon a...
2025-06-22 16:24:42 +0000 UTC View PostHarald’s instinct was to immediately draw back, heart hammering in his chest. Two foes. Moving a good distance apart from each other, but in parallel, and no doubt planning to attack in concert.
His thoughts whirled. How was this possible? Who’d get the Twilight Crown if he fell while fighting them both? Would they then turn on each other? Had they agreed to this pact due to his proving surprisingly durable? Were they cowards, or had they been commanded to fight alongside each other...
2025-06-22 02:13:22 +0000 UTC View Post