I decided to tweet out microfiction every day of 2021. Here’s the January haul.

Clouds rumbled across the sky, chasing the third sun down the horizon and threatening a dark, wet evening. Tel hated nights like these. She’d need to find shelter deeper in the forests where neither rain nor moonslight pierced the canopy, but where less pleasant company slept.

You open your eyes, greeted by the morning sun casting a cool sliver of light across your face. Blankets melt around you, them as much a part of you as you, them.

It’s comfortable.

It’s a dream.

You’d prefer the ‘scape to stay like this but you have other dreams to attend to.

“Ixthian hot sauce. Only fermentable at Lagrange 2 or 3 at Oria V using berries from Jemin’s terminator.”

“Hot sauce? That’s the grand plan?”

“Also illegal everywhere outside the Orion arm. Humans love this stuff. You know how your kind is.”

“You son of a bitch, I’m in.”

Wise Aevra put her bright daughter, Aon, in the northern sky to guide us. The Brothers Aui took it on themselves to dance along the east and west to herald dawn and dusk. But the southern sky? There are only stories of when it shined, before Avya, the Darkness, began to feast.

Fas clenched his abs and jerked the stick hard left, feeling the Gs threaten a blackout as a flurry of phaser fire threatened everything, but instead of pulling straight, he cut thrust and let the inertia fly, swinging 180 before engaging stabilizers. Target acquired.

Stance two steps too wide, off-hand directionless, swordspoint a novice’s reckoning of correct. With that guard, Artke was likely to start with a thrust. Lukke dropped to a loose quarta. Should be easy enough to leave Artke with enough fingers to eat but not enough to duel again.

Kirikree let out a low whistle and a double click. The response was a moment of silence, but only just. As Kirikree floated forwarded, jellies and anemones slowly awoke in soft blues and golds, a welcome answer for the prodigal son.

Gwin whooped as they crested a snow-dusted dune and, in response, felt a warmth over the telepathic bond with Tno as the ilvethi beat its four quicksilver wings. No, not “the” ilvethi. *Her* ilvethi. The next years of training would be long and hard, but for now? She grinned.

“Dropping in 3, 2, 1—“ Leruch felt his stomach jump as the Raines Octavia flipped from slipspace to main. 30 years in and he’d gotten mostly numb to the dimensional flicker, unlike some of his newer crew. Never did get over those moments seeing the inside of his eyeballs, though.

Liquid rock coalesces into an obsidian boat atop the magma of Hell. Charon’s Carriage, you think sarcastically. But unlike a psychopomp delivering final rest, you have different business to deliver: an ass kicking the Old Ones have not seen since the Big Bang threw them out.

Found in the Maliwanag tropical forests, Arcus Magni is a flowering tree that over its thousands year life will collapse to form living arches that root at both ends. The arches form a dense enough network to create a new ecosystem between forest floor and canopy.

—Dr. Katiyakan

I took off my glasses and rubbed my temples in exasperation. Across my desk was a new client, Paul. 19, nervous, not good at fine print. Between us, a Contract. “Let me get this straight: You summoned Bzelcha, a lowly first layer imp, and traded half your soul for a Lego set?”

Two men walked the dunes, naked yet seemingly unconcerned by the beating sun above and burning sand below.

The tall one perked up. “Do you feel that?”

The other simply nodded. “Suppose it’s time, then.”

As a breeze licked their skin, they both scattered into dust. North.

In this grim twilight, Shen could see shadows flitting at the edges of his vision among the old neon signs and dust-covered windows—the city’s own memories of Before, made manifest when she started to Dream.

We laugh and sing a song as we shut down electronics to enter the wormhole. They say keeping spirits high wards off Those Beyond, and like our ancestors on ancient highways, we convince ourselves that ritual—prayer, sobriety, seatbelt—can tilt a 1 in 100000 fate in our favor.

Cool air on the lips
Green grass under foot
A lover’s warm touch
In a valley called home

What home, what home?
That valley called home
Here’s to old memories
Of that valley called home—

XC12 didn’t understand the words, but they timed exhaust cooldown well. Just keep digging.

“Hello humans, what brings you here?” A baleful greeting sang in our heads. Outside, a glowing mass of gestalt conscious matched our orbit.

I typed up a response and set the metronome. Aeldrel used thought to communicate, not sound, so we’d need to all speak as one to respond.

“Really? Elevator bossa nova?” It was Rad’s first deep space sleep. The psycryochamber hissed shut. “Why not something more fun?”

“Your mind needs to be blank to enter the Dreaming,” the AI said, emotionless. “Any deviation may result in mind wipe.”

“Wait wh—“ Rad fell asleep.

Io sings a staccato melody and Ganymede a soft tenor hum. Saturn and his many moons ring a complex tone as the other giants play their throaty bass. Sol has enjoyed the choir’s harmony for 4 billion years, but something recently has been off tune with the third world.

The ship’s psychic had a habit of singing when she woke up, and like a rooster crowing straight into everyone’s minds, it made for one helluva alarm clock. The captain, early bird that she was, seemed to actually enjoy it. Jetz didn’t pretend to understand the aviarians.

Over the past month, Tala had grown used to Raul’s little hum during reentries, and even had even taken to humming along the past couple drops. It reminded her of her grandmother in the kitchen, and just like with Nanay, when they hit the high note, the heat should’ve gone off.

Yuzu flipped on comms at the usual time. Far from the red shine of Anatres, her ship charged enough to keep the antenna up for about an hour each “day”—long enough to ping out another distress signal, and also long enough to catch the big band sections of Old Earth’s I Love Lucy.

Despite homeworlds in different arms, Humans and torvok somehow shared the same taste in post-occlusion drunken singing. The imprecise meters were so discordant to En, but that was fine. It simply turned off its audio processor and raised a glass of ember to join the merriment.

The girl by the campfire drew a bow across her curious instrument with its fingerboard spaced for her long webbed fingers and its body resonating against vestigial wings.

“Systems online. Greetings, Jackdaws.”

“Charlie boy, you ready for this?” Hess asked.

“When have I not been?”

The crew laughed, their synchronized mirth flitting through Charles’ analytical engine. As each jumped through the barrier, the crowd roared. Show time.

The earth rumbled, softly at first, but soon crescendoing into an explosion as a tagagiik’s churning maw burst from the canopy, flinging stone, wood, and lightning into the air. Ewa and Marko turned to each other and grinned. Spears in hand, the twins took off toward the beast.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Day 3 looking for that fucking psionic fluid leak, each fucking splatter in the station’s stupid maintenance vacuums still echoing in everyone’s god damned mind.

Jac flipped Bubblegum Haze off a wall in a flashing arc above the arena, both to get over Calypso Anarchy’s giant swing and to give the crowd a show of fluorescent lightning—and before landing behind the other mech, Jac made sure to give the press box a winning smile.

He tells a joke about a bird, laughing. I laugh, too, even as I already forget the exact words he used. The words don’t matter. The mindscape is an ever shifting flow of scenes and emotions, and all that matters is us sharing another moment in this alien place.

Patriarch Gyloen strode into the hall followed by a sizable entourage, each dressed to remind all that their ancestors forged the empire: brigandine and silk cut high and tight for riding, and the patriarch himself crowned with a towering, three-horned piece of sung wood.

Damien heard the everblowing western wind grow as he climbed the aerie’s tower. The wind roared off the masonry, but soon, Damien found an oddly quiet door that lead to an open landing under a still air charm. He stepped through, and for the first time, looked down on the clouds.

Gemeti, the first hero and she who walks the sky, plucked the child, Ku-Ayu, from the fires of Ubalnu and climbed Bashaa, tallest brother to Ulbanu, to raise the child to her domain. But in her sleep, fitful Ku-Ayu wailed and belched Ulbanu’s molten wrath, shattering the moon.

I decided to tweet out microfiction every day of 2021. Here’s the February haul.

You pull the chain and hold your breath, the coal dust thrown in the air a choking cloud that irritates your eyes and nose. The timing must be right. You mutter a spell and feel dead trees sing from beyond, infusing their compressed remains with power drawn from an ancient sun.

“Haex rises in three days. We strike then, when my magic is strongest.”

“But their magic will be just as strong then!”

“That’s why we’re bringing you.” Ri crossed her arms, smug.

Flots paused. “Go on?”

“Ever see a wizard finish an incantation while being punched in the face?”

A group of wizards strode into my village, one hefting a carved box that amplified the thumps and beats of intersecting leylines. The one in front called for Ukias. The last I saw was the two doing flips and spins in time with the beat to channel fire and lightning at each other.

A flash of movement, then pain. In your adrenaline-addled dying breaths, you realize that there was a point in the thicket when hunter became hunted, but you can’t figure out when. All you can think is how embarrassing this memory will be for whatever iteration of you gets out.

I dropped a portion of bread and salt by the campfire. A pair of sarãpong, curious creatures as they were, crept forward to snatch the bread then joined me in my evening meal. Their movement was like spider made of black oil. Uncanny. Yet in a way, I found them charming.

Gemstones are chosen and faceted to to pay for the right spell from the right fey. Ruby to call a servant of Hastom, sapphire for Moso, diamond for Ozzem. A single incorrect angle is the difference between Bhamas bringing rain for your crops or drowning you on your 38th birthday.

Jef suddenly found themselves extremely tired and extraordinarily hungry and uncomfortably wet, which probably meant stasis just went offline. Hopefully this time it was on purpose and this junker of a ship was actually close to the next planet this time.

“Damn, they were right about the phantom fart smell. Everything’s sealed, but it’s hard to forget the atmosphere is methane.”

“You sure you didn’t toot in your suit?”

“What are you, 12?”

“Yeah, got my PhD from Rockridge Elementary. Prestigious as fuck.”

“Whatever. Let’s go.”

“Go ahead, sweetie.”

Ione took in what breath his young lungs could hold then blew it out over a painted clay figure. As the breath came to an end, the figure shuddered, unfurled its wings, then took flight.

Tava smiled. Ione was talented. He would make a fine god some day.

“Why do liches love traps anyway?” Cetano asked, tossing a pebble at the obvious pressure plate.

Lilith took a half step to the right and shrugged, a rusted axe swinging past her. “Makes ‘em horny, probably.”

“They’re already ha—”

“I’m pushing you into the next one.”

“I’m pretty sure this series of sigils is for binding—“

“Pretty sure? Don’t you have a degree?”

“In sewage alchemy!”

“Just shut up and fix my arm already.”

“There’s a 50/50 chance this’ll knit the bone or extract all the magnesium from your body. Please don’t rush me.”

Maldonado pulled his furs tighter and cursed the Arctic Circle for the twelfth time today. Currents had brought the Eden far north as the governor had decided fuel was better spent keeping the arcology water hot rather than running the engines on a mile long island of steel.

One moment, the crystal forest was a jagged, brooding darkness; the next, it was a dazzling display of faceted light as the sun rose above the mountains. With morning come, the forest erupted in long whistles and croons, each call resonating among the amethyst leaves.

The old storyteller began with a throaty hum and a slow pluck on her bow.

“Gather before me, hear my tale:

In those ancient days,

When Aten gave us the stars,

When Ushar showed us first wheat,

When Yastet taught us of flame.

Know of Great Queen Re, who stole writing from God.”

A Singer’s worth was not in thunder and lightning—any child could smash two fronts together to ruin a town’s day. No, their worth was in the wind: fast enough to fill a sail, elegant enough to avoid rain. Kenna knew her worth. To any that forgot, well, the storm was still there.

One would be forgiven for being wary of ethereal flame in the bog, and one would be understood for calling those who followed fools, but for they who heeded the faerie song, the promises of adventure and fortune always came true; just not in our mortal sense.

A pod of cairisdan whales breached near the horizon, yet in the darkness the eyes along their massive bodies sparkled like stars in the restless ocean, and their baleful mindsong washed over the Aurore as if under the waves. An ill omen. There would be fitful sleep tonight.

Had it survived until today, the Bronze Spire would have been a true wonder of the modern world with its spiraling library that touched the clouds. Alas, while infused bronze seems invincible, it is not immune to a dedicated formula to bind tin, and soft copper does not last.

You would not believe what umbral horrors come from the depths, for I did not either. My father and my father’s father knew peace, as I’m sure did yours, But know this: the heavens will align, and they will come. Heed this warning.

— Tablet I, recovered from the ruins of Naram-Si

“We’re in.”

“Was getting a bit worried, love.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“Istanbul, 22—“

“Anyway, Dimes, I’ve updated your map with cameras and drones. Pick me up something nice, yeah?”

“Always do. Ta for now.” Diamond entered the corporate slip dimension. Easy money.

I place my hand on the rook and feel the familiar sensation of my infinite eyes opening. Most simply see a different pattern of waves, a new cry from a new gull. In twelve the tides recede. A beachside love gone wrong and right.

Rook to G6. The world turns.

The problem with Cadrani bread was that their wheat-analogue formed a transparent crust, meaning Shel could see the unnervingly even crumb; it was like a nest of eyes in a disarmingly inert loaf. Ready. Waiting. Delicious, but at what cost?

The Loroxolan entourage was imposing to be sure: four squat legs supporting a thick frame, and the shortest still twice the height of the ambassador. They wore helmets to breathe, though their visors were marked for individualism: family sigils, jagged geometries, scenes of home.

Would that it be so simple as to forget the sweet memory of light touch and lingering scent, the impassioned taste on the lip… yet when [] asks for a Name, you find yourself unable to give it. Would that you could oblige, but [] does not accept a lie, no matter how believed.

The grey city sprawled below them as the Beanna descended, its faceted towers of concrete and glass once a beacon of modernity, now a forlorn shell of a forgotten boom—a world so far out that only mined æther was not worth visiting when hyperspace was no longer reliable.

Pâl’s cape shifted as it Walked, each new fold holding a dizzying glimpse of another world for a single moment before flapping to the next. Brilliant stars, lush forests, empty deserts, alien hearths and homes.

“Uh—“

“Uh? That’s all you have to say after murdering me? Can you at least tell me why? I had so much left to do!”

“Old prophecy…”

“What the fuck.”

“Look, I didn’t know you’d come back… Anyway, guess I’ll be—“

“Oh hell no, I’m haunting your ass until I get sent to hell.”

“I envy you, lieutenant.” The captain leaned on the gunwhale, peering over the dark sea. “Every sailor has a defining day.”

“We faired well today.”

“Yours wasn’t today, lass.” The captain chuckled. “Worse things than pirates out there. Eyes up. Heaven is deeper than the abyss.”

I decided to tweet out microfiction every day of 2021. Here’s the March haul.

The first sign is the unseasonably beautiful weather, the second a haunting melody so pristine it feels like a dream. The sound rings clearer at the approach: the repeated glory of HALLELUJAH HALLELUJAH ad infinatum as angels descend, mouths wide in song yet unable to scream.

Toshan gently plucked a leaf from his garnet succulent, its reflective, faceted surface at odds with the plump flesh between his thumb and forefinger. He transferred it to a runed alembic and almost as soon as the vessel closed, red ether began to drip into a waiting inkwell.

Chameleon suits were all the rage in Slide City, not to blend in, but to strut apart from the crowd. The streets were a shifting throng of mesmerizing colors as lurid as the billboards in the sky. Yet for those of us who did want to disappear, well, it was easier than ever.

An entire city-that-should-not-be erupting from the ocean was accompanied by surprisingly little fanfare. With the aliens, time travelers, interdimensional intersection, and so on, the old gods demanding a cult just seemed so passé.

This was his favorite moment: that last step over the threshold where the Storm gave way to the Edge, the moment you went from sand stinging your eyes to having the clearest view of the stars below your feet.

Adon leaned against Harvel. There was never silence on the Galileo, and the helmets always made things awkward… but it was hard to not be romantic with a rising Io sparkling a new plume overhead and the constant aurora and swirling clouds below.

“Line 1 advance! Aim! Fire!”

The rattling snare was overtaken by the patter of twenty guns aimed at keeping the enemy caster from calling lightning while the main lines fought.

“Line 3 load! Line 2 advance!”

They only had a hundred men, but the volley had to be constant.

A crow calls midnight.
The far moon sparkles orange.
Omens, good and bad.

Tamachag let out a low whistle punctuated with a high yip then waited. Moments later, Cota crested a far hill, her rusted wings flapping once for altitude and her talons clutched tight around a fat hare. She was an old ornial, but she still glinted in Tamachag’s eyes.

“If it stretches across the entire cylinder does it really count as ‘the tallest building on Eden’?”

“The most advanced metamaterial construction project post-launch and your first question is semantics?”

“I mean it’s more of a pillar than a building, right?”

“Mark.”

There is exactly 16 minutes deep rumbling that you can feel rather than hear before the siyara begins to move, taking the city on its back with it. This usually gives everyone adequate time to tie down their homes and holdings, but tonight you have been caught drunk in a diner.

Keerati ran in the only direction she could: away from the gnashing of a thousand teeth and down an unfortunately clear path. Clean forest floors meant the grinlek had swarmed through here already. Hopefully they had passed days ago and it was only the swarm behind her left.

The Writhing Fields were the exact kind of nightmare that Hastios was expecting and dreading. The ground was covered in tangled, sickly vines, necrotic magic ironically the only thing keeping them alive—and aggressive.

When the first cube on Ganymede was found, the world simultaneously debated and held its breath for the next couple decades until Galapagos could land with investigative instruments for intelligent life. Historians often mark this as the clear inflection point before the End.

Nidinta applied another layer of dragons blood to her horse’s carapace, polishing it to perfect silver sheen and clean enough to see the greens and blues of the Bridge in the reflection. One day she would make it up there. Perhaps not today, but one day.

Always seemed a shame that in order to hop to the next timeline, one had to destroy something in the current one. Hopefully this was the last one. Charlie sighed and muttered a spell, amethyst flame consuming the 221 pounds of gold before him, then vanished himself.

Beware the trap of tyrants and cowards: so easy to sacrifice a kingdom yet so difficult to give up a home. Only a fool or a child would find comfort or refuge in such simplistic thinking.

—from the letters of Empress Dowager Suha to Prince Dalandan of Atis

“Remember to hydrate!” it said, another tick of temptation added to the pile. Of course, an offhand verbalized desire for quiet is how Hetiqe found himself parched in the desert in the first place. Wouldn’t be giving the demon the satisfaction again.

And so they swim, forever circle,
Beneath the black in blue.
Such teeth that gnash, though ever hungry,
Find little more to chew.

The Duchess steepled her hands, contemplating the aged tome before her. She smiled. The kings could play at their wars, thinking a thousand lives for a dynasty dramatic and worthy of song, when in reality, a few strokes on old parchment would bring it all down with only one head.

It felt like every bill to stay connected to the Cortex was higher than the last, and the work to be found within was less fulfilling each time. Maybe it was time to become a psi-farmer.

The crew was in place, each soul in the theoretically correct spot around the m-drive to draw the correct flow of energy around the approaching leyline. 10, 9, 8. Aviels checked her math one more time. 5, 4. Everything seemed in order… wait was Ensign Zaloir—

So does she sleep, the dreamer of all,
The goddess who gives us the night.
Play in the garden, do your duties above,
Make deals with her phantoms and wights.
But be quick and be quiet lest her rest wane too early,
And call morning to burn all in her light.

Of course prior attempts to transfer a mind from one body to the next; the transfers all focused on the 4 dimensional extrusion of a 7D object. This was it. These were the equations needed to define the boundaries of consciousness and govern its movement. Immortality at last.

The frozen winds bit what parts of Sælmar’s face that could not be covered with layers of cloth and fur; ifhe didn’t find the Underground soon, his servos would be frozen shut. Trying to convince a bunch of humans to let in a synth was hard enough even with a working jaw.

Like all the others in Matiek, they wore a sash patterned to their station, and the sigils indicated the couple was of a First Family. However, their house colors were blue and gold. The archon would be sashed in purple, but Sho could not tell which of them was wearing it.

The 1942th floor of Arcology Rho was a multi-story atrium purpose-built to watch cumulonumimbus clouds roll under and around you from behind the safety of quantum glass. The danger of lightning and sound of thunder were all academic concerns to the citizens who were born here.

Much like DNA, something of the mind was lost on every copy, each dream some final metaphysical outburst as memories shunted from one side of REM to the other. This was fine until now. The brain died after a century or two, but the soul never evolved to defend against millennia.

When a teleportation spell big enough to disappear the big boat was found, the world laughed, cried, and cheered. About 1000 years later, humanity would learn the spell had been temporal-sympathetic, not spatial, as the ship showed up stuck in a hyperspace lane.

The first breath back from cryo wasn’t anything dramatic—due to the sedatives, it was like blinking, except someone different standing over your tube. The second breath, the breath that came with realization, was far worse: waking up meant it was your month on maintenance duty.

John stepped over the threshold and had to take a moment to collect and reorient himself. Just because he had read about the Corridor didn’t mean his eyes were yet willing to accept the shifting Escheresque geometries connecting every doorway in the multiuniverse.

I decided to tweet out microfiction every day of 2021. Here’s the April haul.

Even from leagues away, Vimala could see the dead god’s shattered beak and blind eyes as a silhouette on the horizon, taller than the mountains it formed when trying to break out from the world, and she could feel the quintessence fault lines growing beneath the ground.

As the quartet approached their crescendo, August felt the resonance where his palm met Lady Haleton’s. They locked eyes, the rest of the ballroom consigned to a muted ringing. She felt it, too.

Mr. Risewell was right. Tonight would make quite a interesting evening indeed.

Landen was vaguely aware that #13 was closing from behind, but ahead there was only sand, the keeper, and the tower. Down by one, a high goal would win it, but the keeper had been a monster in the arc. Landen could practically feel #13’s breath on his back. Now or never.

Mt Estrelya was a barren black spear from earth to heaven, a sudden cry from Mother Earth to push her realm to the sky. Yet when the peak nearly grasped the stars, Mother Sky froze the liquid rock in place. Nothing but ash has swirled the centuries since.

A gestalt of ravens was an impressive thing: a stories high formation of a thousand synchronized wings and an orchestra of caws modulated to form human speech in aggregate. Today they came to negotiate ownership of a particularly shiny skyscraper.

Her hair was touched by Fire, each lock a lick of flame glimpsed from Meravath’s domain and frozen into sun bright halos wreathing burned out eyes.

The towers of Geval could be seen from leagues away, a testament to not just surviving the flood, but prospering. In the thousand years since the world sank beneath Orovan’s waves, countless kingdoms rose and fell, but only one stayed afloat throughout.

“A whole wheel?”

“Specifically from a Fyrdoen cow and aged 12 years.”

“I, uh, have a 12 year from Gyloen.”

“No no, the conjunction wasn’t even remotely affecting that area. Do they not teach cheesemongers star charts anymore? I swear…”

“M’lord I just work here.”

Above a barren valley,
Alight a lake of glass,
A black swan sings beleagured,
Beneath the black moon’s maw.

Among the spirits milling,
Aloft aetheric cries,
A demon wakes with eyes of diamond,
Beset to bind the world.

A crown for a queen but a king for the crown,
A battle now won by his ghost.
The memory of laughter and the memory of pain,
Gone memories she cherished the most.

Otto could hear the ajanprata well before anyone from the village saw their spindly silver lines over the horizon. They came and went in a day, their deliberate pinprick steps somehow not disturbing the livestock with any tremors but unfortunately ruining the neighbor’s barley.

Elidyr almost preferred traversing the caverns without any light. The crystals were for him and the other elves and humans; the dwarves with their blind white eyes had an unerring sense of depth and knew every crack and crevice as soon as their tendrilous beards touched them.

Çive plucked her thread from the air, a cool tingle spreading from where her finger tips briefly reached Between. Over 3, under 1, over 3, under 2. In theory, this pattern would bring luck, but if nothing else, it would look nice.

You awaken face down in sand, damp from salty tides rolling at your feet. As your eyes focus, you’re sure the shipwreck killed you—what at first seemed like a towering cliff is quarried stone forming a castle stretching impossibly in each direction as far as the eye can see.

In another life, perhaps they could be together, she said; the stars were not aligned in this one. Perhaps, perhaps. She thrusts the dagger into her abdomen and smiles, feeling her conscious slip to the next world while the suns flare their knell.

In the deepest valley of the world there lies a single spot that the sun has not touched. The only light it gets is every 24 years when the far moon swings near, and only in that week of moonlight do the cobalt roses bloom, their crystalline thorns ringing maddeningly discordant.

The moonshard floating above Cithrel’s head cast an ethereal glow over the arcology. Cithrel looked to Adwae. He was on edge. While humans may have built these places, a thousand years had made them foreign to all—and humans didn’t find small comfort in the moon like the elves.

“Empress 279, you are cleared to drop.”

“Thank the gods. Feels like purgatory is longer and longer each time.”

“Sorry about that,Two Seven Niner, but you know the rules. Can’t risk another incursion.”

“Yeah͓͕̯̫̼̜͎̫̓̔͛̎̐̆͒̈̍͟͝.”

“Empress 279 abort your drop, I repeat abo—“

It was the ultimate irony that we’d be thirsty in a rain forest but the rains of this planet were toxic to earthforms, and the engineers hadn’t figured out a good purification method yet—too busy keeping the moisture traps running so we at least had something to ration at all.

In total there were 138 clocktowers in Dapplesturm, and only 53 used 12-hour faces. The 13 clergy-run towers counted 24 hours written in ecclesiastic script, and the rest used unique systems that their builders thought best—that is, more obtuse than the last clock a rival built.

With enough synapses, animals gained awareness of self, awareness of the future, awareness of the universe. Surely a million trillion wires could do the same. And yet, with 73.1518% of the world repurposed, the Machine still found itself feeling nothing. Perhaps one more wire.

As the tail gunner, James had served just as long as Vaughan but never received half the accolades—the riders could control the beasts, and a dragon by your side was always impressive. And yet when other scales appeared on the horizon, it was James that kept them in the air.

“The hell was that?”

“Egg.” The old bosun was already pulling on a helmet and loading his space gun.

“… why did it sound so wet.”

“Lotta tentacles. Good for grabbing ships and spacers. Also good eating. C’mon, let’s go,” the bosun said, shoving a space gun into my chest.

“Systems are green, no hostile outside. How ya feeling Tinks?”

“Already feel covered in sand. Any way we can get these bots sealed better?”

“Find me some weatherstripping out there and we can talk. Until then—“ the bay door started to open bringing in the harsh wasteland suns.

The boy wiped sweat from his brow and caught his breath as best he could on the unstable footing—the colossus was none the wiser about the boy’s grueling climb to its head glyph. The boy took out his phone and took several selfies then jumped off with his glide suit.

No one could say when the sky first began to crumble, just to avoid looking where the blues and oranges and blacks had peeled away like weatherworn paints on a forgotten canvas.

Every 894 years, the seven greatest mountain ranges in the world would shake as the titans that had slept under them awoke. From a distance, their gargantuan ritual could almost be described as a dance—beautiful, alien, and forgotten. Few lived to describe a closer point of view.

Calico whipped his phasecycle down the lower streets of Mania, calmly glitching through unperturbed jay walkers busy with their own affairs. Above, the neon lights of the tiered highways shone, a constant reminder of tolls and debts that even the fastest courier couldn’t escape.

The oceans of Allorec by all accounts of initial explorers seemed normal enough, yet upon further study, was found to be a natural ferrofluid. Changes in viscosity and movement of currents aligned with the planet’s strong magnetic fields, yielding an almost orderly weather system

The streets of Saphtesh were always dark. The sun never rose on the city, locked as it was to the maelstrom side, but at least tonight both Nasetera and Leipra hung in the sky full and shining.

Vigridr flexed his sword hand and grimaced. It had been 10 years of peace since he won the throne as the Undefeated Prince—not only having never lost a battle, but having never even being struck despite fighting with the foot—yet the gods crippled his strong arm simply with time.

Synethetic brainwaves and pirated identities were all the rage since memory crystallization hit the black markets. Why simply relive someone’s memories when you could be them for a while?

Captain Hael could feel the tension on the bridge, all eyes on her for the past three hours. Days in hyperspace, unable to see light outside the bubble always put people on edge, but by now they should have picked up the gravimetric lighthouse around LGM-1.

To take another man’s mask was the ultimate insult, so of course it went came into vogue when duels were outlawed: a way to discreetly show everyone who won and who lost without inviting the eye of Law with a corpse.

The tick tick tick of the clockmaster’s cave could be heard before the glow of her forges could be seen, even with the thick foliage that blanketed the former city. Her creatures always skittered about, heard but never seen. Never any surprises—neither for her nor any guests.

Every creature has the ability to form a hivemind of exponentiated intelligence—not just with pheromones or language, but true conscious-to-conscious thought along infinite upper dimensions. Thankfully, dogs figured it out first, and they kept us as pets in their new world order.

The machine-creatures’ guns were getting more sophisticated the deeper into the wilds Azem walked. Her suit was still holding up—if she couldn’t find the crawler for another day or two, she’d still be fine—but unlike machine-creature carapace, her metal did not heal.

The initial theory of humanoid mech suits was that the neural interface would work best if it matched the pilot; instead, scientists discovered a new form of insanity triggered by the uncanny melding with something too similar yet not identical.

“Don’t you think ‘Hammer of God’ is a bit cliche?”

“And what else, pray tell, do you propose calling a kilometer wide projection of psionic force from the heavens?”

“Psionic slap?”

“No.”

“Mind muncher.”

“I will psionic slap you off this planet if you continue this nonsense.”

She found a gift on her window: rose blossom embedded into chert, both expertly entangled to the point one couldn’t tell where immortal flower and living stone began or ended, and petal edges sparkling with transmuted fire opal that still suggested the softness of a new bloom.

The cave was an odd green against the wasteland’s brown. The normal signs of dusty lichens and mosses clinging to life were were ever present, but they were overshadowed by the brilliant jades, celadons, and myrtles of a thousand facsimile leaves adorning every wall and crevice.

0zone was the most dangerous region of the Verse, sure, but Lyr found a weird comfort here. One wrong move and your mind would instantly fry from overflow, but that went for the bots, too. Only villains and daredevils—people—out here among the floating point glitches.

“Look out the window.”

“Why? The ocean’s as dark out here as it back home.”

“Trust me.”

Remy rolled their eyes and turned toward the window. Suddenly, inky blackness tore away as the train passed an outcropping revealing a glowing crevice of churning magma and strange fronds.

Between the worlds lay an impossibly complex network of portals, navigable only by song and story passed from mouth to mouth, generation to generation. Any attempts to map the structure resulted in the network reconfiguring itself as if out of spite.

Howell held the small, untitled tome up to the Librarian. It took the book with a dry tendril and raised it to its obsidian eyes. A minute passed, then a gentle nod. Howell tipped his hat back then strode into the phantom section.

The caravan could easily be seen on the horizon: a line of spindle legged širáfár carefully picking through the steppe, each carrying on their carapaced backs a pair riders robed in flowing colors that that relished rather than shunned the winds.

The trees had eyes in a very literal sense, each bulbous growth occasionally splitting open so a solitary blue eye could peer at the group. Benign so far, if not creepy, as the Forest so obviously wanted them to know it was alive.

The air around the old hut smelled of seawater memories and distant loam despite being nestled atop a rocky cliff. Subtle, but obvious to anyone who had shorn and amended the Veil themselves.

The seers spun the wheel and the entire room became motion as gears and pistons reconfigured themselves. The seers claimed that this let them see the future, as if a machine so complex approximated the universe, but who were we to argue when they were right more often than not.

The Langam colonies were still unsettling to Dina, despite being ambassador for 4 years. Each hivemind communicated by thought and pheromones and silk, and so their towered cities were permeated by gossamer thread, sweet scents, and imagined song—but no sound save scuttling.

Charles had anxiety. But c’mon. The elevator between Nol Aleph and Nol Bet just had 5 millimeters of metal between him and eternal vacuum, and the ride took so long that there were beds. So much could go wrong and it would all be over so quick. But fuck him right?

Inakalka traders this far north was always odd, and they stood out in the summer heat still wrapped in their blue and green dyed furs as if warmth were a formality, not a necessity.

The first thing to fall apart with time travel—at least as far as the bean counters were concerned—was the UUID used to track each jump as parallel universes had matching entropy much of the time. This lead to the MUID which has been so far accepted as “probably fine, for now?”

The shrine was of a robed woman carved from sandstone, arms cradling a jug of ever flowing water. Her features were still sharp despite having been here as long as anyone could remember, her face still carved into a perpetual expression of stern disappointment.

Luna had spent the last 15 years in Tulukaruk dreaming of leaving. The sweltering heat of the geothermal forges kept the city alive, but the moment she thought she found respite from molten rock, the tundra would freeze her sweat-licked brow almost in an instant.

“You know what it’s like for a memory to self replicate? It fucking sucks, Paul. It needs to be deleted entirely before it corrupts your entire mind, and afterward you know something was removed but know you’ll never know what. There’s a reason our kind still dies of old age.”

The moon flared its aurora brightly this morning, a welcome change from the last season of darkness. The Spires would be pleased, or so Grandmother said. She said she had seen them light up the sky with fire once, as a girl, days after the moon made it blue and green like now.

Steve woke to a notification he’d been waiting on for the past week. Well, more accurately, he’d been waiting 16 years, but 7.9 years for a message to get to Wolf 359, some time for Jeff to write, and 7.9 years to get back meant—realistically—a reply would’ve only come this week.

As the teleported broke down every molecule in her body, Lilith briefly felt the infinite as her mind untethered from 3space in the eternity it took for her brain to rebuild. There was always a worry that it wasn’t a perfect copy and some part of her mind would not anchor back.

No raindrop thought itself responsible for a flood, but Anyil found that when you stopped them to talk, they did enjoy the idea of pooling with their siblings wherever the Speaker suggested.

The skies tonight were a powerful wash of yellow and green, and the gods’ bronze faces were sparking and glowing as their power came manifest. The warriors knew to revere but not touch their swords lest they burn their hands. Soon we would have victory.

When the rifts first opened, some chucklenuts decided to wear masks carved in uncanny expression like the Others. The Syndicate in particular used those masks for intimidation and terror. That stopped when every member was found with their face seared off as if by their masks.

It was expected that as Sol warmed, Titan would have to hibernate perhaps a billion years until its atmosphere was cool enough to think again. A shame. The supercomputer had been enjoying the galactic merger.

Vano closed his eyes and felt the ten others focusing their spirit through him. He prayed to whatever gods hadn’t come today, then projected his colossus to meet those that did. 144 seconds before his soul burned out.

It starts with a tapping in the back of you and your neighbors’ minds, and most know that means a week to move. Should you stay, you know the unseen keepers will reconfigure the city around you, and it’s a coin flip if you wake up as part of new foundation or in your bed.

“Sydanit Company, how can I help you?”

“A ship of yours crashed and dropped a load of kerashi on our town! We need help!”

“Can you give me license number?”

“Their what? They’re eating us and your mercs refuse to help unless we pay them! This is AHH—“

“Please hold.”

A whale’s passing is not subtle: groaning trunks and snapping boughs accompany a bassy song felt more in the chest than ears as their awesome, tendrilous mass moves through the middle canopy, and the days following will rustle and crash as the forest grows to fill the wake.

Fuel. Water. Snacks. Diah counted 17 days of stock: enough to find the Majesty (they said they had a week), top them up, recalibrate their navcom, and tug them back over to the Proxima Relay. More importantly, Diah’d never gotten a call to the Centauri system. How exciting!

The room’s far wall was a dense network of webbing, still throbbing with activity as its 46 worms spun a message from House Avedreya. Brother Vell quietly noted each knot and angle into the castle’s communication book: it seemed the Empress was preparing a tour of the realm.

Red lightning lit up the sky, foreboding in its quiet wake, yet the natives considered nights like these a good omen. Perhaps their ancestors were right; red clouds indicated a core rich in infused ochre—certainly a good omen for the Clementine Company.

It was almost sad that the rebels still used small arms, Redmond thought as the bullet holes in his chest knitted back together. He stepped around the corner and cut the man who shot him in two. From the shock on their faces, they had never seen the Imperial Vanguard before.

The Old Roads were a marvel: the Seekers claimed there were millions—millions!—of miles of black rock laid across the land, though now less marvelous than imposing: most of it was now spires of jagged amethyst that rang so loud that buildings crumbled to dust.

Mildred took a sip of today’s space coffee and promptly spat it out. Apparently the only thing FAI learned from yesterday’s review was that beans were involved, and that the synthesized stimulants shouldn’t induce cardiac arrest with three sips. Small victories, they supposed.

The lead scientist was more bramble and thorn than flexible vines, yet her graft was just as adept as any green leaf’s at manipulating seeds and spores.

Antoine could scarce believe his eyes. Two compasses wrapped in copper sat on separate tables a meter apart, yet their needle twitched in synchronicity. In the distance, a malachite giant undulated it’s hundred legs to a similar rhythm. So this wasn’t a coincidence.

Quirze reached for the setting sun, and as it flashed its last light beneath the ocean, the boy pulled a strand of iridescent thread from the horizon as long as his breath. Quirze wove the light into the spine of his unfinished sword, deft fingers now practiced after a year.

Sister 814 raised her beads to the sky, muttered the words, and ticked her fingers to the next knob of bone. Sister 815 raised her beads to the sky, muttered the words, and ticked her fingers to the next knob of bone. Sister 816 raised her beads to the sky, muttered the words, a—

Come Conjunction, a favorite game of the idiot bravado was to carve a sigil in wood and hold it against a stone wall until it rotted under first light and stained the surface black—the stranger the placement, the better to prove how swiftly you escaped the suns.

The uncanny silence shattered as the Martian ship burrowed its past the shields and crashed head first through the dome, its fusion engines a roar accompanying the rapidly jettisoning atmosphere. Even before the ship came to a stop, troops began streaming out in all directions.

Somewhere between Rock Bottom Street and Existential Avenue, you stumble into a pub with homey name that’s immediately forgotten for a comforting, flat beer and a burger that, at best, mops up the day’s woes. You think of coming back, but come next evening, nothing’s there.

Each house’s Reaper stood across from each other, scythes held at attention and shimmering with the infinite. 1000 souls in her opponent’s blade; 1000 souls to House Laskariadi with a win. And of course Athanasia would keep hers.

“The key’s got both precision gearwork tighter than any movements mana can mimic alongside sympathetic bindings that would take the Guild 10 years to unravel.”

“… so… how much to forge a copy?”

“33% of the haul.”

“Can’t I appeal to your pride at breaking this?”

“No.”

Direct hit, yet jubilant cries quickly turned to shock as the machine man did not fall. Its arm, sheared off by the canonfire, began to regrow before the soldiers’ eyes: first a shaft of silver steel bone followed by crawling copper veins and twisting golden muscle.

The Inquisitor mewled at the eye contact then went back to licking its paw. The Guild estimated at least a fifth of the cats in the city were Inquisitor copies, but of course it would not confirm or deny: the premier information broker in the west would never say a word for free.

Princess Preen sat atop Cloud Castle awaiting Queen Quack’s arrival, uneasy at why the normally chatty queen insisted she deliver some news in person, and especially now with tensions between Boulder Bastion and Seaweed Citadel so high.

Weaver spun her web, each strand a link of cause to effect, atom to atom, star to star. Yet Weaver, in her infinite omniscience, was blind to the souls that condensed on her silk and coalesced like dew from the ether.

The HES Right Hand of Justice was the largest flagship in the Orion arm, and had been for the last 100 years. Imagine the admiral’s surprise before being vaporized when someone had timed her Kessler shield’s rotations and finessed a 50kg slug at .018c into her main reactor.

Glass Lake was as advertised: perfectly still despite reaching into the horizon. Billy tossed a stone, and it almost seemed to disappear into the mist rather than the water. He heard the deep plunging sound, but didn’t see a single ripple hit the shore.

Camrin felt the etheric disturbance like a kick in the shin. “Captain, a ship dropped in about a light hour away. Something big.”

“Freelancer big or Alliance big?”

The phantom ache lingered too long. “Bigger… and I think it’s on intercept with our course.”

Detective Bronswell held the dropper over bloodshot eyes and felt a cool tingle wash over his retina then the bitter euphoria hit his throat. The world felt sharp, clear, colorful again—more importantly, Bron could see a hazy ghost of every person and object reliving the scene.

An empath in negotiations was probably the most annoying thing Harris had to deal with today, which was good—the liaison focused on that annoyance and filled the room, taking (small) enjoyment at the second hand lines in the empath’s brow.

The hardest part was ignoring the pleas to return the bodies, having to stoically tell someone “no” while loved ones were thrown into the pyre without the dignity of the sky to release their souls—but with the Blight so close, the spirit roamed faster than the avians could eat.

Trilla held her sword quiet and hidden under her cloak as she entered the dusty city. A warm cloak on a day like today still got the odd look, but it was better than flaunting a metal sword: in Singer lands, metal meant you were either stupid or bonded, both short lived traits.

The migration swarm tumbled across the dusty badlands, the normally small rodents inflated to meter wide balls bouncing and rolling with the strong summer gales.

It was hard to tell if the gentleman in the back was quietly watching the saloon or wallowing in his drink—cactus pads grew from his eyes and swept over his head, green flesh and spines in place of hair and scalp.

Like clouds the day before the storm, the midnight sea was punctuated with brilliant blue swirls, frantic and active, each swarm of plankton guided by some deep sea star drifting toward the surface.

Orange for desire, delicate across the head; yellow and red for life rising, ringed on each joint; and black for fury, for hunger, for vengeance, slathered thick on the hands. The monks continued to paint the corpses, layer upon layer, as the skies darkened under eclipse.

On the seventh day, God descended once more: a twisting giant made of screaming metal and abyssal void. On the eighth day, we stole His fire once more to survive another week.

Foster’s final words were “there’s no such thing as centrifugal force!” uttered smugly while floating in the center of the wildly spinning ship and shortly before his untied shoelace got caught in a bulkhead seam.

There was something comforting and nauseating and unsettling and beautiful about the Above, how you could go leagues in a single direction without your light touching anything other than the frozen ground. Looking up, you almost feel like you could fall into that endless void.

The air on Coarilia was in a strange equilibrium: a simple wave of the hand would trigger a cascade of iridescent particles to precipitate and float away shortly before dissolving again.

The CEO zipped into the board room as a flutter of gossamer wings, golden dust, and navy suit to match. She came to a hover by the deck, smile so saccharine it was like she wasn’t late. “Thank you all for waiting, had a little emergency in name accounting but let’s get started.”

Adrihan felt pressure at the front of his head: the psionic dampeners. Thank the gods. He smirked as the Empress’ expression changed in realization.

“This ends here, Temrence. No more resurrection.”

“Oh?” It was then that Adrihan realized the Empress was smiling back.

Access to the Corridor’s like access to an exclusive night club: you gotta know someone to know someone, and the Guardians’ll fuck you fierce up if they catch you slipping between Nodes. If you manage to get in, though, find Infinity: word is she knows a way out of the Network.

Perfect day for the beach: no chance of rain, Alpha Xeris would be occluded by Rovenia’s red clouds from sunsrise to sunset, but Beta Xeris was perfectly in the clear with its warm yellow light.

With practiced ease, Charles crouched into his stirrups as Talos charged their quarry and tackled it with all the weight that an adult grey bear implied. As Talos slammed into the creature’s chest, Charles let his own momentum carry him sword first at the monster’s thousand eyes.

The only creatures to be found in the Silent Forest were silhouettes in the mist that always darted about just at the edge of the sight yet never left a trail. Frightening to the unwary traveller, certainly, but the locals knew they never bothered anyone.

He pours himself a shot of engine cleaner and lemon cider and sets it on fire—the goal being for the storytellers to give him something compelling before the fire goes out otherwise they get to take the booze themselves.

Atop the giant’s head was one of the most ornate temples that Galeran had seen. The priest, even though just a speck on a pulpit, was easy to spot in their golden robes and gesticulations directing the giant across the plains.

SK47 took the Sent down the old fashioned way: loudly, with a shotgun. As much as Sam liked quiet precision, she knew noise didn’t matter to a Network, and she knew speed meant less chance of finding out first hand how the virus was spreading through all the other Sentients.

Emerylda gestured and the broken glass world shifted to accommodate an entirely new scene: the prince’s palace. Veracundo’s ethereal reflection flitted in and out as his real self walked his mirrored halls, both oblivious to the princess watching and waiting.

Come the lightning, the mountains came alive: a single jolt would keep a malachite man awake for hours as it made merry the rains with its clan and sewed gray stone with living crystal before coming to another season’s rest.

“You can’t just go out and get bitten so you don’t have to deal with the apocalypse.”

“Why not?”

“We need you here! And, turning isn’t instant—you’ll be in agony the entire time!”

“It’ll be agony hanging with you lot for days, weeks, years. I’m making new friends, bye.”

Contrary to their name, rustworms glinted fiercely silver when they erupted above the wastes, their ironsteel spines polished clean as they burrowed through the shifting sands.

At 2839, Evelctrys was bored. Without Geda, the Seven were incomplete and could not grant her permission to pass immortality to some other poor sod. Even the search for the lost brother, something that had filled her with fire for 500 years, grew tedious as the centuries turned.

The polar bear in the back of the Virgil’s mind was an ornery lad, always hungry and always trying to take control to find some meat. Sometimes Virgil wished for a more docile morph, but the thought quickly vanished whenever zeds were around.

With her porcelain mask, the court gossip was that the Queen was not immortal; that someone new would take the mantle every few decades. And yet we find ourselves at the 100th feast of her Ascension with a dozen courtiers dead of poison at the high table—but not the Queen.

On a clear night, a telescope pointed just south of the moon’s equator can make out the sun bleached turrets of Severen Castle, and an oft repeated reminder to properly anchor one’s portals when moving lands.

Like the peal of thunder that brought it, one moment the night was clear, the next it flashed into downpour. A single strike of lightning struck the center of the townsquare: the Imperator had arrived.

A lovely tea of honey blossom and orange heart, brewed sweet and aromatic yet bitter in the finish, infused with words of affirmation and a secret twist of hate: the perfect tincture to make the prince forget sour memories along with what few sweet moments had bound his sanity.

“Set.”

The jack clicked into place, an uncomfortable presence despite no pain.

“Start.”

Data streamed through her mind and poured back out to the data banks. More a dream than a deluge, yet just as inscrutable.

“Sync.”

White light. Death. Life. Again.

His father’s father was the last Teller to speak stories of how Ux, the Hunter, slew Yeqres with his divine bow across the horizon. And yet that could not have been, as the boy only ever remembered the stars of Yeqres to live in the southern sky, well away from Ux’s arrow.

The Prince—for all that was what they allowed us to call them—entered the circle of aspens that made up the Mountain Court as a resplendent vision of ethereal brown and white: their wood bark skin and twisting bough limbs draped in fur and crowned in bone.

Gemini was not happy with this new planet. Every inch of surveyed land was covered in a reactive vine-like plant that slithered away when the ground team tread forward. One of Gem’s colleagues joked about this being a planet full of polite noodles. It did not help.

A hundred suns birth and die in a blink of an eye, noteworthy only for their thousand civilizations that did the same. Ievatu was getting better at this whole God business—perhaps it was not a mistake to have killed her predecessor, after all.

She adds another scar and slashes her left hand, letting her blood slicken the green gold veins of her dagger before plunging it into the captured elk. With its final breath, the poor creature begins to wither away as the muscle and fur and horn and bone armor the woman’s body.

The Queen of Dreaming sat stop her throne, form shifting with each passing blink and thought: Nightmare, a hunched upright shadow with a hungry smile; Dream, a figure you swear is a friend yet her face is featureless; and Reverie, crystal clear beauty, always out of reach.

A spectre caught too much of the sunrise sky such that its pearlescent tail and wings visibly withered, and the poor creature soon began to drop beneath the clouds. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was bound for the contested lands between the Oron and Plobom tribes.

Silver a triumph from Father Earth, tarnish a gift from Mother Sky, forges a lesson from Sister Fire: the union of three the only weapon man could wield against Brother Night.

Phinn did a couple flips and spins, which Simo already knew meant “no” before the translator kicked in. “Unfortunately this Dry Suit does not have the strength to pry open the door. Perhaps if we had upgraded…”

“Buddy, you know we can’t afford one without this job.”

One could hear the village before seeing it, not for an abundance of noise but for the lack of it: the blue lichen that covered every surface sucked sound from the air, blossoming black flowers whenever a passing song slacked their thirst.

Given enough time, a pack of gyrwhales could melt through anything with their superheated tusk, whether it be ice sheets sheltering prey or a steel ship that they were not particularly fond of.

Over four years there were 38 supernovae among adjacent stars, 26 too small to have exploded, which many took to mean 100 million years ago, some alien civilization caused an apocalypse. Terrifying, yet Dee saw potential: faster than light must be possible.

My dear listener, forgive me to say this song is not for you—for this tale is best dreamt, not heard, shared intimate in the mind. Forgive these soulless words for words are all I have, and perhaps together we may capture the smallest glimpse of the Psions’ long gone splendor.

The saloon became silence incarnate with the stranger’s second step into the establishment. There was not a single person wearing anything less than blue, yet the newcomer strode in with their unpainted and unadorned—but polished—gray mask as if they belonged.

With the gate unsealed, Ur-Nyxala was no longer human-like creature defined in crystal relief: it had become a hazy shadow that hurt to look at for too long with a presence every instinct said not to ignore. And yet it made no move to attack or leave; it simply waited.

sub:Conscious was the true heart of in:Verse. Sure, all formal business and recreation passed through the meticulously programmed plaza systems of re:Surface, but the chaos of shared thought that constantly altered sub:C made it a haven for more… interesting company.

The potato behemoths crashed into the walls of the Strawberry Kingdom, the hail of cannon fire only able to keep their waves of rot at bay for barely the morning. All was lost.

Despite stalking the forest in gleaming plate, the furfolk were almost impossible to see or hear when they were on the hunt, even when the clowder numbered in the dozens.

A figurine of a slender man coagulated from the bowl of blood. “Still alive, Sun Queen?”

The old queen scoffed. “Aren’t you bored of these weekly taunts?”

“Immortality gives me time, unlike you. Your Light will fade any day now, and with it, your ‘kingdom.’”

“Perhaps.”

He turns his head and the next face begins to speak, this one with beautiful features contrasted by the raspy voice. He finishes the diatribe and turns again, a face more wrinkles than flesh now speaking in hushed tones and smiling riddles.

The Old One’s mark was painted in iridescent black across the cruiser’s hull, invisible to every sensor except a sentient’s naked eye—exactly when it was too late for a salvager on EVA to ignore the wreck and move on.

There hadn’t been a wormhole incident in decades, but that liminal space between portals was always just long enough to think, “Is it working? Am I stuck here forever now?” almost like it was powered on anxiety. I once heard a monk got stuck in Limbo for 8 hours.

Rebecca released one of the keep’s last five radio crows hoping against hope it could sing its message before laser fire snuffed it out.

At the horizon, a convoy of perhaps a dozen ships shimmered in and out of the baked desert air, mirage sails too crisp for raiders but formation too loose for navy. Company merchants, maybe, though odd to see them so far out.

It was a true death mural: long strokes of the blues and greens and yellows of a passing soul that wove along the entire wall and reaching off the canvas into the room as an ethereal, tendrilous mirage. The body, however, was nowhere to be found.

Incense smoke drifted through the temple, disturbed only by meandering shades normally unseen in their endless worship of Mother Midnight.

Contrary to popular belief, antenna dogs can see even without eyes. This is why, in addition to holding your breath and staying as quiet as possible, you also should hide behind something if you suspect a pack is nearby.

“This is the captain speaking: we’ve turned on the fasten harness sign as we expect a bit of space turbulence and so will need to turn off the grav plates. Shouldn’t be any other interference to worry about, but kzzrt—”

“But what?”

Of course the Mistress of Keys was in the living room, eating a sandwich from my refrigerator. Lord knew how she got around so quietly with that comically large key ring and… the rest of her vibe.

“Can you at least close your mouth when you chew?”

“Nah.”

“New job?”

“You in?”

The little storm cloud was passing through again, dropping a meter of snow along a wake no wider than a driveway and apologizing the entire time.

The knight lifted its visor revealing its polished porcelain face, androgynous features frozen in neutral serenity. The body language—the slumped shoulders, the loping steps, the dragged greatsword—spoke differently.

A nearby neon light flickered momentarily then quietly cracked, its red light disappearing immediately from the crowded streets. A few noticed, but the only one who stopped to look was the woman in white whose eyes were now a dull orange glow. She blinked, and then she was gone.

Many of these drew their seed from swordtember art prompts because I am running out of ideas.

Compared to even polluted Earth, the air on Cheq’Nai is a haze, though here it is saturated with parasitic fungal spores that bond with the local insectoid life, including the dominant sapients. Cheq’Nai born off world, however, die within days as their own brains never form.

Gav had a near daily ritual of sitting at the edge of the village, feet dangling over the stormy abyss against his mother’s best wishes, to watch the sunrise. Today he wasn’t alone though—apparently Kavado was floating nearby, and folks were setting up to receive their gliders.

Even without a head, Qarna towered above everyone else walking along the boulevard. The god’s willowy frame shrouded in flowing golden robes had become a regular sight the past few weeks, though no one knew why it had shown up in the first place.

“Gods I hate Port Greylock.”

“It’s not that bad. Mancer Liandra is rather lovely, I think, and her ghouls are all very cordial—all things considered.”

“You don’t think it’s that bad because steelkind can’t smell.”

“Oh here we go again.”

There are only 121 legionnaires in service to the empire, but with their chronomancy, a single one planetside can become a legion and all but guarantee the emperor’s reach.

The night side of the Terminus was filled with bats, about the only reliable form of communication in the light of the refractive aurora. It almost wasn’t too bad—you could get used to the constant fluttering and chirping in all the shadows, but man, the guano got everywhere.

Club Eden wasn’t exclusive, but it sure as hell didn’t bother catering to anyone without enough money for augments as every surface flickered personalized sin through each patrons’ oculars.

“The Templar’s sword is the only thing keeping this ship asleep and anchored to Ganymede. This thing’s been dormant for a millennia. Pull it out and who knows what happens.”

“Sounds fun.”

Amrita had sat in meditation for three days now, each exhalation crystallizing shards of her soul back into her broken ruby blade.

Twelve blades gathered
Twelve hearts rent
Twelve words spoken
One soul sent

Dwarves swordsmiths were the most sought after in the Spine: their manifold blades were easy to carry and easier to wield despite unfolding to lengths twice the height of the average ærÿndr.

After the shot struck its mark, his longbow unravelled itself into a mass of woody vines then formed into a hooked pole that the hunter used to swing down from his treetop perch. As his feet silently touched the ground, the hook morphed into a spearpoint to secure the trophy.

A Penitent of Pa Ulu rarely left their moon, and when one did, palpable dread permeated the Verse as a Penitent Sword and its wielder were all but indestructible until the blade shattered within its sworn target’s heart.

Today, three took flight.

You feel your lips crack and your skin cool as the swampy summer night suddenly becomes desert dry, all moisture in the air coalescing into a shimmering rapier that falls in your teacher’s outstretched palm. A breeze rolls wet air back around you then she instructs you to repeat.

“If a sword in a stone is worth a kingdom, a sword in a tree’s gotta be worth, like, at least a nice house, right?” “

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.”

“Whatever, I’m pulling it out.”

WHO DARES DISTURB MY TREEHOUSE

It was all in the eyes: dilated and drug addled, dopey with exactly 626 days of addiction up until midnight when the glaze turns to beady focus. This is your last chance to get them, before the parasite learns how to use its new eyes to blend back in with the crowd.

“Why do I need to keep my sword out?”

“She figured out a sword in a leather scabbard counts as bones in dead flesh with malicious intent.”

“What.”

“If you’d just brought a steel scabbard like I said this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“This is ridiculous. I’m n—AH IT’S MOVING—“

Growing a blade from a shardbush was the earliest lesson any child learned before their first hunt and one’s first blade was as sharp as one’s hundredth, but the mark of mastery was flourish: imprints of leaf and flower, seed and fruit, grown into woven shard.

“Sir, I have tape—“

“Are you trying to kill us all? That’s duct tape, not space tape!”

“I’m sorry I don’t—“

“THERE ARE HOLES IN THE HULL, GET THE SPACE TAPE, JACKASS!”

The young mechanic ran off.

“You think he’ll figure it out?”

“We have enough O2 for two more rounds.”

In the span of a breath, the familiar darkness of dusk turns to brilliant divine light. You can’t help but look to the sky, and in the brief glimpse before pain forces you to turn away, you see the miles of celestial steel that can only mean a Justice has arrived.

Tired of your warrior-clan boasting about a kill only to find out another deserves the glory? Introducing the Seerblade from Seer Tech! All of Seer’s proprietary 3-space monitoring without compromising the meta material quality your best expect and deserve, now only for—

The Pasukan padded to the obelisk and gave it a once over. «👁🌎🔍» it asked.

“I didn’t get two degrees with a lack of attention to detail. The hyperlink sigils are all confirmed on Earth.”

The xeno articulated its sabreteeth—a gesture not unlike a human eye roll. «✅»

Each of the eight High Kings’ gilded greatswords are more than heirlooms and symbols of their immortality: folded the right way, each can unlock one of the eight locks on the dead emperor’s prison. Small blessings that they constantly bicker and war rather than open the tomb.

A stake through the heart has always been a tried and true way to kill a vampire, not because the stake or heart itself is important, but because wood can hold enough blessed water to hold a vampire’s regeneration and the heart is a good approximation for the seat of their soul.

Whenever one of those extradimensional assassins marked a target, the shadow of their sword would hang ethereal above their head until killed. The problem was that a tenth sword appeared above your head as the previous nine didn’t clear when you took out the wielder.

For all intents, living stone should not make a good sword—but give me a single note with which to Harmonize and I could Sing even sandstone sharper than steel and nimble as air. Yet even in my prime tenor years, I could not match his voice and artistry with alabaster and quartz.

Vetu’s sword shimmered with stars from a galaxy long dead, reflection of a sky older than this history or the history that came before frozen into void glass for the next eternity.

The sentinel gave her charge a thumbs up and set her bloody sword down. With a series of clicks and whirs, the sentinel’s porcelain face split down the center and slid apart, exposing the calico controlling the machine.

Servitor gave the key one last turn then removed it from the sword’s pommel. He felt the blade’s flywheel come to life, and once he thought the engine had appropriately warmed, he swung the blade—now resisting as if submerged in oil—through the iron gates barring his way forward.

Sphinx was a master shaper, sure, but Sphinx was also as prideful—if not more—than any other cat. The stolen sword would be hidden away in something even more ornate than it… Johnson eyed a shelve of Faberge eggs and whistled. Always did want to break one of those.

Another jack lit, another soul captured, this time its quiet eternal scream ringing G minor. The conductor smiled. Only a few more to complete the symphony, and the conductor had them all picked out.

Judging by Jules’ bedsheet-white face and glasses eyes, I was right about at least three vampires among the survivors. Small comfort in being right with the walls still closing in.

The third sun rises
Mother moon turns
Her watchful gaze gives way to green
We are not ready for the rot

Adelaide could feel the telltale discomfort of restless souls wafting off the apartment building a block away. Just about every building in the city had a ghost or two, but this… this was unlike anything Adelaide had felt before.

The studio was a macabre sea of broken glass and black paint surrounding a sprawled corpse. Everything with a reflection had been destroyed or defaced—all except for mirror shard about the span of a hand near the victim’s bruised throat.

“I love AB+. You?”

Oh shit oh shit uhh, “Haha, same.”

“That’s amazing! I can’t believe we’ve never crossed paths with so much in common. When did you say you were bitten?”

You’d think this kind of stuff would be asked before a random shmuck (me) wandered into a vampire party.

You should remember. You know that the Void, terrifying yet beautiful, should be seared in your memory. You know you’ve been here. Yet, when she takes your hand with the familiarity of someone who has done this with you a thousand times, you remember nothing.

WARNING: Side effects include drowsiness. Before taking this medication, ask your oneirologist if sleeping is safe. Do not travel under open skies while taking this medication without approved psionic barriers.

“I’m in love man.”

“You said that last time.”

“She’s not like other ghouls.”

“James.”

“I swear, man.”

“How’s her skin?”

“Pale as—”

“The moonlight. Lemme guess, pretty violet aura, into goth pop, only eats animal blood. How’s your soul?”

“All here, look… sonova—”

There was the telltale hollow chime of bones whose marrow was burned to animate the dead. It was like this every seven moons when the seventh star arose, and the seventh son awoke.

It found us through our dead: every creature that Mother Earth had birthed in her 5 billion years left its soul in the void, a trail of ghosts listless, eternal, and brilliant to the Hunger’s metaphysical senses.

Contrary to popular belief, vampire fangs are not enamel; they are twined probosces that unravel and latch directly into the victim’s veins. All in all, a rather clean process. A vampire with a bloody mouth is a vampire who got their fangs stuck and is likely about to die.

You will hear the jungle quiet itself in respect long before you see the Crone’s colorful rags. Beware this moment, but do not panic: you already died when you first set foot in her domain. Turn your eyes down, and speak softly. Do not make the end more painful than necessary.

While the spirits of man and beast range from chaotic to malevolent, the restless souls of flora know only what they knew in life: water, sky, and decay. Burn sunwood at dusk next to fresh rainwater to attract them such that they may eat any malicious spirits in your home.

The day the stars stopped twinkling would have marked a historic turning point had the world still turned—had any soul on Earth not been trapped in cosmic amber with only racing thoughts and frozen eyes to descend with them to madness.

It would be easy if the turn for werewolfism matched the stories of the full moon followed by haunting howls. It is not. The modern Hunter must understand that it is not moonlight, but strong light in the dark—such as a computer screen after midnight.

“Which witch are you looking for?”

“The sandwich witch.”

“I only know of the sandwich lich.”

“Maybe I got the witch and lich switched—does the lich have that ostrich sandwich?”

“Hmm, no. I think you’re talking about Mitch.”

Remember to remove the heart and bury it in salt before giving a body to the flame lest the soul follow the smoke into another creature.

The plan for Nirvana was foolproof: now, while in the prime of my body, mind, and soul, I’d summon each of the Seven with thirteen transgressions, then beat each in a duel so they couldn’t claim me. Whatever number 13×7 sins was would surely kick me out of Purgatory, too. Easy.

With the year’s last harvest finished, all that remained in the fields were wards for the upcoming season: ancestral bones set into wood and resin, placed every 121 paces to protect the village from winter crows.

You feel the air thicken in descent—not just with a vague sense of dread, but with cobwebs brushing against your face, your shoulders, your arms. You fight the shivers knowing that queensilk latched onto reflexive nerves, drawing victims into a web both physical and mental.

Jupiter is home to some of Sol’s most spectacular ghost ships. As humans have a rich death culture, so too do their ghosts forever trapped in Jupiter’s storm sea: ethereal wings of blue and green stark against orange and red, with gleaming skulls staring in eternal joy.

While the gold archived spirits of the deceased could not be copied, they could be kitbashed by the… less than ethical… medium, willing to put dangerous amounts of stress on the source archives to create a facsimile of an original soul.

On the south side of the lake lies 28 hectares of land that’s always frozen over even on the hottest summer days. It is said that the Witch of the Waters appears to lost children on the new moon, looking for her cold, lost heart.

★★☆☆☆

It seems there’s been a management change at Hotel Purgatory, and not for the better. Last I stayed to deal with unfinished business, the rooms were well kept and service was prompt. Now you can’t go five minutes without some “ghost hunter” interrupting a work call.

“I’m sure your sleep paralysis demon is very nice.”

“She has a knife.”

“And Paul is a manifestation of black flame, but he makes the best cookies in Reverie. Don’t judge a book by its cover!”

“Aren’t Palz!kias’ cookies poisonous?”

“Just venomous, and only under a half moon.”

It was as soon as the sixth night of the eclipse that the first underworld lord made a push to rule all that once was protected by the sun, and only six hours after that when the other rulers decided they wanted a piece for themselves.

It should have come as no surprise that as soon as the Savannah Indigo’s hockey arena opened, the local mediums declared it haunted. Whether intended for marketing or not was irrelevant, however, as no one could explain the midnight zamboni sounds and smooth ice every morning.

Few dirigibles have returned from beneath the storm layer, and those that have are always found without captain. The rest of the crew can be found gaunt from exertion but otherwise hale of mind, yet when asked about their former leader it’s as if they’d never heard the name.

All in all, there were 35 shades that inhabited the 500 sq ft apartment, each flitting in 2–6 days out of the year around their birthdays or death days or any other interesting occasion to the deceased. If this sounds like a lot, I can skip telling you about your home.

All Hallows’ Eve marked a special occasion for Lorena: while the veil between mortal and spirit realms was weak, so too was the veil between all worlds. Just on time, Samara stepped from a shadow, sword dripping with ectoplasm: a beloved sight that Lorena immediately embraced.

These are self-contained worldbuilding excerpts from my Nanowrimo project, Reaper.

The Order of Propriety denoted duty with hands shaped into their ornate helms: the Seekers had covered mouths but opened minds, the Watchers were deaf but felt fate itself, and of course the Fury—blind to the world and their own death—were the most feared warriors in the Reach.

Meje Anathasa Silvaire, Third Blade of the Imperium, felt her heart beat for the third time today as she pulled her scythe through the man that had just killed her.

With such power, her wounds would heal within the span of a breath. It didn’t matter, though. The white-masked figure’s scythe continued its spin through Anathasa’s chest, severing her dagger from her heart. A body could not heal once a reaper claimed its souls.

Nivilai had even perfected the art of taking a nap while standing—the house adepts simply had to stand behind the Patriarch with their heads bowed while all the pomp and circumstance unfolded, and what was the point of having a hooded robe if not to hide one’s sleeping eyes?

“Emperor-elect Gian Kemyas II thanks House Berenjal for their loyalty,” the messenger said. Nivilai could have sworn it was just Gian Kemyas I last year. “And of course, for House Berenjal’s tribute in souls. The emperor-elect will be pleased with these twenty.”

The golden sun still hung four fingers above the southwest horizon. How was there so much day left? The Kemyas entourage had arrived while the sun had peaked high in the south, and the ceremony was so long it felt like it had aged Nivilai to her twentieth birthday.

Aside from the simplicity and separation from the main palace, nothing marked the reaper annex as unique among all the other Berenjal buildings aside from a simple sigil of a heart pierced by a dagger: the phylactery. Nivilai thought it looked more like a bean being bisected.

It was easy to forget the man’s heart was pierced almost a century ago, freezing his body in its prime and healing all the scars and ailments that came after. “The arena. Thirty minutes. Your scythes don’t grow themselves.”

A reaper’s dueling harness wasn’t meant to protect from the scythe as honed voidmetal could cut through almost anything with the same force it took to cut through a pound of flesh. They were, however, significantly easier to move in than ceremonial dress.

Meje Viur Kraval, at least according to the mosaic, was a broad man with dark skin and a strong jaw. Most striking about the mosaic were the eyes: they were set with citrine, and while the other mosaics so too had gemstone eyes, Meje Kraval’s were aflame under the golden gun.

Oummi finished lighting the last crystal and gestured for both adepts to the center of the arena.

“Salute.”

The adepts held their respective scythes first to the side in attention, then simultaneously swept their blades behind themselves. They bowed to each other.

“Approach.”

Nivilai slapped her blade against Ranja’s. As blunted metal clanged against blunted metal, Oummi pulled his hand into a fist. The muted grey ghostlight dominating the room flared into cascades of silver, like moonlight reflecting off a lake but with a thousandfold intensity.

“No,” Oummi said. “When two duelists with disparate masses of souls step beyond the Veil, only one vessel comes back. Mortals cannot see what reapers do this side of the Veil besides flickers of ghostlight. So who is to say how honorable the fight was besides the winner?”

All things considered, a scythe is one of the most awkward weapons to use in a normal (for some definition of normal) duel to the death; however, reaping a soul requires not only cutting the soul from its seat, but pulling it into a phylactery lest it dissipate outside the body.

The world of Mendasan is the second planet orbiting a small orange sun. In the grand scheme of the galaxy, it is not notable—for as time goes to billions, most moons become locked to their parent and so too do planets become locked to their star. Mendasan is no different.

Outside the terminator is not a story of humanity: we are too fragile for these extremes, and so we must stay where the sun is shallow and the land is red, and where the great rivers travel from dark to light and carve deep valleys wherein we can hide from the scouring winds.

The young man was also dressed in Kemyas green dueling robes and wore a jade mask carved into an eju’s gaping maw. Curiously, his entire face—soft cheeks and softer nose, icy eyes, and a slight frown—was visible as his mask only encircled the sides of his head.

Receiving a sliver of soul felt like being caught in the wind plains and getting hit by a full grown binye tree’s 10ft scale at 100mph, like every bone crushed to fine pulp, like every vein filled with fire. Then it passed and Nivilai was just aware of how sweaty she had gotten.

Historical record indicates that practice of covering one’s facial birthmarks with a mask started around 1500 years ago, and prior art even suggest that such birthmarks were rare before then. It is not lost that the Veil was first breached around this time, as well.

Kadjasi are strong, and though they have a rich history of plow and milk and meat, they have just as rich a history of walking into the rivers laden with goods with no one able to stop them, as well as stubbornly refusing to drive even a few miles from where they were spawned.

The most prominent life above the canyons on the scoured surface are the binye trees: spires that reach from ground to sky for hundreds—sometimes thousands—of yards, covered in black and red airfoil scales that drink the sun and protect the main body from the wind and debris.

The deck was a mess of activity centered around the two dozen or so kadu that would be driving the barge upstream. The lead rider was checking his mount’s yoke, while another keeper was throwing clouds of pulverized grain at some of the kadu waving their feeding gills about.

The gallery was not large, but its four walls all featured windows so broad and so clear that Nivilai thought she’d stepped outside for a moment. She’d only ever seen colored glass in vases and small, distorted panes.

Of course, Nivilai’s first thought was to touch the window.

In the late indigo light, the masses of kadjasi were hard to make out as individual silhouettes in the mud. One of the kadjasi shifted aroudn in the pile, getting as far as pulling its first four limbs over another then giving up and lying back down to sleep.

The ravine walls were 3–4 miles high, yet the chasm had been carved so wide by the River Jandu that Nivilai wouldn’t have guessed that they were any taller than the Berenjal valley’s. The river itself could have been mistaken for a lake if not for churning whitewater.

On the third day, the barge happened to pass a school of salmon making their way upstream. The crew had a specific winch and powder-launched harpoon on deck for reeling in the powerful fish that swam the great river, and they had managed to catch four of the gigantic creatures.

Nivilai’s ceremonial robes split only from neck to navel, and somehow, the Berenjal tailors had fit fifteen steel clasps that, as far as the adept was concerned, required a deep understanding of celestial mechanics to tighten and close.

“Oh yeah, kadu are incredible—those big wings aren’t for nothing. Same for all those gills. Makes it real easy for them to figure out which way the gusts are going and to get lift without having to flap so furiously like all the bugs and bats we got down here in the ravines.”

With easy to traverse water and such high cliffs, the city that formed along the Ryngsinoya thrives along manifold layers of strata, growing denser and denser until finally reaching the Imperial Palace on the nightward edge of the river’s source lake.

The tall vaulted ceilings and the exterior walls of the imperial temple were made of impossibly large slabs of clear quartz set into an irregular iron lattice, allowing the golden midday sun to filter into the ziggurat.

The skeleton had its ribs painted in alternating red and green, and it wore a festive hat. “Merry Christmas!” it shouted at anyone who passed by. The only person who stayed to chat was a dog that really was just in it for a femur.

Mondays, right?

The knotwood trees of the Wodwǎ Forest were bulbous and twisted with cancerous growths. One must be wary when choosing the right tree to cut down: too old and the knots have calcified into stone; too young and spiders may still guard their charge.

On the Feast of Teneqa Pela, it is customary to exchange small gifts with loved ones as a sign of trust and respect, and on the Feast of Teneqa Sufeja three days later, those gifts are to be burned or consumed by the recipient in honor to the gift giver’s gods.

Know the futility of your seekers, your guardians, your wandering souls; but know the necessity of their sacrifice. Know the Lost God will be found one day; but know today will not be that day.

One day, Thomas woke to find his room covered in thorns and ivy. That didn’t seem right. Surely, if the world had ended and plants had become aggressive, they would have done to him what they did to the alarm clock. And yet Thomas awoke, hale and healthy.

Happy 174717 Digitization Day! On this auspicious anniversary, integration stims will be sold at a 50.233333333% discount. Don’t forget to praise your overmind!

“Dang dude, I feel like you’re playing 5D chess right now.”

“Nah, 5D chess is sending an alt to yesterday to swap your opponent’s meds for the wrong dosage so they think it’s working but everything is slightly off.”

“What.”

“Good game.”

To prevent further dissolution, all relics of the New World must be brought to the nearest Center for processing. Relics include anything with decipherable writing and sigils. Do your part to stem the tide, Citizens.

By morning, the twelve bright candles only eleven flickered orange over all but spent wax. The twelfth, however, was as tall as it was when ensconced and produced a steady amethyst flame. The ritual was complete. 👁✍️

Stims were 99.9% efficient in restoring one to an energetic, lucid, and biologically healthy state, but didn’t sort all the memories of the past weeks. New moon—when the Dreamers weren’t so dangerous—was in a few days… but maybe Phil could just sneak in a little nap right now…

When the Goddess was killed, the world fractured as her nine daughters sealed their kingdoms for fear, distrust, and anger at each other. None took credit for their mother’s murder, but surely only the divine could have killed a god.

First light was signaled by a vibrant droning horn from the monastery on the hill. The long note sounded for several minutes, steady with alternating paired breaths from the two most senior monks.

While tracking days on the Ark was useful if nothing other than aligning to human sleep needs, the concept of a year lost meaning as soon as Sol was just another star out the windows. Still, humans cherish ritual and habit, and so the new year is celebrated every 600 days.

Even when the bells stopped tolling on time, even when the mooms forgot to shine, the chorus dogs kept calling midnight with yips, barks, and howls.

Iana put her whole body into the brushstroke of pale yellow loosely mixed with vibrant white, painting a streaking zigzag into the midnight sky. Clouds gathered overhead and sympathetic thunder rang distant at first, then crescendoing to a torrential pour.

Only three comets in the sky tonight. Bad omen to have so few guides for the caravan. The navigators insisted it was enough, but words so rarely sit hand in hand with comfort.

With each of Sequoia’s quaking steps, the desert stone folded from browns to greens. Only hardy shrubs and crawling grass for now, but perhaps in a hundred years, something more.

Oron had one hand on his sword and the other on the telescope. Three others paced the room, eyes trained on the projected image of an asteroid Himingæða had assigned for their watch on the eve of the blood moon. Gods be blessed that nothing fell from heaven tonight.

The saltfolk braid their stories and myths and gods and families into their hair and beards, and yet the one who called himself Arnon sat before them with long straight hair, unadorned and unknotted. Not shaven like a slave—so he had no identity, by choice.

Gren hate going into the forest. Every tree was covered in sap-sucking urchins, and whenever he had to fetch wood, one would inevitably fall on him. At least their spines weren’t filled with poison.

Aya carefully worked her spear into the dead dragon’s sides to peel back her rusted scales. It was a delicate balance of force and finesse: didn’t want to nick any of those fragile polymer veins and waste any of the dragon’s precious blood before harvesting.

Beyond the edges of sleeping minds the Dreamlords wander untethered from body and soul yet trapped in that collective conscious of every being that can imagine wonders and terrors beyond what their eyes have ever seen.

That was Tivan’s crow… it cawed, clearly alarmed, and Blackwing cawed back. He batted his wing against Qara’s knees a few times before taking off and landing next to his brother crow.

“Tivan’s fallen down the well?” Qara asked. Both crows cawed back and bobbed.

Astronomers counted at least a hundred energy signatures appear around Jupiter, but barely an hour later they were gone. The only evidence anything happened was a tight beam message aimed at a single comm satellite with a message: “if anyone asks we weren’t here, don’t narc”

The 322nd Aspect born in the year of Creation took governance over bring dusk and dawn as something as dramatic as night was already accounted for. Sister 23 was always so dramatic but honestly kind of simple.

Palatera farming was an involved activity to say the least: days of waiting for Eothal and Yadan to align, then in those brief hours of conjunction harvesting as much of the pink blossoming kelp that grew where the water receded.

When a glassman walked and talked and laughed and smile, save for the crystalline skin they could be seen for any other man or woman—but when they paused to consider something: no breath, no shifts, just a simple blank stare until their thoughts finished.

When entering a new home, bring water, salt, and chimes across the threshold before anything else. Should the chimes ring, salt the floors and water all doors and windows. Repeat as necessary as you enjoy your abode.

The murderer smelled of strawberries and sunsets and fresh cut ruby. It was always surprising how ignorant the humans were to that lingering scent, so dependent on those two little eyes of theirs.

“Free trade, hyperspace schematics, full archive access… Ambassador, to be blunt: what’s the catch?”

“Catch? I don’t fully understand your human idioms yet.”

“These conditions are highly favorable for Earth. What does Zorzipan get from this?”

“Oh! New friends, of course.”

“Time of death, 9:31AM,” the doctor said, brushing away a stray light from her face. Like vultures to a dying man in the desert, faeries blinked around a dying man in a city to both feed on and ferry the soul of a thinking, feeling creature into ultimate silence.