We traveled through the night, and I began to think that we’d escaped safely–that the merchants wouldn’t find us or guide others to our trails. The faint rumblings of thunder on a clear day the next afternoon disabused me of that notion. As night fell, I was about to push my people to continue trekking through the night, but first I decided to explain my thoughts.
“That what you’re hearing is the sign of a High Speaker. They’re close.” I spoke to my elites as I called atte...
2024-08-22 06:11:58 +0000 UTC
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[Tariel POV]
As soon as he saw what Lierthan was so angry about, Tariel stood tall and began to rush forward to the head of the damned Alniyh’s tortoise. He couldn’t stop himself from jumping down from the massive shell and even before he hit the ground, Tariel began a Windcalling that pushed him forward at a blistering pace. Behind him, Tariel heard Lierthan call for him to slow down and wait for the rest of the troop, but he refused to. Instead, Tariel reinforced the Calling and b...
2024-08-21 05:36:45 +0000 UTC
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Naddarah,
You have spoken appreciatively of the mild winters and temperate summers of Viertaal. You have wondered why it is that the salt witches of our people do not wrest control of the weather from the Great Albatross’s wings and the gods’ will. Naddarah, read my words and remember well: the Veratocracy’s ways are not our own, and though we do not wish for battle with them, we still consider their ways a heresy and a blight on the world. If...
2024-08-20 06:28:51 +0000 UTC
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“Thank Nievtala.” I breathed out thanks to the goddess, but they were almost more of a curse. Not towards Her, of course, but instead because of what Rulac and Foire had found.
In the distance, I saw the skeletons of forgotten towers and walls, but not for regular buildings. Instead, the walls were built and reinforced against the other side, further east than us. The towers weren’t mere tall buildings, but instead watchtowers. I had never seen a city nor had I explored anci...
2024-08-18 07:11:05 +0000 UTC
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As the swarm passed through the hills that grew taller and rockier by the day and the gray smudge that I’d seen across the horizon became clearer and clearer to me, I finally realized that what I was seeing was something I had only heard about as a boy–mountains. I’d always thought that “mountains” wouldn’t be anything worth seeing, that I didn’t mind never seeing any, since the Martanimis Jungle I lived in and loved was mostly flat. But the trees were tall and beautiful, the ri...
2024-08-17 08:08:06 +0000 UTC
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When last I’d sparred or fought with Wisterl, I had been a khatif and she a keelish. Though I had enjoyed a significant advantage in stats, I still found myself struggling in combat against her while I held myself back from using more deadly means. In fact, the only time I had even nearly matched her in combat, I’d taken her by surprise by breaking her jaw with an unexpected knee strike. With her new evolution, one that she obviously was dying to test out, I could guarantee that I wouldn...
2024-08-16 05:12:02 +0000 UTC
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“The monster’s found you! Flee before it devours you whole!”
Trai’s screams echoed across the watching members of my elites as I stomped exaggeratedly towards her with my eyes shut tight. The little one couldn’t quiet herself as she stumbled and rushed to the other side of the circle to avoid my approach. Unfortunately for her, Trai’s laughing screams betrayed her location and guided me just as surely as the quiet patter of her feet did. With three of my steps quickly outpac...
2024-08-15 05:45:19 +0000 UTC
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“Nievtala give me patience and wisdom. Nievtala bless me with understanding and strength. Nivetala give me victory and power. Nievtala make me whole. Nievtala give me patience and wisdom. Nievtala…”
Repeated enraged prayers brought me no peace, and I only felt my fangs grinding harder and more frequently as I paced and prayed. Such a blindingly stupid moment, and here I was, looking at the maddening tallymark as my rage continued to soar.
The next full week of trekking...
2024-08-13 04:59:14 +0000 UTC
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[Fen POV]
Doluk was boring. Though she couldn’t talk as good with him as she could with Varali, Fen could still have something like a conversation with a creature as intelligent as Doluk with the soul magic she was developing, something the [System] called “Soul Sympathy”. Even though she’d asked a couple of times, the explanations that it was giving just didn’t make any sense. Anyways, Doluk should have been able to talk with her, but he either chose not to, or ...
2024-08-12 05:54:40 +0000 UTC
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The crocodiles’ hissing roars and the keelish’s defiant screeches filled the air, but I paid them no mind as I focused on the new notification from the [System].
[Skill: Quaking Claw; an active Skill that sends a concentrated flow of sonic magic to a specific location. The sonic magic’s vibrations cause the affected area to vibrate in a way that facilitates cutting and tearing. When paired with a sharp extremity or sharpened held tool, Quaking Claw will show its greatest effective...
2024-08-10 06:11:15 +0000 UTC
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The swamp lizard’s scales along its back were different from our own–they protruded proudly from its spine all the way down its tail, and each scale was so thick that they felt like either armor or stones under my feet. However, it didn’t seem that its belly was quite so armored, and I grinned in fierce satisfaction as my prey began to try to free itself from the stakes that I’d forced it to get trapped on.
Where the waters had gotten shallow enough, we’d buried stakes with th...
2024-08-09 04:43:35 +0000 UTC
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Let the Inkulu’aka’s voice be heard. Let the Inkulu’aka’s call be answered. Let the Inkulu’aka’s will be made manifest.
Those who have desecrated our lands, hunted our game, and trampled our grasses will not be permitted to live. Those who have dared to disregard the sacred sovereignty of our people, disrespected our hallowed ufudoluk, and disobeyed our divine decrees cannot be forgiven. Any trespasser without the Inkulu’aka’s ...
2024-08-08 04:53:05 +0000 UTC
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Panic surged through me as loud shrieks filled my head. I sat bolt upright, something hitting my shoulder as I rose and looked for the threat. The suns had begun to rise, so I’d been asleep for several hours. Had the swamp lizards struck while I slept? Or was there something else, something I didn’t know about? Had the Veratocracy’s soldiers caught up to us?
A pained mewling interrupted my frantic thoughts and I looked down to find the source. Trai struggled to roll from her back ...
2024-08-06 05:16:50 +0000 UTC
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I strained my arm, then shoulder, then back and legs as I struggled to wrench the creature’s body out of the waters, but it refused to give up trying to get a bite of me. My khatif face had narrowed, but still I, like all keelish, had a large snout with thick, sharp fangs filling my mouth, but my jaws couldn’t begin to compare to this massive mouth, tremendous teeth studding the merciless maw.
It continued to turn its head, the thick muscles of its neck tightening around...
2024-08-05 06:22:42 +0000 UTC
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The words shot adrenaline through me, forcing me to fully shake off the grogginess of sleep and the confusion ofdivine conversation. I stood tall, my spine crackling from the base of my skull to the tip of my tail as I stretched. Sybil and Trai cuddled closer together on the wolfstag pelt beneath them, and Trai continued her little infantile whimpers as she settled back into a deeper sleep. The mud and filth from the swamp had dried across my whole body, and, before I focused on the threats l...
2024-08-04 06:44:20 +0000 UTC
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At last, I am able to meet with Drolick, and his face remains as craggy and crotchety as ever, the lines carved into his face from long decades of his pure stubbornness protecting his people. My memories say that he was an old man when first I met him, some twenty years prior, but the only change in his face (the only part of him that I can see) is that the hairs of his beard and head have faded from silver to a pure white. He seems hale and hearty, though I would guess he was nea...
2024-08-02 06:00:32 +0000 UTC
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As I listened to the cries of my keelish, I was again tempted to shift my vision to perceive heat signatures, but with a force of effort, instead I strode forward, my magic bubbling within my throat. The “mere lesser” keelish continued to scream around me, and a part of me wanted to delay reaching out, delay helping them to allow their morale to break so that I could ensure that my [Innervating Address] would fully change the morale of my swarm. After all, they all would be served by my c...
2024-08-01 04:57:29 +0000 UTC
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Days continued to pass, the journey difficult and somehow easy at the same time. There wasn’t anything unusual to do, simply to continue on our path while hunting enough prey to keep the swarm fed. With nearly 1000 individual carnivores needing to eat enough to sustain ourselves on long days’ travels, we devoured everything we found, from Toothy Bullfrogs to terrorbirds. Of course there were some that could escape our hunters, but most everything we found eventually fed the swarm. And our...
2024-07-30 21:21:08 +0000 UTC
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[Varali POV]
A week had passed since Varali and Fen had left Stonestep, and the journey continued to be a strange conglomeration of tranquil and infuriating. The jungles remained beautiful and safe, so long as you knew how to treat it, and though Varali had been a fool in a dozen ways a day since her parents’ death, she did know the jungles. The journey south, though easy and fast, remained agonizing as Varali couldn’t know how far she was from reaching the Thnufir fort, since she...
2024-07-27 22:16:59 +0000 UTC
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[Mualtir POV]
Mualtir had been stationed as the High Colonel of the Thnufir River’s Fort Thnufir for nearly a decade now, though before that she’d spent most of her whole life here as a soldier’s daughter, then a trainee, then a soldier under her grandmother’s command before a brief stint in the Alniyh family’s training camps. Then, once she’d risen through the ranks, that same position was assigned to her after her grandmother’s retirement. Mualtir could still remember th...
2024-07-26 05:36:30 +0000 UTC
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Immediately, I raised my head and began to search for the source of the confusion, though I couldn’t see far or clearly in the dimness of the setting suns. I could at least be sure that Arwa’s reaction and the keelish’s shrieks were somehow connected, but the specifics were still unclear. Before I allowed myself to think any further, I began to run towards the nearest screeches, [Innervating Address] immediately tickling my throat as I rallied my people.
“Prepare yourselves! Def...
2024-07-25 05:38:17 +0000 UTC
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Though Drolick and I had interacted several times in the past, I wouldn’t have called him even an acquaintance. The mayor/guard captain/spiritual leader of the insular community lives his life in his heavily enchanted armor, so far as I know. Surely he steps out of the armor sometimes, but for any nonresidents of the city-state, the man and the armor are one. Within the armor, he cuts an intimidating figure, well over seven feet tall and broad shouldered, his grey beard stained ...
2024-07-23 05:55:09 +0000 UTC
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I wasn’t sure how, I wasn’t sure when, and I wasn’t sure why, but what I did know was that Took literally held Rulac’s life in her jaws. She had dragged him back to the rest of the swarm, his throat and most of his neck retained within her maw, and it was painfully obvious that Rulac was absolutely livid but willing to bear with the indignity for the chance at survival. Behind them, eight other keelish had worked to drag back two scaled deer corpses, which they dropped to the ground u...
2024-07-20 07:21:58 +0000 UTC
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And there should be another chapter tonight!
[Took POV]
Took had long become accustomed to being the largest around, and she liked that. It helped her to feel like there was at least something she was in control of. Sure, Sybil was smarter and a real Beta to the Alpha, but Took was taller and stronger than her! Foire was faster and a better scout, but Took could haul much more of the hunt back to the swarm. Yes, the Alpha was stronger than her, and he could use magic too, but at ...
2024-07-19 22:24:01 +0000 UTC
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My brief visit to the New Empire complete and the Republic of the Indlovu’s city-states behind me, I made my way into Shandr once more. In the years since my last visit, nothing had seemed to have changed. Still, the city was surrounded by magically reinforced stone walls that are constantly manned, and still, at the first sight of any strangers, the men and women tending the farms that surround the walls flee back to the relative safety behind walls. On the surface, a small, se...
2024-07-18 06:12:07 +0000 UTC
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The arrival of Private Varali served to guide us more directly and immediately to our goal, and her continued presence among the garrison has been positively impactful, especially for the youngest and least hardened of our soldiers. If I am to be removed from command, I do request that her enlistment, though earlier than typically permitted, remain valid. After all she has been through, I do not think that her parents’ hopes of her enrollment in the Red Abbey are feasible.<...
2024-07-17 05:46:47 +0000 UTC
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WARNING: much of this chapter is super [Skill] focused, since I don’t think there’s ever been a full run-down of every [Skill] and its evolutionary possibilities as of yet. Here, there finally is. Of course, throughout it all are Ashlani’s thoughts sprinkled around, so, yeah. If that kinda crunchy element isn’t of interest to you, you can skim from after Trai and Foire’s interactions.
There had been no reason for me to expect anything different, but t...
2024-07-16 05:40:17 +0000 UTC
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High Colonel Mualtir di’Thnufir:
High Lord Leialt Alniyh is only half a day’s travel away from Fort di’Thnufir. Upon his arrival, he will accompany you on your mission, and with his Bound beasts, you will have no issue in wholly annihilating the entirety of the murderous pests. Afterwards, with his expertise, it may be that we will be able to learn how it was that such an advanced warren of the beasts was able to propagate themselves whilst wi...
2024-07-13 07:10:51 +0000 UTC
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Foire was immediately smitten with his daughter and couldn’t seem to be bothered to look at me, though I didn’t care or even want him to. Though, looking at her, I wasn’t sure how Trai would be able to learn how to work with other keelish since she was the only egg at the time and would have a brood to grow with. But, I supposed that wasn’t my issue to deal with. Though, she was born a child of two khatif, not keelish, and I was interested to watch and see how she might differ from a ...
2024-07-11 05:34:41 +0000 UTC
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[Foire POV]
Since Treel’s death, all that Foire wanted was the next assignment. He’d always just wanted the next thing to do, but now… the quiet moments were the hardest, the longest, the most painful. The fight against the “humans” had been good for him, since he’d been constantly scouting to see where they could be, then going to the swarm to report on what he had found, and then, finally, blissfully, watching them be slaughtered. They’d taken his mate from him and left ...
2024-07-10 05:55:16 +0000 UTC
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