“What are you talking about?” I say. “I’m not Fyreneth. I don’t even know who that is.”
Nek still watches me with a revered look. “Her return has been predicted for generations. She swore her death was not final. That she would return again.”
I shake my head. “You’re not making any sense. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She was a phoenix harpy, just like you,” Nek insists. “Her affinity was fire instead of air. And she wielded ...
2024-09-14 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
[7 Days until the Gods’ Tournament]
“Chaos and potions, huh?” I stir the pot as steam hisses up from the bubbling brew. “I guess it’s not the worst idea.”
I haven’t added any magic to the potion yet; I’m just preparing the solvent. Once it cools and I activate it with my mana, it will be another standard smoke potion, which I’ve practically memorized by now. But what happens if different components are added first? Like, say, a frost seed? Could I us...
2024-09-13 12:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
The first thing I notice, strangely enough, is all the mushrooms. Before now the caves had been barren, empty of any sign of life—save Mirzayael, I suppose. But the humidity is immediately apparent in this new space, and I’m met with a sudden urge to wipe off glasses I no longer have.
The mushrooms blanket the walls and floor, and I can see this because they’re the source of the cavern’s light. Thousands, millions of them litter every surface, filling the cha...
2024-09-12 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
I slam open the Storage building’s door. “Talia, I need a shit-ton of money!”
Talia sets down her teacup as the City Guards turn to face me.
“Hello, Sal,” Talia says. “Thank you for joining us so… unexpectedly. Would you give me a moment to finish my business with the guards here?”
“Um,” I say, trying not to stare at the guards. “Sure. Sorry. I thought you were alone.”
I shuffle off to the side and stand awkwardly by a cluster of training dummie...
2024-09-11 12:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
The spider woman hisses against my light and raises a hand to shield all eight of her blinking, black eyes.
“Ah, sorry,” I say, lowering my light and turning to place myself between the spider person and my flame. “Didn’t mean to bother—”
She doesn’t give me a chance to continue. Even as I’m speaking she snatches something from behind her and swings it around toward me. I hastily stumble backward, letting out a cry that bears an embarrassing resemblance to a ...
2024-09-10 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
The rest of the night passes in a sleep-deprived haze. As the adrenaline wears off, my body crashes hard. My insides feel hollow and cold, and every pain I hadn’t been feeling before, I feel now. I shouldn’t, because my level up healed all my injuries. But maybe this kind of hurt isn’t entirely physical.
I numbly obey Cyros’s instructions when we make it back to the Guild. Others stop to stare when I step through the door, and I don’t blame them—I’m dyed crimson from head ...
2024-09-09 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
Having double vision is kind of trippy, but given the last few months, I’ve sort of gotten used to it. Double hearing and double touch, meanwhile—still super trippy.
Zyneth stands on top of the Prismatic, looking up at the ship that’s slowing beside us. It’s a lot like Earth sailing ships of old, except in place of sails are transparent films of glowing magic, and runes are lit all along its hull.
Zyneth doesn’t even flinch as the underbelly of the ship bumps in...
2024-09-08 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Is it too late to, ah, uninitiate a pact?” I ask.
[Dungeon Core abilities interfaced,] Echo says. [Pact formation complete.]
I take that as a no.
Even now, that sense of vastness I’d felt is rapidly fading. The Dungeon Core just appears to be a stone. Granted, a very excitable stone that seems eager to get to work, but certainly not some other-dimensional bottomless well of darkness. I almost believe it was just my imagination, though the strangen...
2024-09-07 12:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
I fumble blindly for a pouch, my fingers stuffy and numb as I pull the drawstring open and dig my hand into the sack. My fingers close around several frost seeds, and I push mana into them as I pull them back out and throw them across the floor.
Enrold’s footsteps stop. I hold my breath. My pulse is a jackhammer. All my nerves are alight with heightened sensation. The rough grit of wood pressing into my hip and elbow. The throbbing pain from where Enrold’s hand had been around my wr...
2024-09-06 12:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
“Unexpected” feels like a bit of an understatement. I am certainly surprised. More than a little disbelieving. Yet the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and I cannot deny the reality of this new body simply by deciding it is not so.
“Alright then,” I say, allowing myself to listen to my new, unfamiliar voice. I suppose I should try to get used to it. “What to do from here?”
As much as I desire answers about this body and how I got here, my immediate needs are...
2024-09-05 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
[Role Requirement.]
Ice chills through me. What? What do you mean?
[The day ends in 56 seconds and the user has not fulfilled their Role Requirement. The Chef role requires the user to engage in cooking, baking, or food preparation on a daily basis.]
Crap. Shit! How did this happen? I always make sure to help in the kitchen with meal prep!
Except today. I was so busy preparing for tonight, so laser focused on making sure I didn’t forget anything, that I forg...
2024-09-04 12:00:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Friendly Fyre begins in direct consequence to Chapter 45 of Loose Kanin.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
So this is what dying feels like, I think.
There’s no fear. No sadness. Just clinical observation as the pain fades from my chest, and the surrounding cubicle walls are consumed by the darkness of my tunneling vision.
Died at my desk, was it? They always said I would. Ah, well. It wa...
2024-09-03 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hello all! Since Friendly Fyre is launching this week on the Patreon, I thought I would update you all with the planned post schedule, at least until A Little Salty completes.
Since there will be THREE stories running on the Patreon at once, I thought I would split them up so there's one chapter posted per day. With that, here's the plan:
A Little Salty:
2024-09-02 13:00:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
[9 Days until the Gods’ Tournament]
[2 Days until Blackcloak membership is due]
[Name: Sal]
[Class: Rogue]
[Level: 16]
[Attack: 35]
[Agility: 18]
[HP: 90/90]
[Affinities: Poison]
[Role: Chef]
[Skills: Knifework lvl 10, Poison Resistance lvl 9, Soft Step lvl 8, Throwing Knives lvl 7, Toxic Intuition lvl 3.]
[Potions and Alchemic Store: Smoke Potion (2), Mana Potion (1), Frost Seed (5), Mana Drain (1), Invisibility...
2024-09-02 12:00:16 +0000 UTC
View Post
We submerge when the ships continue on an intercept course, hoping to lose them beneath the waves. But we’re above the coastal shelf now, and the waters are shallow. The most we can stay beneath the surface is fifty feet. It will have to be enough.
The ship is tense and quiet. Neither of us speak as we continue toward land, watching the display in the Prismatic’s bubble-shaped window as it tracks each of the ships converging on our location. Two have shifted course, now ang...
2024-08-30 12:10:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
[15 Days until the Gods’ Tournament]
[8 Days until Blackcloak membership is due]
“So what do you think?” I ask, seated across from Cyros inside the Blackcloak Guild Hall. A handful of others are checking the job board or speaking with the vendor behind the supplies counter, but otherwise it’s much emptier than it had been the previous week. I guess assassins don’t hang around at the secret base in the middle of the day.
Cyros takes the Mana Drain potio...
2024-08-30 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
[18 Days until the Gods’ Tournament]
[11 Days until Blackcloak membership is due]
[Frost Seed: A condensed pellet of mana infused with freezing properties. Once activated, the tablet has various effects: if swallowed, it will inflict a slowing de-buff onto the consumer. If cast upon a surface, it will create a creeping spread of ice that grows at a rate of ten inches per second until the seed mana expires. Affinity Requirements: any subfields of Life or Water arcana...
2024-08-28 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hey everyone!
First off, I'm excited to share a new cover for Loose Kanin that has recently finished. I don't have a cover for Kanin Fodder, yet, but I hopefully will have something in the next few months! With that, here's Loose Kanin:
I'm pretty stoked with it! I like it a lot better than the previous cover that was made.
And speaking of covers, I've got another one for you. The...
2024-08-26 13:00:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
[20 Days until the Gods’ Tournament]
[13 Days until Blackcloak membership is due]
I idly stir the cauldron with my right hand as I keep the alchemy book propped up on my knees, left hand scrolling down the page as I read through the book Lis had lent me. She’s right: this is dense stuff. A lot of the theory it’s going through might as well be written in another language. But I don’t give up. I can’t. I get Echo to explain whatever she can elaborate on, and I...
2024-08-26 12:00:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
I hurry onto the main deck, where Zyneth is at the controls. “Land? Where? What do you see?”
The main window looking out into the sea has shifted over the last couple of weeks. What was once black nothingness, speckled with the occasional bubble or fish that flitted through the Prismatic’s headlights, has gradually evolved into a living ocean once more. The water has lightened into a deep blue, and all sorts of creatures dart out of the submarine’s path. No longer chase...
2024-08-23 12:10:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
Cyros narrows his eyes. “Blackcloak?”
Oops. Right. He never really told me the name of the organization he worked for. That was insider knowledge from Echo. I gotta get better at tracking what I am and am not supposed to know.
“That’s the group you’re a part of, right?” I ask, scrambling to make something up. “I heard people talking about them in Fairwood. Unless you’re gonna tell me you’re part of some other super-secret assassin guild.”
“You ...
2024-08-23 12:00:05 +0000 UTC
View Post
“What do you mean I don’t have a choice?” I demand.
Talia had refused to answer anything else until we made it back to her place and I got patched up. I slipped my knife back into my Inventory, just so it wouldn’t accidentally poison any present company, which meant I had to carry my bandolier and Lis’s alchemy book all the way there. Whatever Talia thinks of my new accessories, she’s kept it to herself.
Lis sips at her lemon mint tea, appearing quite content to listen...
2024-08-21 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
I throw myself forward, scraping and squeezing myself beneath the bench. A knot catches on my side, scratching along my ribs, but I hardly feel it. I wiggle forward, desperate, clawing—grab my knife—and then I’m through.
Maru tilts her head as if she’s going to look back. She must have heard something, but it’s too late, I’m already jumping down the seats toward her, knife raised. I slam down on the first bench, still four rows away from Maru. I stumble, my leg giving ...
2024-08-19 12:00:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
It takes over a week to push the submarine up to the surface. Even with all my glass and void, we’re still just a fraction of the size of the Prismatic, so it’s a lot like a dog trying to push a semi-truck. But little by little, inch by inch, we make progress. And finally, the water begins to grow brighter. And then there’s sun.
No more trips to the seafloor to gather sand and make more fulgurite. But I don’t mind, given Zyneth’s condition. As I’d hoped, our progres...
2024-08-16 12:10:00 +0000 UTC
View Post
“What?” Lis says. “Maru? How do you know?”
Talia swears under her breath. “Come on.” She beckons to me. “We have to get you out of here.”
“Why?” Lis asks, her eyebrows knit together in confusion. “We were expecting her to appear sometime today. Shouldn’t we be heading out to greet her?”
Images of Maru flash through my mind. Those emotionless, liquid silver eyes. Her stabbing Terimus in his gut. Kicking Rena across the ground. The cruel laughter as t...
2024-08-16 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
“You sure you’ll be alright?” Gugora asks. “Fairwood is a big city.”
“I got back fine last time,” I say. “Don’t worry! Talia will let me stay at her place again.” Probably, if I ask her. She’ll want to hear more about the new ‘clues’ I found, anyway.
“Just don’t forget the ingredients,” Iski says. “You sure you won’t forget?”
“I won’t forget,” I promise, shaking the bag she’s lending me. It jingles with coins. “Not that you’d...
2024-08-14 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
By the day Cyros is supposed to meet back up with me, I’ve leveled up again.
[Name: Sal]
[Class: Rogue]
[Level: 14]
[Attack: 26]
[Agility: 15]
[HP: 90/90]
[Affinities: Poison]
[Role: Chef]
[Skills: Level 7 Knifework. Level 5 Poison Resistance. Level 4 Soft Step. Level 4 Throwing Knives.]
Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I’ve started to notice some of my higher-level skills, like Knifework, are harder to level up even though...
2024-08-12 12:00:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
We fall into a routine. The weirdest kind of routine. During the day, Zyneth works on figuring out the controls of the sub while I tinker with my glass magic; or he and I experiment with strengthening my glass and making new fulgurite; or I head out into the water and the predator helps me try to nudge the ship in whatever direction and orientation Zyneth calls for. Then at night, of course, the predator takes over, and we spend our time prowling the waters, slaughtering any suspicious creatu...
2024-08-09 12:10:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
I hold in a groan as I chop up a board of carrots, wondering if there’s anything more mind-numbingly boring in the whole world than food prep. If it weren’t for the fact that I still need to do this every day in order to meet the Role Requirement, I’d have already shirked the chore through malicious compliance and used mushroom-hunting as an excuse to sneak off to practice my knife-throwing skills and find more ingredients for my potions.
But instead, here I am. Chopping vegetable...
2024-08-09 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
Everything is green. The crates are green. The walls and floor and ceiling are green. I am green.
Despite Iski and Gugora both typically being green, I think they’re about to turn red in anger.
“The food is ruined!” Iski cries. “We’re going to have to make a new batch from scratch. And not to mention all the dried herbs and meat that were exposed to that—that explosion! We need to clear everything out.”
“That was dangerous,” Gugora says, glaring down at me....
2024-08-07 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
