Technically, all of this had started about an hour ago. Or something along those lines, anyway. Cale wasn't great at keeping track of time, and it was worse when they were in the narrow corridors of a labyrinth with no sunlight to speak of. It felt like around an hour had passed, and tha...
2025-10-02 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostCale Cadwell Cobbs wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up in this situation.
He also wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to get out of this situation. Not yet, anyway. This, at least, wasn't all that unusual for him: he had a habit of taking his time with anything that interested him, r...
2025-09-30 14:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostAkkau had earned many names throughout his very long life. The Thousand-Cored Beast was the one he earned in his earliest days on Utelia, and he thought of it now with a wistful sort of fondness.
Things had been much easier back then. Even with Dragonfall—or Vekorax, as Cale insisted on c...
2025-09-28 14:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostIt was, as a general rule, rather unusual for Sternkessel to feel much of anything.
That said, he wasn't incapable of feeling. Far from it. Indictments were an embodiment of a realm raging against itself, and Greater or not, Sternkessel had been no exception. He had manifested from the very...
2025-09-27 14:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: A quick note for all the new patrons! First of all, I'm really thankful you're here (that goes for everyone); especially for the last weeks I've been struggling a bit, and I appreciate you all for being here.
That said, if you came in from Chapter 38 on Royal...
2025-09-25 13:37:59 +0000 UTC View PostFor Cale, magic the way he envisioned it had always been something just a little bit out of reach.
He was well aware, of course, that the feats he was capable of were things that even gods dreamed of. Liches, dark lords, and all sorts of ancient powers would have sacrificed their souls and ...
2025-09-23 14:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostCale listened as Damien explained everything he knew, keeping his expression carefully neutral in the process. Inside, though, his mind was whirling.
The Verdant Flame. No matter how many years passed, the name remained achingly familiar. Even now, Cale remembered a time when entire temples...
2025-09-20 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostCale, Damien, and the golem that was definitely still Sisyphus inhabiting Syphus's body all stared at what was now seven jars of sourdough starter sitting in front of them.
"Um... do we really need this much of it?" Damien asked awkwardly. "Also, I feel like you shouldn't put this into food...
2025-09-18 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post"Yeast," Cale said, very patiently.
Damien stared at him. The poor dreadshade looked like he was getting increasingly confused rather than enlightened, which, frankly, was a little insulting. This explanation had worked perfectly well with Vesuvius!
Although Cale supposed that Vesuviu...
2025-09-16 14:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostSerof Ontiladus was running out of time, and he knew it.
The Watchful Hive ran on a strict schedule, in large part because of its position off the eastern coast of Aersheld. Inconvenient as it was, the waters of the Endless Deep did a remarkable job shielding the enormous, tower-sized relic...
2025-09-13 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostCale learned mostly a single thing over the next few minutes, which was that the elemental god of fire was named Vesuvius.
The name felt vaguely familiar to Cale. Not enough for him to figure out what was familiar about it, but enough for him to realize he'd probably seen it before. He cons...
2025-09-11 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostObserver #27 was pretty sure that he hadn't heard that Brightscale professor correctly. It sounded like he'd said his student could destroy the Firestorm Scale, and that was patently ridiculous.
Of course, the idea that he'd misheard something was equally absurd. His scrying spells...
2025-09-09 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostCale didn't really know what had happened, though he did know that something had happened. He'd sensed something strange for a moment, something with an odd familiarity; stranger still was the fact that whatever changed, his mana core had responded with an odd twinge. He was pretty sure ...
2025-09-06 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostOrguk Fangtruth was very proud of his mana reservoirs.
He had trained! Endured! He'd spent years racing through the mageblight swamps of the Illwyld on a daily basis long before he even applied to join the Brightscale Academy. His mana core had been large to start with, but the swamps had h...
2025-09-04 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostUnfortunately—or maybe fortunately, as far as Cale was concerned—he didn't immediately have to worry about the balancing scale, because the professor from the other academy was storming over. Graystalk himself looked neither surprised nor worried, so Cale was pretty sure he'd been expecting s...
2025-09-02 14:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostSeveral things had happened when Cale attempted his cast of [Disorient]. The first among them, of course, were the messages from the Gift.
Mana overload detected! Attempting to compensate...
Adjusting spell construct...
...
2025-08-30 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostCale wasn't exactly sure how it worked, but there was apparently something rousing about giving lectures about the history of the Great Realms. He was far more awake than he had been about an hour ago. This, to him, seemed deeply offensive; the very idea that anything was more effective than his ...
2025-08-28 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostFlia was going to kill Cale when she woke up.
Not literally. She was far too grateful to the man to try to do something like that. But to just throw her into a conversation with the Leviathan? She wasn't ready! She hadn't even studied the Leviathan! Which wasn't for lack of trying,...
2025-08-26 14:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostIt took Cale a few moments to remember where he was when he woke up. Part of it was the resonance vision, which... it was too early to think about that. The other part of him was expecting to see the same gloomy ruins he'd been sheltering in for nearly thirty years, so when he opened his eyes to ...
2025-08-23 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostTo say that Cale had mixed feelings about the conversation that followed would be a bit of an understatement.
Cale was largely immune to a wide variety of magics. He'd never spent much time questioning it, mostly because he far preferred using his time to explore the multiverse and contend ...
2025-08-21 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe first thing Cale noticed was that Cyte was rather comfortably nestled within its blood obsidian box, sitting on Akkau's desk. There was no enchantment or ward to keep it trapped, either; instead, it nibbled happily on a pile of attunement papers Akkau had apparently left out for it, a sight t...
2025-08-19 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View PostLeo wasn't really sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't this. Everything Cale had said about attuning made sense. It explained why he was having so much difficulty trying to shift the base aspect of his mana core, and even before Cale said anything, it told him in no uncertain terms that his ...
2025-08-17 14:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostWhen they arrived back at the dorm, Cale was almost immediately drawn to the labyrinth door that was now mysteriously affixed to the back of his room. "Ooh," he said immediately, impressed. "So that's the door."
It looked identical to the one they'd seen in the labyrinth, so it wasn't the d...
2025-08-16 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostCale's mind lingered on a few of Sternkessel's questions, even after the professor brought back the rest of the class. The questions were nothing he hadn't considered before—he'd asked about the possibility of there being a curse placed on humanity, among other things—but as much as the effec...
2025-08-14 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Just noticed that Chapter 28 was missing a next chapter link, sorry! Make sure you didn't miss Chapter 29 (that's the one with the final encounter of the Inverted Spi...
2025-08-12 14:00:18 +0000 UTC View PostIt took a bit of time, but Cale and the rest of his impromptu team were as ready as they would ever be.
Fighting something from the Abyss wasn't something he did very often. Really, fighting non-lethally wasn't something he did very often. The effect of the Thread of Fate meant man...
2025-08-09 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostCale whistled as they pushed open the enormous golden doors that barred the entrance to the odd, spiral-shaped building at the heart of the Inverted Spires. Or, well, Leo pushed them open. Cale had taken one look at the size of them and immediately delegated the task to their resident minotaur, w...
2025-08-07 14:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostShortly after manifesting the giant hammer and making both Leo and Damien gawk at him, Cale dismissed it and instead retrieved a tiny pin from one of his pockets. "Just kidding," he said, setting to work picking open the locks on one of the windows. "The windows look too nice to break. And I'm pr...
2025-08-05 14:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Don't forget to read yesterday's extra chapter if you haven't already!
--
Cale watched with interest as Leo finally cast a spell in front of him. Now that h...
2025-08-02 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostCale had no idea what to call the thing that rose out of the ground, mostly because the first names that came to mind were all ridiculous. A large part of this was admittedly because it looked rather distinctly like an elephant, down to the massive ears and elongated trunk. The only major differe...
2025-08-01 14:00:29 +0000 UTC View Post