I wanted this chapter to be really good, which made it really hard to write. I don't think it came out better than normal (but at least it's not worse than normal either). This was definitely a case where that saying about the perfect being the enemy of the good (or something like that) applies ...
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One thing in favor of Blaze’s choice to surprise Serenity was definitely the fact that it limited the time he had available to worry about how the Imperia...
2023-10-30 07:47:34 +0000 UTC
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Serenity knew something was up when Blaze shooed him out of the house to go work with Minu. He was happy to play along with his friend’s scheme, whatever it was; he could use the distraction. Jenna was napping and Rissa was talking to her lawyer again; getting out of the house sounded wonderful.
It turned into a long run that day. Minu seemed excited and wanted to play. They even had a short mock fight in a secluded portion of the dungeon.
Well, ...
2023-10-28 21:57:43 +0000 UTC
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So, I'm technically "over" being sick ... at least, no fever for several days. Still way too much sniffling, though, and I'm exhausted enough that I had a surprise nap instead of writing earlier this evening...
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Imperial Agent Cymryn,
While Earth is not yet open for general visitation, a small group from the Empire would be welcome to visit and learn something of the unique nature of the planet. An informal visit is preferred. Formal d...
2023-10-28 06:33:35 +0000 UTC
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As always, let me know if you see I've messed something up!
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Character List of Invasive Species
This list includes people mentioned in all Arcs to date.
It does not include people with only a single mention or the “people” from the Story Dungeon; they are specifically for that Story. If I missed anyone more important than that (I often do), please let me know in the comments.
Aaron - Ab...
2023-10-27 05:50:55 +0000 UTC
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None of the humans noticed as Tek tightened the last screw into place. It didn’t really need her help, but it seemed somehow appropriate. This was her first real installation on a planet other than Earth, after all; it felt like she should be involved.
She stepped back and looked at the transmitter closely. It was a really simple piece of technology, essentially just a repeater for a local network that would only cover a little beyond the building it...
2023-10-26 05:11:17 +0000 UTC
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Distinctly feeling better today. Not well yet, but definitely better.
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Apollyon’s nostrils flared as he caught Serenity’s scent. He frowned and seemed to shake his head slightly. “You smell of Wrath but you do not look it. Wrath draws only lightly on the Suras bloodlines but clearly you are not purely of Wrath. Well, so much the better; Wrath was never much for conversation. You wished to speak?”
Serenity did not like Apollyon’s attitude, ...
2023-10-25 03:28:53 +0000 UTC
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Feeling a little better. Slept basically all day. Still sick.
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Serenity was a little surprised he hadn’t heard from the Voice about this the way he’d heard about the “Tokens of Terror” on Asihanya. The Voice handed that quest out with restrictions, so it couldn’t just be because the Voice was trying to keep things quiet. If it was watching for Apollyon the way he seemed to think it was, Serenity should have gotten a quest by now and he hadn’...
2023-10-24 04:59:13 +0000 UTC
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“Who are you to think you can demand something from me on my own land? Why shouldn’t I just kick you out of here like the grifter you are?” The voice sounded offended.
Serenity suspected that was as much acting as reality; the Apollyon actually thought there was no reason to talk to him, why were they talking? Apollyon was the one who started the conversation and who knew where Serenity was, not the other way around, so Apollyon ought to feel like ...
2023-10-23 02:58:31 +0000 UTC
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Some of you probably saw this on Discord, but for anyone who didn't - I currently have covid. I'm doing the best I can between brain fog and general illness (this is miserable). This chapter was supposed to be written last night but I just wasn't up to it.
I'll keep up the best I can; if I get too sick, I may have to miss a day and then figure out what to do about it. If this is like the last time I had covid, that probably won't happen, but we'll see how bad it gets. Late chapters are ...
2023-10-22 05:02:51 +0000 UTC
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The man with Rose was no demon. He was also not touched by Night Fire as far as Serenity could tell. Instead, he seemed to be an ordinary man doing his job. He was shorter than Serenity, tanned, and had sandy blond hair that had grown out a bit longer than it looked like it should have. He was dressed in what had to be a work outfit, jeans and a polo shirt with a logo that looked like a grasshopper leaping over an entwined LF.
On second thought, that...
2023-10-20 22:41:43 +0000 UTC
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That evening, dinner was somewhat strained as everyone tried not to talk about the events of the day. After dinner, Serenity pulled Rissa aside and talked her into a silly movie marathon. Tremors 11: Return to Sender featured a horribly silly plot that centered around returning a graboid to the dungeon it escaped from as an invading monster. It wasn’t particularly true to either the rest of the series or how dungeons actually worked, but it did manage to ...
2023-10-20 02:43:33 +0000 UTC
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Serenity didn’t expect to succeed on the first try. That was part of the reason he’d collected so much World Core crystal, after all; he expected to destroy some of it or at least render it useless for anchoring a nexus. That was simply how it worked when you pushed spellcraft into new areas, and this was new to Serenity. He was taking reasonable precautions to protect himself and everyone nearby, but so far they hadn’t been needed.
He hadn’t ma...
2023-10-19 01:53:56 +0000 UTC
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Rose grinned as he walked towards Minu and Serenity. “I wondered if I’d see you here or if I’d have to pick you up then catch a cat. I already have an order for a tamed talmis, but if you want to pay the tamed price for her, I can make an exception for you.”
That sounded an awful lot like “I’m going to charge you extra for cutting in line.” Serenity wasn’t certain there actually was a line, but it still gave him something to wo...
2023-10-18 04:51:51 +0000 UTC
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“Eh?” The man with the wand seemed surprised and turned towards Serenity. “Who’re you? It’s not safe for strangers here.”
Serenity wasn’t certain if he was warning Serenity about the demon or about trespassing. It wasn’t really important, at least not yet. “Are you Mr. Rosemont?”
The man chuckled loudly, but it didn’t seem humorous. “Ah, you’ve been talking to my staff, have you? No one else calls me mister. You call me R...
2023-10-16 22:52:53 +0000 UTC
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Rosemont’s Specialty Pets and Tamed Monsters was not what Serenity expected when he asked Janice to take him to a pet store. He expected a PetSmart, but rather than a large store in a strip mall, this was a large building without any others around it; behind the building, Serenity could see fenced-in fields and a few other buildings.
The doors to the other buildings seemed large and looked like they rolled up instead of opening to the sides,...
2023-10-16 00:12:20 +0000 UTC
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The house where Legion hadn’t found a ley line connection even though Serenity expected one was in a nexus.
Normally, Serenity would have assumed that meant Legion simply missed it, but he’d just been thinking that Apollyon might want to reestablish ley line nexuses at broken nodes. It looked like this one had already been fixed. At least, if his assumptions were correct.
It was an assumption he could check. If he found both a broken crystal l...
2023-10-15 02:58:20 +0000 UTC
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“What is he?” The words were out of Serenity’s mouth before he had a chance to think about them, but he didn’t regret them at all. He did want to know what Mischief was; he could smell that it was a demon, but what he could see if it looked harmless, possibly even helpless. He’d never seen a demon like it and the papers he’d recovered from the summoning in Kansas also didn’t list anything like him.
Aide had checked.
“Mischief?” T...
2023-10-14 04:27:57 +0000 UTC
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In this case, the answer turns out to be "I have internet if I tether my cell phone." It's slow but functional.
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Serenity quietly closed the door behind him as he left the reunited pair to their mutual apology session. He didn’t think either of them really had anything to apologize for, but it seemed to make them happy. He shouldn’t judge.
His next stop was a place he hadn’t been in quite a while: Rissa’s house. It was one of the sites the b...
2023-10-13 05:05:29 +0000 UTC
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I'm traveling today and tomorrow. I don't even know if I'll have an internet connection this evening. The schedule impact probably won't be worse than the irregularity I've been posting with lately, but if I don't have internet tonight, I obviously won't be able to post. If that happens, I'll make it up as quickly as I can.
~Lillene
2023-10-12 13:11:25 +0000 UTC
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“Good morning,” Serenity greeted D’Nehr. “Are you ready to try? I’ve picked out a room near Amani, but not within her sight, as you requested.”
“As long as you’re there as an anchor,” D’Nehr replied. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay on that side of things, since I don’t really have a body anymore. Not the way you do, and yes, I know you’re a shapeshifter. I only exist because Gaia …” D’Nehr stopped and sho...
2023-10-12 00:15:26 +0000 UTC
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“I cannot permit the ley line to be fully disabled; indeed, even the mana you want to reroute will be bad enough, and I can only allow that because allowing the spell to be cast will be even worse. What you describe would collapse the local ley network; I believe you have underestimated the damage, rather than overstated it.” Gaia paused just long enough for that to sink in before she continued. “There is no way to disable the ley line on command in an...
2023-10-10 23:05:45 +0000 UTC
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“Weapons?” Serenity’s mind raced as he tried to understand what D’Nehr was asking. “The only weapons I know of on A’Atla are in the Vault, the one Amani called a prison.”
D’Nehr’s head tilted up suddenly. Serenity wished he could read the Guardian’s expression; he thought he might have surprised the magma golem, but he wasn’t certain. “Amani Valles? The Architect?”
How did other people remember names like that? Serenity o...
2023-10-09 22:55:33 +0000 UTC
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The other three ley line inputs didn’t have a convenient alternative. Two of them did have other lines that ran through a nexus not far from where the ritual’s area started, but the other lines weren’t much smaller. Both nexuses held dungeons, however, which was enough to give Serenity some hope he might be able to work with it.
The last ley line was even worse. It didn’t have any connections for over a hundred miles from where it entered the fo...
2023-10-09 03:15:45 +0000 UTC
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It was strange to think about, but Serenity was pretty confident this wasn’t a repeat from the previous timeline. Yes, large portions of the eastern seaboard were destroyed, but it wasn’t all at once and it was completely explainable. It wasn’t easy to follow when everything was breaking and Vengeance had only cared about two of them, but the people he’d traveled with had cared. He’d have known if everything went in a massive earthquake and volcani...
2023-10-07 21:24:10 +0000 UTC
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Serenity stared at Russ for a moment, then checked his body. It wasn’t something he did often, but he’d done it before; it wasn’t something that generally required much attention unless you were a healer trying to heal someone who was badly injured, but he knew he’d seen the normal pattern and it didn’t look like that. If he remembered correctly, the last time he’d examined his body, it wasn’t for his mana channels but for the equivalent channels...
2023-10-07 05:33:30 +0000 UTC
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“So when are you two going to actually get married? You’ve been together for years and you even have a child, why aren’t you married yet?”
Serenity froze. That wasn’t a question to hear the first time in months that he was home when Rissa had company over. What was her friend’s name, Christine, maybe?
Rissa laughed softly at her friend’s question. “I’m not sure we will. It’s not important to me, and as for Serenity - well, I ...
2023-10-06 05:54:12 +0000 UTC
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Russ nodded. Serenity couldn’t tell if he believed Mr. White or if he was just playing along, but Serenity thought Mr. White was probably telling what he knew. “Nothing about trying out for a cheer squad?”
Mr. White seemed to have to think about that for a minute. “Maybe? There was some afterschool thing she was interested in that she didn’t get into. It might have been cheerleading?” He bit his lip, then confided, “Her mom was happy abou...
2023-10-05 04:20:58 +0000 UTC
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In the end, Serenity managed to get Misty’s story out of her without too much trouble; a little help with her basic mana sensing and use was all it took to get her to open up. Serenity walked her through it while she talked; she had the basic idea but hadn’t managed to actually feel anything.
Being Tier Eight helped a lot with teaching Misty to feel mana; his mana was a lot more obvious than the mana of a Tier One or Two, because he could put enough ...
2023-10-03 23:30:22 +0000 UTC
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“No. No no no no no!” The words started off soft but quickly rose in both pitch and volume as the apparent spellcaster dropped to her knees on the ground in front of the dead demon.
That wasn’t the reaction Serenity expected. He certainly hadn’t expected them to be happy about him killing their demons, but collapsing to the ground crying and screaming the word “no” wasn’t the reaction he’d expected, either. Shouting at him for ruining th...
2023-10-03 03:34:41 +0000 UTC
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Misty watched in awe as the light expanded from two points to a pair of blobs, one stretching taller and the other wider. The light faded as it stretched, but it gave Misty and Nat time to point their flashlights at the two forming demons. Misty couldn’t really see by Nat’s flashlight, but that was fine; she could point her own flashlight at each demon. It gave enough light to see by.
The demon on the left, where Nat set down the piece of paper for the ...
2023-10-01 23:37:04 +0000 UTC
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