Joroboros

[YF] Chapter 253: Mages

Leal felt awkward.

She shifted on her feet, looked back down the hall she came and considered if it would be better if she waited elsewhere. The two guards standing besides her hadn’t spoken a word, and each second seemed longer than the last. They were staring. Each time she glanced the way of the short pair of dohrni, she caught their eyes.

The purple one, the woman, pretended l...

[KoJ] Epilogue (Book 1)

Ceph stepped over a ditch between broken stones that made up what used to be called a street. To her side, the once towering wall holding the upper city stood crumbling; a section had collapsed, burying half a dozen buildings of the lower city.

The alley, like so many others, had been cordoned off. She ignored such warnings and strode with purpose.

The second Collapse had been just ...

[KoJ] Chapter 69: Realm-Breacher

The rend snaps.

For a mere instant, the spatial fabric tears. It rips open like a dozen arcs of lightning, before slamming shut. In that short moment, I can do nothing but stare at the sheer beauty of what lies hidden beneath the fabric.

It is somehow both a pure absence of everything, and something more. The natural weave of life unravels to unveil the nothingness it is built upon....

[YF] Chapter 252: Pit of the Pact Nations

Despite my fears, not a single one of the leaders claimed falsehood. Not even the idiots. Everyone was quick to accept my accounts, and the horrors of the coming Anatla were not tossed aside as the ravings of a lunatic… as much as I’m sure they would have loved to.

Their lack of denial hardly means they can truly accept the fate that lies before us all. Many hold their heads in their ...

[KoJ] Chapter 68: Commitment

An agonising tug on my spine, and suddenly my constriction is not so strong. I slip from the leg. My fangs slide free of flesh despite my efforts to hold them deep. I am pulled backwards, tossed through the air and disoriented. When I adjust, I am already falling in the mouth of the lynx.

Vicious, predatory teeth surround me, each ready to carve through scale and flesh.

My spine ach...

[YF] Chapter 251: Heights of the Pact Nations

Remus leads us through the wide, arching hall of marble. Maybe, years ago, or if the circumstances weren’t so dire, I could have awed at the grandeur of it all. But not now. Countless cracks and seams spiderweb their way through the once polished stone walls. Imperfect iron struts reach between floor and ceiling, drilled into the marble every metre. They are an ugly addition. Even upon the al...

[KoJ] Chapter 67: Brawl

I weave around the diamond spear that rockets up from the earth below. The next two following in its trail require passing through a bend, but I avoid them with ease.

As I climb higher into the air, and the pillars stretch further, it becomes less than a challenge to avoid, but it isn’t the pillars rising from below that concern me. I’m already trapped. The wall of crystal is encasing...

[KoJ] Chapter 66: Patience

Immediately upon finding the diamond-crested earth, I shrink to the smallest I can. It is dangerous to be so small up here, where even the ground itself can kill me, but I cannot risk the beast discovering me. Not if I plan to fulfil my purpose.

It cannot know where I am.

With my distortions, I can obscure myself from those with mundane sight. It is not perfect, and any that view me...

[YF] Chapter 250: Ruins of Meja

With war upon the pact nations, we unanimously decided to forgo the railway and fly direct to Meja. Now was not the time to worry about committing a faux pas. We needed to get to the core of the pact nations now, even if we had to leave our guards behind.

Not that our train was in working order any longer.

With the amount of enhanced mercs travelling with us, it would have been poss...

[KoJ] Chapter 65: Perseverence

I slam my will back into the bend.

The space around me shivers in response. It groans. a low, slow noise that rises from the space falling momentarily out of order with the air it holds.

By shoving my own spatial fabric through the unsettled distortion, I have stopped its collapse, but its sudden stop left the space around me disturbed. Instability is at dangerous levels, and that i...

[YF] Chapter 249: Declaration

The land looks dead.

Between the grey land, and the greyer sky, life is more a memory than reality out here in the far east of Vanguard. The view through the small window is drab, and not at all encouraging, but I can’t turn away.

Trees stand without foliage, bushes slump, and there isn’t an animal in sight. A powder coating covers everything. Not snow, but ash. It falls from th...

[KoJ] Chapter 64: Recourse

My wounds are slow to recover as I slither along the earth. The scrape of stone beneath my tattered scales is unpleasant, but I push forward regardless, leaving a trail of crushed earth behind me.

The frozen battlefield is long gone from my mind.

There is no point hiding myself from the sapients while I cannot shrink, so I slither between their nests without care for the thousand pa...

[YF] Chapter 248: Forgotten

For a crowd of about a hundred ursu, without a single enhanced amongst them, the hateful glares of half a dozen of the strongest people on the continent is beyond overwhelming. My elders don’t even need to unleash their presence to send these ursu into a shivering mess. Considering how high the crowd stand over us, it would make for an amusing sight… if not for how problematic this entire s...

[KoJ] Chapter 63: Revelation

High above, the albanic stands stalwart. Staring down. Wind curls around her arms and legs to keep her aloft. The touch of breeze passes over her wounds, freezing the blood and stemming the flow.

All around us, the storm rages. Only in her vicinity — the centre of the blizzard — does the wind falter, slowing to a stop. The last volley of razor icicles pelts my scales, leaving nothing ...

[YF] Chapter 247: Fortune

The Continae is not yet complete.

I don’t know why I expected it to be fully constructed; we’ve only been gone nearly three months, which is hardly enough time to finish such a tall structure. But the trip somehow felt longer. My mind had constantly been back in this city while we’d been sailing with the heqet, and my ever-present concerns that they had moved forward without me made...

[KoJ] Chapter 62: Frozen

Even with an immediate reaction and the assistance of a distortion, I'm nearly overwhelmed by the gust of icy wind that slams over me. To my side, the land disappears beneath a blanket of frozen crystals, only for them to fracture and peel away in the wind.

The line of fragmented icicles extends beyond my sight. A path twice as wide as my current length. The forest its path now frozen and...

[YF] Chapter 246: Resolute

“Show me that it’s possible to get your kind in line, and maybe our next meeting won’t start with me incinerating you.” Assuming the Anatla haven’t already done so by then.

We drop Anoures off a kilometre from a major village on our path north again. Considering her strength and influence, she’ll have a crew of heqet sailing her towards whatever throne she sits in no time. The...

[KoJ] Interlude VI: Blizzard

A vast wall of white blanketed the horizon.

What breaks in the cloud she could see, shifted slowly from right to left, churning and deforming constantly. Only the sheer distance, and the winds whipping past Ceph herself, revealed that apparent laggard motion to be deceptive.

Ceph, along with the mercenaries that replaced her team, ran across open plains toward the storm. Frigid gust...

[KoJ] Chapter 61: Faltering

The truck bounds through the thicket, often needing the khirig to push it out of the mud when it gets stuck. I take to following from above; the constant bouncing is unpleasant. This continues for a while, before they come out on another road and their speed returns.

Soon, it rolls into a stop outside a lone nest with no others in sight. The structure is small — which is strange to cons...

[KoJ] Chapter 60: Reconsideration

I slither through the bush just out of sight of the dozen khirig lying in wait.

After they decided to foolishly take on the forces greater than themselves, they had asked me to leave. In no uncertain terms, they made sure I knew I wasn’t welcome… and yet they still held back from attacking, which is better than the rest of the sapients I’ve come across.

Of course, I could hard...

[KoJ] Chapter 59: Dispossession

After the slaughter of albanic soldiers, as the khirig calls them, I follow the sapient deep into the woods. Knowing just how startled these creatures can get upon seeing my ability to fly or shear distortions into space, I limit myself to slither over the earth.

If only the me of a dozen hunts ago saw me now. I wouldn’t believe it. It’s not that I have grown to enjoy slithering acros...

[KoJ] Chapter 58: Receptiveness

After leaving the hive, I decided not to follow another train. I saw plenty in passing, but opted to veer away. As much as I want to overhear conversations, it was best to keep away from being discovered until I’d gained at least some distance.

I want to start again. Without an entire hive of sapients chasing me down. If I was to be discovered right after leaving, I’d just leave mysel...

[KoJ] Interlude V: Meja

“The city froze. It was quiet, but unmissable. A hiss struck at everyone’s hearts, no matter where they were or what they were doing. Gripping them like we were all only a moment away from having the fangs of a beast taste our lifeblood. I thought for sure it was our end. It was just as bad as the shatter that destroyed the mountain, only this was close. It was right next to us, and our bod...

[YF] Chapter 245: Defender

Leal and I hurry to sketch the last of our respective inscriptions. The both of us could remain here for weeks and there would probably still be parts to copy, but we’ve already filled all of her notebooks. Besides, we should already have all the important parts.

I pass Leal my notes along with the pencil I didn’t end up using. She, for some reason, glares at the small drawing tool. I...

[KoJ] Chapter 57: Forsake

The return of the strong spatial ripple is surprising. Especially considering it reappeared without my moving. That very fact clears away my original thought of it being a natural part of the cavern.

While I didn’t know what caused it, it had remained present both in this cavern and the Other Side. When riding on the spine of that train, it had disappeared so quickly because of some shi...

[YF] Chapter 244: Suppression

I stop a pace before where the beam last appeared. All traces of it are completely gone, and even as I look over the glowing pyramid to the sides, I cannot see any marks indicating its origin.

Before I instigate the beam again, my gaze passes over the pyramids. I stand at about the half-way point of structure besides me, though it is harder to be exact than most because of both its size a...

[KoJ] Chapter 56: Intelligence

Dozens of sapients crowd together in the tight space of the nest I find myself. They murmur amongst themselves, concerned, but not quite fearful of the lockdown. I hear questions thrown around. Speculation about the cause.

None realise that the very thing they are hiding from slithers beneath the cluttered mess of objects stacked at the side of the room. Hiding from them here is rather ea...

[KoJ] Chapter 55: Misjudgement

For a couple of flying rodents, this sapient pair is annoyingly persistent.

I'm now nearing the end of the abandoned region, but regardless of the rocks I weave between, the obscuring broken overhangs I slide beneath, or the speed at which I slip through them all, the fake-winged rats keep on my tail. Soon enough, there will be more of the creatures swarming this place, and I’d rather n...

[YF] Chapter 243: Pyramids

The wind ceases.

It is a gradual change, but before we know it, there’s not even the slightest of breeze disturbing the air we fly through. The waters are equally still. Lacking so much as a ripple, they surround the the hundreds of pyramids like a silver mirror. If I had not seen the depths or pillars that lurk below, I would believe the double-sided pyramids were floating.

The v...

[KoJ] Chapter 54: Empathy

The two in my grasp couldn’t have more different reactions.

Nixie screams as she dangles from my fangs. Her five free tentacles not pulled taught by her own weight flick around in a desperate attempt to grapple something solid. She scrapes against the cliff-wall, but can’t seem to gain a grip. She is delirious; uncomprehending of her safety.

Asmis, comparatively, is inexplicably...