Bongosian Press

§060 Airwalk

He was leaving Midway much later than expected, but the extra weeks hadn't been wasted. Between Prater's Pith, Spatial Defense, and a promising beginning to his Other Place, he had made good use of his time. On a more physical level, the garrison offered him several veteran fighters to train against. They hadn't taken him seriously at first, but Taylor taught them the error of their ways on the first day. Since then, they sparred with him seriously. There were several soldie...

§061 Bostkirk I

Taylor went straight into the city's Arctown, where most of the inhabitants were arcaic. He had nothing against humans or the rest of Bostkirk as a city, but it was dull compared to the riot of sights and smells in Arctown. Building styles from every race and several eras mingled freely, and every turn brought him face-to-face with some new style he'd never seen before. He used Riverstone, his stick-pin made from an enchanted mana stone, to cast a waterfall illusion around himself as...

§074 Oathbreaker

Cadmius, in Bostkirk

Winter was creeping in at the corners of his house, but what did it matter? Even without the prestige bonuses, Cadmius couldn't get cold. He could feel the cold, and he knew that it might be uncomfortable for others, but there was little point in heating his house just for himself. The cold didn't threaten him, but the boredom might.

He went to the gymnasium, where people pretended not to know he was an Oathbreaker. He sparred when he could, b...

Twilight Hunter Cover

The untitled version of the cover came in recently, and I love it. It's charming and happy, which is something we all want for our main character. The cover doesn't directly depict a scene from the book, but is inspired by Taylor's second trip into Twilight, when he meets Saria. As you can see, he has both hands. Maybe, this is the same food stall on a different day. Just look at that happy little face!

Book cover dimensions vary quite a bit. Audiobooks are square, ebook covers have a 5...

§062 Bostkirk II

Taylor's first two days in Bostkirk were all about selling off materials and organizing his work. He agreed to make two large divine figures for the arcaic temple housed inside Dwergbank: Gunthigis for dwarves, and Gelexia for beastkin. Although every beastkin tribe had its specific patron god, Gelexia was the ur-beastkin deity who gave birth to all of them. The resident priest was impressed that Taylor even knew about her, but it was hard not to. Lately, Gelexia had been around a lot during ...

§073 Vacation IV

The air over Celosia was controlled, but Dwergbank had one of several coveted landing spaces in the city, right on their own roof. Taylor waited under a sky that threatened snow but never delivered. After an hour, he spotted the first sign: a white blotch beneath the cloud cover in the east. The blotch grew and grew, until it resolved into a pair of impressive wings with a horse suspended between them. A tiny rider sat on the horse’s back, barely visible from the ground.

As the pegasu...

§064 Paladin Cadmius II

High Bishop Yaonoch

The day-to-day life of a high bishop wasn't anything to envy. Whenever he was at the Home Priory, he spent most of his time reading reports in the Heirophant's wing of the central administration building. His Holiness, Laurence VI, patriarch of the Church of Divine Gifts, had his office just down the hall from Yaonoch. A squad of assorted guards of the third and fourth tiers guarded the floor. It was stifling, but it wasn't forever. Sooner or lat...

Map of Mourne

This map appears in Volume 1, A Cursed Child. It's not intended to be to scale, but more like a child's perspective. The mansion is huge, while the countryside around it diminishes with distance.

§072 Vacation III

Maestro Theudebald was the broadest, most solid dwarf Taylor had ever seen in Aarden, with close-cropped gray hair and eyes the yellow of phosphorous. His beard was a magnificence of distinction, in its thickness, length, intricate weave, and decoration. Several of the baubles he wore were enchanted.

"There he is!" The director of the bank stood when Taylor was shown into his office. It was unexpectedly sparse, with metal drawers built into the walls, like a bank vault. He didn't just s...

Aarden's Two Continents

This map appears in book 1: A Cursed Child, and will appear in every subsequent book in some form.

Sketch: Cover art for Twilight Hunters

On the rare occasion someone asks me if I do my own artwork, I laugh at them and say yes. Then I give them my latest sample, whatever it happens to be. There are reasons artists can ask for money, and you can see one of them right here. I do … whatever this is … and write a bunch of text about the scene and characters, and someone else turns it into a picture you can stand to look at.

My goal for this cover is to recapture the fun and charm from A Cursed Child. Action scene...

§071 Vacation II

People in the breakfast room gave him curious looks, but Taylor had long since learned not to care. He kept his Riverstone illusion active while he ate crêpes stuffed with different things, from preserved fruit and whipped cream to scrambled eggs and sausage. As a carrier for other foods, the crêpe was officially his new favorite platform, and Malachite's kitchen turned them out quickly. That was fortunate, since he was starving. He was still recovering from nearly getting crushed ...

§070 Vacation I

"When you said, 'Let's go fishing in the ocean,' we didn't know you meant in the ocean!" Tanya hugged the much smaller Jalil to keep him from freezing. Winter started early this far south, and Tanya liked any excuse to hold the hare like he was a stuffed toy.

"There's fish out there!" Taylor swept his arm at the sea, its far horizon lined with a promise that dawn would come. Eventually. "You're a bear. You love fish!" 

"I'm a bear spirit. There's a differenc...

§069 Rewards

Taylor was awarded the elemental's core mana stone as a reward for his services. He was also supposed to receive a share of valuable animal skins and other monster parts, and he was happy to take his share, but he had nowhere to put it all. The stone was the real prize, anyway. It was far smaller than expected, only twice as large as Taylor's head. The surface bulged with bright orange lumps of hexagonal crystals. At first, he was afraid to go near it, even though it was offered to him by Pro...

§068 The Dungeon

There were not as many monsters on the other side of the gate as Taylor feared. He could see a few large elk monsters in the distance, but nothing immediately around the gate. He camouflaged himself and Airwalked higher to get a better view. According to Balhadra, he was on the frontier between Wenfold and Estfold, on the Wenfold side. If he floated high enough, he might be able to see the mountain range that gave the province its name, far to the south. But that would be counterprod...

§067 Raising Stakes

“When you said payout, you meant you literally get paid for being summoned?”

“The marbles are filled with mana, so they have lots of uses. But yes, they work as currency, too. Color indicates value. Green is a very respectable second-tier denomination. And I got so many! I’ll need them to buy materials and whatnot, so this will be a big help.” 

She looked at the dimming sky. “We need to find the next town before it gets dark. This far away from Sunglaze, you can r...

§066 Branching Out

The day started a little rough. However much he wanted to trust Saria, he couldn't sleep until he warded her guest room. When he woke, he couldn't remember where he was, and shot to his feet ready to fight. His balance was off, he tried to grab some furniture to steady himself, and discovered he was missing a hand. Somewhere between "Where did my hand go?" and his face hitting the floor, he remembered everything.

It made him angry all over again. Meeting a third-tier Paladin was exactly...

§065 A Familiar Spirit

~ Taylor ~ Taylor's good-guy act for the paladin was just that: an act. Inside, he was seething. He wanted to kill the man so badly that his

~ Taylor ~

Taylor's good-guy act for the paladin was just that: an act. Inside, he was seething. He wanted to kill the man so badly that his hands were shaking. Unfortunately, with his curse in play, Taylor couldn't go around killing everyone who hurt him. If he started doing that, he'd leave a trail of bodies in his wake. 2025-08-24 05:15:51 +0000 UTC View Post

Patreon Is Starting...

For Taylor's lovely fans ... enjoy.

§063 Paladin Cadmius I

Paladin Cadmius, of Bostkirk Priory

“He refused me without consideration, Sir Cadmius. It was most irregular.”

Keeva was old, but she commanded respect among the province’s leadership. Her family controlled several townships and the ministerial office of trade. She was also a long-time supporter of the church. Cadmius didn’t like to admit it, but the Augbergs' largess bought access. That was the only reason a third-tier paladin was here. When the matriar...

§057 The Hunt

Tristan wasn’t a stolen horse, exactly. Two weeks after the new Legate of Mourne exiled Taylor and his associates from their hometown, Tristan showed up at the boardinghouse. At first, Taylor was touched that the animal would go to such lengths to be reunited with him, but the horse had been following Kasper. Whenever Kasper was out and doing chores, the horse shadowed him, never wanting to be more than ten paces away.

The boardinghouse was on the edge of Midway, with a good bit of ya...

§056 Staging

Carefully, Taylor etched characters into a thin sheet of mana-tempered silver. His tools pressed and creased Langtree’s Alignment Model into the reflective surface, with new labels for concise identification, and symbols to either operate on the alignments or react to them.

Langtree's theory arranged magic attributes into multiple planes. The top plane contained energy attributes, arranged in a square: light, sound, fire, and lightning. The middle plane controlled earth, water, wood, ...