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SOTW - ARC4 - Tempest - Chapter 30

Rain drenched Erich, beating down in waves as it obscured the landscape.  He was on a road somewhere outside of Madla, two hours to the east of the hamlet, however far that was.  In that time, he hadn’t seen anything of note.  A tree here or there on small islands raised above the flooded rice fields where he could rest for a minute or two, but other than that, nothing but raised roads and fields as far as the eye could see.

Not that he could see very far.  Erich r...

SOTW - ARC4 - Tempest - Chapter 29

“That wasn’t all of them?” Erich asked, frowning while he absently rubbed a soiled towel over his hands.  “How many more are we talking about?”

Derl shrugged helplessly.  The dim communal eating hall around them was filled with the gentle murmur of conversation and the click of wooden spoons against bowls as ten or so rice farmers ate dinner.  There were a couple members of the town militia at the table with them, but most were still manning the walls watching f...

SOTW - ARC 4 - Tempest - Chapter 28

They spotted Madla’s wooden walls about the time that the sky began to grow dark.  The rain began to fall a bit harder as they pushed onward toward the torches that lined the top of the wooden fortifications.

“That’s strange,” Allthier said, concern lining his face.  “I don’t think I’ve ever managed to reach a town without seeing a farmer first.  All the fields on the way here need to be tended once every couple of days, and usually a traveler will start run...

SOTW - ARC 4 - Tempest - Chapter 27

“That’s the rainy season for you,” Allthier remarked happily, loosely holding onto a rope that was connected to Benny the ox’s neck.  “Don’t be surprised if we don’t see the sun for another couple of weeks.  There might be a couple of days here and there where there isn’t rain, but we’ll have cloudy skies pretty much every day.”

Erich poked his head out of the shelter, looking up at the sky as gentle rain pattered down on his face.  It might have been ...

SOTW - ARC 4 - Tempest - Chapter 26

Erich stepped out of the darkness into driving rain.  He reached up, shielding his eyes from the rain as he looked up into the murky gray sky.  There wasn’t anything to see but uniform low hanging clouds.

He reached up to pull his collar tight before wrapping his cloak tight around himself, suddenly grateful for Iston’s assistance.  Erich wasn’t entirely sure about fighting a duel with his daughter, but the armor, food, and rain gear were angel sent.

A line of...

Swords of the West - Against the Storm

Hello Everyone! I am kicking off the return to Swords of The West with some of the initial cover art for book one (tentatively - Against the Storm). The first 25 chapters are up on my patreon (and Against the Storm is 47 chapters/145k words so roughly 550 pages). I already have the first 8 chapters/100 pages of book two done so hopefully everyone likes the series. I am currently waiting on a more final cover (m...

What's Next?

Somnus is done. That's... a lot. It also doesn't mean that I'm taking a pause. My next project, Swords of the West, is a progression fantasy focusing, unsurprisingly from the title, on a guy trying to become a sword master.

This series is a bit more of a travelogue in focus- the main character has a quest but it isn't epic in stakes. The goal is more to focus on him and how he overcomes struggles and becomes stronger all while trying to find what actually motivates him.

T...

TS6 - Chapter 45

Kat reversed gravity, launching herself into the air with a thought.  Ten to fifteen gozzlam heads tracked her squawking hatred at Kat’s rising form.  Before Kat could get more than ten paces off of the floor of the swamp they took to the air as well in a flurry of anger and feathers.

Mana drained out of Kat as she activated Improved Laser.  The beam of coherent light pulsed to light as it chopped downward, meeting one of the rising geese.

It squawked in anger, mu...

TS6 - Chapter 44

Kat stood silently on the twenty fourth floor.  In front of her was a gleaming ziggurat made out of what looked to be a single carved block of obsidian.  Etched into its side were drawings of warriors from a thousand different races, each of them depicting the individual triumphing over some challenge or the other.  At the peak was a large bell fashioned from some iridescent metal that practically glowed from the amount of mana invested in it.

A peal of trumpets cut throu...

TS6 - Chapter 43

Kat opened her eyes to see Belle slumped in the chair next to her, the arm of her body armor and infiltration suit burned off and revealing scarred flesh beneath.  The older woman shifted as Kat sat up, hissing in pain as her movement caused the scraps of fabric to rub against the open wound.

“Rise and shine,” Belle said tightly, flashing her a pained smile.  “The bad news is that Millennium forces have pushed a lot deeper and a lot faster into the complex than your secu...

TS6 - Chapter 42

Improved Laser snapped to life sending a pencil thin beam of energy directly into the floor guardian’s eye.  The laser seemed to flicker, pulsing at speeds that would be invisible to anyone but the superhuman as the coherent stream of energy began to drill through the light crystal of the creature’s left eye.

It shuddered in pain as Kat dragged the spell across the surface of its eye, cutting and pulverizing crystal as she sought to blind the monster.  Despite her efforts,...

TS6 - Chapter 41

Quickly, Kat checked the time on her smartpanel.  A little bit after five o’clock.

“I’m sorry Lieutenant Turner,” she said, turning to look the nervous looking soldier in the eyes.  “If they are deploying forces like that, I am going to have to activate a contingency plan, and that means leaving this spot.  I can basically guarantee that they will be sending the bulk of their reinforcements here to try and trap and kill me.  Shareholder Donnst had a good id...

TS6 - Chapter 40

Kat bit back a groan of frustration as she jogged through the hallways of the complex toward a concealed security station.  She would’ve preferred to move faster, but Belle was struggling to keep up even at the current rate.  As much as Kat wanted to break into a run to put some distance between herself and the battle in the cafeteria, she forced herself to move at a more measured pace.

More gunshots and zapping sounds of the plasma weapons used by Millennium echoed down the...

TS6 - Chapter 39

Gunfire echoed down a half dozen hallways, giving Kat an approximate map of where the Millennium forces were.  She took a left and broke off into a fast jog, slowing down after a couple hundred paces to give Belle and her security detail a chance to catch up.  After so long operating with a team of superhuman aliens, it was hard to tone herself down into the realm of mere mortals.

After about five minutes, they found the defensive team.  Four security guards were manning ...

TS6 - Chapter 38

“I’m jammed.”  Belle’s voice was clipped as the woman stood up suddenly, her assistant scurrying backward to get out of the way.  “It seems like all communications outside of the facility are being blocked.  Unless we can physically get a transmitter outside the walls, we’re trapped.”

Kat blinked her eyes once, letting her pupils dilate, activating her smartglass communication systems and trying to put out a call to the forward security stations inside the l...

TS6 - Chapter 37

“H-how many more d-dungeons do you need?”  Jasper was simple and to the point.  The second he sat down with Davis towering behind him, the other shareholder dove into the crux of the matter.

“Eleven for a full clear,” Kat replied.  She was a little more centered now.  Emma had already sent out the order for the attack, a public announcement for a new product line in a trade magazine that the 3445 was monitoring.  By 6 am the next morning the attack would...

TS6 - Chapter 36

“Bored.”  Whippoorwill remarked, throwing a tennis ball up in the air and catching it again.  “Beyond bored.” “Sorry Whip,” Kat replied.  “W

“Bored.”  Whippoorwill remarked, throwing a tennis ball up in the air and catching it again.  “Beyond bored.”

“Sorry Whip,” Kat replied.  “We’re kinda trapped in the facility at the moment.  Almost eighty percent of our security forces are either in South America or en route.&nb...

TS6 - Chapter 35

Kat took a deep breath, doing her best to steady her nerves.  The unfamiliar weight of metal and circuitry on her left arm didn’t do much to

Kat took a deep breath, doing her best to steady her nerves.  The unfamiliar weight of metal and circuitry on her left arm didn’t do much to help her calm down.

She glanced down at the portable shield.  Even without turning it on, Kat’s enhanced hearing could pick up the faint hum of the device's capacitors as they kept t...

TS6 - Chapter 34

The dragon took a deep breath, chest swelling as its scales scraped against the rocky floor before letting the air back out again.  It was b

The dragon took a deep breath, chest swelling as its scales scraped against the rocky floor before letting the air back out again.  It was bigger than any floor guardian she’d ever fought.  Some of them were close, but those guardians didn’t have any special ability.  Their only real asset was size and the strength that went...

TS 6 - Chapter 33

It was most certainly not ‘fun.’  A week of hiking and tracking the orcs, all while constantly fending off attacks from the wolves and bears of the forest was far from enjoyable.  More than that, Kat hadn’t exactly studied the animals of medieval Europe, but there sure seemed to be a lot more of the creatures and each of them was faster, stronger and more resilient than anything appearing naturally.  On top of that, once the four of them cleared out a territory, it should...

TS6 - Chapter 32

Kat could hear the orcs chasing after her.  Their heavy breathing and angry yells followed her as she wove in and out of the trees.  Despite all her stat points in agility, Kat didn’t dare to look back.  Her legs might be faster than an orc’s, but theirs were twice as long and she wasn’t thrilled about her chances in a long distance foot race.

Luckily for her, she wasn’t traveling a long distance.

Barely a minute later she spotted the first of the bushes tha...

TS6 - Chapter 31

“Town princess?”  Dorrik asked as they ran alongside the panicking townsfolk toward where the bell was still ringing.  “I thought that princesses were a higher noble rank, not something you would find in a small border village such as this.  If I was wrong about that, I have an angry letter to write about Chrome Cowboys Episode 921, Revenge of the Dairy Queen.”

“No,” Kat replied.  “Town princesses are absolutely not a thing.  Whoever it is that mad...

TS - Chapter 30

The dragon’s wings flapped once and it was in the air.  A blink of the eye later, the downdraft from its ascent hit the three of them, blowing Kat’s hair everywhere and threatening to push them into the ground.  On instinct she reached out with her domain, weakening the pull of gravity around them to help their group fight back against the sudden assault.

Kat’s eyes widened as the giant reptile disappeared into the sky, flying rapidly toward the solitary mountain she had...

TS - Chapter 29

Bright but diffuse light shown down from a featureless sky.  From the second Kat had opened her eyes, she’d been sitting atop a square pillar with nothing around her.  Each side of her platform was about six paces long, just big enough that she could walk and move a little without risking herself, but not nearly large enough for Kat to try anything strenuous.

A quick check of her status sheet confirmed that Kat was in the Tower, but she pretty clearly wasn’t on the twenty ...

TS6 - Chapter 28

The image of Dringbek flickered slightly as some sort of interference from the laboratory interrupted the transmission for a second.  He inclined his head slightly.

“Shareholder Debs, Representative Ahn,” Dringbek said, a plastic smile on his furry face.  “It is so good to see both of you.  I appreciate your taking my call on such short notice, but I must say that I am surprised to see Jaalin with you Katherine.  The last time I checked her public itinerary the...

TS6 - Chapter 27

The snake opened its mouth, letting out a sibilant, hissing bellow of anger before lunging toward the three of them.

Kat yanked herself to the side while using her empowered domain to push downward on the guardian’s head, but it managed to struggle back against her gravity, wobbling slightly in flight as it tried to bite down on Kaleek.

He flailed wildly for a moment, struggling against the gentle grip of gravity that was holding him aloft.  Kat immediately released him, bu...

TS6 - Chapter 26

“Are you ready to finish up with this level?”  Dorrik asked, his eyes flickering back and forth at the various aliens that seemed to be milling listlessly around the adventurer’s hall.

Kat followed his gaze.  None of the other aliens were looking directly at their team, but Kat couldn’t shake the impression that someone was watching them.  

She pursed her lips.  That they were being observed was unwelcome but hardly surprising.  It was clear t...

TS6 - Chapter 25

Michelle ran two steps forward, cocking her arm and throwing the tennis ball wrapped in her grip as far as she could.  Hans exploded from where he was sitting, galloping after it in an avalanche of fur and energy.

Kat shook her head, smiling at her younger sister as Michelle ran back to the plastic box they’d left on the park bench with all of their belongings.  Before Hans could chase the ball down, she’d grabbed another tennis ball from the container.  The dire wolf...

TS6 - Chapter 24

Kat’s index finger tapped against her knee, an almost inaudible metronome more fit for speed metal or hyperpop than a march or waltz.  Her cup of coffee sat in front of her, steaming but untouched while Dorrik stood silently, leaning against a wall of the conference room, both sets of arms crossed in front of his chest.

“When do you think he’ll-” she began only for Dorrik to interrupt, his voice trying to project a calm that didn’t match the troubled expression on his fac...

TS6 - Chapter 23

The scrape and clank of metal on stone announced the intruders minutes before they actually appeared.  When Kat had earned her improved hearing, she’d thought over a lot of the perk’s implications, but one that had never occurred to her was how boring it could be when she was stuck in a stake out.

Kat could hear everything, but that didn’t mean she could do anything to change it.

She could hear Kaleek and Dorrik breathing in their own alcoves.  She could hear Kalee...