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Miniarc-Northern Lights-19 (End)

The monotony of Lancecain’s life eventually came to an end. After having his bodily needs tended to, the hands pulling him through the darkness entered another tunnel. One that went upwards rather than sideways. Lancecain heart hammered with excitement at the implication.

It felt like he’d spent a small eternity in the dark. Eventually, his patience had run out. He lashed out with wor...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-18

Lancecain severely underestimated Little Water’s patience.

Hiding underground was a smart tactic. The knights wouldn’t expect it because the conditions of the burrow would drive any person insane. A criminal could only remain in a dark, cramped space for so long before coming up for air.

He originally expected his incarceration in darkness to last for a few days, perhaps a week ...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-17

Lancecain woke to darkness. He was groggy but it only took a moment to get his bearings. As he felt the dull ache and extreme itching over his face, the memories of the previous night came back to him. He sucked in a deep breath, smelling damp earth, and let it out slowly. Being bested didn’t feel good but his chances of escaping on his own had been abysmal from the start. It was why he had u...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-16

The people of Harvest feared and revered the light affinity. No affinity had an intrinsic advantage over any other. A caster’s threat was purely based on their ability, a mix of coefficient, knowledge, and experience. What made the light affinity special was the history behind it. An ordinary man wielded fire. Heroes and saints wielded light. No matter someone’s skill, facing a light caster...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-15

The hours passed slowly as Lancecain lingered outside the walls of Victory.

Though young, Lancecain was a full-fledged knight. That meant he technicality had the same authority as the man that told him to stay away from the fort and could have ignored the informal order. However, there was an unspoken hierarchy based on seniority in the north. Besides that, he understood being told to sta...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-14

Lancecain waited for several minutes to be sure that the monsters’ retreat was real. He didn’t think the birds would make a tactical retreat to lure out the more vulnerable members of the fort before resuming their assault but he wouldn’t be the one to underestimate a manabeast of legend. Once he was sure the battle was over, he gathered a group of young knights from the Duelists and spri...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-13

The Order of the Polar Duelists was much smaller than the building for the Bleaks Moons. What was a tight fit before became uncomfortably cramped as Lancecain directed his charges inside. No one was happy but they understood.

Once they were settled, Lancecain climbed onto the roof to watch what he could of the battle taking place in the distance. He couldn’t make out many details. Perha...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-12

The doomhawks weren’t the worst the north had to offer. Compared to titans, they were relatively weak. Their greatest advantage was their numbers. Their second, their large bodies. Their feathers didn’t defend against magic and couldn’t deflect blades. Their talons were sharp and powerful enough to hold onto struggling prey as they lifted them into the air, but they couldn’t fight worth...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-11

The Lord, if the duke’s suspicion was correct, screeched and slowly flapped its large wings. Lancecain grimaced as he saw a wall of snow and ice coming toward him, swallowing everything in its wake. It was too large to dodge. All he could do was grit his teeth and hold his arms before his face for whatever meagre protection they could offer. He shut his eyes but the cold and force he expected...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-10

Lancecain had participated in campaigns since he was fourteen. He hadn’t done much fighting the first year, merely serving as an extra pair of hands to be lent to whoever needed them as he accompanied the army from Winter’s Bounty along with his master. Since, he had left the walls of Victory many times with many armies of different sizes. He’d seen, dismantled, and fought every monster t...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-09

A large part of a knight’s training, Lancecain would hope for any order, was reacting calmly to problems. The large wave of cold death coming down the mountain was a big problem. Traveling through the pass that led beyond the mountains, he knew not to underestimate snow and ice. He’d seen much smaller waves crush men. The wave heading for the fort was a hundred times bigger than the largest...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-08

The days following Zach’s visit were full of activity. On the first day of the three given to prepare the exploratory force that would investigate the source of the strange weather, the last army returned. The Northern Devil had suffered as many losses as the duke’s eldest, coming back with a fraction of the forces he left with. Worse, he had severe injuries, including a missing hand and a ...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-07

One after another, the armies returned. No matter their size, no matter how prepared they were, no matter the order they belonged to, none of them could face the wrath of a bad storm. The proud warriors of the north turned tail and fled like children before their first monster, suffering countless losses that grew progressively worse the longer the poor soldiers took to return. It went from the...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-06

Lancecain was intrigued by the strange circumstances. Both as a knight of the north concerned for his many comrades beyond the walls and as a man with a strong sense of curiosity. There weren’t many things of interest in the never-changing north so the unusual drew attention like a warm fire invited freezing hands.

The Last Rites of an army was not a private affair by tradition. The ord...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-05

The next day, Lancecain was walking home having retrieved his blade left with a smith for maintenance, when a group caught his attention. A half dozen Moon jogged past him. Brows furrowed, he followed, walking slowly in case he was approaching a situation he had no business sticking his nose in.

He was beyond surprised when he heard the distinctive sound of the northern gate slamming shut...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-04

“I didn’t take you for the type to bully children.”

Lancecain turned from his seat on a medium-sized boulder where he’d retired after several bouts with the trainees to find a woman approaching him. Victory made no distinction between men and women when it came to war but they were not so far gone that they completely ignored courtesy between genders. The women also wore little wh...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-03

After their meal, Lancecain left his mentor with the rest of the Herbanacle and went for a walk. There wasn’t much in the way of scenery in the north. The same for entertainment. One of his favorite pastimes was watching the large-scale drills of the Bleak Moons during the warmer months, seated in the snow with a few of his fellow Duelists and sharing a bottle. On clearer days, which for Vict...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-02

“I don’t want to die, Master.” He hadn’t spoken much with Lady Tome but he had the feeling she was a jealous woman. “Have you forgotten the elf has a pure physical affinity? They didn’t seemed concerned about it at the feast.”

“She’s still a woman.”

“If she wants to be. Healers don’t only heal. There are men that pay good money for a little extra length on th...

Miniarc-Northern Lights-01

AN//: Small lore correction. Polluck was originally stated to be a member of the Order of Undying Embers. Changed to the Polar Duelists. In case of any confusion.

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To the people of Harvest, Victory was another world. It looked different, constantly painted in...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-07 (End)

Little Water didn’t expect her meeting with her sister to go so well. It was suspicious how quickly Good Light had given into her request. Suspicious that she had given in at all. Little Water had been prepared to sacrifice half of everything she would ever own as well as her first three clutches. Receiving a treasure like the majesty’s scale was for free was beyond her comprehension but sh...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-06

In a corner of the large cavern, the darkness peeled away to reveal the elder sitting on a flat rock covered in luminous moss, surrounded by his nameless, a glow leaving the gold-scaled guard’s eyes as he released the spell that’d hidden them. “It will do.”

Atop her cushion, Good Light hummed. “I admit, I expected a bit more praise after sacrificing something as valuable as a ma...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-05

Her first stop was the dome, named after its spherical ceiling. It was one of the largest caverns in the warren and filled with structures to train the brood’s warriors. There wasn’t much cause for them, as an enemy hadn’t breached their territory since the first century they relocated to their current home, but it was tradition.

Most of their warriors slumbered in different caverns...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-04

Little Water remained quiet and pensive as the blue-scaled guard escorted her back to the brood’s warrens. It was not a long journey. Beyond the rocky shore, another member of the brood waited. Its smooth dark-blue skin marked it as one of the lesser members of the brood. Lesser even than the dull scales that usually accompanied her.

When she was in an uncharitable mood, she liked to ca...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-03

“Oi. Oi! Get away from me, stupid thing! What the—shuba? Shuba…shuba…where have I heard…SON OF A ONE-WINGED WYVERN! WHICH DUMB, STAR-FORSAKEN IDIOT IS TALKING WITH THE DARK LORD?! OI! WHAT IS MY ESTEEMED WARDEN DOING?”

The elder sighed deeply. Calling on his magic, he spoke. The words themselves were redundant, the meaning expressed by his spirit. It was the first lan...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-02

The elder sighed. “You know as well as I that no one forced the boy. When the situation was explained to him, he volunteered, knowing what his sacrifice entailed.”

“You didn’t give him any choice!” she snapped, tail slipping from her grip and throwing up small pebbles as it swept the shore. “He is an honorable man. How could he think clearly when you told him that refusal coul...

Miniarc-Inevitable End-01

At the northern tip of the human continent, beyond where any human had ever reached, the endless white landscape transformed into a rocky shore and clear blue waters. Steam slowly rose from the water’s surface, creating a hazy curtain that stretched from the water to the sky full of fluffy clouds, gentler than the stormy gray clouds that covered most of the north.

There was no trace of ...

ARC 6-Winter War-150

The front yard of the James estate is full of activity as we prepare to leave. It’s comparable to the madness of our departure from the Hall.

For ourselves, there is little to prepare. Most of our supplies have been depleted. Not all in the way we expected. The booze is mostly gone. The shroom juice proved as popular as I expected. The representatives of the orders attending our army’...

ARC 6-Winter War-149

Objectively, Khan is being treated pretty well. As a traitor to family and country, it wouldn’t be surprising if the servants withheld his food and beat him intermittently.

If Khan was the captive of the unscrupulous nobles of the capital, he would have to face all manners of humiliation. He would be paraded under his shame, cursed by thousands. It’d be incredibly bad seeing as he’s...

ARC 6-Winter War-148

March to the Ancestors.

A bloody northern tradition where two groups with irreconcilable differences meet on the Witness Circle and settle their conflicts with extreme violence. Both sides wager everything they are. Their lives, their wealth, their legacies. To the winners, everything. The losers are forgotten. The debt incurred, absolute.

As we understand it, Zachariah James gave t...

ARC 6-Winter War-147

The tension in the room takes on a more sinister identity. Kalise is a straightforward woman. Her first response to a problem is action, preferably violence. Standing around talking goes against her nature but she’s been enduring because it appeared to be the best route to saving her son. Now that a dragon may lie at the end of that road, she is changing course and falls back on her nature. 2023-06-01 19:33:02 +0000 UTC View Post