***Nema***
“May their bones tumble about the wastes forever,” Nema cursed around the gor root between her teeth as she rubbed the faint hand marks off of her arms. The most recent altercation between her, the chief and Vol had nearly escalated beyond what could be forgiven.
When s...
2021-09-07 22:44:41 +0000 UTC View Post“Heave!” Tom shouted to no one in particular. It was just him and Suzie, tugging on a leather strap looped around the truck’s hitch.
The red sun beat down on them as they pulled, trying to get the truck to budge.
“Okay, give it some slack.” Tom let go of the line and furtive...
2021-09-07 22:42:46 +0000 UTC View Post“Suzie no. No. NO. Suzie NO!”
Tom and Suzie made eye contact. The frog familiar’s tongue began to slowly reach toward the fat-pan, as if he wouldn’t be able to see it if she moved slowly enough. Like he was a T-rex or something.
The familiar darted away when Tom stomp...
2021-09-04 20:17:27 +0000 UTC View Post***AWAKE***
Tom’s eyes snapped open. The first thing he noticed was that it was cold! An involuntary shiver swept through his entire body as he gasped.
The second thing he noticed was a throbbing pain in his elbow. The back of his arm had gotten pressed up agains...
2021-09-03 19:49:40 +0000 UTC View Post***DREAM***
Tom walked back toward the hollowed-out mobile home where Reese and Jacob had died. Her neighbors hid in their own hovels, peering furtively out at Tom, presumably unable to call the cops on account of the self-replicating NDA curse that prevented anyone from mentioni...
2021-09-01 19:39:50 +0000 UTC View PostIn the middle of an endless ocean of desolate cracked earth, there was a single monument taller than the occasional stubborn gnarled bush hanging on for dear life for the yearly rains.
It was brown, a bit darker than the surrounding tan land, reddish from a distance. Like everyth...
2021-08-30 17:18:47 +0000 UTC View PostFeel free to jump in the comments with suggestions and questions about the next arc in addition to the vote.
The Endless was a fun boogeyman, and I've got an interesting idea how I see it turning out.
The Endless is Tom, if his daughter is killed, and it's his daughter fro...
***The Hall of Worlds, Kinzena, Deraan continent.***
Sasha Honnekun wiped her sweaty palms on her bright white healer’s jerkin for probably the hundredth time.
The tension was palpable.
Marida En’hol herself, the powerful seer known as The Omniscient, was standing in the cen...
2021-08-26 18:41:05 +0000 UTC View PostTom forgot that Carol had eyes, ears, and a brain. She heard what he heard, and saw what he saw.
The Outsider was slamming the belt of ammo into place and had engaged the first round before Tom finished speaking.
The Outsider cursed, something unnatural and guttural that fe...
2021-08-25 20:52:08 +0000 UTC View Post“Alright, got that taken care of,” Carol said cheerfully, wedging the machine gun in the back of the sedan. The weapon was too big to fit in gracefully, and Carol spent a minute finagling it in diagonally, with the barrel over Tom’s left ear, something Tom was entirely not comfortable with....
2021-08-24 21:00:38 +0000 UTC View Post“On the planet Orsoth, on the Deraan continent, where the sun, water, and fertile soil create a veritable paradise for great civilizations to rise to prominence, there exists dozens of kingdoms vying for supremacy under the oversight of the Emperor. Each of these kingdoms is ruled by a family o...
2021-08-23 19:14:35 +0000 UTC View Post***Tom***
“911, what’s your emergency?”
There’s a bunch of murderous LARPers on the 88th interstate, mile 105.
….
“Sir?”
Tom’s mouth was open, his tongue was working, his brain knew exactly what he wanted to say. But the wor...
2021-08-20 17:24:57 +0000 UTC View Post***AWAKE***
The swelling had really set in, and Tom’s face felt like the Toxic Avenger’s, all swollen and throbbing in the most grotesque way.
Honestly, Tom was aching for the opportunity to do Grant the same favor. Intellectually, he supposed he understood why i...
2021-08-19 16:45:11 +0000 UTC View Post***DREAM***
“I fucking warned you,” Ken’s voice came across the phone.
“Shut up Ken and listen to me very closely. I’m about to do you a huge favor. I’m gonna scratch your back real good, and then you’re gonna scratch mine. Understand?”
“Speak.” ...
2021-08-18 03:54:30 +0000 UTC View Post***Tom Graves***
“We’re gonna be alright, son,” Grampa said over the phone. “Somebody got that bastard through the window. She’s right outside, taking care of an accomplice or something…Is that a horse?”
A horse? What?
“Umm…It’s getting a li...
2021-08-17 20:06:21 +0000 UTC View PostTom’s brain went from his typical sleepy idle to a blistering hundred miles an hour as his body dumped adrenaline into his veins.
First, he analyzed every hostage/revenge phone call he’d ever seen in a movie and identified one ingrained weakness: The bad guy had to offer terms, or make ...
2021-08-16 15:27:28 +0000 UTC View Post“What the hell was that?” Tom asked.
The young man lying on the grass looked confused for a moment before wincing and grabbing his forehead.
“I’m sorry, I must have just prophesied,” He said, levering himself to his feet, stretching out his cramping muscles. “Terribly inco...
2021-08-13 16:48:17 +0000 UTC View PostSo I wanna prove I can finish a story, and I’d like to spend 2022 making that happen for at least one series.
It’s just downright unhealthy having so many unfinished series. So, by order of age, which would you guys like me to focus on closing out in 2022?
The Outer Sph...
2021-08-12 22:53:42 +0000 UTC View Post***Chris Evans***
Tap, tap, tap, tap tap taptaptap
“You got somewhere to be?” Chris asked, glancing over at Ken, whose shoe was clicking against the laminate outside the principal’s office.
“I just fail to see what this is going to get us. We’ve got his record...
2021-08-12 17:00:39 +0000 UTC View PostThe material a spell phrase is composed of is more important than anything save the spell phrase itself.
Material spells are part art, part science. There have been many attempts to chart the effects of different materials, and yet, while often similar, no two charts wind up be...
2021-08-11 17:45:22 +0000 UTC View Post“Then it is agreed. House Ku’leth is to be removed, root and stem.” The grizzled head of house Kinzena said. “These ‘crypts’ that allow any common-blooded peasant to imitate their betters cannot be tolerated.”
But..Lily is a Ku’leth…
“Hey!” Grant snapped...
2021-08-11 05:32:29 +0000 UTC View Post“Mi dealer's casa es su casa.” Jacob said, gesturing expansively to the double-wide trailer with the sagging flooring and scent of mold.
“Two nights.” The woman on the sofa said. Reese was slender, with a gun holster bearing pistol over a baggy t-shirt and jammies...
2021-08-10 01:46:16 +0000 UTC View PostI'm taking a trip down to Oregon to visit my wife's grandmother.
2 weeks, from the 9th to the 23rd.
I've got my laptop, and I'll try my best to maintain a high level of output, but this is just a head's up that there may be a few days that I fall behind because of getting my c...
***DREAM***
“What the hell is a key fob?” Tom demanded, grinding the muzzle of the gun into Chris’s bleeding face.
Tom was currently holed up in the interrogation room, with the door forced shut by the detective’s girth. Tom made sure to hide from the one-way mirror in case th...
2021-08-06 20:03:58 +0000 UTC View Post***Chris Evans***
A burst of adrenaline allowed Chris to catch the kid’s hand before he got himself killed, forcing it back down to his side.
“Shut your mouth,” He whispered, wrangling the lanky kid down the hall toward the cells.
Once they were away from prying eyes and e...
2021-08-05 20:29:50 +0000 UTC View PostChris Evans studied the kid in front of him. Tom Graves had pale skin, brown hair, and a frankly exotic face complete with brown eyes that seemed to appear brighter at times, orange or gold in the right light. Easy on the eyes, but Chris couldn’t place his ethnicity, which was odd, given his de...
2021-08-04 22:40:29 +0000 UTC View Post***Kenneth Peterson***
That could have gone worse, Ken thought, blinking burning tears out of his eyes as he drove. He could be dead right now, face bit off by a goddamn mountain lion.
On the flip side, it could have gone a lot better too.
Obviously, the kid co...
2021-08-03 19:28:43 +0000 UTC View PostTom did smell smoke. He saw it, too, rolling across the ceiling from the basement door.
The house was on fire.
Grampa built the place back in the seventies before the sprawl of Chicago suburbs engulfed it, and like so many other old houses, it was built entirely out of highly...
2021-08-02 21:53:57 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay, let me get this straight. The demon spirits who are going to inhabit the skeleton have resumes?” Jacob asked incredulously as Tom flipped through a sheaf of aged papyrus with the demon’s vital statistics, cost in soul-pulses, and work history.
“Apparently.” Tom sai...
2021-07-30 21:38:06 +0000 UTC View Post“Huh, kid’s alive,” Ken said, watching the local news on his living room TV.
Thomas Graves was wearing a blanket, sitting in the back of an ambulance, with a thousand-yard stare, a cup of hot cocoa in his hands and a news camera up his nose.
“You’re welcome,” Ken told the ...
2021-07-29 21:16:40 +0000 UTC View Post