Epsilon Twilight

36. Monster

It didn’t take Aloe much time to set up the leaf pipe after she carved it. Unlike the error-prone system she had on the oasis to irrigate somewhat expansive crop fields, for the greenhouse she just needed to relay a bit of water to a solitary seed.

“Okay, my vitality has been long topped up. I guess it’s time to go back to check all those seeds for an evolution.” Aloe whipped the ...

35. Company

The fact that the Blossomflame seed had been so cheap to infuse had removed a strain from her heart. Not only did this practically verify the theory that infusion costs solely depended on the final or mature – there was a bit of a definition void there – size of the plant, but also removed the fear of running out of vitality by infusing plants. Only an evolved tree could truly present a dan...

34. Breath

Every good morning should start with a visit to the latrine rather than long sessions of brainstorming, or that was how Aloe thought.

“Ugh, I feel my mind clearer!” Aloe groaned as she stretched her arms.

The sun caressed her skin, it was still somewhat early and it didn’t scrape with much strength. Her whole body bathed in the welcoming sunlight as Aloe had to remove her nigh...

33. Blossomflame

Aloe woke up feeling... fine. With all that had happened these last days, that was more than alright for her. She could settle with fine if that meant no more problems.

“Hello, hello.” The girl mumbled weakly on her bed. “Alright, it seems I can somewhat talk now. It still hurts, though.” She sighed as she got out of bed, she still didn’t understand how her throat got hurt this ...

32. Fear

To say that Rani was flabbergasted was an understatement. She hadn’t expected such an honest and hard-striking revelation out of Aaliyah’s mouth in a million years. But at the same time, that was how her mother worked.

“You are serious.” The words weakly left the emir’s mouth, it was a statement.

“Indeed.” Aaliyah nodded as she stretched her arms. “I’m getting tire...

31. Exhaustion

It took her a while, but after spending a solid half of an hour sitting down on the ground with her back to the wall, Aloe decided to stand up out of sheer boredom. Her head no longer throbbed in pain, but it had been so bad that she wasn’t able to take a nap in the meantime.

“Ugh...” Aloe groaned, her knees and thighs protesting at the ‘sudden’ movement. She instantly repented ...

30. Grief

Aloe panted, her breast heaving up and down with outstanding violence. A human torso shouldn’t deform in such a manner. Air went in and out of her mouth audibly, and yet she almost couldn’t hear it as the ringing of her ears was greater than that.

Her body didn’t obey her, and only now her mind was clearing enough to muster some coherent thoughts. Not words, thoughts.

It hurt ...

29. Push

“Oops, I almost forgot,” Aloe said as she took out the Cure Grass pills from her satchels. “That could’ve been bad. Better to have them as accessible as possible.”

She had yet to find a pattern for the evolution costs of the seeds if there even was one, and if one of the new ones – yet again, if there was even a new evolution hiding among them – a vitality cost higher than t...

Halloween Drawings

Here you have Harvest Witch Aloe and Bewitching Dweller Fikali!

I absolutely adore how good the straw hats look on them!

Art by @Lyra_Gamer on Twitter (the bird still lives in our hearts)

Halloween Special

Happy Halloween! With art and all to celebrate! (This chapter counts as a regular one)

Drawings by @Lyra_Gamer (I'll add the art in another post so you don't have to download it)

____

Night gloomed over Sadina. The twilight crept inexorably to bring with itself a nocturnal mantle of stars. Today was a special day, the harvest festival. Sadina, because it was a big and rich cit...

Release

Hello there,

As I'm suffering from a lot of workload, stress, and an overall shaky mental health situation, this week I'll just publish the three chapters that are already up.

I intend to take things back to normal in November, but it will probably take me some time to catch up as I have no backlog whatsoever and just the last chapter I have published has taken me three begrudging h...

28. Classification

The soup was hot.

That wasn’t to say she hadn’t expected the soup to not be hot, but she meant that there was nothing else highlightable from the bowl of water, potatoes, beans, and jerky. Aloe sighed as she left the bowl on the ground.

Instead of eating at her desk, she decided to sit down at the doorway to observe the oasis as she ate. The sight was more tasteful than the food...

27. Cooking

As it would appear, the wild dwellers hadn’t thrashed the greenhouse. And for that, Aloe was immensely grateful.

“Alright, the latch is on, that’s good... that’s good...” Aloe whispered to comfort herself. Even if someone had intruded inside it would have been easy to put the latch back on position, but she didn’t tell that to herself.

The glass panels of the greenhouse ...

26. Routine

She didn’t want suffering to turn into the norm rather than the exception, but when Aloe woke up the next day, she still hadn’t fully recovered. The damage had quite literally inverted. Whilst before her calves ached and her hands were numb, now her calves were numb and her hands ached.

After waking up, she lingered groggily in her bed. She didn’t have enough strength to wake up nor...

25. Call

Aloe was tired.

Maddingly so.

After seeing the dwellers rush into the horizon, her legs buckled, and her body fell onto the grass.

“Wro?” Fikali asked nuzzling her snoot against her arm, worry present in her visage.

“It’s nothing, Fikali. I just need to rest.” And she was being truthful, this wasn’t any excuse.

Her legs hadn’t faltered out of...

24. Suitable

“If what you say it’s true, then it’s quite interesting, yes.” Aaliyah laid her back on the plushy sofa, her breasts swaying up and down like a ship upon her drop even if she was dressed unlike before.

The sultanah had once tried the tailors’ recent invention, the bra, but she textually called that piece of cloth a ‘jail to freedom’ and ‘the work of a djinn’. The tailor ...

23. Dwellers

She was tired. Yesterday had been an exhaustive day. Though she wouldn’t deny the exercise had helped her. It was astonishing how two days of sedition could change someone. Whilst she had the energy to make the whole travel without stopping, it wasn’t like she should do it.

It was still better than traveling at night though.

She didn’t like the touch of cold sand. It perturbed...

22. Back

Light had become scarce when they arrived at the oasis. Even if her hands were wounded, Aloe refused to stop unless Fikali herself wanted to, and the dweller was dotted with seemingly endless stamina, they continued all the way to the greenhouse without resting once.

Her body was absolutely thrashed after continuous hours of riding, but Aloe was thankful for the little light remaining in ...

21. Wound

Men were a nuisance.

That was a truth that became apparent as of late. The only men Aloe had seen as a positive influence and helpful were members of her family, and maybe Jafar. But that one was treading on a thin line. Only women had goodwill in their blood.

Well, even further than that, females.

It truly made Aloe’s blood boil that the stable master didn’t even know Fik...

20. Girl

“What do you mean you are going back?” Mirah jumped out of her seat and placed her hands on the table with a loud thud.

“Exactly what I said.” Aloe calmly responded as she drank from her teacup.

“I... why?” The housewife fell on her chair defeated.

The two women were the only ones in the house. Aya and Jafar were long gone, one to the school and the other to work. ...

Chapter Update

Hello there,

I've said it in RR and SH but I'm going to lower the upload schedule from 5 weekly chapters to 4. This is only for October as I'm doing other writing things, but I'll compensate it a bit in Halloween.

-Epsilon Twilight

19. Glass

Even if Aloe was blinded, she knew that Laraib had instinctively enclosed the Myriad glass between his hands. His face told it all. The massive man took a few steps backward in confusion. His mouth was agape, but no words left it. His first action was to search and sit down on a stool.

Aloe's mind purely worked on how to justify all of this as the glassworker’s daze still lingered. Her ...

18. Workshop

Her eyes were irritated as she walked toward the factory district. It was honestly quite the stretch to say that Sadina had a ‘factory district’ as it was just a neighborhood like every other except that it had more workshops than normal.

Blacksmiths, jewelers, carpenters, and glassworkers; those kinds of people populated these streets.

Columns of smoke were commonplace as the w...

17. Education

Sunrays met Aloe’s face.

“Ugh...” The girl groaned as she rubbed her eyes. “I still feel like shieeet...”

Truly a poet of her age.

Aloe blinked thrice and finally opened her eyes. She lay unmoving on her bed; her sight locked onto the ceiling. Her bed, which just a month ago had been her refuge from problems, was now but a coffin. A cage that tied her down. Even if w...

16. Office

As Rani walked behind Aaliyah, she couldn’t help to notice the heat. She wasn’t talking about how hot her mother may be or the restless sun above, but actual heat. The half-naked woman quite literally expelled steam as she walked.

How’s she not burning alive? The sultanzade wondered.

The sultanah kept a lot of secrets, so whilst the sultanzade were her children and th...

15. Lesson

“Ugh...” Aloe groaned as she twisted her neck upwards in pain, her nape resting against a slate of sandstone. “Never again.” She let out a loaded groan, after exiting her meditation and changing her internal infusion back to ‘toughness’. “I still feel it... I would say it’s a phantom pain... but it’s very real.”

The girl’s back curved as she curled forward a bit, her...

14. Fine

“Oh, heavens, that was stressful.” Aloe led her hand to her heart and sighed after closing the office’s door behind.

“What was stressful?” Jafar, who was resting her back on the wall, inquired at her side.

“Damnation!” Aloe jumped. “You scared me!”

“Don’t know how, you’re the one who told me to wait here.” The guard shrugged, his saber clinking with t...

13. Enterprise

“And what’s exactly this?” Tamara asked unfazed by Aloe’s theatrics.

“You’ll know if you open it.” Aloe smugly said.

“No, I don’t think I will.” The scribe responded, removing the girl’s smile with a metaphorical slap.

“Why?” Aloe asked with true doubt and curiosity, a bit of fear lingering on her expression.

“You surely don’t know how thing...

12. Commerce

Aloe and the remaining scribe remained still in the audience hall, still flabbergasted by the emir’s mannerisms (and body movements). The scribe of commerce was the first to come out of their daze as Aloe heard the rustling of cloth and papers as the woman stood up.

“You give a person too much power overnight and they begin bossing you around.” The woman sighed and walked toward the...

11. Offer

Aloe blinked several times, the emir’s petition totally breaching her thought scheme. She couldn’t believe what her ears had heard. This must be a mistake of some sort.

“I... uhm...” She didn’t how to respond or what to respond, for that matter. “S-surely I must have misheard, R-rani.”

“I don’t think so, no.” Rani’s honeyed voice permeated the air. The...