28 Results in the "Yabanverse" category
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The lei tai was simple from above and severe from within: a broad circle of bone-white square stone tiles, smoothed enough to be uncanny, and inlaid with eight equidistant bronze trigrams. Beyond it, nothing but red dirt and a moat of smoking black water in the pit below, then the tiers of demons ascending into the mountain’s throat. Four prayer-pillars stood at the cardinal points, wound with iron sutra chains. At the north wall, looming over the ring from a niche of red lacquer and soot, stood the…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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The arena snapped sideways. He hit the stone on his shoulder and rolled through pain bright enough to have color. Before he could find his knees, a second blow struck the ribs. A third landed under the sternum. A fourth slapped his guard aside and cracked across the cheek. He came up on one elbow. She kicked him down. He gasped and looked up at her. She stood. He had, at the last panicked moment, seen her move and braced himself. “For you,” she said, “I start with twenty…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
The Death Chamber
The Xaxalpa family home was the type any passing driver would not have found extraordinary. Two stories of a Cape Cod house, a manicured front yard, a picket fence as a border, and of course the raven-haired Saiyan girl in the backyard. Sol Yulaan had been out there since midnight, standing over a block of Devilmite Blackstone with a pick-hammer, shaping a skull. Devilmite didn't yield to much. A Gosamyrian noble could fire a star-busting chi wave at a Devilmite wall and knock off a chip no bigger than…-
34.1 K • Ongoing
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Bakuga Kōten of the Burning Sparrow School was called next against Kurohane Shigure, the Rain-Crow Ronin, a narrow demon in a lacquered crow mask and a traveler’s cloak darkened by spells of perpetual rain. His sword was longer than his arm and black along the back, the edge flashing clear whenever he breathed; around his shoulders hung wet feathers, though no water touched the ring, and each step he took left a small black footprint that evaporated after his shadow passed. Mali bounced along. “If…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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Late afternoon lay over the palm-dappled canal town with the soft authority of habit. Laundry snapped between second-story balconies. The sparring yard behind Old Hu’s tea shed was dusty from boys dragging heels through practice stances. Wooden bridges crossed the canal in stacked angles, darkened by old rain and hand oil. Children shouted over the water. Someone fried fish with too much pepper. Someone cursed at a pump engine that had survived the Horror, the reconstruction, three floods, and every…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
Battleball
René Magritte - The Empire of Light (1954) Battleball Good mornings brought the Yabans out. Above Armstrong City, blue-lined white clouds rose like alpine mountains over the pines. Their shaded green went so deep it turned blue in places, an empire of light occupied by shadows. The city’s towers stood far off beyond the suburb, titanic panes of glass and steel half-lost in morning haze, their edges made ghostly by distance. The through-road carried cars toward them and away from them, a steady…-
34.1 K • Ongoing
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Mali brought her flag down. “And that will settle the first rounds! Now it’s time for a much-needed food break!” Enekai and Yulaan ran towards the food court, a hundred paces away from the pavilion and arena. The bronze champion hyperventilated around Yulaan and calmed when Enekai rushed along. Sesame shook both fists after them. “I’ll tie your tails into knots if you spend all my money stuffing your goddamn maws again, monkeyfucks!” Temujin felt cooler than the other side of…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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“Nine!” He awoke. “And—!” Pink smoke struck him in the face. It had the taste of sugar, copper, and Sesame’s sweet sweat. He sat up before he understood that sitting up should have been impossible. His ribs no longer ground together. His throat opened. The crushed place under the sternum filled with warmth. His torn cheek sealed. His lungs drank air and found room for it. He stood. Sesame stood at the rail with one hand stretched toward him, her whole arm…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
Tetri Teschi In Luce Viola
Saturday, April 30th The last thing Yulaan remembered before she passed out, she was doing the one thing every Saiyan does best: filling her mouth with food. Once she came to, she found herself with her wrists chained and standing at the center of a stone circle that lay beneath an oculus of a grand Romanesque cathedral built with bad intentions. All around her, infernal tags and designs— goat heads on pikes, a giant pentagram of blood around the altar, black candles alit, occult runes given…-
34.1 K • Ongoing
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Several slow clouds came and went. The bracket wheel burned and turned and sent ashes fluttering down. Temujin’s name appeared again. With renewed zeal, he stood, beat his palm, and said, “Alright, bring it on!” As he walked, the voices of his new ‘friends’ cheered him on. This drew a complicated, but grateful warmth to his fists. There surged a sound different from the roar that had greeted Qinglong. This was a warmer noise, uglier for being warm. Temujin recognized it as the…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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