Aster Brooks Books

Ch. 36: Copper Crescent

Cass followed Daidyn through the crowded streets of Velillia’s lower district. As they walked, he pointed out interesting landmarks and his favorite shops: a sandwich place over there that got the ratio of meat to lettuce just right, a tailor here that cut particularly flattering clothes, the statue of the duchess in the plaza there, a spot where a dumpling stand popped up in the evenings. 

He was pointing out an impressive stained glass window when Dodge screamed in her ears. Sh...

Ch. 35: Magic Academy

“The catacombs open tomorrow,” Alyx explained to Cass as they walked through the city the next day. “Telis and I have preparations to make. You’re welcome to tag along, take it easy.” 

There was another question unspoken there, but Cass ignored it. 

“I’m going to follow up on some leads I’ve got,” Cass said instead.

We need to prepare for the Storehouse as well, Salos reminded her from her shoulder.

Cass made a distracted, noncommit...

Ch. 34: The Delim Library

Cass lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Sleep should be easy. It had been a long day. Travel and dueling and banquets. Sleep should be easy. 

She should be tired. 

And she was. But useless questions drowned out that exhaustion. Questions she didn’t want to think about. Questions that she did not have answers to and no amount of pondering would derive the answers. 

She turned over and over, from side to side. The bed was criminally soft, yet she could no...

Ch. 33: Averenis Storehouse

Was it unreasonable to be mad? Cass didn’t know. She had known Alyx was callous about death. She had known Alyx had no problem killing. 

This wasn’t some big betrayal. 

Alyx had tried to keep her out of it. Cass was the one who’d forced the conversation.

Cass flew through the night air, trying to work out her thoughts. They just turned over those same ones. Again and again and again. 

The wind twisted along the hillsides, dipping and bobbing over t...

Ch. 32: For Power

The banquet continued late into the night. The food seemed as endless as it was diverse. Every time Cass was sure they had cleared a plate on the table, it was replaced with another new dish without so much as a ripple of air displaced.

All of it was delicious. None of it was poisoned as far as Identify, Foraging, or Herbal Concocting was aware. And Cass learned that although her slyphid body did not get hungry, it could become overstuffed. 

When the third dessert tray appear...

Ch. 31: Introductions

Cass blinked to regain her vision, though she could still roughly make out the last moves of Alyx’s fight through Atmospheric Sense. That had been so close. Did Alyx know how many lightning bolts Kohen had been preparing? He had implanted more than a dozen in the arena’s floor and had summoned more with each of those bolt attacks. 

If Alyx hadn’t gone all in there at the end, never mind losing, Alyx might have died. Was this how duels went? 

Then again, Alyx had sw...

Ch. 30: Alyx: Duel

Alyx stepped onto the dueling stage, the pressure of high society’s eyes on her shoulders. She stood tall, forcing herself not to look for her father in the crowd again. Two of his children were fighting. If he weren’t watching, nothing she could do now would change that. 

She just needed to prove it was worth it to watch her.

Kohen stood opposite her. He was level 28, two levels higher than her own. 

The level gap had not been smaller since they were children,...

Ch. 29: Banquet

A woman stood beside an enormous dragon. Both could be described in a word as night. She wore a gown of flowing black, her dark hair coiled in a crown of braids against her head. Silver pins were woven into the plait like stars in the dark sky. At her side, a silver sword hung from her waist. Over her left shoulder, she wore a lizard’s glass skull like a pauldron.

Beside her, the dragon was larger than a semi-truck. Its scales were black, shimmering with an iridescent shine, like oil ...

Ch. 28: The Ducal Palace

Cass followed Alyx up the stairs to the palace. Telis had dressed them in robes of silken fabric, Cass in dark blue with long, wide sleeves and a short train that glided effortlessly behind her, Alyx in deep green thing of a more square or masculine cut—at least, to Cass’s eyes. 

Alyx wore her hair in tight braids pinned to her head in a twisting design, the excess coming together in a short ponytail. A mask resembling a snarling wolf adorned the side of her head. It was made o...

Ch. 27: Procession

Half a second later, Cass was falling. 

Alyx was laughing by the time Cass’s feet were on the ground again. “You are way more slippery than I imagined!”

Cass blinked. “What exactly happened?” 

She had gotten a few skill levels from the fight.

Wind Step has increased to level 11.

Staff Mastery has increased to level 12.

Wind Blade has increased to level 11.

Aly...

Ch. 26: All Out

Cass turned to see Alyx and Telis step out onto the training yard. 

“Oh good, you’ve warmed up,” Alyx said.

“What?” Cass asked. 

Everyone looked at Cass with disappointment.

“Why did you think I asked you up here?” Alyx asked. “Thought you might like to do some sparring before dinner.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Cass asked. 

“How else do you plan to build your weapon mastery skills?”

She supposed that made ...

Ch. 25: Sparring

“So, where is Alyx?” Cass asked when they got up to the empty training yard. It was on the top of the Spire the manor had been built into. It was simultaneously natural stone and the manor’s roof. 

“The lady’ll be along in a bit,” the old guard said. He walked up to the rack of wooden training weapons, selecting a short sword and giving it a test twirl. “I thought it’d be best if the two of us had a chat first though, so I figured I’d invite you up a touch early, ...

Ch. 24: Unwanted Guest

The guest room was an impressive suite, larger than Cass’s entire apartment back home. It comprised three rooms: a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. That was if one didn’t count the extensive (if rather empty) closet space as its own room, which she probably should. 

All three spaces could be generously called comfortably large. It could less generously be called unnecessarily grandiose. If this was the guest space, Cass could only imagine what the rooms of the actual re...

Ch. 23: Velillia

They rode down the main street, following its gentle curves through the town. The deeper they got into the city, the less and less of the sky Cass could see above them. Every block, the buildings on either side seemed to hang further and further out over the road, and what open air remained was filled with more and more streamers of cloth and glass.

Even at midday, the sunlight above was choked out, with only the occasional beam of colored light refracted through the maze of cloth and g...

Ch. 22: Arrival

They left shortly after Cass woke up the next morning. Cass called it morning, but it was almost noon. Alyx had spent the morning organizing the campground into a long-term encampment, taking stock of what the villagers still had and what they would need to get back on their feet. 

New palisades were already being raised around the campground. The villagers would stay here until the town could be rebuilt, an effort Alyx promised the duchy would see completed. 

“I would...

Ch. 21: Alyx: Nightwatch

Alyx stood behind her tent, just outside the collective glow of the refugee camp. Night had long since fallen and, by every right, she should be resting. She needed to be in the best possible condition when they got home. There would be no time to recover before she descended into the Catacombs as part of the Festival. 

But here she was, sword in hand, moving through forms and flaring skills. Restless to her core. 

Everything about today bothered her. They were too close...

Ch. 20: Camp

The sun was the barest sliver over the far treeline when Cass was forced to give up. There was nothing left. Her body was ragged, her mind raw. 

More importantly, there was none left to save amid the flames. 

Cass staggered back out to the camp, the sky darkening to the blue-black of night. 

She hadn’t saved them all. She knew there had been far more than she’d pulled from the flames. But she hadn’t been fast enough. There was no way for her to be fast e...

Ch. 19: Smoke and Hearth

There were more. There were so many more. Was one of them that child’s mother? Another child’s mother? A wife? A husband? A father? A sibling? A friend?

Cass threw herself into building after building. The smoke was choking, but a slyphid didn’t need to breathe. The fire was all-consuming, but Dodge let her flicker through it like it wasn’t there. 

Every second mattered. Every second was a body suffocating somewhere amid the smoke. Was a body succumbing to the heat. 2024-07-22 22:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Ch. 18: Smoke and Fire

There were dozens more people chased by the bartiangs. Dozens more huddled in corners, hoping the fire and smoke would leave them alone long enough for the apes to leave. Fire licked at every building. 

Eventually, the screams fell silent, with just the crackling fire threatening the village. 

Cass had circled back to the break in the palisades they’d entered from. A ways back, a collection of tents had gone up behind fire breaks. Within, the survivors huddled together...

Ch. 17: Smoke and Mists

Around her, the fire was growing. The air was thin, more smoke than oxygen, all of it hot, scalding her lungs and skin. 

She heard another scream and followed it into a plaza around a well. A group of people—a woman with a sword, two other women, and a man with a pair of small children—stood in the center, surrounded by six apes. The ground around their feet glowed in a gold circle and the apes seemed unable to step over that boundary, not that it did anything to stop them from...

Ch 16: Salos: Smoke and Silver

There were more bartiangs in the buildings and side streets. They were attracted by the calls of the silverback. But telling the child this would not help. 

All he could do was get her as far from the silverback as he could. 

He sprinted from their cover, darting across the street and up the silverback’s back. He dug his claws into its flesh with every step, but they left little more than shallow cuts in its thick hide. 

But it was enough to get its attentio...

Ch. 15: Salos: Smoke and Shadows

Salos slipped through the smoky streets, silent as a shadow, for all the good it did him. Behind him, the little girl Cass saved scurried, her feet loud as she ran over the dirt road, her breathing gasping and choking in the smoke. 

They needed to be faster than this. Every minute they spent on these streets was another minute the bartiangs might find them. It was another minute Cass might get herself into trouble on her own. 

But the child was slow.  

2024-07-13 22:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Ch. 14: Smoke and Apes

They spent the next several days riding hard across the open fields between Hervet and Velillia. They stopped regularly for Cass and Alyx to switch between Alyx’s horse and the one that had been intended for Cass, but only truly resting when night fell and hurrying on their way again with the rising dawn. 

It was near the end of that third day, as the day dipped into the gold of twilight, when Cass saw something on the horizon. 

“Is that smoke?” Cass squinted at th...

Ch. 13: Dragons

Cass woke up on a blanket on the ground. Alyx sat next to her in the grass. 

“What happened?” Cass’s voice was hoarse. 

“Cass!” Alyx grabbed her hand. “Abyss, what was that? Are you okay?”

Cass blinked. Excellent questions, both of them. 

She started with the second one. She flexed her arms and feet experimentally as she sat up. There was no pain or stiffness. 

Stamina: 96/96

Focus: 324/3...