Chapters
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Ten minutes later, behind the locked door of the Medieval Metaphysics room, Evelyn provided a practical answer to ‘what is magic?’ Magic, in this quick and dirty example, started when she noticed the smear of Twil’s blood on her walking stick. She was still shaking, but her lips curled into that sharp, devious smile. “Evee?” She grunted in reply. That’s all I got. I was too busy crashing out on adrenaline. Raine would get here any minute. She’d had to skip straight out of a…-
95.8 K • Ongoing
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Raine didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. She stood up, the change in attitude evident in every shift of muscle and posture, instant and electric. She flexed her right hand, the one in the modified glove, curling and uncurling a fist. From anybody else it would have seemed empty showboating. A ridiculous, playground gesture. Except I’d seen Raine beat a monster to death once before, grinning and flushed and loving the violence. My mouth went dry and my heart hammered all the faster. A tiny,…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Thirty minutes. That was Raine’s estimate. Thirty minutes stuck in a room with two very angry people who hated each other for reasons I didn’t understand, waiting for Raine to return before either of them felt well enough for attempted murder. Thankfully, neither seemed inclined to get up yet. Twil had hunched tighter around her imaginary stomach wound, while Evelyn brooded, her eyes barely open and fixed on Twil with dark intensity. I did as I’d promised, positioned myself behind one of the…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Elpida scrambled out of her coffin and landed on cold metal. The drop to the floor was a greater distance than she’d expected, her joints were stiff as fresh-drawn wire, and her soles were slicked with that thin, greasy fluid. Lances of red light strobed and stabbed, a flicker of electric blood in the air; the alarm pulsed out a moaning dirge; voices screamed in terror and pain, sobbed deep and hard, and laughed on the edge of loss. Training took over. Elpida’s body became a coiled spring, fists…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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The machine womb was dying. Elpida saw it when she turned away from the door and the row of lockers — and away from Pira, who was plunging on alone into the depths of what could only be a Silico hive out in the deep green, the kind of structure that the best alienists in Telokopolis had only guessed at. Pira had also taken the only weapon: the lockers did not contain a second stun-baton, only several more grey jumpsuits. Elpida wished Pira good luck; a Silico construct wouldn’t flinch from a cattle…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Tracking Pira was easy; Elpida followed the trail of dried-out slime. The corridors beyond the resurrection chamber were made of uniform, seamless, silver-grey metal. Cold, windowless, and impossibly clean, without a single particle of dust. Flakes of dried slime stood out on the metal floor, scraps of crumbly translucent biomass caught in searing white illumination, from lights recessed behind thick plastic in the ceiling. Pira must have shed the flakes as the slime had dried on her skin, but the trail…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Elpida had made sure that every member of the cadre was trained in close-quarters combat — unarmed or otherwise. Even the few who had no natural aptitude, like Bug, or Shade. At thirteen years old she’d spent six painstaking months personally coaching Shade every day, both of them black and blue all over, sleeping together in each others’ scent, until Shade could last five minutes against Elpida herself. The cadre hardly needed help to work together — they had proven that with their first group…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Pira’s intel was good; the service lift was right where she’d said it would be, fifty feet down a corridor off the side of the atrium. But that corridor was kinked into a trio of awkward corners, narrowed into choke-points, and punctuated by a steep switchback ramp. Empty hard-points pockmarked the walls and ceiling like scabbed sockets after tooth extraction. Everything was made of that same dull grey metal, just as spotless and dust-free as everything else inside the tomb — except for a few…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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The gravekeeper’s chamber: two dozen feet of grey metal pyramid with the top scooped off; a black sphere cradled in that apex, blank and still; the upright coffin with half a girl inside, more wire and tube than flesh and bone. Elpida did not see the avatar speak. None of them did, except perhaps Ilyusha. The others were clustered on the laboratory side of the first room, with the corpse and the coffin hidden by the dividing wall. By the time they recovered from the shock of the mechanical…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Elpida took command. “Into the gravekeeper’s room, now!” Click-click-click went metal on metal, racing down the lift shaft. “Amina, hold onto that shield and get behind the wall. Vicky, grab three more ballistic shields, toss them back there, then start flipping tables, pile them in the archway. Atyle, you take a shield as well then get behind the wall. And help Kagami, hunker down. Howl—” Elpida froze. The others froze with her, hanging on her words; they didn’t know…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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