It’s funny. You grow up in Balkirk with stories of philtres, but unless your an Oli, that’s all they are. The potions that define the Oligarchy, granting power and prolonged life beyond the imaginations of us serfs. And mostly, the stories are right. Embellished a little, but right. What they don’t tell you about is […]
The Black Wall: Chapter Two
The Defenders Pasha tugged his sister up from where they’d hidden under Bora lake and watched the bizarre scene play out. Her face was round, with a small mouth and wide set, slanted eyes. She was a child—not even thirty, yet—but she looked even younger. Tears mingled with fishy lake water, now black and grey […]
The Black Wall-Prologue
“Guilty.” The Grace’s word reverberated through the Hall. The Grace of Fom, an angular, thin woman with hair and eyes the color of unpolished iron, waited for the echo of her verdict to die before continuing. “General Albertus Mann, you are condemned to the Pit for public viewing until dead, for sedition, treason, and the […]
The Black Wall: Chapter One
The Invasion: Six Months Before the Verdict Bodies lay strewn, pale against the rich brown ground. Blood muddied the soil between the trunks of massive trees, churned until its hue matched the broad, fern-like leaves grasping the sky. Long-beaked scavenger birds, red breasted with gleaming black wings, hunched in the lower branches, silent and waiting. […]
We’re All In This Together
I heard some advice that we should keep track of our days during these plague days. Or months. Or years. For posterity, I suppose. On one hand, I can see the value in that, but on the other, life is a blank page when our days are spent behind closed doors, away from one another […]
Corona-Japan
Taiki has been home sick half the week. Normally that sort of thing doesn’t bother me, other than it means I’m not going to get much done, but these days there’s a mild sense of concern beyond that of the normal, “My five year old is sick yet again. Goddamn it, there goes my day.” […]
Where the Hell Have You Been?
I have failed in my goal of posting here every week. Or every two weeks. Or every month. Or every two months. Or three. This is a failure I could have predicted from the start, and one reason I never started a blog before last spring. So, where have I been? Since August, The Kalis […]
The Major Locations of Eris
Sports Day
I remember track and field day back in elementary school. A day of friendly competition at the end of the year, with races, long jumps, high jumps, and so on for colored ribbons. After the long year was behind us, it was fun to have one short day of no school work and no pressure, […]
Wait! I was reading that!
There is a possibility someone was reading the chapters of Within a Name I had been posting here on a semi-regular basis, only to check in a few weeks ago to see that not only was there no new chapters up, but 4-6 were now missing entirely. Well, there is a reason for that, and […]