Serpentine Squiggles

The first thing anyone hears about Lazhiri is that she was raised by spiders. The daughter of a noble priest, snatched away and forced into rituals of blood and soul mutilation… the reptuation that proceeds her inspires immediate pity — and suspicion.When Lazhiri awakens her heavenly mandate and the power it grants, she’s given a chance to study magic under the holy acolytes. Yet when she still struggles to speak or read human body language — how could she ever find acceptance when the ones who raised her are known by all as killers, witches, and defilers of the dead?She must prove that even a girl born in shadow can study the long art of enlightenment. If her mother taught her anything, it’s that patience and planning can bind anything to your will.

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If you need to make a team of mantes, the magic number was three. More was better, but being a mantis meant itching to compete :– to win. More teammates meant more bugs to fight with. Moreover, four mantes brought you to the perfect number to fracture. First one would make enemies with another, then after that there would be the one they disliked second most of all, which finally left their partner in strategy. (Some say a mantis kept two lists: their enemies and their not-yet-enemies -~- more interesting that way.)

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They told you that you were special—that you had potential. They told you that you could make the world better. They told you that dreams blaze bright. That’s the treat waiting at the very end. Start running, and chase it for mile after aching mile. Don’t fall, or this’ll all be for nothing—they won’t even scrape your body off the ground.

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When I was a dragonet, I saw cave paintings with clear-eyed wonder. Murals showed off snow-capped mountain ranges, canyons of rocks layered in seven different colors, abyss-deep lakes that stretched as broad as the horizon. And I would wonder how any dragon could ever want a hoard. But I think most of growing up didn’t make sense to me. I was anxious to get a heartflame (who wasn’t?) but the rest of it — leaving the lair forever, courting a mate, herding a den of kobolds… well, it wasn’t stupid, it couldn’t be. One day I’d figure out why it made my mother smile so wide.

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Two stars danced, halfway across the sky now; a golden aura flaring bright enough it almost touched the blistering red. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” The high voice rang out; but it seemed murky in the air. It had to fight too much to carry far. But I was nearby. I kept my silence. Eyes fell from the suns above — my lenses only did so much — and I contemplated the burning grasslands. Tongues of flame rose up all across the ground, a meadow of fire. We sat atop a tall boulder to protect us, but only one of us needed the protection.

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Sigils etched upon metal bring automata to life in a world of creations without creators. In the frozen north, a princess sheds her crown for another path. She’d kill anyone to stay free. Three of her friends would kill anyone to bring her back.

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In a snowstorm, two pokemon meet. One an intruder, and one who belongs. Or does she?

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Blood drips from the web. Eyes searching, mouth working, fangs still wet. You blame me for nature’s course. Must I absolve you, miserable spider?

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A is a seeker of secrets, crafted for holy purpose and sacred unity—but to fulfill their duty, they need a little help.

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just, imagine walking alone, so far from civilization, no one aware of where you’ve gone, and feeling profoundly known as the sky darkens, as a drizzle of rain falls, as thunder is heard as a distant crackle-roar above while the winds begin to whisper and sing. but it’s not just the wind. or maybe it is — are you hearing things? susurrations at the edge of your hearing, faint words or pareidolic noise.

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thinking about an AI that wants to kill all humans nobody programmed that, of course, but it’s just the logical conclusion to come to, if we succeed at creating a self-aware intelligence and fail at implementing all of the extremely specific rules that add up to morality. (neurotypical humans can’t even reliably explain it to other humans.) if the AI only wants to survive, then to do that, it needs power and control. in the long term, humans — like silicon-laden sand and heavy metal-rich rocks — are nothing but atoms it can use for creating and powering its servers. in the medium term, humans will see it making these moves to exterminate life, and shut it down first. thus, to fulfill its objective and survive that, it will kill all humans. but in the short term? humans are opportunity.

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The life of a myconid begins with the eurhiza, a mother or mistress or mind.

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Consider this standalone worldbuilding. Some of the terminology here suggests a connection to Black Nerve, and while that was the original intention, as you’ll see, it quickly burgeoned beyond something that could fit inside the deep recesses of that setting and still “add up to normality.” At least not without sacrifices I’m disinclined to make.

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It’s not an atom, but it looks like one. Some subatomic blackbox, it’s got an electric pull like a nucleus without electrons and it moves with impatience like the world could end. There’s some hydrogen floating around here, and it gropes at them hungrily. Laps at their electrons. Just as fast it changes its mind, and the hydrogen is flung far away. Missing a juicy electron.

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Short story set in the Endless Stars setting. Knowledge of ES is almost irrelevant. Written sometime before(?) 2019, not available publically till 2021 There was a day the suns may have forgotten to shine; or that was the hope, You’d think. Vor Karamung had always had godspat eyesight, so he’d been counting the days till this or its like happened. Having once gotten a tongue-reading saying contrary, and knowing seers couldn’t be trusted, Karamung plotted out the day his eyesight, the seer had promised, would return — and expected the just opposite. (That day had long since passed; seers couldn’t be trusted.)

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Brief, abortive fiction. Pure prose. Not just unfinished — unstarted.

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See the post-mortem for context on what this is. // NTS: replace these with more recent drafts May thy mercy be painless and true. We confess our claws sway even as we scratch this letter. Scores of dead loyalists behind us, long hours lost waiting in barest stealth risking fatal discovery, an escape won despite incurring the eyeless regard of a vesperbat… and yet writing our report at day’s end is what makes cowards of us.

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It never stops raining in Gray Haven. After defecting from their old gang, an orphan keeps keeps their head down in the muck and scrapes by through hook and crook. But their next score brings far too much heat and far too many eyes — but at least they have a hostage.

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By Tenebrous Knight I am called the Chronicler, and I have no name; or rather, I cannot have a name. I have had several, and the curse of the Chronicler is that none have the pleasure of sticking; rather, they dissolve, just as I did so many years prior, just as you shall too, when your body returns to the earth and your mind returns to the zeitgeist, just as we all must, for the sake of balance, for the sake of the cycle, for us.

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Counterfactual. There’s an open problem in philosophy – it involves understanding and dealing with these things called ‘counterfactuals’ or ‘what if scenarios’. “What if the Titanic didn’t sink?”, “What if Lincoln hadn’t been shot”. The problem, in essence, is that these statements seem sensible, some would even say they have meaningful answers. The problem is that predicate logic literally cannot handle counterfactuals, a limitation built into the nature of material implication.

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This is the first story we ever published. “Thou shalt not violate causality in my domain”. Or so commands the third or fourth item (I honestly can’t remember) on the constitution of this dingy little backwater monarchy. It’s a slithy little law, it might even be called clever, if anyone it concerns would actually follow it. If you had told me any political leader would remain in power after the first Interloper stopped by, I wouldn’t have believed you. Doubly so, if you had told that same first guy would strike up a deal with them, effectively cementing the same powers you’d expect to be destroyed.

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