ericdontigney

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 21 – A Different Path

Where Sen had set a brisk pace before, he set a brutal pace now. He wanted as much physical and psychological distance from that fight as he could get. Although, he wanted those distances for very different reasons. The physical distance was practicality at work. Someone sent those people, and Sen was already wishing that they’d captured someone alive and sane enough to ask them questions about that person. He knew that probably wasn’t realistic, that trying to do that would likely have e...

Confluence (Short Story)

“That’s just how things are done here,” said Melody.

William Barnes was normally the sort of kind-hearted man that wraps up a stray puppy in his coat on a cold day, but Melody’s words made him want to do violence. He imagined himself seizing the heavy-duty, high-capacity, Swingline stapler – one capable of punching a staple through over 200 sheets of 20 pound bond paper. He saw himself lifting it high and bringing it down on the head of Melody A. Stenton.

He could imagin...

The Stone Forest (Short Story)

1

They were waiting in the silence and darkness. He felt their cold, smooth lifelessness and thought of gargoyles, although they were not gargoyles. Gargoyles, at least, were made by human hands. What waited for him in the dark had known no human craft, human compassion, human love or none that could be discerned. Where they came from was a mystery, as was their method of selection. Even the way the mark found its way onto the hands of the selected was unknown. It simply appeared betwee...

Saturday Chapters

Hey guys, I woke up today with a pretty vicious headache that is swiftly turning into a migraine. I took my medication for it and, hopefully, that will take care of it. But, it's made writing almost impossible so far today. I don't want to promise I'll post chapters later, so, here's what's up for today. 

Instead, I'm going to post a couple of short stories I wrote. That way, you'll have something to read no matter what. Then, later, if the migraine clears up, I'll see about writin...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 20 – Lessons

Falling Leaf glared across the table at the Caihong and resisted the urge to smash the teapot. No, she reminded herself for the hundredth time, Ma Caihong. She was so frustrated with the woman, with the situation, with the countless, stupid human rules that she had to learn. They had rules for everything. They had rules about when to sleep. Rules about when to eat. Rules about how to eat. And so many rules about bowing. She honestly didn’t know how they k...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 19 – The Flower of Strange Fortune

Control. So much in cultivation depended on it. Without it, strikes would not find their mark, or be turned aside with ease. Without it, one could shred their qi channels to uselessness. Without control, techniques could run out of control. That was a lesson Sen had learned the hard way. Seeing the destruction he’d wrought in that abandoned town with his poorly controlled use of Heavens’ Rebuke had very nearly convinced him to swear it off altogether. Even as he directed the same techniqu...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 18 – Passing Judgment

It seemed that no one was expecting the offensive formation or the ruinous, charred remains of the first person to find it, which was lucky for Sen. The second or two it took him to engage his brain with the idea that it was time to fight were seconds he might not have otherwise gotten without that shock of the sudden death. Of course, the reactions of his body and his subconscious had been forged in the fires of Master Feng’s training. He was up and moving even while his mind tried to take...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 17 – Coping

Traveling with Lo Meifeng again was both more and less frustrating than Sen expected. It was much more frustrating because she insisted on keeping up the farce that he was in charge. He loathed that extra responsibility. Sen didn’t want to wonder if every campsite he picked was going to be the one that the enemy found because he hadn’t chosen wisely enough. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen to them all if he made a bad call. Most of all, though, he didn’t like the false natu...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 16 – Ridiculous

Sen was so startled by the familiar but long-absent sensation that he completely lost track of everything around him. He focused on that tugging sensation, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. That proved to be a somewhat useless exercise, since he didn’t glean anything except that it was somewhere farther west of them. He thought it might not be exactly, directly west, but they were going to need to travel for a while before he’d know for sure. Yet, the return of that tugging sen...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 37 - Miscalculation

Banjin Colle stared at the remains of the planet below on the viewscreen and felt a pang. He’d visited the place a few times before the idiots in research apparently mangled the planet’s magnetic field. Not that he’d known at the time that his government had a serious presence on the planet. He’d only found out about the facility and what had happened there an hour or two earlier. He sighed. It had been an idyllic setting, with temperate weather and a light population. It was the kind...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 15 – The Call

For a few moments, Sen didn’t know how to feel as vying emotions went to war inside his chest. A small part of him rankled at the knowledge that he was, once more, under the watchful eyes of a minder. Even though he’d suspected all of those bodies had been Lo Meifeng’s work, he was still shocked to see that she was actually alive. Part of him had truly believed she was dead. An irrational piece of his heart was deeply angry at the woman for leaving them behind when she went back to the ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 14 – The Western Road

After their short break, during which Lifen slept almost non-stop, Sen had pushed hard for a few more days. Then, he started noticing the bodies. He didn’t point them out to Lifen because there was no benefit to that, but he’d formed a working theory about what was happening. He hoped that he was right. If he was, he’d be able to put away a vague, gnawing guilt that had been working on him since they’d decided to leave instead of going back to find Lo Meifeng. Unfortunately, he might ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 13 – Hunter/Prey

Lo Meifeng was tired. No, she thought, I’m exhausted. She hadn’t been this worn out since before she’d become a core formation cultivator. It wasn’t that she hadn’t slept in six days, although that was wearing on her a little. It was that she’d spent most of those days running from people, chasing people, and killing people. Part of her was frustrated by the whole thing, but part of her exulted in it too. As necessary as bodyguarding the kid might be, sh...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 12 – Rest and Reflection

Sen kept them traveling at night. At first, it was simply to avoid other travelers, but things changed on the third day. While Lifen was sleeping the afternoon away in the tent, Sen felt a potent spiritual sense sweep over the entire area. It wasn’t enough to penetrate or collapse the obscuring formation he’d set up, but it was more than enough that Sen felt it strain the formation a bit. That put Sen’s nerves on edge. He waited for the spiritual sense to make another pass or focus on t...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 36 - Job Site 6

Even though he expected it, the fury of the weather still staggered Kalan as they stepped off the ship. A particularly violent gust of wind combined with the standing water on the pad slid Kalan sideways the better part of a foot. Temera slid past him, her lighter body providing less resistance, and Kalan snaked a hand out to grab her arm. The rain lashing them ran across the face shield of the suit and obscured anything more than a few feet away. Even inside the helmet, the noise from the ra...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 11 – Into the Night

Sen and Lifen left the inn quietly, only taking a moment to return their room key. The inn owners seemed startled but weren’t given a chance to protest before the two young guests vanished out the door. Once they got outside, Lifen turned a questioning gaze on Sen.

“Where will we go?”

“For now, we’ll keep heading south.”

“For how long?”

“There’s a western road ahead. It’ll take a while to get there, but it’ll give us options and make the search ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 10 – Sunset

The next morning, Sen woke up early. He’d noticed it more and more since his body cultivation advancement. He needed less sleep, a lot less sleep. Even knowing that moving between major stages meant substantial changes, he’d been a bit hazier about what that meant for body cultivators. With spirit cultivation, he could feel the difference in power between himself and other cultivators. With this transition between body cultivation stages and solidifying the Five-Fold Body Transfo...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 9 – Cultivator Chou

Once they were out of the city proper, Lo Meifeng seemed to relax a little. At least, Sen thought she did. Her answers to the occasional questions that Sen or Lifen asked were less sharp and terse. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but Sen liked to take his victories where he found them. Despite relaxing slightly, Lo Meifeng kept them moving until nearly sunset. At that point, they had moved beyond the city and the dense crush of buildings that had gone up beyond the city walls....

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 8 – Port

The next two weeks fell into something of a routine for Sen and Lifen. They’d get up each morning and cultivate for an hour on deck. Then, Sen began the grueling process of teaching and drilling Lifen on unarmed combat. It didn’t take long for the question Sen had been expecting to come up.

“I don’t understand,” said Lifen between puffing breaths. “I thought you were going to train me to use a weapon. Why am I learning all of this unarmed stuff?”

“What will you do ...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 7 – Practicalities

It turned out that Sen had spent almost two full days on that beach. Once the captain figured out that nobody was getting on or off the boat for a while, he just put his crew back to work on repairing the ship. So, the ship was underway again almost immediately after Sen and Lo Meifeng were back on the ship. For all that Sen desperately wanted to seclude himself in some quiet corner of the ship and consider his questions and theories about cultivation, there were practical concerns that could...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 6 – Cultivation Mysteries

Sen tried to get what rest he could while Lo Meifeng’s boat approached, because he suspected there would be little enough rest after she arrived. He made a point to commit the name Elder Bo had given him for the body cultivation technique he’d, almost accidentally, used. Five-Fold Body Transformation. Sen didn’t really understand what that meant, or even what it entailed for his current level of body cultivation. For that matter, he didn’t even know what relative stage of body cultiva...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 35 - Planetfall

Kalan glared at Temera. “Don’t speak to her.”

The spy gave him an unamused look. “I was just saying hello to the girl.”

Fresia looked deeply uncomfortable at the minor battle of wills going on between Kalan and the Ikaren spy.

“Don’t,” Kalan repeated. “I won’t let you use her.”

The woman managed to look offended and shook her shackled hands at him. “I wouldn’t do that. How could I like this?”

“Your Zeren counterpart did. Call me cyni...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 5 – Tribulation

Sen’s first thought after the elixir went to work on him was, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

No matter how powerful he’d thought those extra ingredients were, it had been a pale, pale shadow of the truth. His previous body advanced had refined the tissues, the organs, even the bones. This refinement went so much further. He felt it like was ripping apart every cell in his body and rebuilding it from the ground up to be something better, more powerful, more efficient. While Se...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 4 – Elder Bo

Okay, this should put us back on track. ~Eric

***

Sen found that the water stepping technique came easier to him than ever as he dashed from the side of the ship toward the beach. He didn’t think he’d broken through in any meaningful way, but it was still easier. Maybe he’d just reached an accommodation with water qi after that using that technique to save the ship. The explanation sounded weak, even inside his own head, but it was the best he could...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 3 – Moon Cakes

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. No sooner had the captain walked away than Lifen appeared. She smiled at him, clearly happy to see him up and about, but there was a line of worry between her eyes. Sen gave a quick, longing glance at the beach before giving Lifen his full attention.

“I’m glad to see that you’re awake, but should be up and about? Lo Meifeng seemed,” Lifen frowned a little, “concerned that you might have damaged yourself.”

Sen lifted an eyebrow at tha...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 2 – Shelter

There were blurry spots of semi-conscious, semi-lucid understanding in Sen’s memory. He vaguely remembered being thrown over a shoulder. He recalled someone throwing him into a bunk. Then, it was just intermittent flashes of storm noises and people yelling about things. Mostly, though, it was darkness and pain. He’d hurt himself with that stunt on the deck. It had been necessary to save everyone, to save the ship, but he was paying a price for it. Flashes of agony would tear across his sk...

Unintended Cultivator V3: Chapter 1 – The Storm

Sen sat cross-legged on the deck of the ship with his senses and qi extended. The ship had many excellent qualities, or so Sen had told himself, but speed wasn’t one of them. Lo Meifeng admitted that the journey was moving slowly, even by the standards of sea travel. She also assured him that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. The longer they spent wholly unfindable, the more likely the demonic cultivators were to assume they’d made a mistake and redirect their forces elsewhere. The demonic c...

Rinn's Run: Chapter 34 - Nothing in Nature

As soon as they exited the wormhole, Kalan turned to Tessan. The man stood on the bridge and looked outwardly calm. Kalan felt an irrational urge to do something to break that calm, but he pushed it down. It wasn’t the time or place for that kind of personal foolishness.

“Tessan, double-check the landing coordinates with Em. This is raider territory. I don’t want to spend a second longer here than necessary.”

Tessan nodded and walked over to Em. He spoke quietly to the rob...

Burst Cherry Tomato Pasta

I realized I haven't done one of these in a while. I made this for myself the other night and, despite some initial misgivings on my part, it was delicious. It's also got a fairly short list of ingredients. Most of them are things that people will have in their kitchens. Also, this recipe works with any kind of pasta, so pick something you like. 

Pro tip: If you're making this for one or two people, cut the recipe in half. 

If you're really interested in trying it, 2023-07-04 16:11:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Stormbreak: Chapter 2 – Meetings in Odd Places

As promised, and hopefully early enough not to disrupt family/holiday events on America's birthday.  ~Eric  

***

I woke up early the next day, but then I always wake up early. I don’t know if it’s hardwired into my nature or a byproduct of my particular role in Stormbreak. Either way, I was up and getting dressed at dawn. The Queen was already gone. Apparently, she was an earlier riser than me. It was a relief of sorts. Next morning small ta...