Chapters
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February 2056 MARIE Aurore walked the Quai de Valmy along the Canal Saint-Martin in the grey-blue light before the cafes opened. The plane trees were bare and black against the zinc rooftops, and the canal water sat flat and green-grey between its stone banks, and the cold was the kind of cold that did not bite but settled into clothing and stayed. Her breath came in small clouds that dissolved before they reached the iron railing at the water's edge. She wore a black double-breasted coat with brass…
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2.7 K • Ongoing
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The yōkai repair crew had learned to move fast. The faceless priest repainted bronze trigram lines around blood that refused to wash out. Two turtle-backed masons argued over whether a cracked lotus panel could be billed as new if the crack now resembled a sacred river. Mali hovered above them, microphone tucked under one arm, red flag under the other, cheeks puffed as if a delay in bloodsport were a personal insult. Temujin sat near the rail-edge of the now-quiet fighters’ pavilion with one…-
56.5 K • Ongoing
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A streak of fire burned above the arena mouth, white at the core, red at the tail, falling through the carved mountain throat. For one moment, the crowd believed it was part of the show. Mali popped one leg behind her and made an exaggerated visor with her hand. “Ooooh? Shooting star? Should Mali make a wish, or is that—” The star slammed outside the tournament temple. Mali shrieked, and ducked for cover. The impact shook the mountain. Dust burst from the high tiers. A line of…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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The yōkai repair crew had stopped pretending the arena could be saved. Still they patched it. That was tournament law, or temple habit, or the stubborn pride of little contractors who had seen six hundred and fourteen tournaments of idiots ruin stone and still considered every crater a personal insult. The broom-armed oni swept the last of Mame into a lacquered tray while two turtle-masons dragged trigram strips back into the floor with their teeth. A faceless priest in a saffron raincoat stood over…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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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…
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34.1 K • Ongoing
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“Earth to Temujin!!” Pink fingers snapped in front of his face. He looked to Sesame and pulled himself back to something that felt more comfortable than nirvana. “Is it over?” She hugged him so tightly the air left him. He hugged back. Finally, a lovely touch. Yulaan came limping through the wreckage, hair ragged and down, side bleeding freely. She looked him up and down, taking in the burn marks, the dark wrist-curse, the stupid living face. Then she rushed him, wrapped one arm…
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56.5 K • Ongoing
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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…
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34.1 K • Ongoing
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The First Song of the Vitagashi Megas, as spoken through the people of the Yeren Khanate, from the Myths and Legends of Sovagulo Another world lived before this one. At the end of that world, there were two forces as warriors: Getavara and Tien-Rus. The Wrath of the Monkey Warrior Getavara had, over eons, calmed to temperance as He rose to godhood. Getavara slayed and Getavara fought until time ravaged the populations of the old world. Every act of creation had begun to calm Getavara…
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34.1 K • Ongoing
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Ashens Square, Armstrong City The bomb found the west atrium at 9:47 PM. The blast peeled marble from the facade in slabs and the fireball that followed consumed oxygen so fast that windows three blocks east bowed inward, held, then gave up. Inside, the Impressionist wing filled with plaster dust and aerosolized pigment drifting in thermals of superheated air. Gerald Mackey, third-shift security, had been eating a turkey sub in the east corridor monitoring station when the blast knocked his chair…
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34.1 K • Ongoing
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I. A rented Buick shot through the Jersey pines, rattling and battling against a scarred, pocked road toward a sharp bend around a hill that hid their destination like an asshole. Walter Lattimore folded the road map into his lap and let Vernon do the swearing. Vernon Asch had been swearing since Toms River. He kept swearing and the other two were about to swear. They were three: a Times man, a sociologist, and a writer of sweat-magazines, respectively gravity, framework, and prurience by way of…
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34.1 K • Ongoing
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