Author: alexanderwales

  There were times when her father hit her. He wasn’t a cruel man, just given to fits of anger. Ros didn’t remember a time before her mother had passed, but she often imagined that her father had been different then. It was always the small things that would set him off. There was a […]

Dominic tried not to watch the lengths of flesh slither back into Gaelwyn’s wrists. Dominic could see a faint impression of coiled flesh within Gaelwyn’s skin, as though the rope of flesh was coiled around the meat of his forearm. When Gaelwyn was finished, the wounds at his wrists bled slightly. “It needs refinement,” said […]

  Gaelwyn often wondered what he would be without Welexi. His life had changed the day he’d found the world’s greatest hero laying broken beneath an olive tree. The story was different every time Welexi told it, which had bothered Gaelwyn at first. In the Sovento States it was an orange tree, fully in bloom […]

Vidre fell. Glass twirled in the air around her, spreading as it fell with her. It seemed to move backwards, because it was falling more slowly than she was. The moment stretched out in front of her, a half second where she was surrounded by her domain and empty air. Death lay below her, coming […]

The one-armed man staggered toward Gaelwyn and laid his hand upon the physician. His face was pale; blood dripped from the stump where his arm had once been. “Please,” he whispered. Gaelwyn sat up slowly and gave the man a careless touch. The bleeding stopped at once as the meat around his shoulder folded in […]

Dominic woke up to a cat licking his face. “I’ve always taken to dogs instead of cats,” said Vidre. She was laying in bed next to him, watching him. She still had her armor on, but it was clear that she was only just waking up, same as him. Vidre frowned slightly. She reached over […]

Vidre held the reins to Dominic’s horse as they made their way through the Iron Kingdom. They were following the curve of the Elnor River, which made a snake-like path towards Parance. After the first hour, Dominic’s legs began to get sore from riding. The fresh air and open fields were starting to lose their […]

A salty breeze sent the ship away from Meriwall, off on the next great adventure. For all that they were being exiled, the send-off had still been rather grand. The Flower Queen had taken one last tea with them aboard the ship, with Steelminder standing beside her and a number of the more favored members […]

Dominic stood on the roof of Grayhull Palace, and flapped wings made of shadow. He’d made them as long as he could, stretching them out to nearly three feet each. That wasn’t quite as long as Welexi’s were at their full extension, but it was as much as Dominic could manage before they began to […]

The Council of Laborers proved unable to formulate a coherent response to the letter. They had been running along with a single plan for too long. If they had imagined forks in the road, places where the plan had different paths to follow, they hadn’t imagined this one. They first tried to deny the truth of […]

The city smelled of smoke. It soaked into Dominic’s clothing and filled his nostrils. His sweat made black streaks on his skin where it touched the bits of ash. After the first hour, he’d developed a light cough that he was sure was going to get worse as the night dragged on.

“We’re going to have to execute Gael, of course,” said the Flower Queen. She had a faint smile on her face, and looked around the room with sleepy eyes. She walked over to Gaelwyn and placed her hand against his cheek. “Oh, we’ll have a marvelous trial first, just the sort of thing to let […]

Vidre walked through the city streets of Meriwall, incognito. She had a hood up to hide her hair, and had pinned it back in a tight and efficient way. In the stories, a woman who was traveling as a man was always revealed by her hair, which was dramatic but also stupid. The sole tactical […]

Kendrick Eversong had been sipping on a mid-morning ale when a young boy came into the tavern, hollering about Welexi Sunhawk flying overhead. The last piece of correspondence from Gennaro had arrived three days ago, which meant that it was nearly two weeks out of date. At that time, word had been that Welexi was […]

  Dominic felt like he had been sick his entire life, and had only now gotten better. Partly this was a result of the magic Gaelwyn had done, and partly it was Dominic’s continued increase in standing, but the combined effect was that Dominic was brimming over with energy and power. He wanted to run, […]