“I believe an explanation is in order,” said Asad.
‘Several explanations,’ added Qorvass.
“Indeed.” Ismael took a haggard breath and exchanged looks with Rholtam. “But first, we must inform everyone of the ceasefire. Does anyone here have a working phone or com device?”
Asad shook his head. “My earpiece was destroyed in the fight.”
“As was mine,” said Ismael.
They both looked at the young black man, who seemed to have difficulty removing his gaze from Ibai even as he answered them.
“...I didn’t bring anything,” Hector said. “I figured it would just get broken.”
Ismael turned to Ibai, who was still trying to put his pants on Melchor. They seemed a little snug around the thighs. “Ibai, can you... tell our forces to stand down? Quickly?”
Ibai popped up to his feet again, leaving Melchor with an impressive butt crack. “Sure thing, Papa!”
Ismael held up a hand. “Ah, but before you do--please, release the reaper.”
“Aw, but we were gonna go on an adventure...”
“Ibai.”
“Tch.”
‘We’ll take a rain check on that adventure,’ said Chergoa. ‘Ha. Get it? Rain check?’
Ibai laughed. “I do get it! You’re funny!” He let her return to Emiliana and then teleported away in his underwear.
-+-+-+-+-
The feeling was that of a slow boil, beginning in the pit of his stomach, reaching up through his chest and all the way into his head.
It had been thirty years since he’d felt anger like this.
Raw fury. So powerful and blinding that he knew the dam inside him would burst if he so much as moved. And he wanted to save this anger, to bottle it up inside and use it later. But right now, he couldn’t even blink. He just stared at the wall, expressionless, waiting for his brain to stop feeling so numb, for his sense of reason to start working again.
It was just too much to process at once. Everything Axiolis had told him.
The children, captured. The Rainlords, at war with each other, in addition to the Vanguard.
And Mariana...
Zeff had thought he would be able to handle it better than this. They’d both been members of the Vanguard. The notion that she might leave on a mission one day and never come back had crossed his mind before, as the reverse had undoubtedly crossed hers. They’d both known it could happen. They’d planned for it.
But not this. Betrayed by their own comrades. This was something else.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Man. Talk about a difficult scene change.
ReplyDeleteGET YOUR UMBRELLAS, EVERYBODY, BECAUSE THE WEATHER'S CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF VENGEAAAAAAANCE!
ReplyDeleteI'm getting the feeling this ceasefire will be pretty short if Zeff shows up.
ReplyDeleteOh god, the HATE Hector must be feeling! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SWITCH NOW FROST.
ReplyDeletedo you experiment with scene change markers? Like "~_~_~_~" instead of "-+-+-+-+-" ? Or "/\/\/\/\/\/\" "<->-<->-<->" "~@~@~@~@~" "_*_*_*_*_"
ReplyDeleteI call the last one "earth and sky".
You, I like you.
ReplyDeleteHey there, Mr Frost. I tried commenting on the Abilities page, but the blogspot-native comment system hates me (which is entirely my own fault).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I have a little request for the Ability page. I keep getting confused about the hyperstates and have to re-google the information about them. It would be awesome if you could add a description of the different hyperstates (as currently explained in-story). I was just thinking that it would be nice to have a place where all this information is gathered for quick lookup.
It's rather more a case of "that's no thunderhead; that's a volcanic ash cloud with imminent pyroclastic flows and optional rain of mud". :P
ReplyDeleteBless you for more updates Frost :) hope the new donation page works out for you
ReplyDeleteSo, this has nothing to do with the current chapter, but about Hector and Pan-rozum.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Pan-rozum allows for you to gain all sorts of cool, extra powers so long as they are based on your original power. I was thinking that if Hector combined his Materialization with Integration, he should be able to create Magnetite (Fe3O4), which is 'the most magnetic of all the naturally occurring minerals on Earth'. If he enhanced that with Alteration he should gain cool magnetic powers.
Why all this wild speculation into powers that will not come to fruition for a long, long, LONG time? The general sentiment in the novel is that iron materialization is nothing special. However I'm pretty certain it's the only element in Materialization that opens the door to magnetic powers at Pan-rozum.
So yeah, iron has potential. Suck it ability snobs.
Will Chergoa and Garovel do a random arguement or laugh off their reunion?
ReplyDeleteI'm conflicted. On the on hand, I want them to stop fighting and focus on the actual villains.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand... They deserve it. Allowing their comrades to be brought to the brink of destruction, the outright betraying them by kidnapping their children, and being the cause of Mariana dying? Heck, if Zeff completely destroys their house, they had it coming.
A classical case of a situation snowballing out of control. If they had just revealed that their child was an aberration then none of this would have happened. Considering Ibai appears to be natural and not brought about unnaturally like the rest (at least from what we know, since there was no mention of anything odd happening during pregnancy), they may have allowed him to live and just studied him (still a horrible thing, but he was pretty much imprisoned his entire life and brain washed to go against his inherent nature...).
I'm also conflicted about whether to send George a poison laced Christmas pudding, or to make it more personal and stab him with a candy cane for delaying Hector and Emiliana from meeting... ;)
It has come to my attention that my last statement could be considered a threat! But that's just silly... When I said "poison laced" I was referring to covering it in brandy. I admit, stabbing him with a candy cane sounds murderous, but what I really meant was I would shove some in his mouth that he may enjoy their sweetness and Christmas cheer.
ReplyDeleteSo it was not in any way meant as threatening. <_< >_>
All Aberrations are made unnaturally via someone who can perform the procedure, not parson himself but most likely an underling of his. Hence all the blackmailing of (Call Me) Ismael by parson. Also I don't think the Blackburn's deserve all that's happened to them, really everything that's happened to them was the result of one man refusing to kill his son, can you really they deserve that that. Not withstanding that all this still would of happened if (Call Me) Ismael had told the Rainlords of Ibai.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it Parsons grand fuckery is the reason (Call Me) Ismael and Nere never had children before Ibai, the procedure to make an aberration kills any unborn children if they don't have the full reaper gene!
ReplyDeleteSo at first I was picturing Ibai as trying to convince Melchor to take his pants, and then I remembered Melchor is unconscious. That is an amazing mental image, with Ibai taking off his pants and trying to slide them up his unconscious uncle's body. I imagine Melchor is going to wake up to some uncomfortable pinching.
ReplyDeleteWrong Element.
ReplyDelete"That's not the tide going out - that's the water receding before a tsunami"
To my knowledge, the Blackburns have never knowingly killed anyone. Letting Parson's goons through the checkpoint did (probably) bring doom on House Elroy, but even after Parson's threat they couldn't have imagined that the results would be anything like that bad. Mariana died because of another of Parson's goons, before the Blackburns were even involved. While Melchor kidnapped the children and most of the others in the room, he didn't kill anyone doing it, and as far as I can tell nobody died during the seige either, it was all prisoner-taking. And while it's true they concealed an aberration, he never killed anyone and in fact refused a golden opportunity to do so, so hiding him from people who would want to kill him is just self-defense.
ReplyDeleteThose guys who tried to feed the reapers to Ibai are in big trouble, from both sides, but the house as a whole hasn't done anything unforgivable, especially since they'll probably be joining forces when the full story comes out.
...You know, we need a word for non-permanent servant deaths that doesn't sound like a euphemism. Ibai alone killed at least five servants, and dozens more were killed during the battle, but none of those counted.
I'm having trouble commenting there too, but I'm pretty sure I'm innocent. Whenever I click the Post button, it empties the comment box but doesn't post anything. If it helps, I use the name/url option.
ReplyDeleteI disagree... not when your best mate can do molten silicon oxide... Ice and glass is an explosive combo.
ReplyDeleteSame thing for me. I used name/url and nothing was posted when I tried to. Do you happen to use some Javescript and/or cookie blocker? I believe that's the problem in my case.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'll add that stuff eventually.
ReplyDeleteI had Firefox set to refuse third-party cookies, because I think the advertisers are using them to spy on me. When I told it to accept them from visited sites, I was able to comment. Sometime when I can work up the motivation, I need to find and shout at whoever set that up.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Being properly paranoid sucks.
ReplyDeleteI think the blogspot-native comment system doesn't do nested comments. All the old comment threads are flat as well.
Well, I just replied to another comment and his time it did nest properly. Not sure why it went bonkers the first time, maybe because I had opened a level-one post and then moved to a reply without canceling properly.
ReplyDeleteHe probably couldn't get ALTERATION, but he could soul strengthen the magnetism, and do some cool things with it, the same way Lawrence does with his Radium radiation, which also isn't alteration per se, but a result of soul strengthening.
ReplyDeleteSoul-filtered
ReplyDeleteGhosted
Body-busted
Quasi-murdered
Semi-killed
Undeaded