The first pale threads of dawn crept through the curvy stained-glass arch above the bed, painting geometric patterns of amber and rose across the sleeping forms tangled in the sheets. Shady opened her eyes slowly, her vision instantaneously cutting through to the soft morning light with the power of a crepuscular predator.
Predator. What she was. What she had been. What she had been trained to be by her pradavarian instructors who feared an...
The steaks were halfway done when Nessy's phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen and her ears flattened against her skull.
"Oh no," she whispered.
"What?" I asked, flipping a steak.
"It's… Mom." Nessy stared at her phone like it might bite her. "We were supposed to come to dinner. I completely forgot. Feels like we spent a week roaming across dimensions.”
"Our internal clocks are a mess, yes. Answer it," Candace encouraged, seasoning a r...
I pointed a finger gun at Sillicia in the back of my mind, visualizing the targeting reticle appearing right at the end of it. I mimed a mental recoil. Bang.
Hook, line, and sinker.
My front mind maintained the Emperor's stoic mask, watching the Wendigo Commander practically vibrate with post-scary-movie endorphins. Or whatever the Wendigo Omnids had instead of dopamine.
My back mind was doing victory laps around itsel...
As they moved toward the exit, the Datamancer, Emperor and Marshal followed.
Sillicia frowned at them.
“The cat has to stay close enough for my hooks to be in her head," Shady clarified. "The experiment I'm running requires me to stay mentally tethered to her. Otherwise the whole thing collapses and I'll have to start over."
Sillicia's hooks caught the edge of something there—not quite a lie, but perhaps an incomplete truth. The Princ...
"I lick things? Is that all?" The Nessies asked simultaneously and then giggled.
"Lick things n’ sing ‘bout em!" Candace nodded. "It's like your whole thing! Anyway, the point is—and yes there IS a point—we're all fragments of the same cosmic disaster, puppeteered by an infinite broken goddess who keeps restarting the universe because she’s trying very hard to fix some very fucked up shit, to save humanity from being ground down into white noise by t...
The magical community leaders retreated to the back room of the Seeker to give them some privacy per Aquillianne's order.
Sillicia sat silently on a crystalline couch, attempting to wrap her mind around Princess Aquillianne's revelations.
A mad Omnid Elder on Corpse-God Citadel actually managed to outwit the Archangel of Time by splicing another Omnid! An incredibly illegal, criminal act and th...
I once again admired the three fantastic, custom gun bodies fabricated by Kawathra. They looked human-ish, with a pitch of surreal, otherworldly quality, hopefully enough to bamboozle the Wendigo High Command into thinking that wizards were real.
Arachnids Man cracked jokes at Professor Doomsday. Baba Yaga hunched with her wooden staff. Her wrinkled face was perhaps the most unsettling. It looked too detailed, too lived-in for someone that had been born...
The increasingly jagged-looking, labyrinthine crystal roots and branches parted as we approached, melting away like ice under hot water. Swarms of bulbees fluttered around us, humming dangerously, evaluating us with crystalline eyes, then flashing away.
Everything bent around the Leviathan's presence, excessive entropy making local reality dance and twist in a wild waltz.
Soon enough, I reached for the RV's door handle, f...
"Start by helping! This house is a dump in dire need of a Hearth Keeper. You want to be the Baroness of Earth? Start by being the Baroness of this decrepit estate. Fix the damn water heater, for example. Make us noms from the truck that just delivered plentiful supplies. Stop treating Ash like he betrayed you when we both know he helped you.”
"How do you know he helped me?" Galateya asked. "You barely know me. We just met yesterday."
Sunlight broke through the ragged curtains, painting golden stripes across the tangled sheets. I cracked one eye open to discover a dark skull inches from my face.
"Morning, Ashy!" Shady announced. I flinched back slightly at the big, silver eyes and rows of large teeth, then relaxed as my mind caught up to reality.
Her massive jaw stretched into a cheeky, winning grin that looked more like a horror movie poster than anythin...
Shady found a lush patch of moss near the crumbling edge of the rooftop, where the broken brick and concrete parapet came apart into colorful sand and met the endless dream-ocean.
She flopped down with a satisfied "oomph," the dream moss cushioning her massive frame like whimsical memory foam, rippling with dancing colors. Without warning, she grabbed me with her tail and yanked me onto her stomach, settling me there like I was her personal emotional supp...
I wasn’t a big fan of my dreams, especially after the anti-psychotic meds twisted them into awful, nightmarish reflections of reality deprived of any sensible direction and logic.
Dreams of high school are the worst. They feature endless, liminal hallways, the urge to go somewhere, the nagging feeling that you're late and cannot find your classroom.
This one started like all the others—gray fluorescent lights humming the song of their people a...
"Yass! We definitely won," Nessy bounced giddily to where I stood. She was dripping, her sundress clinging to every curve. Without warning, she launched herself at me, wrapping her soaked body around mine.
"Ack! Nessy! You're getting me all—"
"Wet? Good!" She nuzzled into my neck. "You should've been in there with us.”
“How would I even fit?”
“We could have probably made you fit!” Candace laughed, joining the husky and smothering me in wet fox. "Smooshed Al...
I looked at Shady, who was tilting her head curiously, then back at Nexxali. "Nexy, you're high on catnip. And Shady's... getting better but still not exactly herself right now. That's probably not the best combination for getting into a… polyamorous triangle relationship.”
“You think that my feelings aren't real just because I’m high?” Nexxali tisked, straightening her posture. "Fine." Her voice rippled with compulsion-laced resonance. "Nexxali Ever...
The waves of Lake Quinault rushed up to meet me with all the hospitality of a concrete wall made of very cold water.
SPLASH.
I hit the surface hard enough to knock the wind out of me, then sank like a stone in my shirt, jeans and boots. The glacial mountain water was approximately three degrees above "instant death" and felt like liquid needles stabbing every exposed bit of skin.
I kicked frantically, breaking the surface with a gasp. "SHADY! WHAT THE ...
South pressed her face against the gas station window, watching Mount Olympus burn in the distance like the world's most fucked up bonfire. The orange glow painted the gloomy Pacific sky in apocalyptic hues that reminded her of the Terminator 2 movie poster she'd had on her bedroom wall before the leukemia got her in 1991.
"This is so bogus," she muttered. "So fucking bogus."
She snapped her Nokia open and dialed North's number. There was a s...
Keiy's business and life's purpose was being a gun.
Her assigned core Quest was to aid and to defend her bonded Omnid dragon partner, Galateya Selene Belthys Frontenachii.
She had been bred for this singular life-function, her crystalloid consciousness carved from a harvested, long gone vampire colony and reshaped into the perfect weapon-mind within Celesteel frame reinforced by immovab...
"I..." Kawathra trembled, mouth opening and closing.
The Emperor of Earth was here, finally in her grasp and yet she was utterly powerless to do anything about it. A single word from him to the Marshal would unmake her… permanently. A bullet to the head from a non-Crystalloid gun. Once she came to, the Serval would say just a few words and Kawathra would stop existing, stop being herself, maybe even stop liking data charts!
“Scale-bae, why must you be against fun things?” Candace asked.
“I’m not against fun things!” Kristi huffed. “I’m fine with beach dates and… Uhhh… Paragliding and whatever else normal this carnival offers! I’m against simulating the end of reality where fuck knows what’s going to happen to us!”
“Soooooo…. You’re up for a wet t-shirt contest then?” Candace made a sly face.
"This human showed great interest in working for you, according to his own statement that Keiy just sent me. Eighty two percent desire to be a subordinate? You are lucky to have found such an early devotee,” the Wendigo smiled. “Rejoice!”
Galateya didn't rejoice, she looked quite sour at the ‘unexpected consort’ development.
“Ashcroft clearly proved himself useful, like that… other human working with Division 881’s Datamancer and A...
"Nexy, can't you use your voice on yourself?” I hissed at the Serval through chattering teeth as the gun and dragon began their plan to undermine the local command structure. “Order yourself to be less high?"
Nexxali's eyes widened. "That's... Oh!" She cleared her throat, eyes lighting up. Her voice took on a deep, bell-like resonance. "Nexxali Everrim, restore cognitive function to baseline parameters. Focus!"
Brad's mop clattered to the floor as he stared at us. "What... what did you just do?" His voice cracked and warped, sounding less like tired-teenager-Brad and more like something pretending to be Brad, an eldritch thing wearing Brad's skin.
I turned to look up at him and immediately wished I hadn't. Black and white eyes were blooming across his face like inverse flowers, spreading in checkerboard patterns down his neck. His MacPaws...
