Year: 2018

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go. Valencia, at the first sign of trouble, we’re bailing. Watch them closely.” “Mode?” asked Valencia. Ah. Fast-talking or fisticuffs? Based on how she’d described the experience, it wasn’t so much that she had a demon or devil’s thoughts, it was that for the strong ones, their skills became so much […]

The oppressive feeling of being trapped in a corner faded away once Fenn was through the portal. Dealing with gravity was a bit tricky, as she’d gone down through a hole and come out the side of a tree, but she landed on her feet easily enough and took stock of where she was. It […]

I was alone. I’d thought that it would feel like I’d made a huge mistake, but strangely, there was a feeling of righteousness that came with my decision. I probably shouldn’t have felt exhilarated, but I did. Whatever thing Fenn had felt so strongly, I only had a twinge of it. Did that mean that […]

“They’re a recognized phenomenon,” said Amaryllis. “To maintain the deception for so long, under so much scrutiny, you’d need –” “Powerful magic,” replied Masters. “I was going to say that you’d need the complicity of far too many people,” replied Amaryllis. “People — scholars — would come to this place and they’d want to speak […]

When looking at the athenaeum system as a whole, I was very much reminded about what Figaro Finch and I had talked about regarding specialized hammers. If all you had were thirteen special hammers, then eventually you would start designating some of them for ‘close-enough’ purposes. Each of the athenaeums had carved out their own […]

“Jorge and I are going on a date,” said Valencia as she came into the common room and flopped down in a chair. Bethel had gone big. The common room was shaped like an egg, with the domed ceiling forty feet high. An ornate chandelier hung down and gave the whole place a warm light, […]

The Isle of Poran sat in the middle of a slate gray sea, under unnaturally roiling clouds. The soil was poor, leaving little but lichen and moss to grow, and it was almost perpetually wet and drizzly, with an average of two sunny days out of the year. It had been the redoubt of a […]

Mary’s Notes: Toward an Optimal Build Mistakes of the past are locked in via point selection w/ limited options wrt correction “Floating” points should not be floating as they alter hard caps and should be put toward maximizing those caps!! J right that exact functions of all skills are not known J says even known […]

Negotiations took hours, and I was thankful that my role in them was very minor. There were hundreds of things that needed to be hammered out, but Amaryllis and Valencia (with the most cunning devil she could find) were both up to it. No one ever said out loud that if we wanted to, we […]

I sat there, staring at Finch, trying to figure out my options. Killing him was certainly an option, but I didn’t actually know what he wanted, and it almost seemed like we were on the same side. “Carrots,” I said. “What kind are you offering?” I was implicitly admitting that most of what he’d said […]

“And you’re okay with staying behind?” asked Mary. “I am, you don’t need to ask me again,” said Valencia. They were in the hotel room together, alone. Grak was putting up wards in the other room where the tuung were staying, and Joon had taken Fenn to go find out if there was another way […]

I’ll admit to a bit of panic. “How serious is this?” I asked. “Serious enough for the hospital,” said Amaryllis. Her voice was steely calm. “Labor needs to be induced, because it’s been twenty-four hours without it happening on its own, and the baby is going to be preterm, which means she’s likely going to […]

I put the backpack in first, bidding it a fond farewell. I was less sure about giving it up than I was about giving up the Anyblade, but we’d had seven months to pull out everything we could want from it. Amaryllis had argued about it, but we hadn’t had a proper fight. The thing […]

I emerged from the time chamber feeling drained, despite my best efforts. I ate well, I slept well, I exercised often, and by the end, none of it really seemed to help. My break from the chamber had lasted no more than two hours, if that, so it was effectively two solid months, back to […]