BlueShear

Chapter 65

Sitting stiff and ramrod straight, completely oblivious to the soft embrace of tufted velvet upholstery—one of the very few seated accommodations present within the cool, well lit, and even finer appointed rooms of the Interior Minister’s office—Meredith just couldn’t seem to help the cold sweat which was, even now, heavily beading her brow.

In her defense, it wasn’t an uncommon reaction. After all, sitting directly across from her, behind her large mahogany desk with its sta...

Chapter 62

Through his periphery, R. Jun watched the girl scrutinize the weapon rack for what had to have been the sixth consecutive pass. This had been going on for quite a while now, and, seeing as she appeared no closer to making a decision, he figured he still had time.

Idly toying with the supernaturally sharp splinter of aura he held between his teeth, on the surface R. Jun feigned a casual disinterest, while on the inside he strained for comprehension.

Keying in on his innate feel fo...

Chapter 67

It was only with the advent of the Azure Queen that humanity struck the first decisive blow to rift born kind.

One that was heard around the world and back. Taking the war to them after countless centuries of indolence, the hero’s and fated champions, great warriors of old, rapidly expanded the boundaries of their burgeoning queendom.

Beating back incursion after incursion with brutal efficiency. Facing off against impossible odds time and time again. Genius tactical know how ...

Chapter 66

Eleanor

Day 01

Journal Entry 01

Mary insisted I keep a daily journal chronicling my time here in the military. I don’t really have much to say so far. Oh wait! The wall! Of course. It truly is something else. I’m now positive that not a single one of the descriptions I’ve heard ever really did it justice. The food here is good and my fellow privates are accommodating. I even feel like I’ve started to make a few new friends.

They w...

Chapter 60

The next mere handful of days were, quite possibly, the most hectic of Eleanor’s entire life.

Due almost entirely to the fact that, for most of it, she felt less like an active participant in goings on, and more like a helpless passenger purely along for the ride. In that time, she took several baths—each of them warm, unhurried, and blessedly free of other people’s stink—ate more food in a day than she had over the course of some weeks, visited book shops, clothiers, hairdress...

Chapter 64

Unwilling to let things go so easily, Jun tried pinpointing where exactly the problem lay.

Where he could’ve possibly gone wrong. It didn’t take long for him to recognize that some weapons evinced a greater resistance than others. While thinner blades, daggers, long swords and the like, appeared to submit to his will with only a token amount of resistance, everything else didn’t seem to want to budge whatsoever.

With a tsk of annoyance, Jun released ...

Chapter 68

“Splitting Chop!”

One crosswise sweep and half a dozen undead fell lifelessly to the floor. Well, more lifeless than they had been, at any rate. And again, and again, and once more for good measure.

Jun’s arm a blur. His lemon-yellow extension a reaper’s blade, scything down moaning zombies like wheat stalks by the dozen. Bane to every creature unfortunate enough to find itself within his long reach. Well, with one rather persistent exception anyway.

2024-10-22 22:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 58

The sound of an explosion had Eleanor rolling to her feet before her brain, still half asleep by this point, had fully registered what was wrong.

Over the perpetual rhythm of the sodden downpour, she heard the rattle and snap of dozens of shutters, as many similarly tried to investigate the noise. Not to be mistaken for thunder, the distinct bang sounded as if it’d come from only a street or so away.

Elenor strained her ears, body tensed up like a bow string—now wide awake a...

Chapter 52

“Up!”

Raina emptied the full contents of her bucket onto the sleeping form of their would be captive. Jerking him awake with a cold slap of well water, she only took a small amount of pleasure from the way he coughed and spluttered.

If her life had, by necessity, become this nightmarish crucible, and would effectively remain so for as long as they continued to circuit these backwater provinces, she’d be damned if the little brat got to go on catching up on his beauty sleep ...

Chapter 51

Forty minutes later, and he finally felt as though he’d been brought up to speed.

Not that it made any of it any less confusing, mind you, but now at least he thought he had a better handle on the situation. First things first? It was official. He’d royally messed up. Talk about biting off more than he could chew.

If the workshop was to be believed, and as far as he could tell it didn’t have any reason to lie to him—in fact it seemed to take great pleasure i...

Chapter 55

As five of the shadow wolves broke away from the pack, converging from seemingly every direction at once, he didn’t change his method of attack in the slightest. Well, if you ignored just one minor detail that was. Sensing the one to his left most keenly, he turned in that direction, ignoring the others for the time being.

As he’d suspected, he was just in time to see the feral shadow beast beginning to pounce, though already he could see its clever eyes carefully judging the distan...

Chapter 54

“Are you sure about this?” Edmond asked, voice pitched too low for their guest’s ears to pick up. “I mean we don’t actually know if he’s any good in a fight. He could be terrible. Worse yet, he could die, and then where would we be? If you’ll recall, you didn’t exactly approve of me pulling my punches when creating this trial.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because if he isn’t, he�...

Chapter 56

“Idiot girl!” Eleanor was awake and rolling to her feet before the swat of the broom could connect with her forehead. “That’s right! Off with you now. Get! And don’t let me find you sniffing round here again, you hear?! Daft urchin! What am I running here, a blooming orphanage?!”

And though Eleanor briefly slipped on the slick cobblestones in her rush to comply, she was still feather quick in gathering up her things—rat sack, hemp blanket, and other such women’s daily ne...

Chapter 57

“You heard me! Are you daft, girl?! Give me all your damned money!”

Eleanor blanched, looking cross eyed at the rusty knife hovering only a few centimeters from her nose. Following the trembling arm up to the pockmarked face, she felt only an acute sense of despair as she looked into those azure-colored eyes.

An ember fiend.

Hooked on low quality soul energy, no doubt. Eleanor would be lucky if all the woman wanted was her coin. With eyes nearly brimming over with tear...

Chapter 61

“Eighteen!”

With a smooth, almost mechanical motion, Eleanor pushed herself back up until her arms reached full extension. Hands planted slightly wider than her shoulders, body held straight from her head to her heels—almost like she had a broom handle stuffed down the back of her tunic. Then, before the next number had even been called, Eleanor was dipping back down until her chest grazed the turf, where she waited.

For an exercise she’d only been made aware of less than ...

Chapter 53

“Could we really not have found a bigger cage?” asked Edmond. “It looks as if it were made for a small dog.”

“It was the best I could cobble together on short notice,” snapped Raina. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?”

“Well, no. It just seems a bit… undignified is all.”

“He doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

Jun, for his part, was simply having the time...

Chapter 59

Eleanor didn’t snap awake from bleary unconsciousness, so much as she passively recognized her own growing sphere of perception.

Sight, sound, and an indecipherable sixth sense slowly expanding out and away from her a few paces at a time—a diffuse light, with no identifiable source, steadily beating back the tide of darkness that surrounded her on all sides.

The first things she noticed were her bare feet, then the floor, and after that the arcane scribbles carved into its s...

Chapter 50

At first there was pain. Then there was darkness. Darkness and pain. Pain and then darkness. His consciousness a faulty light fixture. A torch buffeted by hurricane winds. Flickering. Faltering. Barely there and then gone. His mind operating on quarter rations. His body always a ways away. He could never be sure if he screamed, how much he screamed, or for how long.

Trapped as he was behind walls of his own making, for all intents and purposes, he knew nothin...

Chapter 49

The unnerving, gut twisting sensation of being folded in on himself, over and over, until his total remaining body mass could fit inside a pinhole, was brought to an immediate halt with a forceful yank.

Then, all of the sudden, he was somewhere else entirely. Hovering several hundred meters above the ground, he looked out over an expansive range of mountains carpeted by an unending stretch of pine forest canopy.

Feeling somewhat tipsy, after having grown by what felt like a mill...

Chapter 48

 “Alright! Roll call everyone!”

There was a general chorus of piteous groans at this, bringing to Jun’s immediate attention the four individuals lying prone on the other side of the barrier. Well, three prone figures and one woman standing tall with her arms crossed. This despite the decidedly greenish cast to her skin and the way she wobbled on her feet.

“Oh? And why is that you might ask? Because if somehow, despite all of my grand efforts and peerless ability besid...

Chapter 47

Suddenly, it was as if the world around the young cultivator changed, as something that should’ve forever remained intangible… swiftly solidified.

Standing far too close to the epicenter for comfort, Raina felt the sting of several small cuts digging into her flesh. This despite the high tiered runic barrier that lay between them. Something that, by all rights, should’ve been impossible.

Raina staggered back, more alarmed than she was in...

Chapter 46

Simon dabbed at his still damp hair with the coarse bundle of cloth he’d been given in place of a towel.

Absentmindedly he hooked a finger beneath his sweat-soaked collar and tugged. As if the pervasive heat could be released so easily. Uncanny and serene as this oasis might’ve been, it was humid as hell.

And, although these cultivators' robes were somewhat comfortable, that comfort came at the cost of layer upon layer. Quite frankly, it was far too many layers for his likin...

Chapter 45

While he struggled with himself internally, Jun didn’t fail to notice their peculiar reaction. They looked at him almost as if they didn’t recognize him. Which didn’t make any sense because they’d have had to recognize him first and he’d only just met the group.

“That was me, actually,” said one of the older boys.

Jun scrutinized the larger boy. Six foot tall with a lean athletic frame, caramel skin, an unkempt head of red blond hair, and a brilliant pair of piercing...

Chapter 44

“I still don’t see why I should stay hidden when it’s unlikely anyone down here is bound to care one way or another,” Ivory grumbled from within the inner folds of his robes.

They’ll have seen us together, Jun thought back.

It’s just not a risk we should be willing to take. There’s bound to be someone who knows to associate a particularly ebullient lady Cthulle with a certain young lord. Even if it was only for a day, something that bizarre woul...