After Eudora left the room was utterly silent.
Then Feiyang let out a bestial roar. One of the crates exploded, scattering a plume of tangy dust onto the floor.
One part of him wanted to run out, grab her, and fuck her ‘till she was so sore she was stumbling over herself. Hold her down by those long, soft legs and fuck her till tha...
2022-03-21 04:32:35 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: have you ever thought ‘screw that adastra fellow, I hate his dumb face and I hope he never writes another chapter again?
Well today’s your unlucky day! Bc here’s the first of 2 bonus chapters which kinda popped into existence outta nowhere!
//
Eudora flipped off the ledge, planted her feet on the sid...
2022-03-21 04:32:13 +0000 UTC View PostDorian was at the open market, a smattering of stalls in a marble-floored plaza which seemed to stretch endlessly, its loose rows wrapping around itself like the lively intestines of some massive beast. Its stalls were all strung with white-cloth tarps more specialized than any Dorian had seen in the Festival’s market; he passed a rolling food...
2022-03-19 18:21:45 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: This chapter was 2300 words, but then I added a scene in the middle. You’ll know exactly which scene I’m talking about when you get to it. It is the sort of scene which miiiight not be the best thing to add, but once you have the idea you can’t not follow through on it
I’m not sorry. Actually I’m ki...
2022-03-17 05:08:33 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Sry this chapter’s late—it took quite a bit of finagling, but I’m pretty happy with how it ended up! Next chap is back to regularly scheduled Dorian programming
//
Kaya frowned. “What are you meant to be, a shaman?”
“I am a Priest. A Priest of the Order of Jez, at your service.” The ...
2022-03-15 20:21:01 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: this is not an incest story, peeps!
//
Kaya woke two hours before the sun rose. She donned her new loose gray robes and snuck outside. Lights still dotted the walls and the city beyond; there was the cranking and whirring of metal, but it was as dark and quiet as it ever got around here.
She staked out a s...
2022-03-12 22:18:08 +0000 UTC View PostShe rushed into a standoff.
On one side were the bronze-skinned fighters of the Narong Tribe, dressed in dark-brown smocks; Young Master Narong stood at their front. His forearm was slicked with blood.
On the other was a gang of men cloaked in dark-yellow robes; cowls left shadows over their eyes. A dark-red symbol, like the laughing...
2022-03-10 20:21:59 +0000 UTC View PostThe air seemed fresher as Dorian strolled out of the doors of the Guild. Humming to himself, he took stock of the sun in the sky. That whole jaunt had gone faster than he’d expected—there was still an hour or two left, it seemed, before he’d be kicked out.
Would he be kicked out, now that he had an Artificer’s badge? Pebbl...
2022-03-09 22:08:54 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Last artifice chapter!
//
Kal mulled it over. There were a few possibilities.
One. His longer career as a prize-fighter had finally caught up with him. He’d taken one too many blows to the head. His brain had been tenderized to mush, and now it was cooking up some fantasy that the reincarnation of ...
2022-03-08 03:32:52 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Slight delay to this chap bc it turns out I had 2 more midterms (yesterday + today) that I just found out existed! … Im not an exemplary student, as you might guess
//
He flipped open the Compendium of Artificing - Tier 1. It was a very long volume, sorted by popularity. On the first page were...
2022-03-05 18:28:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe testing room was spare. Blank sandstone walls. A workbench, with a small box of assorted screws and hammers. Blocks of raw material. A furnace. A bookshelf stacked with reference materials. An anvil. A clock. All made of a dark-gray metal. That was it.
Dorian waited, legs crossed, as the clock ticked slowly by. There was no sign of a p...
2022-03-03 04:49:31 +0000 UTC View PostA/N: Midterms are over, huzzah! I can go back to rapid-firing chapters!! Don’t know if I can promise dailies, but I’ll sure try for it.
//
“Will you behave?” said Dorian, frowning.
Leo nodded, goggle-eyed. “Really?” Dorian shot him a stern look. “You’re not just saying that so I’ll let you go, are you?” More...
2022-03-02 06:07:49 +0000 UTC View PostWhat was this girl about to do to him? Dorian was a little perturbed.
She seemed a normal sort when he first saw her. Then she’d gotten steadily more unhinged.
His eyes trailed to the Furnace; qi-flames licked at the edges. The way she was looking at him sent a cold draft down his spine. Either she wanted to stab him to death or de...
2022-02-26 19:35:01 +0000 UTC View PostSo this is the part where she gently crushes my dreams.
Dorian fought to keep himself from snorting. “This,” said the girl, sweeping her arms out like a bad actress, “is artificing!”
A herd of fools sweating it out over basic metalworking? They don’t even have free-hand Inscription? And my goodness—w...
2022-02-26 01:08:10 +0000 UTC View Post“Call me Io,” said Dorian softly. He blinked fast, watering his eyes a smidge as he looked up at her.
“Io,” she repeated, and her voice made the syllable a song. She smiled as she held out a gloved hand. “Come with me.”
He eyed the hand warily. Then, with the cautious slowness of a frightened animal, he reached o...
2022-02-24 22:43:44 +0000 UTC View PostPebble chose a direction. It was the wrong direction.
Half an hour and much scampering later, they came to a stop before a gold-domed basilica, easily the most impressive structure in its block.
It was a behemoth of metal and spinning cogs; its pieces were in constant motion. There were the nodes on the roof, cackling with qi like ov...
2022-02-23 05:43:12 +0000 UTC View PostVery quickly they found out two things about Pebble. He knew his way around here with such familiarity it was like he was following a sixth sense—and he wouldn’t shut up. He seemed an excitable sort, and utterly oblivious to the fact that neither Dorian nor Kaya was much in the mood for talking. Kaya especially. Her face was dark as a midnig...
2022-02-21 04:29:56 +0000 UTC View PostKaya was stupefied—by the stench or the sights, Dorian didn’t know. He grabbed her wrist. “Hold on,” he warned. “And don’t let go.”
“Ah?” was all Kaya got out before he dragged her into the disheveled swamp of a street.
Personal space was a foreign concept here. Bodies scraped and brushed and slithered by other bodi...
2022-02-20 06:05:54 +0000 UTC View PostTime Elapsed: 1 Month, 1 week.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” said Kaya, panting.
“Not at all,” said Dorian. He smiled at her. “Not this time, nor the last hundred times you asked.”
Kaya huffed, collapsing to the sands. She was drenched in sweat. “That’s enough for a day,” she gasp...
2022-02-19 02:09:20 +0000 UTC View PostAnother Plane, Another Time…
Dorian ascended. He was a rapture of light and blistering fire, a newly-born star rising to take its place in the firmament. He was the only light in a dark, splintered world. Then he was gone, rushed to another realm. The darkness dropped again.
The sky was a thick, mournful purple. Bl...
2022-02-14 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostOne last note before my brief break...
Don’t tell RoyalRoad this, but I’m *much* more likely to read and consider patron feedback than I am an RR comment. If you’ve got feedback of any sort, please feel free to let me know—constructive criticism included! I only ask that you deliver it kindly (we authors have feelings too).&n...
2022-02-08 05:39:19 +0000 UTC View Post“What did he say, child?” To stand in the presence of a peak-Profound Realm master like Patriarch Yalta would’ve wobbled the knees of most Vigor fighters. Dorian bore the pressure with a grimace.
“He threatened me,” said Dorian, feigning a cringe. “He said this was a message to the rest of the Desert that today was only the beg...
2022-02-06 04:55:18 +0000 UTC View Post“I…” Kono appeared to wrack his mind. “Maybe it isn’t under control.”
Dorian glanced back, frowning mightily. “What?”
“Look.” He gestured to the Dragon. “It’s not moving stiffly or in set patterns. It is simply enraged.” Kono tilted his head. “Besides, wouldn’t it take a master of Profo...
2022-02-02 23:43:14 +0000 UTC View PostWhat was this All-Seeing eye? A few explanations had been swirling in Dorian’s mind. One was that it was a trite metaphor for a celestial body—the sun and the moons might be all-seeing eyes, always above and gazing upon the plane. Another was a magical beast; he’d known many a flying critter with supernal senses. Or a technique—though th...
2022-02-01 05:44:49 +0000 UTC View PostBeasts crowded in from all sides, snapping off stragglers at the edges. The mass of humanity contracted as hundreds of men and women fled inward. But they couldn’t flee very far—the Frost Dragon waited at the very middle, its neck ablaze with cruel qi as it charged an attack. Everywhere blood gushed in fountains; bodies fell in droves all ar...
2022-01-31 02:42:00 +0000 UTC View PostAt first it was a low, slow rumble, lost in the roar of the geyser. Dorian, on the border of sleep, didn’t register it, not at first. Only when he heard the click-click-clicking of jostled glass did his eyes snap open, just in time to see a beaker of healing elixir topple from its perch to land mouth-first in the sands. There it trembled with ...
2022-01-29 06:13:12 +0000 UTC View PostThe Festival was sound asleep. It was that time of night, so deep and so late and so silent that the ambiance felt like a physical thing, a thick wool blanket lain atop all the tents and huts and stands. A few revelers slouched home on wine-weak legs, but that was that. Even the geyser’s roars were subdued, seeming more to Dorian’s ear like ...
2022-01-27 07:38:15 +0000 UTC View Post“Finally finished!” Hu sagged back against a pillow. “Thank heavens!”
“Shouldn’t you be upset?” said Dorian as he trussed up some canvas. The elixirs had been put away, the shelves stored in trunks which were then stored in Interspatial Rings. The rest, which couldn’t fit in Ring-space, needed to be bundled up and hauled ba...
2022-01-24 20:34:51 +0000 UTC View PostTwo hours ‘till the Markets open and Dorian had run out of bodily fluids to sweat out. He’d been given a rib-crushing celebration hug by Kaya, a thorough interrogation about what’d just happened (most of which he answered with some variant of ‘I don’t know! Just did it!’), gotten a Tribe-wide ovation, and fended off Kaya again (‘we...
2022-01-22 19:48:27 +0000 UTC View PostThe Golden Roc reached godhood in maturity. After a century-cycle each Roc ascended to a higher plane, but not before leaving offspring behind. Zhang was not wrong to call it a creature loved by the universe; in that egg lay a hint of the divine.
It wouldn’t only sharply raise cultivation. It’d also purify his body and add a fire affin...
2022-01-20 20:39:54 +0000 UTC View Post