Some food, a good night’s sleep in a familiar bed, and a couple of hours in a workshop brewing potions put me in a much better frame of mind, with some much needed perspective. Plenty of kids had...
2022-01-22 06:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostI spoke to my parents again before heading back to school, because I felt like I kind of had to, but the conversation was stiff and awkward. I hadn’t explained the nature of my fight with them to...
2022-01-15 06:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t get four steps out of Instruktanto Cooper’s van before Mum pulled me into a suffocating hug. When I was sure the lack of oxygen would kill me, she pushed me back to arms’ length and ...
2022-01-08 05:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a good day in the marketplace.
Travelling merchants had come into town, some with more money than sense, which made it hard to stay rich in a town with people like George. George crack...
2022-01-01 10:45:05 +0000 UTC View Post“Remind me,” Magistus said, wrapping his coat tighter around his shoulders, “why are we out here, again?”
“Because there are four different memory potions I want to make that have ...
2022-01-01 05:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“You seem perfectly fine,” Malas said once he’d scanned us. “Your parasympathetic systems are quite active, if that’s informative.”
“Is that bad?” I asked.
He shrugged. ...
2021-12-25 03:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Can spells be destroyed?” I asked Max while he painted runes up and down my arms. For the first time, he wasn’t painting the complicated, circular designs that we’d been taught at Skolala ...
2021-12-18 00:42:41 +0000 UTC View Post“Today, we’ll be looking at memory potions,” Instruktanto Costa announced, adjusting her glasses and sweeping her raptor-like gaze over the class. “It’s that time of year where a lot of p...
2021-12-11 03:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Out at Duniyasar, when your spell warned Max about breaking the world, it gave us all some advice. It told me that if I was stuck, I should rely on what had gotten me out of the Pit twice before...
2021-12-04 03:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostNine Inquisition
Nine Inquisition engaged in debate,
One’s declared a heretic and now there are eight.
Eight Inquisition musing about heaven,
One decides ...
2021-12-01 06:25:33 +0000 UTC View PostI guess I figured, after the whole death at Duniyasar thing, that things would move along fairly quickly. But they didn’t. I explained everything to Casey, and they nodded and took notes and said...
2021-11-27 03:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostI’d never been in this part of the school before, but the map showed my where to go. I hadn’t even bothered to clean up before leaving, but the few students I passed didn’t spare me a second ...
2021-11-20 02:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Lydia!” Kylie knelt next to her mentor, fingers searching her neck for a pulse. “Guys, she – ”
“She tried to kill you,” Max said. His tone was clipped and neutral. “There is ...
2021-11-13 01:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMax was loitering in the hall, and looked startled to see us emerge. “I wasn’t standing guard or anything, I just – what’s going on?”
I didn’t slow down to answer. “We have to g...
2021-11-06 07:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post“Uncle?”
Ekon set down his hoe and wiped one sleeve across his brow before glancing down at his niece. Her cheeks were just a little hollow, eyes just a little shaded, clothing slightly m...
2021-11-01 09:46:13 +0000 UTC View PostI got dressed. Went to bed. Drew the bedcurtains tight, turned my tablet’s light on full, and inspected the scar. There they were; a lattice of stretch marks that I’d seen on nobody else but Ch...
2021-10-30 07:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe excitement of being able to text my friends was somewhat undercut by the fact that, apart from me telling them where in the world I was (a conversation briefly interrupted by them asking where ...
2021-10-23 06:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Well, this will either be great or terrible,” Max said, leaning against a bed force field and folding his arms expectantly. “Where are we?”
“It’s quite simple, when you think abo...
2021-10-16 06:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostMy encounter with Susan at the motel had left me worried that people were going to kick up a big stink about me being in town and call my parents. That didn’t happen. I steered clear of Chelsea a...
2021-10-09 06:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostThere was one complication I hadn’t considered when trying to get a room at the motel, and it wasn’t until Susan, the motel manager, was staring me down over stubbornly folded arms that I reali...
2021-10-02 07:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Sir?”
John kept his eyes on the pot until it was complete. Only then did he carefully lean back from the potter’s wheel and look up at his apprentice. The boy… what was his name? Ben...
2021-10-01 07:00:45 +0000 UTC View PostSaina looked me up and down and opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.
“I’m fine,” I said, “and I don’t want to talk about it.” It had been a couple of days since the pit c...
2021-09-25 07:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostMalas was unsurprised to see me and didn’t ask for an explanation. Alania must have told him I was coming. I let him touch me and braced myself against the sickening wave of displaced magic.
<... 2021-09-18 07:30:00 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you mean, the real reason?” I asked. “You kept us out of it because you were trying to protect us, right?”
“I thought so, at the time,” he sighed. “I didn’t lie to yo...
2021-09-11 06:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostBy the time my first pit comp rolled around, magical assassin-incriminating evidence STILL hadn’t magically fallen into our laps, but for once I was too excited about something else to care. Spec...
2021-09-04 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMalas Aksoy had been the kuracar long enough to know that the week before classes started was always the busiest week of his semester. It was a week where the new initiates, fresh in a new location...
2021-09-01 08:02:03 +0000 UTC View PostOver the next week or so, no convenient leads dropped right into our laps. I was getting really sick of trying to solve mysteries on basically no information. Maybe this was why most people went to...
2021-08-28 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostWe didn’t actually go and get an animal to turn into a familiar for a random experiment with no professional input or oversight, of course. That would be wildly irresponsible.
We made a fet...
2021-08-21 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay,” Max said, pacing across our room two days later. “Do we know if this full moon was the correct full moon? Is there any way to tell when the timeline for the prophecy has passed?” 2021-08-14 12:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
“Scars can be painful, or scars can be numb,” the spellthing informed me, staring into me with those creepily symmetrical eyes. “Yours would have been more useful if they were painful.”
... 2021-08-07 12:29:59 +0000 UTC View Post