Bruce_Sentar

AO 6 Ch 38

"Hey, Mary, where are you going?" Steve chased after the other Garrish soldier.

She didn’t even acknowledge him, instead moving urgently through the halls.

"Hey, Mary," he called, running up and grabbing her by the shoulder. The woman froze, sending a chill down his spine. "Are you pretending you didn't know me? The date didn't go that badly," he insisted. 

Mary slowly turned her head, a bright smile blossoming across her face. "Oh, sorry, I didn't hear you. Come in t...

AO 6 Ch 37

"Well, yesterday was a day, wasn't it?" I said, chuckling amid the silence of my anchors as we flew along on the bluesteel plate.

My mother had tried to give us more supplies, only for me to open up the shadow bag and stuff more inside of it in front of her. After that, she told no one to give me any more supplies, insisting that we already had plenty even as people looked on at our meager belongings when we left.

Many looked to my mother with confusion as to why she was punishing...

AO 6 Ch 36

 The goddesses had assured me I wouldn't have any more debt to Lucy, at least not for another quarter. Missy could make her think we had tried and of course it would fail.

All three of them were fairly against Lucy, which was fine especially if they could help me escape that particular responsibility.

I was more concerned with what was happening with Maribelle and the rest of my anchors. My mother had placed me in a room under guard by House Aldis' anchors. Then, all five of ...

AO 6 Ch 35

"Gungnir. How in the blazing sands did you get that?" Bastet's eyes lost their suspicion and instead assessed me with a hint of something new, possibly respect.

"Oh, you know," I rubbed a finger under my nose. "I'm pretty sure Thor gave this to someone in order to kill me. Unfortunately, I'm pretty hard to kill. I froze the guy and stole this." I smiled at all three goddesses.

Ditzy's mouth was still wide as she speechlessly stared at me. "Ard, where did you put that?" 

AO 6 Ch 34

Standing in the meeting room, I was seriously concerned about what Maribelle might do to Lucy now that we were alone. After all, she could probably pop her head right off before she even uttered a peep.

"It seems you weren't given any notice," Lucy commented, the woman seemed unbothered by the arrangement or she just did what her mother told her so often that it wasn’t anything new. Just a slightly different task. 

"You pick up on that, did you?" I said, rolling my eyes.&nb...

AO 6 Ch 33

The Royal Army had turned over their arms. The officers and soldiers were separated and detained. "Do we have to keep the King alive?" I asked, raising my hand. "I really feel like that's just asking for trouble down the road."

Richard glanced at my mother and grandfather to answer my question.

I had asked the same question several times during this whole briefing, and no one really seemed to want to answer me. They deferred to those two anytime I started asking questions.  2025-04-01 09:45:56 +0000 UTC View Post

AO 6 CH 32

The king recovered, sweating now, but coming back on the offensive.

While I waited for him to get back to me, I continued to siphon off Thor’s magic from him.

“Ard!” Emlyn screamed as a bolt from my frantic lover clashed with the king, only to be rebuffed by a swing of his spear. It sent her stumbling with a stupid look on her face. 

"He's a mage!" She called out in disbelief.

I used the time Emlyn was buying me to call on even more magic.

"Yes, he's a...

AO 6 Ch 31

My eyes swept through the group quickly to see if anyone was going to say anything else. When no one jumped to challenge Zuri, I shot the platform down towards a cluster of officers hiding in the back. My bluesteel sheet slapped down against the ground hard enough to kick up a good bit of dust.

The impact had the nobles coughing in their hands as they turned from the raging, swirling, fiery problem of the battlefield to regard me. Some recognized me, but I must have looked a little diff...

AO 6 Ch 30

"Father," Gwen said, stepping forward to meet him.

"I didn't think you'd have so much trouble with them," Anadonis landed with no small amount of smugness on his face. 

"Sorry to disappoint, father. However, they blitzed past our battle line anchors and into our mages. Keeping everyone alive is more important than my pride. There's no House Aldis without the rest of them," Gwen said, rolling a little closer and speaking loud enough that everyone that had been in the command t...

AO 6 Ch 29

At this point, the armies had met in the field and began to clash. Her own forces shifted to a wedge to protect themselves from the flanking maneuver.
 The right flank had held firm while the left was buckling. Reinforcements rode out from the back, cavalry that swept in and reinforced the left, pushing on the split army's flank and preventing them from driving a wedge and splitting off a piece of her own forces.

And while it seemed they were winning, Gwen could only squint at t...

AO 6 Ch 28

"What do you think your son's up to?" Kelly asked, they were all sitting in a carriage while the troops marched forward.

Gwen Aldis turned to Kelly, the other mage next to her, ignoring the massive problem before her.

The Royals had called for this push. It was dangerous, reckless, a pit filled with snare traps.

Gwen would have to hop her way through it with perfect precision to come out the other side. Unfortunately, she didn't do much hopping with her wheelchair. She wasn'...

AO 6 Ch 27

It took us another three nights to get close to Chillwind Pass. And now we were debating how we were going to get into Chillwind Fortress without somebody attempting to blow our heads off.

I was coming from enemy territory, which would make them attack first and ask questions later.

That was less than ideal and I’d like to avoid being attacked.

I frowned, glancing at the situation below, trying to figure out how I could make this work for me. Then it hit me. "Oh, I know ho...

AO 6 Ch 26

Two goddesses and five women huddled together around me as we hurtled away from the fort. Outside was a gruesome scene of carnage. Those two vampyrs had slaughtered the northmen who had gathered.

I felt like I had failed them, but at the same time knew that the next wave from the north would be huge as they retaliated even harder.

There was no need to pick anything up because my dark soul magic could enlarge even to the point of stuffing a carriage inside. 

It seemed as...

AO 6 Ch 25

The two vampires regrouped and stood together, looking utterly relaxed as their wounds healed. They had the expression of someone who was playing with their food.

I was about to teach them a very important lesson about not seizing an opportunity. I continued to dump more and more magic into my soul; the new palace made of Ardenium could hold quite a lot. And to my surprise, the magic wasn't conflicting with each other like it should. Instead, everything that flowed through my new mystic...

AO 6 Ch 24

In all of our training, Maribelle had repeatedly attempted to drill math and basic mathematical concepts into my brain. 

All of which I’d had no desire to actually learn. As far as I was concerned, working off of feel worked well enough.

But as I watched the fire swell, I had to acknowledge I should have paid a little more attention. Right in front of me was the proof of one of the concepts called square cube law. I think?<...

AO 6 Ch 23

"Wow, I am impressed," I said, non-pulsed as Eva began pulling shadows left and right, gathering them for a spell to kill whoever was on the other side. 

"Ard, why aren't you freaking out?" Eva asked.

I gestured towards the door as it got kicked inwards, and from the dust that arose, Emlyn strode through with a fierce expression. 

"It's just her." I smiled. 

"Yeah, it's just me," Emlyn said, frowning, glancing at Eva and then back at me. "Why is she worr...

AO 6 Ch 22

Aurelia was high on life. Her entire family emphasized martial and magical prowess as a daily part of their life. The fact that she wasn't a mage was, in some sense, always weighing on her. She felt like a failure to the Virel family for not continuing their prestigious lineage. Though she understood, on a logical level, that not everyone born into the family would be a mage, on an emotional level, it always hung over her like a disappointed parent.

Yet now, bonded to Ard, she was essen...

AO 6 Ch 21

At this point, I was digging deep underneath the fortress, using my magic to sense all of the stone above me. The fortress itself was set upon an incredibly rocky hill, which made sense. It was likely that the hill had been forged by a mage once upon a time, or even more likely, a whole team of them.

Even for me, moving this much stone was incredibly difficult. I had to use my magic to soften it into more malleable earth and then push it aside. Moving this rock into itself was just impo...

AO 6 Ch 20

A week later, the dreary dryness of the Badlands gave way to the equally dry Barbaric lands. Only this time, they were significantly colder. Even though spring had begun, there was still ice and snow stubbornly blanketing the landscape, yet to thaw. I wasn't sure when it had started, but I was certainly ready for it to end.

"How long are we going to be up here?" I asked, glancing at my travel mates.

The two goddesses had yet to return. Meanwhile, Diana had settled from being overl...

AO 6 Ch 19

After a day spent traversing the Badlands and setting up a new, spider-free home, the Garrish mage, Diana, was still deeply and sickeningly in love with me. But she had managed to be useful.

While we traveled, she massaged my shoulders and cut my food. She even got stabbed by Maribelle for trying to shoo the maid away.

In the end, everything worked out. Or at least, it worked out for me. I healed her, and she apologized to me for upsetting my maid. Sooner or later, I was going to ...

AO 6 Ch 18

After my heart-to-heart with Aurelia, I returned to the house to see what plan they had cooked up. "Finally back, are you?" Emlyn bounced her eyebrows. "Did Aurelia take you for a spin?"

My red-haired anchor next to me stayed stoic. Meanwhile, I put on a cheesy grin. "Aurelia likes her time to be private, and coincidentally, I can't say anything about what happened." I shrugged with a giant grin on my face because I was having trouble holding back my laughter, if only she knew.

Em...

AO 6 Ch 17

After surviving the battle with the two gods and enduring Ditzy's teasing, I came to two realizations. First, I was well out of my depth, both in terms of knowledge and power. It seemed that Ditzy had planned to provoke Thor, who was prone to emotional outbursts.

That and he probably was compensating for something.

There were also numerous contests and dynamics between the gods that I didn't fully comprehend. It was about time I got a crash course, and this might be something even...

AO 6 Ch 16

Thor's face continued to grow redder by the second until his hair seemed nearly white in comparison. His fire-red hair seemed to have lost all of its shine, out-competed by the redness of his face. 

"How dare you!" he growled before pulling another weapon out of his arsenal. He brandished a strange-looking scepter, looking as if he was going to join the fight himself. 

I was suddenly wondering how the hell I ended up standing in a room full of raging gods.

But as I...

AO 6 Ch 15

Missy had once referred to Freya as "cow-tits," which really had been hard to imagine at the time, and I had just written her off as jealous. But seeing Freya in front of me for the first time, I absolutely concurred with Missy's description. 

Freya was a motherfucking cow, sitting on her giant throne with a holier-than-thou, haughty expression. Her upper body had to be at least seventy-five percent breasts. She was an egregious representation of the female form, to the point that ...

AO 6 Ch 14

I looked up at the sky of Soulgard, where energy shifted back and forth like a beautiful aurora borealis. Waves of energy touched in cataclysmic thunder, crashing down to one of the four spires that represented my four spears amid Soulgard. They came out of the corners of the central palace, the crowning jewel of the fake city that I modeled my soul and its defenses after.

Soulgard itself was constantly under change. First, it had been a small, lifeless city of white stone, built from m...

AO 6 Ch 13

King Martin was in his cellar, surrounded by the delightful scent of blood. It wrapped around him like a familiar blanket and filled him with strength. Unfortunately, not everyone enjoyed it as much as he did.

The man before him had his mouth open as if to scream, but his throat had run dry long ago. Instead, he thrashed on the table playfully, as if that would help his cause, but he was bound by three stone straps that held him fast.

Martin's hand was melded with the man's body a...

AO 6 Ch 12

After an exhilarating afternoon of being chased by powerful mages and luring a giant crab to kill people, I was parched.

Thankfully, Ditzy was my own personal water well. She filled a glass for me back at our little home in the Badlands.

If we were going to stay here much longer, I needed to spruce up the place and make it more livable.

"So, what exactly are we going to do with Freya?" I asked curious about the next step while Maribelle went and stuffed the hostage in a back...

AO 6 Ch 11

The massive flaming wyrm of magic hurtled towards me, the flames roaring through the air.

“Ard!” Emlyn yelled and threw her hands forward, borrowing some of my lightning magic and trying to add to the defense.

"A little busy.” I burned the idea of the light shields into my mind, reinforcing them with the concepts that Melida had taught me when I first started. All the magic in the world did nothing without a firm will holding the idea of what you wanted to make.

“The...

AO 6 Ch 10

"I can't believe we're actually doing Ard's plan," Emlyn groaned, shaking her head as everyone gathered to see me off.

I pointed at Missy and Ditzy. "You two are in charge of making sure those three don't die." Then I pointed to Eva, Aurelia, and Zuri who were staying behind for this plan. 

For this operation, Emlyn had insisted on going, and Maribelle just acted like she was going from the get go. Not that I minded, I felt incredibly safe bringing Maribelle. Whenever somethi...

AO 6 Ch 9

I woke up the next morning, lovingly tangled in between my lady's luscious bodies, keeping me nice and warm. There was a particular sort of comfort in being surrounded by people you love. Some primal part of me just knew the world was right.

However, my mind was already alight with delightful ideas, and I didn't have the luxury to lay around in bed like Emlyn would have chosen to sleep all day if given the option. I nudged her and the rest, rousing us from bed with a few muffled groans ...