Seersucker

Penitent Ch 25: Every Man's Fantasy

Michael crouched down in a bush doing his best to ignore a thorny branch digging into his side. He knew that Davi and Pyotr were on the other side, dealing with similar discomforts as they waited. This was far from the hardest part, but it was the most annoying. Every other element of what they d...

Penitent Ch 24: Cause Chaos

Their eyes adjusted and they saw in front of them a young man sitting with a bright smile, perfectly coiffed brown hair, and soft gray eyes. He was sitting in a chair behind a crude wooden table, but sat up and offered his hand.

“I’m Lance, I’ll be in charge of you for the exercise.�...

Penitent Ch 23: Exercise Exercise Exercise

Michael as well as the rest of the irregulars, spent the rest of the week preparing for the upcoming exercise. There was additional instruction about how to ‘kill’ your opponents that basically amounted to wailing on them until they agreed they were down or harming them until they could no lo...

Penitent Ch 22: Punishment

After a few more weeks, Michael was looking at himself in the mirror. He took a moment to divine himself, and when he saw no changes and was unable to reveal anything new, he cleared it and instead looked at his face. His blonde hair was long, nearing shoulder length, and fell in waves on either ...

Penitent Ch 21: Pubescence

The next two weeks went about the same. Michael continued his diviner training, and gained more stamina both as a healer and also in general, his muscles, heart, and lungs recovering from exercise and exertion more quickly, meaning they strengthened faster. He maintained his top spot in physical ...

Penitent Ch 20: Ranking and Rest

At the end of the week, their first rankings went up. Michael had attained first in shield and overall conditioning. He thought his performance on the hill the other day was the reason for the conditioning award, but the shield was a very welcome surprise. His other rankings were mi...

Penitent Ch 19: Sparring

Michael caught up with the rest of the group as they were being paired off. They were starting with sword and shield, which was his favorite pairing, and because he and Pyotr were the last two to arrive, they were paired together. They took some time to put on their lightweight boiled leather tra...

Penitent Ch 18: Grit

The next morning started similarly to the previous ones. The lights in the barracks went off, and everyone got up and got into their uniforms. Kline came in, and inspected everyone’s uniforms. If he found anything out of place, he would have them do some number of pushups, or squats. Michael ha...

Penitent Ch 17: Incentive

The next few weeks everyone was moving more and more toward some kind of specialization with only a few exceptions. Ollie continued his mage training, with occasional help from everyone else when he needed to learn how to implement his spell during active combat. Marcus was always gone for large ...

Penitent Ch 16: Old Dog, New Tricks

They arrived in the infirmary with their guard in tow. Meera did not shorten her strides or slow her pace as they walked so Michael had to effect a kind of half-walk, half-run in order to keep up with her. She was tall for a woman, though the people of Stent had so far seemed to tend toward the t...

Penitent Ch 15: Divine

“Touched by divinity,” said Kline standing from where he’d been kneeling by Ollie. “And a healer at that.”

Ollie stood back up too, blinking and wiping some blood away on his sleeve. “Thanks mate, didn’t know you could do that.” He looked at Michael staring at his hand and f...

Penitent Ch 14: Helping Hand

Kline pointed at Davi who’d had his hand raised for nearly five minutes. It had taken quite some time to earn another free hour of questions after what had happened with Xiu, but Kline had finally allowed another one that morning.

“Why don’t you have lots of guns?” he asked.  2025-02-28 19:20:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Penitent Ch 13: New Flows

A month passed without anything else significant happening, and things fell back into routine. Wake up, treatment, magic, language, lunch, military norms, or quartermaster duties in Michael’s case, bushcraft, combat. As they started to gain greater mastery of the magic, language, and norms, mor...

Penitent Ch 12: Brand

There was one hour to sleep, which few of them in the barracks actually managed. After that they shuffled silently to receive their shots for growth, with Ollie receiving what looked to be a half or even one-third of the same dose as everyone else. After that they went to eat breakfast. There was...

Penitent Ch 11: Reasonable

Michael snapped awake as the lights to the barracks came on. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked around, seeing everyone else doing the same.

“What’s going on?” he asked Davi who was already pushing himself out of his bunk and onto the floor.

“I don’t know,” he re...

Penitent Ch 10: Collateral Duties

One day Ollie was taken out of the barracks and not returned to the rest of the group until breakfast where he sat shaking his head and cursing under his breath as he bit into a biscuit.

“What happened?” asked Michael.

“I’m a mage. Or, I’m going to be anyway. This body’s p...

Penitent Ch 9: Routine

The next several weeks followed the same formula. They would wake up, dress, be inspected, get punished if they messed up, walk to the alchemist to receive the next injection, breakfast, magic, language, then lunch, Stent Military norms, bushcraft, and finally combat. As their bodies grew, the co...

Penitent Ch 8: Q&A

Dinner was uneventful, but when they arrived back at their bunks, there were large packs on each bed as well as storage trunks at the foot of each bunk. They were told that they’d be wearing uniforms from this point on and they would be expected to take care of them. Each one was the same gray ...

Penitent Ch 7: Magic

They were all in a classroom standing on stools at metal tables in a semicircle facing Kline and a man wearing the same uniform, but with a brown leather shoulder on his uniform rather than a black one. He was a bit younger than Kline, with a full head of blonde hair that was whiting at the templ...

Penitent Ch 6: Dawn

They did bring them dinner, and showed them the facilities which proved that they had at least some form of running water, and assigned them to bunks. There was a heavy emphasis on making sure the bunks were neat, with the hint of severe punishment if they didn’t. The majority of the evening wa...

New Story

As some of you may have noticed, I just posted the first five chapters of my new story, "Penitent" for all members to read. I'll be posting these same chaps early next week on RR, but thought you should all have a preview. I'll be uploading another 30 either today or tomorrow to have behind the n...

Penitent Ch 5: Warm Welcome

Michael watched the man leave and turned back around to see that a few of the other lifetakers had approached him. One of them, a short blonde kid with a flat nose, stepped closest.

“Ni hao,” he said with a nod.

Michael shook his head. “I don’t speak any Chinese,” he said in...

Penitent Ch 4: New Skies

The start of the trip to the Stent Military Academy was uneventful. The woman who’d been put in charge of him had little interest in dealing with him beyond making sure that he stayed alive until they reached their destination. She didn’t have much time for the other recruits either, though h...

Penitent Ch 3: Learning, Guessing, Growing

Michael awoke in the very early morning, the fiery pain in his limbs having subsided enough at some point to allow him to fall asleep. He had a taste of some kind in his mouth which indicated to him that he’d been fed at some point in his sleep and he assumed he’d been cleaned as well. It was...

Penitent Ch 2: Drafted

Michael was left in a small crib with only the blanket he’d been swaddled in before he’d been taken on his first night. He couldn’t see anything in the room, having only the vaguest idea of the shapes that surrounded him, or when something was light or dark. He couldn’t turn his head, nor...

Penitent Ch 1: Old is New

Michael was barely conscious. He had the vaguest awareness of a rhythmic beeping from his bedside, the fuzzy outline of a few people surrounding him, and the smell of lemon scented cleaner. The only thing that was crystal clear to him, was the feeling of Sara’s hand in his. He knew every crease...

Downtown Druid has Ended

Just a reminder, this patreon charges at the first of the month. If you'd like to give me a final 5 bucks I'd appreciate it, but if you don't please end your sub so I don't have to do any refunds. They're very tedious on this platform.

I'm going to be removing the 'Street Rats' tie...

Book 3 Ch 62: A Binding, A Sacrifice, A Vow

There were no witnesses dreaming this time, just an empty street, two figures, a pile of ashes, and the sound of wailing. A man wearing a dark blue cloak dug his hands into the pile of ashes in front of him, raising them high and letting them gently slip through his fingers, a gentle wind carryin...

Discord is now available

Good morning,

I made a discord for discussing Druid as well as all of my other stories. Eventually it'll be limited to paying patrons, but since I'm making it toward the end of Druid's run I though I'd leave an open link to all patrons, free or not, for 7 days

Book 3 Ch 61: I Am This City

It was late morning when Gavain reached the edge of the city. Dantes first saw him through the eyes of a pigeon circling just outside the main gate. He looked different from the last time he’d had seen him. He still had a spear at his back and wore the segmented armor he’d seen before, but no...