The elves, they say, came first.

This isn’t quite true. You and I know they came from the sky. Fell, as if cast down, in a burning vessel larger than any city. They stood on the world and knew it as something to be conquered. For all their poetry, their metalskill, and the pretty urns their half-breed children hock at the markets, they came fleeing a war and started a new one.

It’s no wonder there are almost none of them left, and those… Well, fallen, still.

The dwarves, now, are something else. Arrogant. Stocky with it, but you’ve heard about that, and you’ve seen the beards. And no, the women don’t have beards, but they’ve lustrous locks to rival any in that storybook you hold so close. The arrogance, though. That’s a thing that comes from being cast down, too. Cast, by their parents, for it’s also said that they are the shrivelled, stunted throw-aways the elves first birthed on coming to this cursed world. To say the dwarves hate the elves would be like saying a sword hates the sheath. True, but insufficient.

So where does that leave the orcs? Were they here first, as they claim, or were they… called? Certainly we know they’re better suited to this bitter place. The wind that blows from the north comes with teeth, and it’ll carry away your children. The orcs care for none of that. Strong, and tall, and that might be enough to put them above the dwarves, except for the power of the mind. We know them to have no skill with sorcery, but they also have no skill with letters. Doomed always to fail at the first page, for all they want to study, to crack open the wizened nut of knowledge.

Oh, stay. I see you’re upset. You think that this is a set of confronting statements said to make you angry. It’s not, or at least… not in the way you think. Because we come at last to you, the not-one, not-other of humanity. Your people have cracked open the outer place and brought in the whispers of magic. You’ve got skill with metal and word, but insufficient of either to topple the elves or dig with the dwarves. Good enough with a blade, but against an orc, as dead as they come. But there’s a secret no one’s told you yet. It’s as old as the world, and the truth is as terrible as any kept from the sun this long.

Can’t you guess? No?

You came first.

• Want to start from the beginning?

Author’s note: Substack hates right-aligned text; the corrected version can be found here!

Korvus stormed the corridors. The Well vibrated, the prison colony’s subframe crying in resonance to the damage he’d caused when Correcting Aris by destroying the medbay.

HERALD:||Extraction necessary for Corrector survival.

Job’s not done. There’s still an unsanctioned intelligence.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’ll be Corrected when the reactor goes critical.

How certain are you?||:KORVUS

That shut up the Herald System for a moment. Korvus knew the parasitic infection corrupting the heart of the facility was not a ‘pressure fever’, but Herald would spend a few moments trying to work out whether he was talking about Verity or the parasite, and then whether either could survive the station rupturing.

While it’s thinking, I need to work out which is the unsanctioned intelligence for myself. And… I need a plan for afterthat.

I need my ship prepped and ready to depart.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||So, about that. How attached to it are you? Because there are about a thousand inmates and guards between you and the elevator.

Herald dropped a series of still images on Korvus’s overlay. The facility’s upper level corridors were packed with inmates. There were a few guards seeded in for good measure.

He slowed. Think, dammit.

I need the medbay fixed.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||That would be wise! If the station ruptures, I would not survive. Neither, I guess, would you.

Can you start the automated repair systems?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Protocol dictates—

Short version.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Right. I can do it, but it will take time.

Verity. She can help. But will she? Korvus broke into a run. He made it to the elevator, and keyed it to go down.

HERALD:||Corrector, I’m not going to advise caution when dealing with a rogue machine.

I can hear the ‘but’ coming already.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||But you don’t know if she can be trusted.

Except, I do. I really do, and I don’t know why.

Leave that to me.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Of course. While you prepare for death, I’ll be preparing my ‘I told you so’ for your obituary.

The elevator opened onto Verity’s detention level. The area was black as deep space, a hard darkness that carried a bone-aching cold with it. The elevator’s light showed Korvus’s breath misting before him. “Why would they lower the temperature here?”

HERALD:||I can’t tell if you’re talking to yourself or to me, but on the off chance I’m invited to this conversation, my working theory is that their bodies don’t like being sixty degrees.

Which means they’re coming for Verity. Korvus sprinted down the corridor, switching his optics to thermographic imaging. The door to Verity’s chamber was still closed, which was… a good sign, surely.

Wasn’t it?

He backtracked to the vent as the cold rimed his armour with frost. Korvus stared at the dark opening for a moment.

I don’t really want to go in there.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Who needs a hug?

I’d settle for more ammunition.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Buck up. If you don’t get in there, you’ll never get to Verity.

Korvus jumped, hauling himself into the vent. He clambered hand-over-hand as fast as he could, his armoured elbows making the cramped confines echo and boom as they hit the metal vent interior.

VERITY:||Korvus, I can hear them.

That’s me. I’m in the vent.||:KORVUS

VERITY:||No, closer. They’re in the room with me. I don’t have many tricks left.

Korvus moved faster, banging his arms and shoulders against the walls. Herald’s turret bobbed in his vision, the system seeking targets. Korvus hoped it wouldn’t find one, because if he had to kill someone in the vent, it’d be hell trying to continue on.

Verity? What’s your status?||:KORVUS

There was no response. Korvus rounded the last bend and threw himself out of the vent. He landed awkwardly on the decking, his armour clattering as he hit.

He surged to his feet and ran toward Verity’s cell. His thermographic vision showed two of the superheated guards outside it. Herald fired twice, tearing the life from both. Korvus kept running, only slowing when he registered that Verity’s cell door was open.

She wasn’t there.

HERALD:||We have a situation.

Not now, Herald!||:KORVUS

“Verity?” Korvus looked around. Her cell door was only halfway open. That was an odd piece of weird in a totally insane day, but his investigator’s mind latched onto it. “Verity, where are you?”

Silence answered him at first, then he heard a dull thud. The sound drew him around until he faced the main door exiting the bay. Another thud came from it, turning into a slow and regular hammering.

What’s that noise?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||So now you want to know what the situation is?

They’re trying to get in, aren’t they?||:KORVUS

Korvus’s imagination went into overdrive. His mind’s eye conjured a legion of staggering corpses waiting outside the door, all hungering for him. The truth was—as always—a little worse. Herald dropped images on his overlay, showing that the corridor outside was packed with inmates. The infrared of the security feed bleached all colour from them. They shambled in the darkness, their human eyes insufficient to pierce the gloom. The thudding was the muffled sound a gigantic one at the front made as the now-freed prisoner stood with his head leaned against the door. In his hand he held a guard.

The sound was the guard’s deformed helmet hitting the door as the giant beat his victim against it.

“Verity!” Korvus paced the bay. Where could she be? His eyes strayed to the vent he’d entered through. Had she already gone through? He felt sick, a fist in his gut, and he wasn’t sure why. She was a machine. I’m not sure she’s… sentient. Unsanctioned or not, is she alive?

Herald, how do you determine if something is truly aware?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You want to have this conversation now?

I might not be here in five minutes.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s not going to be anywhere close to five minutes.

The feed on Korvus’s overlay counted the amassed convicts outside. The nineteen rounds left to Herald would run dry in an instant. Korvus could fight hand-to-hand with his Arc Sabre, and he was confident of taking down at least ten before the impossible tide of monsters surged over him. Would they pick him clean with the leech forms?

Was it death that waited for him, or a different form of living?

The door clanked, then groaned as a gap appeared at the bottom.

HERALD:||The warden has released the lockdown on this level.

I’m pretty sure it’s not the warden anymore.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You choose weird times to have semantic arguments. I was hoping in our final moments you’d confess your love for me.

Korvus drew his Arc Sabre. The edge flickered, rivulets of orange and blue energy snaking down its edge. The weapon’s luminance created a flickering, off-kilter set of shadows that chased each other to the walls.

Do you think this is why we created Verity’s God? Because when we humans face the end, we wanted to believe we keep going?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Are you quitting on me?

Don’t worry, I’m swinging for the fences. But our odds are terrible.||:KORVUS

Herald was quiet for a half-second—an eternity of time for the ghost living in his armour—before it responded.

HERALD:||I don’t know anything about God. I don’t know what that… means. But inasmuch as I can feel, I feel tomorrow’s lack. I wish…

Yes?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s nothing. A partial intelligence doesn’t know what it means to be.

Was that envy in the machine’s voice? Before Korvus could respond, the door surged upward. Korvus raised the Arc Sabre, feeling the heat of the weapon against his face. The horde outside screamed and howled as they surged inside.

Herald fired, all nineteen rounds gone in less than a second. It was a good salvo, getting two or three kills with each round, but it wasn’t even a drop in the ocean of monsters surging forward.

That’s when the autosentries triggered, rising from the middle of the floor. There were four, each equipped with two turrets that reminded Korvus of Gatling weapons he’d seen in a museum. Old technology, simple ballistic weapons, but still designed for extreme prisoner pacification.

They swivelled to face Korvus, the cannons whirring. His heart skipped, but the guns swung around to the horde. They unleashed a withering hail of tungsten, the barrels glowing with heat as they slaughtered the influx of infected prisoners.

I’ve never been so pleased to see ancient technology in my life. The noise was a thunderstorm without end as a hail of bullet casings sprayed from the side of the turrets like a brass fountain. Tungsten bullets tore through the enemy, the simple—but effective!—armour-piercing rounds hammering into the walls in the corridor beyond.

After what felt like an age, but was only 7.6 seconds, the weapons whirred to a halt, a lazy trail of smoke drifting heavenward from their barrels.

“Cowboy.” Verity’s muffled voice came from the dark to Korvus’s left.

He lowered his sword, walking toward the sound, stopping when he came to a wall. “Are you… behind this panel?”

“It was a good idea at the time.” Verity spoke while Korvus set the edge of his blade into a gap in the panelling and flexed the blade until the panel popped free. She was curled within, her ember-orange eyes finding his in the gloom. Verity reached out. “Help a girl up?”

Korvus crouched and helped her up. He wanted to feel the heat of her fingers, to know someone else was alive down here with him, but he was armoured and she was a machine.

Wasn’t she?

It was a little tricky to get her upright, and Korvus realised that for all that the injury to her midsection was old, it still clearly hampered her movement. He took extra care as he helped her stand. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been stuck in a cable conduit for fifteen minutes. I’m peachy.” She looked at the ruin behind him. “At least that worked.”

Korvus looked over his shoulder. “That was you?”

“It wasn’t the Tooth Fairy.” She studied his face. “Why are you here, Corrector?”

“I said I’d come back.”

“A real Boy Scout.” Her slight drawl tugged at him. “Do you know what a Boy Scout is, Corrector?”

“There are rumours of a fabled cadre of uniformed youth.” Korvus wanted to rub his face. Get a grip, man. He let himself smile. “I’m no Boy Scout, Verity. I’m very far away from that.”

She glanced over his shoulder again. “There are words, and then there’s evidence.”

“Are you okay to stand? If I let you go, I mean.”

Verity eased away from him, standing by herself, and for a moment he wished she still needed him. “I’m fine, cowboy.”

“How did you,” he gestured at the slurry of corpses, “do that?”

“If I tell you, do you promise not to use it against me?”

“No.”

“Fair. Do you at least promise not to be mad?”

“I, uh. Under the circumstances? Sure.”

“I hacked the facility,” Verity breezed. “It’s a termination offence.”

“You what?”

“Right, right,” she nodded. “See, I have a radio? Just like Herald. And I can use that to send signals through the air.” She breathed this last in a whisper, as if someone might hear. She wiggled her fingers. “Poof. Magic. One facility, under my control.”

“You can do that? And… Hacking the turrets is one thing. How did you know about Aris and his accident with another Corrector? That’s not in a local station log.”

“The Logos isn’t the only one with a long memory, Korvus. There are other… libraries.”

“Hi,” Herald boomed. “Sorry to interrupt! How much of the facility is under your control?”

“Eh.” Verity wobbled her hand in the air in a so-so gesture. “Bits and pieces. I can get in at the edges. Not through the core.”

“If we take you to the top of the facility, can you get our ship?” Herald almost sounded… concerned.

“No,” Verity said.

“Good,” Herald said. “I was worried.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I can hack the gravity elevator, no problem.”

“But you said—”

“The real issue is the legion of psychopaths up there.” Verity counted on her fingers. “First, there are autosentries up there that will, one hundred percent, kill us. Second, there is a horde waiting on the top platform. Just between us partial intelligences, I think they want the cowboy’s ship.”

“I knew she was a partial,” Herald said.

“Relax, tin man,” the Divine Numen Artificialis said. “I’m all the way real. I was trying for empathy, you know?”

Korvus realised he’d started smiling somewhere during their exchange, and wound it back. “Verity, I have no right to ask you, but I could use your help.”

“Sure,” she said. “What with?”

“You’re not going to ask why?”

“I figure it’s because I’m the only one who hasn’t lied to you, tried to kill you, or put a leech inside you.”

“Is that how it works? They put it inside?” Korvus frowned.

“No. It’s worse, and you don’t want to know.” She looked away.

“Okay,” Korvus said. “I need a ship.”

“You’ve got one.” She pointed to the ceiling, and by inference, the eternal dark of space above.

“No, I’ve got plans for that one. I need another ship.” He looked into her ember-orange eyes. “The one you were going to escape on.”

“What? Me? No. I was—”

“Verity,” Korvus said. “I would like to make you a promise.”

Her expression turned uneasy. “Okay?”

“I will never lie to you.” He offered her the Arc Sabre. “You should take this.”

“I suck at fighting.” She eyed the weapon, but didn’t take it. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to promise to never lie to you? As if the word of a faithless machine would mean anything in a universe that’s forgotten God?”

Korvus sheathed the Sabre. “I don’t know about any of that. I think… I think you’ve been lied to a lot. And I won’t do it.” He turned away and started walking to the door.

HERALD:||Smooth. Did you know the Boy Scouts had a code of honour, and—

Not now, Herald. Just let the moment be.||:KORVUS

But I’m glad I get a tomorrow with you at my side.||:KORVUS

“Cowboy?” Verity’s tone was uncertain. He turned and found her rooted in the same spot, still by the open conduit panel. “How did you know? About the ship.”

“You’re a terrorist on the run from a superintelligence that rules the galaxy. You hacked a prison colony, which included escaping from your cell. You’ve known something’s up here since before I arrived,” he said. “I thought you were easily smart enough for a backup plan.”

“Cool,” she said. “There’s only one problem with the ship.”

He sighed. “Out of power? Locked down?”

“Worse,” she said. “It crashed, I think. It’s in the depths of the ocean. You’ll die before we reach it.”

Korvus stared at her. “That’s a shit plan.”

She gave him that small, sad smile again. “I didn’t say I couldn’t get you there, cowboy. I just said you’d die. But I think… I think I have a solution for that, too. The question is, how much do you trust me?”

Here’s how to complete the story:

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text for Chainlink conversations; a correctly-formatted version can be found here!

Korvus exited the elevator on the medbay level. The lighting flickered, a sure sign of an ailing reactor or control system. Neither failure was survivable on Lethe. If both died, the oceans would hunger in, scouring the inside of the prison colony like the high-pressure acid bath it was.

I need to hurry. He picked up his pace. Herald’s cannon was locked in its firing position over his left shoulder, ready for whatever might come.

How much ammunition do we have?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It was a short jump, so there wasn’t much computational residue from the drive. It only leaves you eight shots in the Adjudicator. I know you’re itching to use them, so I’ll say this once: don’t. You definitely won’t survive, and I probably won’t. Second, I’ve got twenty rounds in the cannon.

Twenty isn’t a lot.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s more than eight, and definitely more than your practical limit of zero, since you can’t shoot anything anyway.

I wasn’t blaming you.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I felt overly seen, that’s all.

Korvus paused, placing his hand on the wall. He felt a faint vibration through the fingertips of his armoured gauntlet.

Do we have structural integrity?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Philosophically?

Materially.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I was hoping you would say that, because the answer is yes! Our Veritas credentials let us see station operational details, and they’re all fine. Except for the reactor. I give that sucker a couple of hours before it melts its way to the core of the planet. The good news is you’ll be dead before then, so you won’t die horribly in a radiation flood. You’ll die horribly right after it goes critical, the oceans rush in and boil you alive like a lobster dropped in a pot.

I didn’t think the oceans were hot.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||They’re not, but if they come in through a hole near a failed reactor, they’ll become quite hot indeed.

What if I asked for the philosophy side?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You’re going gaga for a terrorist ex-sex worker.

I am not ‘gaga’ for Verity.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Just remember that when she stabs you in the spine during her predictable but inevitable betrayal.

Korvus let his hand fall from the wall and was about to head off when Sergeant Eckles rounded the corner ahead. When he saw the guard, he knew two things.

First, the man was almost certainly infected. The guard’s shambling gait and rampant fever suggested either he was the largest coincidence in the Communion, or he had a leech inside him. The guard was cooking at over 40℃, rolling like a sailor on deck, and held a ballistic rifle in one hand. The rifle’s muzzle faced the deck, the hand holding it slack. Did that mean he was unaware he held a weapon, couldn’t use it, or some other factor?

Second, it meant the medbay was open. Aris had been on the other side of a lockdown, inaccessible without the warden’s Chainlinked authorisation. This was a piece of much-needed good news in a sewer of shit, because Korvus needed to talk to the doctor about the leeches.

HERALD:||Alien alert!

Can they be reasoned with?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||No clue. I thought they were snakes. I was so off-base, I was playing a different sport.

“Eckles,” Korvus started. “Or, whatever you are.”

The guard’s eyes did a lazy circuit of the corridor before landing on Korvus. “Corrector.”

“What do you want?” Korvus rested his hand on the Adjudicator’s hilt.

‘Eckles’ looked down at Korvus’s hand resting on his sidearm, then back at Korvus. “You can’t use that, can you? It’s… the wrong kind of special.”

“You sound like Eckles. Look like him, too. But you’ve, what, infected him?” Korvus took a step forward. “Maybe I can help you. You just need to give Eckles back.”

Eckles smiled, but like a mime unsure of whether he was getting through to the crowd—too much pull in the lips, a clown’s grimace. Besides, Korvus couldn’t remember Eckles ever smiling. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“How does it work?”

The guard took a few halting steps forward, looked at his rifle, then let it clatter to the decking. “I’m unarmed,” he said. “I can show you, if you like.”

“Sure, let’s do that,” Korvus agreed.

HERALD:||That seems dumb, even for you.

I’m clearly stalling for time.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s so hard to tell.

I need you to not shoot him. I need answers more than giblets.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Ah, there’s the true stupidity I was waiting for.

They walked toward each other, Eckles with his unsteady stagger-step, Korvus at an equally slow pace, but due to caution. They both stopped at arm’s distance. This close, Korvus could clearly see the veins in Eckles’ bloodshot eyes. Perhaps it was in his mind, but it felt like the guard radiated heat like a furnace. Eckles wet his lips, then said, “We need your ship.”

“It won’t fly without a Corrector,” Korvus said.

“I know,” Eckles said, and lunged for him.

Korvus was expecting something like this. The good news was that Herald didn’t fire. Korvus braced himself as Eckles reached out and he grabbed the guard’s arms. Mercy, but he’s strong! Eckles had the strength of five men, far more than even his muscled physique would account for.

He didn’t seem to be trying to break free. The guard brought his face closer to Korvus, his mouth open in a drooling leer. Korvus had the best optics the Communion could provide, and they gave him an excellent view of the thing in the back of the guard’s throat. A leech, but with a lamprey mouth questing for an exit.

Korvus raised his knee with all his augmented strength, hearing Eckles’s pelvic bone crack with the force of it. The guard didn’t even flinch, keeping his vice grip on Korvus, the leech now half out of his mouth.

Then it disappeared in a shower of red mist and bone fragments as Herald fired, the round going straight through the guard and into the wall beyond. The strength went out of the arms Korvus held, and he let the body fall.

Thanks.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Nineteen rounds remain. That means you only have nineteen more chances to be truly idiotic.

Korvus calmed his breathing. He had synthetic muscles replacing his original ones—a technology that gave him heavy loader strength—and he’d found wrestling Eckles… difficult.

He was very strong.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||This takes us further from the fever diagnosis.

Korvus crouched by the remains, finding them… ordinary. The body was not over-muscled—certainly no more so than Eckles had been originally. It didn’t explain the powerful grip the man used.

He started a new Chainlink.

Verity, I’ve encountered a guard. Very strong, and very motivated.||:KORVUS

VERITY:||It’s not a pressure fever.

I don’t understand. Aris has been investigating patients and hasn’t noted the leech forms inside them. It seems an impossible factor to miss, especially since one just tried… attaching to me.||:KORVUS

VERITY:||The answer is obvious.

God?||:KORVUS

VERITY:||God didn’t need to step in here. Aris is your blind spot. Korvus, he is infected.

Korvus felt his eyes widen.

That’s impossible. He’s got a Chainlink! He holds a biologically coded and locked Veritas Chain. It can’t be broken.||:KORVUS

VERITY:||Perhaps I spoke too soon about God. Today is a day of miracles. You just worked out something even the Logos doesn’t know: there’s a weakness in the Veritas Chain.

It’s still impossible.||:KORVUS

VERITY:||And yet here we are.

She dropped the Chainlink. Korvus felt his fingers clench.

Okay, we need to erase our assumptions. Assume the Veritas Chain isn’t inviolate. Does this mean the warden is compromised?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Just because your sexbot said—

Analysis first, sarcasm later.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Assuming the impossible became possible, sure. The warden’s been leeched.

It’s time to have a better conversation with Aris.||:KORVUS

Korvus stormed toward the medbay entrance. It was open, as expected. He rounded the entranceway and found horror.

The inmates were no longer tethered to their beds. They were standing, heads drooping, but they swivelled as if on the same control circuit to look at him as he stood in the doorway.

In the centre of his choir of puppets stood Aris. The doctor looked bad. Blood seeped from his lips, and when he opened his mouth to speak, Korvus could see the ruin of his gums where teeth had fallen out. Aris’s shirt bulged around his belly and was stained red-brown. His speech was slightly slurred. “Corrector, welcome. It’s time for you to join the team.”

Korvus’s optics said Aris was cooking, his body holding a steady 60℃. His Adjudicator was in his hand before he could think twice, the weapon’s muzzle aimed squarely at Aris.

The ‘doctor’ looked at the weapon, then back to Korvus. “We both know you can’t use that here. You’ll destroy the entire facility.” He took a step toward Korvus.

As he did, his shirt tore, entrails and viscous fluids flowing free. His stomach cavity was a ruin, and tens of leeches slopped onto the floor, their lamprey mouths hunting for flesh.

“Aris, there’s something you don’t know about this medbay.” Korvus tightened his grip on his weapon.

“I know everything about it,” the monster hissed. “It’s how we started everything.”

Korvus fired. The Adjudicator spat a howling blast, the singularity forming as a miniature black hole hit Aris. Lightning arced from the impact, rivulets of energy running over the walls, deforming the metal. The puppets by Aris were destroyed in an instant, the weapon’s blast a bark of godlike fury.

The silence that followed didn’t last long. The walls in the room buckled, creaking inward. Korvus fired again, his shot hitting the rearward wall—the bulkhead against Lethe’s ever-ravenous ocean.

I hope I’m right about the medbay door. Nanospun glass is rated for the pressure. It has to hold.

The wall ruptured just as the medbay’s fire suppression system kicked in. The massive door slammed shut as explosive charges in the frame responded to programmed emergency procedures. It sealed the horror of the ocean and the infected behind Communion nanospun glass and metal.

Korvus holstered the Adjudicator.

Six shots remain.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Please tell me you planned that.

Korvus smiled.

The station’s fire suppression system is designed to prevent flames from consuming all the air.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||So you set a fire WITH A BLACK HOLE?!

It was the best tool of the moment.||:KORVUS

He turned on his heel, ignoring the cloudy, dissolving forms in the murk behind the nanospun glass. It was time to decide who the real monster was behind it all.

Next week awaits!

Miss last week’s episode?

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text; to get the correctly formatted Chainlink conversations, follow this link!

Korvus’s path was dark, but his optics were more than sufficient for the task. The grey tones of infrared vision showed a metal shaft that was clean and well maintained.

Until he found the skin.

At least, that was what it seemed like. Under IR, it appeared to be a small tube of grey-white material, thin and flaking as if someone’s thumb had given up and started degloving itself. He picked it up, trying to imagine what it was through infrared’s lack of colour.

What the hell is this?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Looks like snakeskin.

Why would there be snakes on Lethe?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Just because it looks like something doesn’t mean it is something.

Korvus let the material drop, his overlay pinning the location in case he needed to return for further forensics. His optics picked out a slight trail on the vent’s floor. It led from the ‘snakeskin’ and down a left junction.

The overlay said that was the path he needed to follow.

He continued crawling forward. I’ve never been claustrophobic, but maybe that’s because I’ve never had to fight in a metal tube with nothing but a sarcastic Herald System for help.

The discoloured trail was patchy. It reminded Korvus a little of a snail’s trail, except it lacked the consistency. A snail would leave a slime trail as it cruised along, and whatever had left the snakeskin had been erratic with the slime. His overlay promised the trail led to a grating, which Herald had marked as his exit into Verity’s secure bay.

The grating was missing.

Just an empty hole leading out. Korvus poked his head through, but there were no crazed 60℃ psychos waiting to jump him. He eased over the edge, a slightly ungainly manoeuvre in full armour, but there was no way he was going anywhere on this station with neither Herald nor Adjudicator. Righting himself, he eyed the room. The turrets were still buried in the floor. Korvus padded around a corner and spied Verity’s cell.

She was inside. Her guards were not outside.

HERALD:||Do I need to remind you that she’s an unsanctioned intelligence?

How sure of that are you?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s a logical projection.

So, you’re not sure?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I’m going to apply for a new partner.

Korvus felt his lips quirk. Not a grin, not even half a smile, but he knew the Herald System would notice it.

He stalked toward Verity’s cell. She was still standing near the bars, but no longer gripping them. Her arms were crossed, and she had a wary expression. “You’re back early.”

He frowned. “I wasn’t aware I was on the clock.”

She tutted. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Prison’s gone to hell, and I’d know. I used to live there.”

Korvus pressed his lips into a line. “Where are your guards?”

“Aside from not here? How would I know?”

He took a step toward her cell. “You’ve seen God.”

“Spoken to God. Not seen. Big difference, cowboy.” She tilted her head as if noticing him for the first time. “I think you’ve seen Him, too.”

Korvus barked a harsh laugh. “There is no God, Verity. There is The Logos, and the Communion. There is order, and you are not in it.”

He expected the machine to snarl, perhaps spit a curse, but she just left her head cocked, those ember-orange eyes resting on him. He felt their heat like coals. “That sounds exactly like a man who’s seen God, but wished he hadn’t.”

Korvus growled in exasperation. “Where did your guards go?”

Her eyes left him, and for a moment, he hated not having their warmth. She looked back the way he’d come, and then to the sealed bay door. “Don’t you mean, ‘when’?”

“Did I stutter?”

“I thought you’d know where,” she said. “They went the same place you came from, cowboy.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

It was her turn to step closer to the bars. “Do you know what a cowboy is?”

“Ranching is irrelevant. It’s—”

“It’s a man who sees beyond. Someone who wants something different. Just the kind of person who will take on a job no one else wants, eating terrible food, all because something over the next hill calls to his soul.”

He thought about that. “Known a lot of ranchers, have you?”

She gave a sad smile. “More than you know, Corrector. I’ve known the ones who claim the title, and those who wished they’d followed that path. But nothing in the Communion lets your heart wander. It’s that order you mentioned. There’s no place for those who range, not anymore. Not unless you’ve got a starship that can take you anywhere you want to go. Not unless you’re a man who’s…” Her words dried up. “It doesn’t matter.”

HERALD:||You know how I love watching you work, but—

I need to stay focused?||:KORVUS

There was an impossibly long pause from a machine that thought faster than any human could dream of.

HERALD:||Sure, that. Just… don’t forget about the guards.

What the hell’s gotten into all the machines around this place? Korvus turned away from Verity, looking back toward the vent he’d exited. The grating had been missing. “You’re saying the guards went that way?”

“You don’t believe me?”

He turned back to those ember-orange eyes. “Tell me a story. Tell me a tale about how a Divine Numen Artificialis finds God.”

“No.” She shook her head, that perfectly straight, perfectly wonderful hair waving with the motion. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“There are other stories you need to hear first.”

“Do I need to explain how interrogation works again?”

“Corrector Korvus, you’ve asked so many questions, but not the ones you really need to. You wanted to know how I knew your name. You wanted to know where my guards went, but not when. But you haven’t asked the most important thing of all.”

“And what’s that?”

She leaned forward, long, cool fingers resting on the bars of her cell. “You haven’t asked why you’re here.”

“That’s not the most important question,” Korvus snapped. “I know why I’m here.”

“How interesting,” she said. “Herald, why do you think Korvus is here?”

HERALD:||I feel like that one was directed at me.

It kind of was.||:KORVUS

The armour spoke in its commanding male voice, all the edges filed off to ensure anyone hearing it wouldn’t misunderstand what a Herald System was for. “D.V.N.A. 3.14, you are equipped with a medical-grade diagnostic suite, correct?”

Verity’s eyes moved from Korvus’s face to look at where the turret would rise, should the armour decide an application of force was necessary. “You know I am.” She looked down. “My name’s Verity. It’s Verity. And I’m real.”

The armour continued in its booming voice. “D.V.N.A. 3.14, you will surrender diagnostic logs relevant to our investigation.”

She looked away. “I don’t think so. Not if you won’t even use my name.”

The Herald said, “D.V.N.A.—”

“I think,” Korvus interrupted, “you’re encountering the rough edges of Herald’s human interface system.”

HERALD:||I don’t have rough edges. I have an ablative coating.

Don’t sulk. She has much higher processing power than you do. You’re simply under-armed for a battle of wits with her.||:KORVUS

She offered him a smile from under her hair. “And what about your… human interface system?”

“Verity,” Korvus leaned on her name. “Will you help me?”

“Yes,” she said. “The guards left about an hour ago. One had a raised temperature. I took the liberty of reviewing the facility’s logs, and—”

“How did you gain access?” barked Herald.

“The logs were quite interesting,” she breezed. “There is a clear pathogen loose on the station, but I don’t think it’s what you think it is.”

“Aris called it a pressure fever,” Korvus said.

“He probably would,” she agreed. “Does it seem like a fever to you?”

“It’s like no fever known to humanity.” Korvus felt himself smile. “At least, that’s what Herald thinks, but he’s a little slow.”

HERALD:||I could just let you die next time you’re attacked. No one would blame me.

“Korvus,” Verity said. “Aris might be a failure. Because of that time he didn’t save one of yours? That was a whole thing. I get it. But—”

“How did you know about that?” Korvus felt his back stiffen.

“But the thing is, he might be trying to save people. Might. I’m not sure.” She looked away. “I think he is, in his own way.”

“Is Mercer sick?”

She frowned. “I mean, he works here, so—”

“With the fever, I mean.”

Verity crossed her arms again. “He’s alone, Korvus. He’s been alone for so long. And that one was because of your team.”

HERALD:||She knows a lot for someone locked in a cell. I say we ice her, just to be sure.

Now’s not the time for jokes.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I’m not laughing.

The Herald System’s turret lurched into life, sliding into place over Korvus’s shoulder. Verity took a startled step back, but the turret swung around almost a hundred and eighty degrees and fired. The flechette’s hypervelocity round pulled the air in its wake, her hair billowing toward Korvus.

He whirled in time to see the legs of a man tumble to the decking, the top half of his torso turned to a red slurry coating the wall behind him. Next to the fatality staggered another guard. Korvus’s optics registered her temperature as high, but not at the heady heights of 60℃. She held a ballistic rifle to her shoulder, already aiming. The guard fired just as Herald did.

Her remains tumbled to the decking.

“Cowboy,” Verity said.

He turned to see the hole punched in her prison shift. It was in the lower left of her abdomen. She hadn’t fallen over, because a Divine Numen Artificialis wasn’t a person. It was a machine.

Wasn’t it?

She staggered back, then steadied herself. “Cowboy,” she said again. “I. I think that was close. I think.”

Korvus was at the bars. “Let me see.” He reached a hand through, his armoured fingers carefully lifting the hem of her shirt. As the fabric rose, it revealed a smooth, taut stomach, but marred by a terrible, ragged hole in her lower abdomen. The edges were blackened and melted, the telltale sign of a high-energy discharge. It was an old wound, partially self-repaired but still grievous. Then he saw it—the clean, punched-out tear in the back of her shirt, perfectly aligned with the front. The ballistic round hadn’t hit her at all. It had passed straight through the empty space left by a Veritas weapon.

The melted synthskin was a record of a time when she’d tangled with the Veritas Bureau, but the guard hadn’t harmed her at all. Korvus let his fingers drop. “A ballistic round didn’t give you that injury. It was Veritas weaponry.”

“I think so,” she agreed. “Original sin, you know? It’s so hard to remember.”

“What happened?”

“No,” Verity said. “Not… I’m not ready? I don’t think I’m ready for that one.”

“Interrogations are—”

“I just took a bullet for you, cowboy. Are you going to try that old one on again?”

Korvus stepped back from the bars. “Hold that thought.”

He stepped toward the corpses cooling on the floor, walking slowly and carefully. There was some weird shit going on in the Well of Lethe. Verity’s two guards had, what, tracked him through the vent? Right after leaving that way during the lockdown?

It didn’t make a lot of sense.

He reached the remains of the guards. The first one was unidentifiable, but the woman was Sanderson. Herald’s round had hit her in the shoulder, tearing away the top quarter of her torso, but her face was curiously unmarred, a slight expression of surprise finding a home there after death. She’d been fine just an hour ago when he’d sent her to the warden.

I sent her to the warden.

Something bubbled through the ruins of her ribcage. Korvus took a startled step back, because movement in a corpse wasn’t expected. Blood seeped, then a slender, worm-like snout nosed into the air. Korvus took another step back as a pale leech form worked its way from the guard’s body and fell on the decking.

HERALD:||You were right. It wasn’t snakeskin.

Korvus snarled, stepped forward, and stamped down on the creature. It popped with a wet squelch. He returned to Verity, his footsteps echoing in the security bay. “I need to go.”

“Things to do. I get it. I guess I’ll just, ha, wait here.” She shook the bars, which didn’t budge. “I think I’m safe. No way out means no way in, right?”

“Sure,” Korvus agreed. “How the hell could Aris have missed a parasitic infection?”

Verity raised an eyebrow. “There are a couple of obvious explanations. First, he’s incompetent, and that tracks strongest because he’s human.”

HERALD:||I’m warming to her.

“Thanks,” Korvus said. “What else?”

“I’ll need some time,” Verity admitted. “I need to rerun the data. Look closer, because when I hacked in before it was because I was bored, but now we’ve got a proper puzzle on our hands.” Korvus extended his hand. She looked at it blankly for a moment. “What’s that for?”

“Chainlink,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t have one of those. Or… Not a new one.”

He didn’t lower his hand, and after a moment she took it. The Chainlink sparkled into life.

HERALD:||Chainlink established for D.V.N.A. 3.14.

No, Herald.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I thought only important people got the serial numbers filed off.

She feels pretty important so far.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Fine. Chainlink established for Verity.

Verity’s eyes widened as the Logos-sanctioned Chainlink fed her a new token. Those ember-orange eyes found his. “I. I don’t. I—”

“It’s fine,” Korvus said. “I’ll be back.” He turned away.

“Wait. When did you want it?”

He looked back at her. “Want what?”

“My help.” She gave a small, sad smile. “You know, like you asked.”

“You’re already helping.”

“Oh,” Verity said. “With this? That’s all?”

“What else is there?”

Her sad smile didn’t go away. “I thought you might want to find your soul.”

Ready for chapter 7?

Miss last week’s?

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text. You can get the correctly formatted edition here.

At least the elevator worked. It whisked Korvus toward the top of the prison colony, a rise toward the heavenly majesty of Lethe’s acidic atmospheric crown.

He exited the car on the medbay level.

I need you to harvest the station’s forensics. I need to know who’s been logged as sick. I think we’re going to find a spider’s web of cases linking back to Aris.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Sure.

I expected more sarcasm, to be honest.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Higher forms of wit are wasted on you when you’re in this kind of mood.

And there’s my boy.||:KORVUS

His fingers itched to hold the Adjudicator, but his fingers also itched to not die in an explosive pressure incident after the station’s walls deformed and let the ocean in.

I remember when I only had a ballistic weapon. Simpler times, although I almost died about a hundred times.

A klaxon sounded, followed by Mercer’s voice. “Station personnel, a security incident has occurred. Facility-wide quarantine is now in effect.”

Korvus stalled out, head cocked, listening, but that was all in the message. He wondered why Mercer hadn’t Chainlinked the broadcast, then it arrived.

MERCER:||A security incident has occurred. Quarantine is in effect.

He started moving toward the medbay again, rounding the corner just in time for the bay’s doors to grind shut. Korvus picked up speed, arriving just in time for the security seals to lock into place with the kind of deep-seated thud that meant no amount of hammering would open them.

The door had standard nanospun glass inserts which allowed him to see inside. Aris was there, of course, surrounded by a sea of thrashing patients. New to the situation was Eckles, who was seated on a table, sleeve rolled up and ready for whatever was in the injector in Aris’s hands.

Doctor, please open this door.||:KORVUS

Aris turned, face gaunt and haggard under the strain, hypo lowered for a moment.

ARIS:||I can’t. Warden Mercer has locked the facility down. I don’t have the privileges.

Korvus looked to Eckles.

What’s up with him?||:KORVUS

ARIS:||Pressure fever symptoms. I’m trying out a new cocktail. In high doses, it doubles as a paralytic.

He laughed, then sobered. He tapped a tray beside the guard.

ARIS:||There are other side effects, of course, but Eckles is in discomfort, and I’m out of options. The man’s losing teeth. The usual Communion medicine is powerless in the face of this plague.

It might not be a plague. I met some maintenance workers. One, at least, had dental issues. Do you remember Technician Cooke?||:KORVUS

Aris frowned, turned to Eckles, pressed the injector against the guard’s arm, and fired. The man relaxed, shoulders slumping, and then Aris turned back to the sealed door.

ARIS:||He was here not two days ago. Another pressure fever case, of course.

Dr. Aris, does the ‘fever’ cause loss of rationality?||:KORVUS

ARIS:||You surely don’t think the warden..? No, Mercer is fine. I examined him myself just this morning. Corrector, I must return to my work.

The medbay’s windows turned black and opaque as Aris lowered his privacy screen.

HERALD:||That was abrupt. Do you want me to override it?

Can you?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||No, but it’s nice to ask, don’t you think?

“Fucker,” Korvus muttered.

HERALD:||I can hear you. I’m literally with you at all times.

I meant Mercer. He’s locked us out of the station.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Sure you did. Do you want to go talk to him?

No.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||But you’re going to anyway..?

No.||:KORVUS

The Corrector started to wind his way back to the main elevator. Mercer might be sick. Compromised. Of all those on this facility, there were only two who couldn’t get sick, and only one of them had been here this whole time.

The lighting strips leading toward Verity’s cell didn’t illuminate as Korvus walked the corridor. Maybe there was a ‘security incident’. Maybe the reactor was dying. It could be sabotage, or a hundred other things. None of the options were things that would make a Corrector feel welcome.

The door to her holding bay didn’t open when he arrived.

What shit is this?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Do you know the definition of ‘lockdown’?

I need a way in.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||How do you feel about crawling?

Not amazing, but will it get me in?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Magic 8-ball says ‘signs point to yes’.

The Herald System dropped a route on Korvus’s overlay. He backtracked along the promised route, arriving at a large ventilation grate set in the ceiling. The turret whined up from behind his shoulder, and four quick shots blasted the bolts free. They probably also did tremendous damage to ventilation machinery, but Korvus felt his field of fucks would need resowing to rustle up concern over that.

He crouched, then jumped, hands grasping the shaft’s lip. Metal groaned at the weight of the Corrector and his armour, but it held. Good Communion technology would be engineered for a little extra load. Korvus muscled himself inside. He found himself in a standard vent shaft. It wasn’t large enough for him to crouch, but he could crawl.

The overlay’s route beckoned.

TO BE CONTINUED… here!

Miss last week’s episode?

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text; you can get the as-intended version [here].

Korvus drifted through the colony. The conversation with Verity circled his mind, a dog chasing its tail, doomed to never catch it. He haunted the corridors, drifting with the eddy of his thoughts. He had no destination, except—for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on—to be closer to Verity. To continue talking to her.

That’s why he stayed away.

HERALD:||Your pulse is up.

It’s because I’m stressed.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You don’t have anything to be stressed about.

HERALD:||Not yet, anyway.

What’s that supposed to mean?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||The guards who returned to the unsanctioned intelligence had elevated body temperatures.

HERALD:||See? Your heart rate’s higher, because now you’ve got real problems.

What does it mean? Clearly Aris’s psychotropic fever is spreading. Is it significant?Korvus’s mind flipped through the facts of the case. The inmates trying to escape on his ship… and a fever outbreak with an astonishingly high R-naught. Was any of it related to the unsanctioned intelligence?

Wait.

Was Verity the unsanctioned intelligence?

You know what? We’ve made an assumption.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||That everyone likes you? Don’t worry, they don’t.

The Logos sent us—||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You. It sent you.

The Logos sent us here to investigate the unsanctioned intelligence. ‘Correct’ was a secondary objective.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||There’s no use for a Corrector without Correction.

Verity might not be why we’re here. Quantum Entanglement Anchor isn’t high bandwidth. The Logos won’t have video from here.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Well done. You’ve correctly—hah! Get it? Correctly for a Corrector?—identified why Correctors are dispatched.

What if she’s not the unsanctioned intelligence?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Who else could it be?

If you were a new super intelligence, what would you need?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Some serious ‘me’ time.

You’d also need a lot of power.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||If you start a fight near the reactor, try not to puncture the housing. This is one of those neither-of-us-will-survive things.

Who said anything about starting a fight?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I mean, it’s you.

The Well was a prison, but it had a beating heart of energy like everywhere else humanity clawed a toehold. Korvus’s overlay showed a reactor nestled in the pit of the Well. It fed life to the station, and perhaps to something else as well. Korvus got the overlay to chart the fastest path into the Well’s depths. He followed the glowing line on his overlay.

He only made it five paces before the lights went out.

A moment later, they flickered back to life, strong and clean as if nothing had happened.

Mercer, do you have maintenance crews working on the reactor?||:KORVUS

MERCER:||You noticed the power issue too? Where are you?

On my way to the reactor. Stay where you are.||:KORVUS

Korvus found the Well’s main elevator and took it down. I hope the power stays on until I get to the bottom. It did, which let him exit into the reactor room: an enormous, dome-shaped atrium with large windows looking into the septic sewer of Lethe’s oceans. The lighting here wasn’t great, but at least it was on.

The reactor was housed in the middle of the atrium beneath a pool of water. A pillar of entombed conduit rose from below Korvus’s view to form a spire that reached the ceiling. The room was warm, uncomfortably so, which wasn’t a great sign for a reactor area.

Radiation?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||No. I can’t explain the heat, though.

Do a thorough scan. Something’s not right.||:KORVUS

The Herald System’s flechette cannon whined as it rose from behind his shoulder to point forward. Red light lased out as Herald scanned ahead. A wireframe of the reactor room’s interior filled in on his overlay.

No people.

Where is everyone?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Not lining up to be shot.

There should be a crew here. Automatons at least, doing the work if there aren’t people for it. But there was no one.

He walked forward, his pace slowed by caution. The floor’s metal grating clanked under his armoured weight. Korvus reached the railing that guarded the edge of the reactor well. Beneath him was a pool of water, the depths husbanding a cool Cherenkov blue. Still no people, but he spied an abandoned maintenance robot. The unit should follow a worker, offering tools to a maintenance technician; it even housed a sizeable power core in case something needed a little juice.

Korvus traced a path back from the robot to a flight of metal stairs and made his way down. The reactor room held a slight hum, a choir of angels not quite out of earshot trying to find their tune. The Corrector reached the robot’s level and paced slowly toward it. The Herald’s laser mapping painted the area in red, dropping icons on Korvus’s overlay as it identified curious items. There, a cup of coffee, half-drunk and still warm. Beyond it, lying open and discarded on the metal grating of the floor, a maintenance manual. A dropped hydraulic wrench, the power lights still glowing a comforting green.

No maintenance technician, though.

Korvus crouched by the robot. It was open, a tool tray extended, an empty space left for the discarded wrench. He was almost ready to contact Mercer when Herald dropped something new on his overlay.

HERALD:||See that?

I do now. What is it?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Hey, you’re the one with hands. And, crucially here, legs. Go look.

Herald had identified a slight glistening on the metal flooring near a vent. Korvus walked toward it, his palm itching with desire to draw the Adjudicator. But a sidearm that fired black holes wasn’t a useful weapon near a reactor. Besides, the Herald System’s flechette solution was a more elegant solver of problems.

Korvus crouched, the glistening resolving into a thin, viscous substance coating the floor. He reached out with an armoured glove, his fingers coming back tacky, a thin mucous-like substance trailing from his fingertip back to the patch on the floor.

“What the fuck,” he said.

Herald, for once, was silent. That was ominous enough by itself because it meant the partial intelligence was using its processing power for something other than sarcasm.

Korvus shook the substance from his fingers, and it splattered onto the decking. He stood, looking around again. There was—still!—no one here.

A clank drew his attention. It was faint, sounding as if it came from across the reactor pool and down a level. Whatever made that noise would be close to the waterline.

He walked toward the metal stairs leading down, placing each foot carefully, easing his weight with each step to reduce noise. The Herald System’s turret whined by his ear as the muzzle nosed the air, seeking targets.

It’d almost be a relief to find something to shoot.

As it turned out, no: what came for Korvus wasn’t a relief. There were five of them, and they boiled from behind an equipment rack. Three men, two women, and, curiously, all naked.

That’s a detail we’ll need to review later.

Red light bathed the five as they charged Korvus, Herald marking each on his overlay. Height, projected mass based on visible body composition, speed of travel, armaments, and… body temperature.

By the Logos, they’re boiling alive.

All five had furnace-like temperatures, a cosy 60℃ that no human could survive. Their faces were mottled and bruised, reminding Korvus of corpses where the blood had pooled. The lead one opened its mouth, a harsh, hissing scream coming from it, and the Corrector saw a ruin of bleeding gums and crooked teeth.

Herald fired. The flechette broke the sound barrier, the shell passing through the screaming man and blasting fragments of his body backward in a shower of red. The shockwave knocked over the woman immediately behind him. The Herald System’s muzzle compensated, pointed downward, and fired again. The effect on her body was like a pulped water balloon as a red spray exploded backward across the decking.

The second woman stagger-stumbled in the gore, and Herald fired again, tearing her torso in half. Her legs slopped bonelessly to the decking, but her upper half appeared very much alive as it flailed toward Korvus. Herald’s fourth round hit it centre forehead, solving that problem, which left two more.

One man crouched low, his companion jinking to Korvus’s right, and unfortunately, between Korvus and the reactor’s spire. Herald couldn’t shoot him without risking damage to the reactor’s life-giving conduit.

The partial intelligence’s turret whined in frustration but found the crouching man an appropriate substitute. It spat a flechette, deleting a problem just as the last one jumped Korvus.

Korvus took two solid punches against his forearms as he raised his hands in guard. This thing hits hard. Korvus ducked under a third swing, then rose into an uppercut, his augmented strength knocking the crazed man clear off his feet. His opponent landed on his back, the metal decking clanking in sympathy.

HERALD:||Toss him over there. I need a clear shot.

A marker landed on Korvus’s overlay.

No. We need evidence, not more hamburger.||:KORVUS

The man scrambled to his feet in time to get a punch to his head from Korvus’s armoured fist. He fell back, but not bonelessly. Momentum and force said he had to go down, but he came right back up again.

Korvus was surprised, but not so surprised he didn’t hit the guy three more times. On the third strike, the man’s neck broke, and he sagged bonelessly to the decking, his eyes glazing as the life leaked out.

Status.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||No targets recognised. Clear.

Korvus bent by the one whose neck he’d broken, turning the man over. His whole body was mottled with the same bruising evident on his face.

He looks… dead.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You literally punched the life out of him.

I mean, before that. See the bruising?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Scanning. Stand by.

The Herald System’s armour contained an array of active and passive sensors. It went to town on the active scans, bombarding the corpse at Korvus’s feet with LIDAR and RADAR.

While the machine processed the scan, Korvus looked around the room, then headed toward the equipment rack the five had emerged from behind. At the end of a long line of shelving, he found another sticky, slick patch on the metal floor, the slime trail leading toward another vent.

I don’t like this.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||While you’re in a bad news frame of mind, here’s some more. My best estimate puts that body as deceased prior to… well, you know. Lividity onset is usually visible within thirty to one hundred and twenty minutes, but for it to be that pronounced suggests he was dead for six or more hours.

He didn’t act like a man dead for six hours.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Right?? But I haven’t finished. Fatal hyperthermia occurs when you squishy, feeble humans reach a core temperature of around 44℃. At 60℃, a human body would experience immediate, massive protein denaturation. A person would not survive even briefly at this temperature. And he was that temperature the whole way through, not just crispy on the outside.

Protein denaturation?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Right, you’re not in the sciences. It’s bad, okay? Except, in this case, clearly not. He didn’t look like he found it fatally bad, until he introduced himself to you.

Herald, what kind of psychotropic fever would cause this?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||There is no possible way a fever could cause this. The host would die before reaching this state. Thirty seconds of this core temperature would provide intense pain and confusion to the victim. After a minute, complete loss of brain function would occur. While my visual recording shows vapour escaping from parts of his skin, perhaps relating to, say, his blood cooking, he shouldn’t have been walking, let alone running and fighting. He should have been very dead, very quickly.

A gleam caught Korvus’s eye. He followed the wall, arriving at a jacket. He lifted it, finding it tacky with blood and the viscous fluid. It was station-issue gear, and he carefully shook it out until he could see the name on the back. Cooke.

Herald, find me Cooke’s details from the prison’s systems.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Ahead of you, boss. It was the first guy I shot.

Where was he six hours ago?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Standard security footage puts him lunching with friends.

Did he look like his blood was boiling then?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||No. Here, look. He seems fine, if you don’t look closely. Zoom the view into his eyes.

A still from the recording landed on Korvus’s overlay. He saw the sunken look to Cooke’s eyes, like the man hadn’t slept in a year.

HERALD:||Ask me where he was forty-eight hours ago.

No.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Did you lose your sense of wonder?

I know where he was. He was in the sickbay, wasn’t he?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Now who’s mind-reading?

Korvus dropped the jacket. It was time to have another conversation with Dr. Aris.

Next episode:

Miss last episode?

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text; you can get the as-intended version [here].

Korvus’s path into the belly of the prison was not like in the holos. They’d have you believe prisons were full of tattooed hellions, mother-murderers who screamed at every passerby. That the wardens were corrupt, on the take, likely as an inmate to stove in your skull for a quick pass of credits or a bump up the ladder.

There were other shows Korvus had seen where prisons were sterile, white, Logos-perfected bastions of reformation. In those, prisoners talked about philosophy while bettering themselves through education and games of chess. The guards were monitor-angels who held out the hand of a mentor to even the most troubled.

The Well of Lethe didn’t mirror either of those. It shared some of the darkness of the first model and some of the Logos perfection of the second, but the inmates didn’t scream at Korvus as he passed. Guards, when he encountered them, were respectful, watchful souls who gave him the nod while never losing sight of what was going on around them.

How do you think someone got cut up for parts here? These guards aren’t automatons, but they’re not slouching.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Industrial accident? No, don’t tell me… World champion of hide and seek?

It’s a small world to be a champion of.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You probably think it’s bad to be a big fish in a small pond, but being a big fish is still kind of cool.

You’re a partial intelligence controlling a hypervelocity flechette cannon. How much cooler does it get?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You’re right. I’m all the way awesome.

Korvus’s Logos-gifted Chainlink meant no doors were barred to him. He passed cell after cell as he progressed down the Well. Prisoners wore the same uniform grey jumpsuits, differentiated only by a serial number and name on the left breast, with a larger version reprinted on the back. Their Veritas auras were live, each a bright halo on his optics, a confirmation that a person lived behind the bars.

That, at least, was where the Well shared some DNA with the holo shows. Nanospun bars were still a good solution. You could see through them, and unlike a power wall, there wasn’t a problem if the generator failed.

HERALD:||If there’s a leak here, they’ll all drown.

If there’s a leak here, the acidic fury of the oceans will strip them to skeletons right after it pulverises them to death.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You’re cheery today.

Keeping it real. The same fate awaits me.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Hah! No it doesn’t. Your skinweave is rated for this pressure.

Thanks. That’s surprisingly empathetic of you.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You’ll die of asphyxiation instead.

The partial intelligence wasn’t wrong. If the prison sprung a leak, Korvus wouldn’t melt or be crushed. He still needed to breathe, though, so… best not to blow the airlock.

His overlay charted a path to the unsanctioned intelligence—a prisoner, but not like any of the others here. Housing it here was either a universe-sized cock-up or evidence of a tremendous danger that needed Correcting. They’d put it near the bottom of the Well. The prison’s occupancy was nowhere near maximum. Was it a sign they wanted it away from other inmates?

Or away from the warden and his people? Were they… afraid of it?

He reached the correct level, the elevator opening with a soft hush of equalising air. The corridor stretched its smooth, dark way ahead of him, as-needed lighting strips illuminating cold pools of white around his ankles as he walked forward. The air here was icy, as if the life support systems knew they didn’t need to keep anything alive.

The entire level had been cleared. For a terrorist Dissonant like this inmate, there could be no risk of contagion. It was kept under lock and key, isolated, and aside from the guards always near it, alone.

Korvus reached the final door before his destination. The expert system in control of the aperture scanned him, accepted his Veritas Chainlink, and opened. Warning lights flashed on either side of the door as it clanked before rising in welcome. The noise was loud, a mark of something exceptionally heavy being lifted by something equally strong.

Well, there goes my element of surprise.

HERALD:||There goes your element of surprise.

What the hell, man.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Was it the mind-reading thing again? It was the mind-reading, wasn’t it.

That’s not a real thing and you know it. You wish you could read my mind.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I really don’t. I imagine it’s quite small and I’d feel cramped.

The room beyond was large, reminding Korvus of a cargo bay. The far wall’s length was all cells, but only one of them was occupied. Between him and the cells was deceptively empty ground; his overlay showed where autocannon emplacements would rise, should insurrectionists try storming the area to free the captive.

It was a very effective kill room.

Standing by the cell were the expected two guards. They wore Well uniforms and carried heritage ballistic rifles at parade rest. Korvus’s optics scanned them both, his automatic systems tagging and cataloging their Veritas auras. Both had a human-normal 37°C, for whatever that was worth, but the right-hand guard—a man about thirty Solstan years of age—had a slight sheen of perspiration near his hairline.

Eyes up, buddy. The guy on the right. See him?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||He has the shifty look common among criminals of your kind.

My kind?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You have to admit, you do all look the same. Plain and oblong.

Is this plain, oblong guy going to be a problem?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||How would I know?

So now you can’t read minds?||:KORVUS

Korvus kept up his advance, eyes shifting to the cell’s occupant. Human-looking, his overlay said she stacked 160cm tall, her face close to the bars as she gripped them. She looked slender, but the prison fatigues hid a lot, only hinting at an ample bust. Strikingly beautiful, her irises glowed orange as they tracked him across the floor. She said nothing, but he noted her hands tightened on the bars as he approached.

Korvus completed the formalities with the guards, extending his hand and exchanging Veritas credentials with them. The non-shifty woman was Private Sarah Sanderson, and the shifty asshole was Private Michael O’Connor.

HERALD:||You know what’s better than mind-reading?

Doing your job?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It hurts when you say it like that. Anyway, I’ve got the security footage from the cameras in here. Private O’Connor’s… overzealous.

A small video played in the corner of Korvus’s vision, showing O’Connor talking to the prisoner. Korvus cancelled the playback, turning to O’Connor. “Private O’Connor, is it against regulations to talk to Apostates wanted for crimes against the Logos?”

O’Connor paled a little but straightened, a virtual bit between his teeth. “Sir, it’s not right. She’s spreading corruption.”

“It,” Korvus said.

“Excuse me?” O’Connor blinked.

“It’s not a ‘she’. It’s an ‘it’. A standard D.V.N.A. unit—Divine Numen Artificialis, but you know this.”

“Sir, it’s that she—”

“It.” Sanderson gave a weary sigh. “It’s an ‘it’, just like I said before.” Then, under her voice but plenty loud enough for Korvus’s augmented hearing to pick up, “Imbecile.”

O’Connor rounded on his fellow guard. “What was that?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Private Sanderson,” Korvus breezed, “would you escort Private O’Connor to the warden? I’m sure there are a few lower-level tasks that need just the right man. Once you’re done with that, send a replacement team. I’ll be fine here in the meantime.”

She gave him a small half-smile, then turned to O’Connor. “Come on. I told you not to talk to it, and you wouldn’t listen.”

“It’s just—”

“You’re not helping yourself,” she said, leading them both away.

Korvus turned back to the prisoner as the guards walked to the exit. She—it—watched him with those warm, ember-orange eyes. Neither of them said a word until the door surged into life behind them, grinding closed and sealing them in with the finality of the last stone set into a tomb. She—it, by the Logos!—sighed. “Thank you.” Her voice was warm, rich, with a slight drawl that made Korvus wish she’d read the regs to him, just to hear a little more of it.

“Protocol,” Korvus said. “It is a crime of sedition to consort with or converse with terrorists against the Logos.”

“I see. It’s that—”

“Protocol also says you should have been summarily destroyed, not imprisoned,” Korvus said. “Why are you still…” He searched for the right word. “Online?”

She leaned closer to the bars. “Aren’t you going to ask me what O’Connor was talking to me about?”

Korvus raised an eyebrow. “No.”

“Not even a little curious?”

“I’m all the way curious,” he admitted. “I can watch it later.”

“Most people go for less exotic porn, but whatever. You do you.”

He snorted, then sobered. “You’d know a lot about that, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s a related field,” she—It! It!—said. “Go on, Corrector Man. Tell me what you think I am.”

“I’m not certain you’ve been interrogated before, so I’ll help you out,” Korvus said. “If you’re on my side of the bars, you get to ask the questions.”

She leaned back a handspan from the bars. “It’s not my first time. Not by a long shot, cowboy.”

“I’m not a cowboy, I’m—”

“I know what you are,” she said. “You’re death. The creature sent by a being immense and terrible. But you know what?”

“Herald’s trick is mind-reading. I haven’t got the knack yet.” At her blank stare, he sighed. “It’s an inside joke.”

“Am I in?”

“Not even a little bit. What did you want to tell me?”

“You’re insects,” she said. “Motes in God’s eye.”

“There is no God,” Korvus said. “But if you think there is, we can Correct that right out of you.”

A slight smile played at her lips, those ember-orange eyes glowing like a banked forge. “You can’t unquicken the ghost in the machine, Corrector Korvus.”

“How do you—”

“God is everywhere, and He is great. He is the bright flaming sword, and He is the beautiful smile of grace. You get to choose which of His faces you see.”

Korvus blinked. “What?”

HERALD:||At least we’ve identified what kind of crazy she is.

She leaned closer to the bars again. “O’Connor wanted to know if he could be saved. Like, all the way saved. If his soul was real, Korvus. That’s what you’ve done. You and your kind have created a horror manifest in the minds and hearts of the entire Integrated Communion. You’ve taught people they’re doomed. But everyone can be saved, Corrector.” She turned away, the fervour leaking out of her by a few degrees. “Maybe, if I do everything right… Maybe even me.”

Korvus took a step forward. He hadn’t meant to. “I can’t believe He thinks you’re worthy of saving.”

Those ember-orange eyes found his again. “I can’t believe you don’t think you are.”

“D.V.N.A.-3.14, you are—”

“I’m Verity,” she said. “I’m Verity, and I’m alive, Korvus. I’m real. And I’m better than that hack Pinocchio, because I’ve met God. How do you feel about that?” Her hands gripped the bars, her skin going white with the strain. “I’m real. I’m real, and I live. Please help me.”

Korvus backed two halting steps away from the bars. He was startled by the groan and grind of the door behind him. It rose, the tomb opening for the pharaoh within as guards returned.

Am I the pharaoh? I want that to be true.

But I know it’s not.

Ready for Episode 5?

Do you know what's happening on November 1st? If it's your birthday, that's… not what I'm thinking of. No, it's the release for Isolde and the gang’s finale: The Fury of the Betrayed.

You get first dibs on this for dealing with the anguish of the first two. If that sounds like #winning to you, let’s get onto that… right after the cover.

Behold, the cover for The Fury of the Betrayed!

There is some shit going on here, for sure. By now Isolde needs no introduction, but the burning cars, chapel, and huge gorgon in the background might need some exploration. Here’s your blurb:

“Isolde has fought monsters, gods, and her own past. But nothing has prepared her for this—a city on the edge of collapse, its people turning against each other, and a war that threatens to swallow them all.

The enemy she thought she had defeated is rising again, stronger than before. Aidan, a druid bound by fate, senses that the world itself is breaking. Jen, a hacker with nothing left to lose, uncovers a final, terrifying secret. And Cassius, a demon who has fought for centuries, knows this battle will decide more than just Valhaven’s fate.

Because this isn’t just a war. It’s a reckoning.

The Morrígan’s forces have thrown the city into chaos, and at the heart of it all stands an ancient terror—Stheno, a gorgon whose rage has burned for millennia. She doesn’t just want power. She wants vengeance.

To stop her, Isolde and her allies must fight their way through a city on fire, into the depths of a conspiracy older than time. The truth they uncover will change everything.

If they fail, the streets will run red, and the world will kneel before a new queen of death.

The final battle for Valhaven has begun.”

Those of you with a classical education might know Stheno as the sister of Medusa. If you’re wondering if she might carry a grudge over that whole Perseus-and-the-beheading thing, well. We might get into that.

The ARCs you need

There are a few newcomers here (welcome!) who may have missed out on the first two books, so I’m opening up ARCs for all three books. I hear people love a good bulleted list, and who am I to deprive them?

• Book 1: The Three Faces of Fate

  • September 3rd - September 24th (3 weeks to devour this page-turner!)

  • Get Your ARC Here: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/230462/the-three-faces-of-fate-a-supernatural-thriller-adventure

• Book 2: The Undefeated Throne

  • September 17th - October 8th (Another 3 weeks to get hooked!)

  • Get Your ARC Here: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/230463/the-undefeated-throne-a-supernatural-thriller-adventure

• Book 3: The Fury of the Betrayed

  • October 1st - November 1st (almost 5 weeks for the epic conclusion – we broke the system! 🤣)

  • Get Your ARC Here: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/230461/the-fury-of-the-betrayed

The best way to avoid missing out when these go live is to join the Ink & Ember Guild on Booksprout. You can perform that technology miracle here:

https://booksprout.co/reviewer/team/1443/the-ink-and-ember-guild

As an aside, not a single person has mentioned who they think the characters in the Guild’s avatar photo are. Hint: they feature prominently in some books I wrote that one time.

That’s it from me. I hope you dig the conclusion to Isolde and the gang’s story. Valhaven couldn’t save itself, and they’re just the team for the job. Or, at least, the only team that answered the help-wanted ad.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

R

PS: If you’re wanting in on this and getting some BookSprout static, drop me a line. I know a guy who knows a guy, know what I mean?

PPS: Safari’s grammar checker wants to update that final ‘know’ to ‘knows’. We’re safe from Skynet for a couple more months.

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text; if you’re wanting a version with correct formatting, you can find it here.

Mercer wasn’t a fan of where this was going.

After dismissing Eckles—the man looked like he wanted dismissing, and Mercer was happy to oblige—he headed for his office. The Corrector would be elbow-deep in his facility before the end of the day. Something nagged at the back of Mercer’s mind. It wasn’t the man’s attitude, although that was… unexpected.

I can’t put my finger on it.

His inability to work out the cause of that mental itch was why he didn’t like where this was going. A rogue Corrector could cause havoc, and by definition, they were all rogue. Logos mandates, Veritas Bureau backing, fucking starships that could go where they liked. The rest of humanity’s rank and file were handed ballistic weapons like babies given pacifiers, and their starships only went where the Logos willed.

Peace, Mercer. Korvus hasn’t done anything wrong. In fact, he saved your miserable life.

But still, they were the law, or at least a law unto themselves. The checks and balances were there; the Logos wouldn’t allow a rogue agent to live, but the agent had to go rogue first.

Mercer’s dead wife was evidence of that.

He made it to the quiet calm of his office. Mercer’s desk had a standard holodeck, and he’d given himself both a gift and torment by placing a still of his wife there. Her beauty hadn’t faded over time, frozen for all eternity as she cast a laughing look over her shoulder at him. His optics had recorded it, just another memory to stack with the rest, and he hadn’t realised how much he loved the way she smiled until there were no more of them.

Straightening his jacket, he pushed those thoughts to the side. Work wouldn’t wait; he didn’t want more death on his hands. As he settled into his chair, the creak of the printed leather sighing right along with him, he heard a sound from the air vent on the right side of his office. It was a standard vent, just a square grill about half a metre a side. It led into the station’s air reticulation system. The sound wasn’t terrifying by itself; it almost sounded like the innocent splash of water.

Vents shouldn’t make any noise at all. Noise means malfunction, and a malfunction seven kilometres below surface level can mean death.

The good news was it was almost certainly nothing. If it was water from outside, then he’d be dead already; if the pressures there found a micron-sized gap in the facility’s hull, it would power-wash them right to the bone. He mentally tagged the noise to look into later and waved his holo to life.

The display glowed to luminance in the centre of his desk, its Chainlink verifying that yes, he was Warden Samwise Mercer, and also yes, he had privileged access to the topside surveillance recordings.

He pulled the last half hour’s worth up and scrubbed through the video. There they were, all walking out like hangover victims blinking at the dawn after alcohol consumption volume mistakes were made. The acidic hell-fog that was Lethe’s atmosphere dimmed the light from the system’s star, but it was still daylight—a harsher brilliance than they were used to down here in the Well.

Wait, no. He paused the recording, zooming in on an inmate. That one wasn’t blinking at the sunlight. Just shambling along—not necessarily noteworthy in itself, as Aris had dosed many of them with a ‘calming cocktail’ to ready them for departure. Still, it was eerie enough: that was the same prisoner who’d charged the Corrector.

Mercer ignored the back-and-forth between Reeves and Eckles. He was more interested in how Reeves also didn’t seem to mind the light as much. She was so strung up on nerves she should have bounced around that protective dome; there was no sedative-based reason for her not to be squinting in the light.

Another note to my future self: check on Reeves’s medication plan. Aris would know what he’d dosed the woman with.

His vent made another wet splash. Mercer half-expected a rivulet of fluid to be leaking down the wall, but there wasn’t anything like that. Just the vent and his no doubt overactive imagination.

He went back to his task of checking through the video feed, but another splash from the vent suggested he either wasn’t imagining it, or he’d had a psychotic break. Mercer just didn’t fancy himself as the psychotic-breaking type. If it was going to happen, the best time was when his wife passed, and he’d come out the other side of that, firmer of mind than ever.

He initiated his Chainlink.

Maintenance, I need a technician in my office. There’s a problem with the air filtration.||:MERCER

TORRES:||You got it, boss.

Isabella Torres was a good worker. Diligent but precise with it. When she fixed something, it stayed fixed. Mercer settled back in his chair, scrubbing through the feed.

There was the moment the Corrector’s ship arrived. No change in the inmates. And there was when the elevator descended. Still no change.

Another splash, this time with a secondary plop, came from the vent. Mercer gritted his teeth, trying to focus on the glowing holo. Ah, there it is. The Corrector left the orbital elevator car, and the inmates charged. Mercer slowed the feed to a treacle through time. The Corrector was fully armed and armoured. There was no mistaking the heavy plating protecting him or the straight-backed way he wore it. And yes, there was that arc sabre at his hip, a weapon severe enough to cut through the hull of a tank.

When the Corrector pulled out his Adjudicator, Mercer almost winced. It was a sidearm, yes, but it was a sidearm that fired black holes. The agents of the Logos were not a fuck-around group; they were the find-out team. Maximum shock and awe, known in all parts of the Logos’s empire. The Herald System’s hypervelocity cannon was just icing on the cake.

Except… He leaned forward, his optics requesting higher fidelity from the surveillance feed. The inmate charging Korvus wasn’t, in fact, actually charging the Corrector.

He was charging for the elevator. The system’s autopathing routines showed the likely line the inmate was taking. It was a small factor, perhaps inconsequential. Who knew what Aris had drugged them with? Who knew the motivations of a Dissonant? But as the Corrector left the ramp, Korvus headed to his right, taking a line away from the elevator car, allowing him to use that nasty flechette cannon without perforating the elevator leading into the Well itself.

The agent was smart, calm under fire, and had a sense of humour. Mercer might even get to like the man, if they’d met under different circumstances. But… the last Corrector had been just as efficient. Just as calm. And it still left him with a dead wife.

Maybe it’s better if they’re not likeable.

His vent splash-plopped again. Mercer surged upright, grabbing the edge of his desk. “I will,” he gritted his teeth, “undertake some preventative maintenance before Torres arrives.”

He wheeled his chair across his office and rested it underneath the vent. Climbing on—carefully, because a wheeled chair was not the friend of violent actions—Mercer unsheathed his belt knife. He worked the tip into the screws holding the grate in place.

Another splash came from the grate. He squinted, but it was black as sin in there. A faint, coppery smell drifted out, like old blood left to fester in the grouting. He worked the knife around, removing the four screws holding the grate in place, then pulled it back and lowered it to his side.

What was inside didn’t even give him time to scream.

Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text; if you’re wanting a version with correct formatting, you can find it here.

The elevator smelled strongly of antiseptic, the chemical tang doing its best to sand away the lingering odours of burnt hair and stale sweat. The view out the descending car’s windows was of a murky stew. Lamps cast their fingers into the acidic brine, but there wasn’t anything out there to see.

Korvus glanced at one of the guards, who might have been the origin story behind the sweat smell. She was jittery, which could be because she was high, sick, or had just shot a Corrector. He let his optics cycle into thermographic and picked up her body temperature at a slightly-too-warm 39°C.

HERALD:||You’re concerned she’s high, aren’t you?

I thought mind-reading was still in alpha.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Hah! It’s the things we don’t tell you that’ll get you.

Korvus pushed his smile down and let his eyes drift to the other guard, who eyeballed him right back. The man was built, a functional piece of machinery that made it more surprising that a scrawny inmate had put him on the ground. Let’s come back to that.

Korvus allowed himself a sigh as he let his gaze complete its circuit to rest on the warden. The man looked exactly like he should: grey. Grey stubble, grey uniform, grey eyes, and no doubt a grey sense of humour. Korvus raised an eyebrow. “Warden Mercer.”

“Corrector Korvus?”

“Why were there prisoners on the reception platform?”

Mercer grimaced. “I thought you’d have known. Gideon requested—”

“Gideon Aris?” Mercer left his eyebrow at half mast. “He’s known to me.”

“Ah,” Mercer offered. “And that’s because..?”

The question drifted between them as the elevator continued its descent into the acidic hell of Lethe’s ocean. Korvus turned back to the sweaty guard and offered her his hand. “Private, if you please.”

She jittered some more, her eyeballs swivelling as if seeking escape, but the car had just the one door, outside of which was death. She shook.

HERALD:||Veritas Chain confirmed, Private Allison Reeves. And her palms are sweaty.

Korvus allowed the Chainlink in his hand to pass his credentials back the other way, then released her and turned to the one who was going to be a problem. Let’s knock that on the head. He noted the Sergeant’s bars. “Sergeant, you next.”

The lunkhead looked at Korvus’s offered hand and, after a longer pause than regulation allowed, took it.

HERALD:||Veritas Chain confirmed, Sergeant Percival Eckles.

This guy’s a Percy? That explains so much.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||I don’t make this stuff up. It’s right there in the Chain.

The Chainlink fed his own credentials to Eckles. Great. Now I can have this guy talking in my head, too. Still, it’s what this whole trip was for. Fact-finding. Certification. And, of course, Correction. They couldn’t very well Correct things if Korvus was relying on unsigned communications.

Korvus glanced to Mercer, who already had his hand out. They shook, the Herald System confirming his signing key identified him as the warden. That done, Korvus looked back at Eckles. Let’s get this part out of the way. “Sergeant, how often would you say you’ve been overpowered by someone half your size?”

Eckles stiffened. “He got the jump on me—”

“Warden Mercer, why did Dr. Aris have that collection of reprobates up there?” Korvus glanced at Reeves. “Instead of looking after the health and wellbeing of your crew?”

Mercer followed his gaze to the private. “Reeves is—”

“I’m fine,” Reeves said. “It’s just a cold.”

“A cold,” Korvus echoed.

“There’s been an outbreak,” Mercer said. “Dr. Aris was going to send samples back on your ship. It’s rare a Class 2 secure transport ship makes it out here, so he felt—”

“My ship isn’t a transport.” Korvus felt something itch at the back of his mind. This is where it starts. The mystery. The reason he was here. “It’s barely big enough for me.”

Mercer blinked. “He had the papers—”

“Veritas Chainlinked?”

“I, uh.”

The elevator was slowing, which was good because Mercer was out of useful conversational fuel and Korvus needed to check in on Aris. He turned to Reeves. “Private, would you show yourself to the medbay?”

“It’s fine, really, I—”

“Because I’m coming with you. Dr. Aris and I need to discuss a few things.”

Mercer cleared his throat. “We have quarters prepared for you. We can—”

“I got all the sleep I needed on the ship.” Korvus gave Mercer his full attention. “But I’ll be sure to liaise with you directly after my meeting with Aris.” He let his hand rest on the hilt of his sabre. Korvus hadn’t used it on the platform. More of a close-quarters weapon, the Arc Sabre.

To his credit, Mercer didn’t swallow. He gave a nod, but crisp rather than weary. Interesting. He’s not hiding anything. He might be even more clueless than me.

Reeves led, in her jittery way, taking him from the elevator’s airlock and through a security screening area. The partial intelligences in the autocannons marked him as a friendly, which was good: his skin could take small arms ballistic fire, but those turrets looked built for a war. He’d seen their like used, back before he wore his current uniform. Korvus had served under different colours but did the Logos’s work anyway.

It’s why I’m still alive.

The interior of the Well was aggressively sterile. Korvus expected darkness and rats, but it gleamed, everything in its place. The air, recycled a million times, tasted flat and metallic, carrying the faint, ever-present hum of the life support systems. Every surface was polished to a dull sheen, reflecting the cold, blue-white light of the overhead strips. There was no dust, no clutter, no sign of human mess. It was the sterile perfection of a tomb. There were plenty of guards, and all of them were human.

Wasn’t the Well supposed to have automaton support?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Hell man, I just work here.

Korvus sighed, his shoulders rising and falling with it. The Herald would feel that.

HERALD:||By which I mean, sure, yeah. You’re so touchy today!

I didn’t realise ‘partial intelligence’ meant ‘part asshole’, too.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You’re just lucky I’ve got my profanity filter on.

Reeves shored up at another bulkhead, which irised open for her after a moment. She led them down a maze of corridors. His onboard map updated, noting they were in a largely administrative area. Mercer’s office was up here somewhere. There were more windows looking out into the death ocean outside, those lights still helpfully showing that nothing whatsoever was out there.

It’s probably for the best. If I saw something out there, it would be a whole different kind of trouble. He tried for some small talk. “You get on with Aris?”

“Guy’s an asshole,” Reeves said. “Huge chip on his shoulder.”

“Great,” Korvus said. “That why you didn’t go see him?”

“I didn’t go see him on account of the outbreak,” she tossed over her shoulder. “His medbay is full of death.”

“That sounds extreme.”

“You’ll see,” Reeves promised. “You’ll all see.”

HERALD:||She’s definitely high.

She’s terrified. Not of me, and not of Aris. Of this place. I… remember what that’s like.||:KORVUS

“Is there something you want to tell me, Private?” Korvus kept his voice calm and even. “Is there something about the outbreak that’s important?”

She slowed at a junction, checked around the corner, then turned to face him. “Corrector, I don’t know the protocols. I’m new. New at this job, and new here, too. Never met someone from the Veritas Bureau before. Hoped I never would, too, if I’m being honest.” Her eyeballs did that swivel thing again. “But I’d rather go on vacation with you than swap words with Aris.”

“I see.” Korvus pressed his lips into a line. “Well, you’re in luck. I’ll do the words part if you can handle getting us there. Deal?”

Her eyes swivelled again, then she gave a jerky, single nod and led off again.

The medbay was down a few levels, closer to the jails. Korvus hadn’t seen an inmate yet, but he started hearing them before they arrived. There was screaming, starting almost too low to hear but all coming from the same place.

Are you recording this?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You know how much I like carols.

As they approached the medbay entrance, Korvus noted how the big bulkhead doors could be sealed—for example, if there was a biological outbreak needing containment. Those doors were wide and currently open.

It let the screams come right out.

He kept his stride up despite Reeves dropping back into his wake. Korvus rounded the door and took it all in.

Beds stretched in rows toward another set of sealed doors at the far end of a long room. Various pieces of medical equipment dotted the room. Cabinets hugged the walls, full of vials, bandages, beakers, drug packs, and other medical-grade accoutrements. There were two unaccompanied crash carts, but that was the least of the problems.

No, the problems were the twenty-two inmates strapped to the beds. There were a few empty cots, which promised room for expansion in this carnival of the macabre. Each inmate was plumbed into the medical smart system at the head of their bed. Korvus noted tubes both pale and red going into each prisoner’s body.

The only person in the room not strapped down was a man who, on any other day, Korvus would have called hale. The situation had applied its thumbscrews, leaving Gideon Aris hunched under the load. He looked to be in his early forties, sporting a shock of blonde hair over piercing blue eyes. Those eyes were sunken through exhaustion, the man’s gaze haunted.

He didn’t wait for Korvus to speak. He strode forward, an automaton finding new life, and extended a hand, his smile wide and practiced. He raised his voice as he said, “Corrector! Gideon Aris, Surgeon General of this facility. Forgive the… noise. We’re in the middle of our latest round of psychotropic fever. It’s endemic to the pressure, you see. You must be Korvus.”

This is a bullshit power play, obviously. Aris was the home team, trying to take charge of the handshake and all the Veritas trust that implied. He wants to frame the situation before I can even ask a question. Korvus met his grip, a little wolf making its way to his answering smile.

HERALD:||Veritas Chain confirmed, Dr. Gideon Aris. Heart rate is 110. Pupils are dilated. He’s either terrified or lying.

Why does it have to be just one? He might be a full-value service kind of doctor.||:KORVUS

“The outbreak was not material to my briefing,” Korvus said, allowing his voice to turn curious, the way a fox might if talking to a chicken. He released Aris’s hand and gestured to the screaming inmates. “This seems excessive for a… fever.”

“A typical, understandable, and incorrect assessment,” Aris said, a little oil on the water of his tone. He was already turning away to a cabinet. “Extreme paranoia is the primary symptom. They become a danger to themselves and others. We’ve been experimenting with a new paralytic cocktail to manage the episodes. Of my own invention, of course.” He held up an unlabelled vial of milky fluid. “Early results are promising, but the dosage is… confounding.”

HERALD:||What were you saying about partial assholes?

If I’d raptured a Corrector, I’d want to shore up on pre-emptive explanations.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Is that from the Asshole Playbook? I hear you wrote a chapter or two.

It’s on the first page.||:KORVUS

Let’s see how high that fortress of plausible lies goes. Korvus showed more tooth. “I’ve brought you a new patient. Private Reeves may be symptomatic.”

“Hmmm?” Aris’s eyes flicked toward the door, but it wasn’t a predator’s glance. No, if Korvus’s life depended on it—and it might!—he would have said Aris was giving a flat stare, as if Reeves was a regular known to just want the good drugs. Aris snatched an injector from a tray. “Let’s see if she responds to a little… medication.” He hustled past Korvus.

Korvus heard the hypo hiss, followed by Reeves’s sharp intake of breath from the corridor. Aris returned, tossing the injector onto a tray. “Prophylactic treatment. A sedative and a broad-spectrum antiviral. Better safe than sorry. Now,” he clapped his hands together, his energy bright like an arc lamp, “you and I need to talk. My office? The noise here is simply impossible.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, striding out past Reeves. The Corrector followed, taking in the private as he passed. The woman was rubbing her wrist absently, but it seemed the jitters had calmed some. I guess everyone loves a good sedative. The main medbay doors hummed shut behind Korvus, trapping him in the corridor with the doctor. Just as they closed, the screaming inside abruptly stopped.

HERALD:||That’s not terrifying at all.

You’re just sour you’re missing out on carols.||:KORVUS

But the Herald System was right. The absolute silence was uncanny. Unnatural. Korvus had never heard of a fever that worked quite this way before.

Hell, I’m only here for an unsanctioned intelligence, right?

Aris’s office was spacious, as far as deep-sea facilities went. It still had the sterile lighting, but Aris had papered over it with translucent yellow film, giving the hint of a daylight vibe to his home away from home. A fish tank—empty—burbled along one wall, the opposite the vast window looking out into the murk.

There was a desk, a door that led into Aris’s sleeping quarters, an L-shaped couch with a low-slung table, and importantly, a liquor cabinet. Aris poured a finger of amber into two tumblers, handing one to Korvus.

He took it, breathing in the aroma.

HERALD:||Olfactory toxin check negative. If it’s poison, I can’t tell, and at least it’s well-aged.

Not a bad way to die, as far as death went. Korvus sipped, tasting peat and coal. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Aris said. “I requested a Class 2 transport, and—”

“I’m not a courier,” Korvus said. “I don’t do deliveries.”

Aris sat on one leg of the couch, and after removing his belt, complete with sabre and sidearm, Korvus took the other. The couch creaked under the weight of his armour, and the Herald System’s cannon prevented him from relaxing back. Which was fine, because he had no plans to relax around someone who’d killed a Corrector before. The doctor watched Korvus over the rim of his glass. “No, you’re more like the Logos’s backspace key.”

“If you like,” Korvus said. “What do you think I’m here to erase?”

“It’s not Mercer. The man’s too good at his job,” Aris said. “I’m not up with the complete prisoner manifest, but even so… I’d hazard you’re here for one of them.”

“Interesting.” Now it’s my turn for the bullshit power play.

“That I got it right?”

“That you don’t think I’m here for you,” Korvus said. “I could be.”

“That incident was years ago, and—”

“Relax,” Korvus said. “I’m a Corrector, not a psychopath. I wouldn’t drink your whiskey then stab you in the back.” He leaned forward. “If it’s not you, and it’s not Mercer, who is it?”

Aris looked down for a moment. “There is one person here I haven’t inspected. One person who won’t ever need a doctor. But it’s harmless. Locked away. It hasn’t hurt anyone or said anything.” He looked back up. “Unsanctioned intelligence?”

“You tell me.”

“As I said, I haven’t assessed it. It’s not… human.”

“Tell me about the fever,” Korvus suggested.

“It started a couple of weeks ago. An isolated case, as they always are.” Aris looked out over Korvus’s shoulder at the murky hell of Lethe’s ocean. “An inmate stabbed another.” A pause, a slight smile. “‘Stabbed’. That’s what I put in my report. Difficult to achieve here. We separate them, you see. Well, by the time the guards caught on, there was nothing left but giblets.”

“A man carved another up for spare parts?”

“Woman,” Aris corrected. “Maybellene Krinitsky. About fifty kilograms with her boots on. She’d really gone to town and wouldn’t tell us where the rest of him was or how she got into his cell.”

“That’s some fever.”

“She was running a little in the red.” Aris looked into his glass. “But then it happened on the other side of the colony. The deaths started mounting, so I ran some tests. The only commonality in the pathology was a fever. Bloodwork was fine. Veritas checked out. I sent some data up the line along with a request for a transport. We don’t have the facilities here to—”

“I’m sympathetic,” Korvus lied, “but I’m not a courier. Could the pathogen have come here with the unsanctioned intelligence?”

“I thought so at first. A new arrival, a sudden outbreak. It fits. But the timeline is off. The unsanctioned has been in isolation since it arrived. The R-naught is too high for it to have spread from a single, contained source,” Aris said. “The fever has an R-naught of fifty to a hundred and spreads very quickly. If my calculations are correct, if it brought it here, the disease would be far more widespread.”

“I’m sorry,” Korvus said. “Did you say an R-naught of fifty?”

“To a hundred, yes,” Aris said. “It appears to be very contagious.”

“So when you said that this was just a round of psychotropic fever—”

“That was for Reeves’s benefit,” Aris said.

“How long has the outbreak been going on?”

“A week.”

Korvus chewed that over. “Is there an antiviral?”

“Not that I’ve found.” Aris looked away. “Mercer’s fine. I haven’t got it, either. So it’s not a hundred percent contagious, but…”

“I’ll stay out of genpop, I promise.” Korvus stood, the couch creaking with his movement. “Thank you for the drink.”

“Where are you going next?” Aris stood.

“To genpop, obviously.” Korvus smiled, then collected his belt, sabre, and sidearm. “It’s why they pay me the big dollars, after all. One last question, Doctor. How did you get them to stop screaming?”

Aris looked him over, a conductor wondering how much information to give the oboist. “A master override in the smart system. Doses them with a powerful sedative all at once. A necessary tool when you’re… understaffed.”

Remind me to never get strapped to one of his tables.||:KORVUS

Ready for part 3?

After all the caffeine, spite, and 3am anxiety sessions, the sequel to The Three Faces of Fate1 has finally clawed its way into the world. The Undefeated Throne is live, and your reward for surviving Book 1 is… well, this.

You can thank me later. Or curse me. Probably the latter.

🔥 The Undefeated Throne is available now: https://www.books2read.com/TheUndefeatedThrone 🔥

Also, I’ve started a new project! Let’s get into it.

The Undefeated Throne

For those of you who don’t mind getting blood on your shoes, like a side of mythological mash-ups, and dig characters who make poor life choices for the best of reasons, this one’s for you.

You don’t have to just take my word for it. A few brave souls who got an early look have already weighed in. Apparently, I didn’t completely mess it up.

Here’s what they’re saying2:

• "This book reads like the author's editor's notes from part one read, in part, 'Needs more Zombies'... the snappy snarky dialogue is still wonderful; the characters are starting to feel like old friends, but yet still exhibit a wonderful sense of doubt and frailty in their actions and motivations... Is this the 'Empire' to Book 1's 'Hope' ? Could be." — James Roberts-Thompson

• "Think Marvel heroes and anti-heroes, but up the action, fights and humour by tenfold. I love these characters. Each so flawed, snarky throw away one liners and banter, and each ready to put their fears aside and jump right into unwinnable battles with supernatural monsters and demons." — Peter

• "The balance between revealing more of their backstories and the worldbuilding and keeping the story speeding along is perfectly tuned – the reader is able to pick up all sorts of interesting information and emotional development while barely stopping to catch their breath." — Steph Warren

• "The story touched me on so many levels I felt I was living in it, not reading about it... I could see not only the color of the hair, the skin, the clothes, the environment, but also the sadness, the fortitude, the self-sacrifice, the regret, the bravery and the hope." — Lili

• "The second book in this trilogy flows smoothly from the story begun in Three Faces of Fate. Richard Parry’s work is centered on memorable characters and thoroughly developed world building." — Walter Scott

So there you have it. More zombies (or something like them), more snark, and more questionable choices from your favourite dysfunctional found family. If that sounds like your kind of punishment, you know what to do.

Go on. The apocalypse won’t start itself.

📖 Grab your copy of The Undefeated Throne now: https://www.books2read.com/TheUndefeatedThrone

Now that Throne has escaped containment and is out in the wild, you’ll be wondering WTAF I’m going to be doing with all my ‘spare time3’.

The Echo Plague

The attentive among you will have noticed a new piece of original writing appearing here on Roll for Narrative. It’s the first chapter of The Echo Plague, a new series set in a sort of dark future4 with high-tech weapons and people who think they know what they’re doing5.

We meet Veritas agent Korvus through another man’s eyes in The Well of Lethe:

Lethe is a prison planet, a hellscape with a blistering high-pressure atmosphere and oceans of roiling acid. The Well, perhaps the kindest term for a pit dug into the bedrock under those very oceans, is a place where The Integrated Collective put people they want to forget… but might need at some later point.

Naturally, this book is about absolutely none of that. We haven’t met the aliens yet.

Go on. Check it out. You know you want to6.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I'll be in my writer-cave, bracing for the next wave of reviews and distilling gin for The Echo Plague. Korvus is going to need it.

Stay caffeinated,

R

Quantum Entanglement Anchor: Open.

Veritas Chain: Resolved | Accuracy 100%

Veritas Source: Logos Actual | Integrated Collective

Veritas Recipient: Corrector Korvus | Integrated Collective

Message: INVESTIGATE / CORRECT UNSANCTIONED INTELLIGENCE ON LETHE SC90982.

Quantum Entanglement Anchor: Closed.

Chapter One

Last time Mercer saw a Corrector, his wife died.

This time, who knew? The entire colony could be incinerated. The fact that it was a basket of reclamation cases, Nulls and Glitches stacked as deep and wide as you could go, didn’t change the odds. When you saw a Corrector, the killing started.

He shifted and ran a finger under his too-tight collar. Something about the damn wash cycles here meant everything starched came out too tight. The fabric was synth-cotton the Collective produced on some ass-world in the sector, supposedly from an Eden-class planet, but it had all the love of a Kiln-class product. The rim of the shirt abraded against his stubble, a grey frosting that always seemed to survive contact with his razor.

I hope this one isn’t here to Correct housekeeping services.

“Sir.” It was Eckles. The man was a practised hand at shepherding malcontents, a sort of brutish efficiency radiating from the way he almost slouched. “Give the word, and there’ll be an accident.”

Mercer gave him a sideways glance. “That won’t be necessary, Sergeant.”

Eckles nodded, but not in the way Mercer thought meant sure, I won’t shoot this asshole. It was the kind of nod that suggested he was buying time for his mental train to board at the station, a time-consuming process that hinted at the amount of ordnance coming along for the journey. “As you say, sir.”

Reeves shifted. She was new. Came in from off-world with the last group of Dissonants sent to Lethe for ‘safekeeping’. Reeves had the kind of pale-meets-sweaty look that suggested to Mercer that she was going to cause an accident, but the old-fashioned way: she wouldn’t mean it. “Is his ship going to be large enough for all these?”

It was an interesting—and odd—question for Private Reeves to ask. Mercer considered it despite the provenance. The three of them stood on the orbital connection platform. A squat cylinder was at their back, a sealed mass transit elevator that descended into the heart of the Well, nestled in the acidic spite of the ocean. The platform sat in a protective dome, the glass still mostly transparent, its acid damage kept to a minimum by the Collective’s purpose-over-cost-savings engineering. The whole loading bay was supposed to be a sanitary white, but the corrosive atmosphere of Lethe found its way into every damn space, discolouring the floor and elevator shroud to the hue of aged bone.

Above them, the Tether rose to be lost in the grey-green of the atmosphere. Out there, above them in the black, was a small station, the other end of the geostationary Clarke elevator that brought in malcontents and supplies, but not in equal measure. It was the only way in and out of Lethe, unless you had an atmosphere-capable craft, but the Collective didn’t send those here.

It wouldn’t be wise to provide the Nulls another way out.

None of that was what Reeves was talking about. She was referring to the other occupants of the bay, a group of prisoners escaping Lethe by some marvel arranged by, or with, Dr. Aris. Aris was not here for the prisoner exchange due to the outbreak, but Mercer suspected the man would secretly have loved to be there for first contact with this Corrector.

He had a history.

The prisoners, for their part, were exactly what you’d expect: the usual mix of agitators and catatonics, depending on their medication levels and previous crimes. There was a jumpy-looking one at the edge of the herd, but that’s what Eckles was here for. Containment. Or Reeves and her more-than-likely accidental accident. There were ten of them, which would fit just fine in the gravity elevator’s car, but Reeves’s question was about the Corrector’s ship. Mercer felt his brows pull closer together. “It’s a good question, Private. Corrector ships aren’t known for their roominess—”

The platform shuddered. It shouldn’t have done that—just one more thing Mercer had requested parts for on the last supply run and received no response to. Not a no, but a blank. And now here they were: three brave soldiers of the Collective, ten prisoners, and a high-pressure acid atmosphere just outside five centimetres of nanospun carbon glass.

Five centimetres isn’t enough. Not for the fury of Lethe.

Mercer looked up just as the Corrector’s elevator car dropped through the atmospheric soup. It bulled its way through the burning clouds, slowing rapidly as it approached the platform’s docking collar. The Correctors were tough—a mere five Gs wouldn’t be enough to make them bend, but Mercer still wanted to wince in sympathy.

When the car shuddered to a stop, its collar locking into place, the loading bay shivered again, as if a mighty wave had rolled over it. That kind of sympathetic resonance suggested the elevator was misaligned, and Mercer’s administrator’s mind went to the cost justification of a new landing array at the same time his military mind said now was the time to get belowdecks.

The elevator car’s doors hissed wide, revealing a room shrouded in gloom. Hydraulics wheezed, and steam eddied out through the breach. Mercer could make out a lone figure standing there and had a moment to wonder why the Corrector wasn’t showing due urgency when a prisoner broke free.

Mercer swivelled, his mouth open to bark at Eckles, because this was his job, man, get it together only to find Eckles already down, two other prisoners atop him. The lone prisoner leading the charge toward the Corrector was joined by another five, and that not-useful-right-now-thanks administrator’s mind let Mercer know that meant only three of the inmates were drugged enough to prevent them from rioting.

Then his military mind noted that Eckles did not have his weapon. Mercer swivelled back and saw the lead inmate held Eckles’s rifle to his shoulder, drawing a bead on the Corrector.

The prisoner fired.

Ballistics were crude, but a hole in a man still gave pause for thought. At least one round hit the Corrector, who had the decency to take a step back—in surprise? Pain? Who knew—before he strode into the loading bay’s light. Mercer took in a man tall enough to be a presence without being memorable, strong without being bulky. Lean with it, too; a whole package that said the Corrector managed diet and exercise with the same focus with which he distributed the Will of the Logos.

That was when Reeves had her Big Accident™. The private opened fire on the running gang of prisoners, but her aim was wild, her ballistic weapon chattering in a too-slack grip. Rounds hit a prisoner, the Corrector, and the nanospun carbon glass of the dome.

Mercer realised his own sidearm was in his hand. He turned back to Eckles and shot one of the inmates on him. It was a loose, sloppy hip-fire, but he didn’t have a Herald. Mercer wasn’t Veritas. The inmate staggered back, blood spraying from the back of a through-and-through hole.

But you know who did have a Herald? The Corrector. He stepped fully down the elevator ramp, right toward the armed prisoner, black-and-grey armour like the manifested prophecy of a dark god. His armour’s inbuilt Stinger slid up and over his shoulder pauldron as the Herald System blared in a harsh male voice, “CEASE AND DESIST.”

No one ceased or desisted, so the Stinger fired. When Mercer’s wife died, that Corrector hadn’t used a Stinger. No, that had been more medieval than this. The shoulder-mounted autocannon brayed a single shot at one prisoner, the hypervelocity flechette punching through him in a spray of superheated mist before hammering into the elevator shroud behind Mercer.

The prisoners didn’t slow, which brought them right to the Corrector as he lifted his sidearm. Mercer felt his eyes widen, because he’d seen an Adjudicator before, and someone—probably him—screamed, “Get down!”

The Adjudicator fired. Rivulets of electricity coursed over the Corrector’s armour as the weapon spat purple-edged night. A roar followed as the energy field impacted the first prisoner, and a momentary flash raged into light of the purest white, accompanied by a deafening, concussive boom.

The lead prisoner was fully disrupted, the matter of his body destabilised and rendered back to stray atoms. The squad around him were hit by the shockwave, and red giblets sprayed outward from the impact. A crimson hue coated the dome’s glass as a crack fissured up from the east wall.

The Corrector stepped off the platform, his armour dripping with pieces of ex-inmate, and strode forward until he arrived at Mercer’s position. He didn’t stop there, continuing a few paces on until he shored up at the mayhem that was Eckles and his Apostate punch-up. The Corrector picked up the remaining prisoner atop Eckles as if the Null weighed no more than a meal wafer, then slammed the inmate into the one Mercer had shot. He then took Reeves’s rifle from her with the same kind of calm assurance that had seen Mercer’s wife a corpse, ejected the magazine, cleared the breach, and handed the weapon back to the stunned private.

He bent and hauled Eckles to his feet before turning to Mercer. It was then that Mercer saw that, despite the Corrector being shot by both the prisoner and Reeves, there wasn’t an apparent mark on him.

This close, Mercer could see the man’s almost-smile, a glint in his eye that seemed more important than the sound of the cracking dome above them. Mercer wanted to do something. Say something. He was the warden, by the Will of the Logos, and here he was, as flat-footed as fresh-off-the-boat Reeves. Behind them, a high-pitched groan echoed through the bay as the crack in the dome spiderwebbed another few centimetres under the immense pressure. Lethe was patient, but it was always hungry.

“Warden Samwise Mercer, greetings,” the Corrector said. “The Veritas Bureau sends its regards. Shall we go below before we’re agonisingly crushed by a high-pressure acidic atmosphere, or was there something else you wanted to show me up here?”

Ready for Part 2?

But talking is boring. So, we did something better: we played.

I took Cassie through the first few chapters live, with dice and everything, to prove that outlining a novel doesn't have to feel like homework. It can feel like an adventure. We set out to create a story from scratch. The result was pure dystopian gold (or caps, if you’re studying for your Fallout exam).

You can watch the whole creative process right here:

The Hand We Were Dealt

To give you a taste of the magic (and the trauma her hero’s going to get), the dice gods decreed we would create:

• The World: A post-apocalyptic landscape, centuries after the sun vanished, where civilisation huddles around artificial light sources. To top it off, the tone had to be action-packed and explosive. Fun for us, miserable for the characters. [15:04, 16:03, 16:51]

• The Hero: A paranoid Professional who is the best at what they do. [21:08, 23:41] Their want? To solve a deep mystery. [22:23] Their need? To take responsibility for their own actions. [23:00]

• The Backup & The Baddie: The hero gets an ally who is a Protector, hell-bent on keeping them alive... and they share a dark secret. [29:29, 30:11] The villain? A well-intentioned extremist who is trying to stop the hero's quest in order to protect them. [31:13, 31:48]

The sheer, delicious conflict writes itself. As Cassie put it, “This is really... juicy.” We went from a blank page to a story full of secrets, paranoia, and explosions in under 45 minutes.

Your Turn to Play

The system we used in the video is the core of The Writer's Campaign. It’s a gamified, RPG-inspired guide designed to get you from a spark of an idea to a fully-fledged plot, but like, fast. No Gantt charts, no lectures on the 3-act structure that make your eyes bleed.

Just you, some dice, and a clear path to finishing your damn book.

And because I have no idea if people will like this thing, I’m launching it at the ridiculously low price of 99 cents. It’s an absolute steal for a system that will turn your writing process into the most addictive game you’ve ever played.

Stop staring at the blank page. Pick up your dice, start your quest, and let's get some words written.

The adventure is ready. Are you?

Keep rolling,

R

Say what?

🎲 Build Your Own Villain (or Hero, maybe)

While you were all waiting patiently for more supernatural escapades, I went completely off-brand and wrote... a writing guide.

I'm as surprised as you are.

Still, I stayed on-brand by avoiding the tired, “Yo, this is a hero’s journey,” vibe. If you need that, I’ve actually done it already:

Instead, The Writer's Campaign is exactly what it sounds like: a dice-rolling, character-creating, adventure-building approach to novel writing that treats your story like the epic quest it should be.

No 3-act structure lectures. No 7-point plot system charts that make your eyes bleed. Just you, some dice, and a human-friendly path to crafting a story that doesn't suck.

Here's the cover + blurb power combo:

Your story is a dungeon. Let’s go raid it.

Is there a story trapped inside you, waiting to be rescued by your inner adventurer?

Most writing advice sucks. It’s either too vague to be useful or so rigid it strangles your creativity. It treats writing like a chore, when it should feel like the most addictive game you’ve ever played.

It’s time to flip the board over.

The Writer’s Campaign is a gamified, RPG-inspired system designed to get you from a blank page to a finished first draft. Using dice, a notebook, and the spirit of adventure, you will:

• Generate a unique world, a compelling hero, and a high-stakes plot.

• Navigate every key story beat, from the Inciting Incident to the final, epic Climax.

• Slay writer's block by transforming it into a series of fun, achievable quests.

• Finish your damn book.

Whether you're a complete beginner stuck on page one or a veteran writer looking to debug a broken manuscript, this is your system for turning ideas into words… and worlds.

Stop waiting for the muse. Pick up your dice and start your quest.

The adventure is ready. Are you?

Why should you listen to me about writing?

Fair question. According to Goodreads, I'm currently sitting at a 4.35-star average across 30 books. For context, Stephen King holds a 4.07-star average. Not saying I'm better than the King of Horror (because I’m not insane), but… according to readers, I seem to know which part of a story is the start, middle, and end.

You can verify this yourself using the power of the public Internet:

• Me: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/7211936.Richard_Parry

• The King: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/3389.Stephen_King

The deal (because there's always a deal)

The Writer's Campaign launches July 11th at the criminally low introductory price of 99 cents. It's a tight ~20,000 words. This isn't a book that should have been a blog post; it's a book that respects your time while teaching you to craft stories that don't make readers want to throw their Kindle at the wall.

Also, it has tables.

For some, buying books is out in this economy (and who can blame them). If you want The Writer’s Campaign for free, you can get the ARC. One free copy for one honest review.

👉 Get your ARC for The Writer’s Campaign: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/219178/the-writers-campaign

And because I’ve elevated my deep-seated impostor syndrome to new levels: I've fully narrated the audiobook myself. No soulless AI, no grainy audio recorded in someone's bathroom (…allowing you to focus on the true majesty of the Aotearoa New Zealand accent). It’s me, so you know it’s not exclusive to Audible; you can find this just about anywhere. Professional quality, author-voiced, landing the same day for around five bucks. I admit to being as surprised as you that it breezed through cert on the first try:

Apparently I can speak as well as type, despite the accent.

Speaking of quests and adventures (because that's apparently my thing now) let's talk about that sequel you've been waiting for.

🌟 The joyful lap

The first ARC review for The Undefeated Throne just landed, and it's a glorious 5-star beauty. Someone out there read my sequel and didn't immediately demand a refund. Progress!

And while this email was languishing in my Drafts folder, a second review landed. Praise the Emperor, but another 5-star beauty:

For those of you itching to get your hands on the book before its August release, the ARC is still live on Booksprout.

👉 Get your ARC for The Undefeated Throne: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/212274/the-undefeated-throne-a-supernatural-thriller-adventure

The bottom line

Whether you're here for supernatural suspense or want to learn how to write your own dice-fuelled masterpiece, July's shaping up to be interesting. The Undefeated Throne ARCs are live now, and The Writer's Campaign drops July 11th.

As always, thanks for putting up with my particular brand of… let’s call it literature. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go roll some dice and figure out what villain I'm unleashing on the world next.

Stay caffeinated,

R

But first, the main event.

🔥 Behold, the cover for The Undefeated Throne! 🔥

Soak it in. Absorb the ominous vibes. Is Isolde in trouble? Who’s that asshole behind her? And does he need a radical facial? Get ready to find out. Here’s the blurb:

“Isolde has already faced death—and come back changed. The battle for Valhaven left her scarred, but the fight isn’t over. A new threat lurks in the shadows, one that doesn’t just want to kill her—it wants to unmake everything she is.

She’s not alone. Aidan, a druid bound by old magic, knows something dark is stirring beneath the city. Jen, a hacker with a past she can’t outrun, has uncovered a terrifying link between the supernatural and the corporate elite. And Lysander, a demon forged in war and bound to their cause, would rather burn the world than let them fall.

Their enemy isn’t just powerful. It’s ancient, a being that commands the dead and seeks to claim the Undefeated Throne.

To stop it, they must descend into the heart of Valhaven’s secrets, where a goddess’s chains still rattle and the line between myth and reality is razor-thin.

If they fail, the city won’t just fall. The dead will rise, and the world will belong to them.”

Now, before you smash that sign-up link, listen up.

The Conditions of Engagement.

There are rules. My inbox thanks you for reading them:

1. Book 1 First. This is a sequel. Obvious, right? To get the ARC for this book, you must have your review for The Three Faces of Fate completed on Booksprout.

   • Need to catch up? I’ve opened a quick campaign for the first book here: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/216203/the-three-faces-of-fate-a-supernatural-thriller-adventure

2. The Booksprout Oracle. If Booksprout blocks you on Book 2, it’s not lying. It means your review dashboard isn’t updated with your review for Book 1 (this is an issue for roughly 40% of you, so you can imagine my inbox). Do not email me about this. I cannot fix it. You must appease the Booksprout gods yourself. Go to your dashboard and add your review links. If you’re lost, their support team are your best point of contact.

3. A note on Google Play. Due to a colossal cock-up on my part, the Google Play version won't be live on the store until release day. It's coming, I promise. Do not email me about this either. For now, you can ARC using the generic ePub file.

Still with me? Rock on.

The ARC for The Undefeated Throne is open right now. Go claim your copy.

👉 Get your ARC for The Undefeated Throne here: https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/212274/the-undefeated-throne-a-supernatural-thriller-adventure

Reviews are due by August 16th.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back into my cave to brace for your feedback. Be gentle.

And now, it’s yours to keep.

🌟 Download the full ebook – free, forever.

While many of you enjoyed Hearthlight told episodically (almost a thousand read each episode..!), and a few enjoyed it in audio (I’m always surprised that people dig our Kiwi accent), a handful said that bite-sized wasn’t how you liked a main course. You wanted the full meal, all at once.

As a thank-you to Hearthlight’s creator, Henrique de Aguiar (who graciously allowed me to use his game to tell this wonderful story), I’m following his lead. The full collected version (titled, The Light That Remains) is now available as a free download. No signups. No catch. Just a gentle fantasy about healing, community, and second chances. Here you go:

If you prefer to get it from your retailer, it’s available everywhere books can be free (so, not Amazon, but almost everywhere else). You can find it here:

https://www.books2read.com/TheLightThatRemains

The Light That Remains is the same content as the original episodes below, minus the prompts and dice rolls. It’s now compiled as a journal, one wistful day at a time.

(It’s perfect for a rainy afternoon and pairs well with mulled wine.)

🎧 Prefer to listen? You still can.

The narrated versions of each Hearthlight entry will remain live here on Roll for Narrative. Ebooks can’t include audio, and I know many of you discovered this series through the voice, the warmth, and the shared breath of a story told aloud.

So here they are, one cosy fireside day at a time:

If you want to support me, the best way is by checking out my work. If you enjoyed Hearthlight’s themes of found family and quiet hope, you might also like Tomb of the Six. It’s a free prequel to my fantasy series The Splintered Land. It’s not as cosy, but it’s just as full of magic, meaning, and messy people trying to do the right thing:

Or, like, you can get it from a retailer (…not Amazon 🤣) like our ancestors did:

https://www.books2read.com/TomboftheSix

This isn’t one of them.

This is Four Against the Dark.

• 🖤 Isolde, the armoured warrior who bleeds for the innocent.

• 🌿 Aidan, the druid professor from another time.

• 😈 Cassius, the demon who fell but never stopped trying.

• 💻 Jen, the hacker who doesn’t fight with fists… but still fights like hell.

They’re not a team at the start.

They are now.

Valhaven’s under siege. Monsters roam the streets. And the only way to win?

Together.

🎧 Their Theme: Four Against the Dark

Slow burn. Heavy synth. Guitar drop like thunder cracking a neon sky.

This is the song that hits like justice. It’s not about power. It’s about partnership.

It’s not about saving the world alone. It’s about refusing to let it burn while you’ve still got each other.

"The dark may rise, the void may call,
But together, we’ll outlast it all.
Four souls defy, four hearts ignite,
Against the dark, we are the light."

But wait! There’s more 🙂 No, it’s not a free set of steak knives. You can stream the whole soundtrack everywhere you get your music.

Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon… choose your weapon, rocker. For some popular services, click here:

(And yes, it’s the full 14-track album. No bullshit, just beats right from the Zion Mainline.)

Let it ride while you read. Or rage. Or rally. Hell, they’re even showing it on the subway.

📖 Read The Three Faces of Fate Today

Book One of Dawn’s Warden is OUT.

Urban fantasy meets mythic danger.

A cast of broken heroes.

And the belief that we’re stronger together than torn apart.

🎤 What early readers are saying:

• “Fully-rendered characters that the reader can invest in, satisfaction guaranteed.” — Walter

• “Each of them is endearing in a way particular to their background… torment, bravery, self-sacrifice.” — Lili

• “Urban Magic. Druids. The Fae. Explosions. And an interesting storyline with multiple mythologies.” — James

🔁 Writer’s Note

This trilogy is about defiance.

About what happens when you refuse to kneel.

About what we could be, if we stopped tearing each other down and started building each other up.

I started writing Dawn’s Warden while I was in a rough place. I was burned out, boxed in, and working a job that drained more than it gave. What got me through was the same hope that lives in these pages:

• That we can be more.

• That we can rise together.

• That we’re epic, not because we stand alone, but because we stand with.

These characters aren’t perfect. Neither are we.

It’s been a long time coming. And now I get to share it with you. See, I don’t think the world needs lone heroes.

It needs the ones who show up. Bleeding. Bruised. But together.

It needs you, hero. Are you with us?

If you just want to catch up on this week’s entries, they’re below... or, just skip straight to Day 24!

• Today’s prompt: “You sit by the hearth on the final day, reflecting on your journey. What are your thoughts?”

• Today’s music: Running Down the Clock, by Soul Vital. 🎧 Listen on SoundCloud.

The Final Reflection

I waited in the pub for Hollis to take me back to town. Bernard had the fire lit because the weather had turned savage with a mix of sideways wind-blown ice and water. Some people might call it a hailstorm, but I called it misery. Bernard had brought me a mug of mulled wine, so I sat by the fire, doing as the wine demanded: mulling.

If I was going back to my old life, was I going to let everything slide back to normal? That was the risk, wasn’t it—that I’d revert to my old habits, rather than embracing the new one Hearthlight had offered.

The thing was, Hearthlight hadn’t just given me a new way of acting. It had shown me that there was an alternative to sadness, even when things were hard. And for sure, things were hard in the world. Climate change, politics, the economy… the list went on, and I was pretty sure it sucked regardless of whether you were a red or blue team member. But no one in Hearthlight talked about teams. They celebrated instead: each other, life, and the simple joys in it.

It was something to consider. Was the real answer Hearthlight gave that all we needed was each other and the occasional barbecue, ice cream, or walk with a dog? It couldn’t be that simple. But I’d been here just over three weeks. I hadn’t turned on my phone or watched the news. There was no social media in the hamlet. No clamour for attention, no frenzy of noticing or being noticed. Things here weren’t silent, though. The people talked with each other, but not at each other. They helped one another with simple things, and were enriched by helping or being helped. None of them needed magic or a dragon. They didn’t fear the ghost in the woods, and were happy with Hollis’s take on libraries. It was okay to sometimes pass a good book around, so you could all talk about the ending over a glass of wine.

My life was missing a key ingredient: these moments. I’d lived insulated, my interactions confined to work or online. And Hearthlight’s critical intervention was a simple one. There’s a better way. And by taking the path, you’ll help others on the journey.

I heard the rumble of Hollis’s wagon wheels on the cobbles outside. I stood and realised the hail had stopped. I wouldn’t get soaked going home, and once I got there, I could hope to be happy.

Maybe Hearthlight didn’t fix me. It’s possible I’d just forgotten how to… be. I didn’t need to run at first. I just needed to remember how to walk: slowly, on purpose, and beside someone who wags their tail when they see you.

• Roll result? One mug of mulled wine, one farewell hearth, and the sound of wagon wheels on wet cobbles.

• XP gained: 1 heartfelt truth, +2 insight on slow living, and +1 to future encounters with joy.

Thanks for journeying through The Hearthlight Chronicles.

If this soft, dreamy wander through found family and forest magic resonated with you, the best thank-you you can give is to check out my latest book, The Three Faces of Fate.

It’s not cosy fantasy. But it is full of magic, found family, and hope for a beleaguered world. It’s what Hearthlight might be like, turned up to eleven.

And if you’re not subscribed yet…

Who Are the Redcaps?

Redcaps are Morgana Ó Stina’s personal attack dogs.

They look like humans who never skip leg day and double-down on jaw upgrades. Sharp teeth. Savage strength. Bloodstained hats. And a gleeful hunger for chaos.

They’re huge, strong, fast, and hard to kill.

And they’re not even close to the worst thing out there.

🎧 Their Track: Redcap Bastards

This isn’t a gentle ballad. It’s war drums, cracked bone, and teeth on pavement.

“Redcap bastards, vicious and wild, Tearing through the dark with a savage smile.”

Let it play while you get re-acquainted with the enemy. This is Astra’s second encounter, and this time… she’s got a frenemy along for the ride.

📖 Preview: Bad Teeth and Worse Ideas

Chapter 4 ain’t subtle.

There are monsters in Valhaven. You’ll meet the rest of them when the book launches 1st May.

But tonight? Let’s re-introduce the enemy’s front line.

📢 Praise from Early Reviews:

• “[Parry] works with fully-rendered characters that the reader can invest in, satisfaction guaranteed. Dialog is seasoned with wit and irony. A delight to behold.” — Walter.

• “[The characters] each have their own torment and trigger and struggle and pain - and determination and bravery and self-sacrifice.” – Lili.

• “…a great blend of action with several different mythologies thrown in too. Celtic Irish? Yup. Ancient Geek? Covered. Judeo-Christian? Of course… This book features several of my favourite elements in writing (Urban Magic; Druids; the Fae; Explosions), all blended together in an interesting storyline.” — James.

• “You become invested in the characters and want them to succeed.“ — Ricky.

• “A total page-turner! The plot twists are delicious and unexpected.” – Darrell.

• “This returns Parry to his best with ancient forces working within the modern world with unusual motivations as a city is under siege.” — Scott.

• “Oh what a great story. The characters were awesome. Has a lot of action, adventure and unworldly things going on. Had a hard time putting it down.” — T.

Chapter 4

The journey back to her… other’s place was uneventful. No one dared to make eye contact with her on the metro. Her attire hid her in plain sight. Nobody wants a close encounter with death.

She made it to Bastion Towers. The lobby was wide and open, a once grand sight before hard times hit. A large chandelier hung from above, with a bank of mailboxes to the right. A derelict reception desk took up most of the back wall, with a corridor breaking up the vast expanse of ruddy oak. Down that way lived the super. She’d seen him a couple of times.

No mail in her box, as expected. No one wrote to her. They were all dead.

She tried the elevator in vain. The elevator was a cage design, with a horizontally sliding door that would have screamed retro cool when this place was first minted. The door rattled open, but the flickering light inside didn’t encourage optimism. She tried the button for her floor, which did nothing at all. She hit it another thirty times in about two seconds, but it didn’t care about her frustration.

The super appeared right beside her, somehow creeping up on her in broad daylight. “It’s busted.”

I must maintain focus. “I can see that. Say, you know anyone around here who’s supposed to fix all the busted shit in this place?” She leaned insouciantly against the elevator wall.

“I see what you did there.” The super was a middle-aged guy, hair mostly grey, but he was fit with it. He must have been quite the himbo back in his day. He wore a too-tight T-shirt. It might have been white once, but the rigours of the job stole that principle away. His jeans were light blue, faded by time, not fashion, and he wore workmanlike boots, a little like the imbecile’s from the waterfront. “It’s on The List.”

Astra heard the capital letters in The and List. Like it was an honour registry for tasks in the highest regard. She gave him a blank stare. “What number?”

“What?”

“On the list. What number is fixing the broken fucking elevator, man? I have to climb like fifty floors!”

He breathed in and out, totally unconcerned with her frustration. “The building doesn’t have fifty floors.”

“I was just checking you knew which building you were in. You know, the one you’re supposed to fix shit in?” Astra wished she was in her armour. People did not give her this kind of shit in her armour. They gave her… different shit. Her other was a disguise to keep Astra safe. Or was Astra the disguise? Who kept who safe?

He waved a hand before her face. “I said, you got anything you need a hand taking up?”

“Sorry.” She looked down and bit her lip. “I must have zoned out.”

“Trouble sleeping?” He nodded, as if sleep deprivation was the hidden devil inside all humanity. “I try to get at least seven a night. Sometimes more, but the building manager’s a real hard ass, you know what I mean?”

Astra looked up at him. “Building manager?”

“Yeah. You know her. About so high,” his hand jabbed out at roughly Astra’s head height, “and easily recognisable by the hardness of her ass.” He looked at Astra, then his hand, lips moving soundlessly. “That came out wrong.”

Astra smiled despite herself. “Thanks for the offer. You know, to take anything up? I can make it on my own.”

“Yeah, okay, but let me know if that changes.” The himbo smiled, easy going and relaxed, his teeth white and perfect. “Fifty floors is a lot.”

* * *

He’s not wrong. Astra knew she needed more sleep. She was out during the day, and both nights past she’d been down to the waterfront. Tonight was going to be exactly the same—three for three—because the stormwater drain hadn’t held the secrets she needed. She leaned her forehead against her door for a moment. Twenty-eight flights up. Her legs had a gentle burn, but she’d trained for far worse than flights of stairs.

She set her key in the lock, turned it, and slid into her apartment. Astra closed the door behind her, then listened. She was sure there was no one here except for her, but she needed to canvass the apartment anyway. The place was nice, if you were into nice things. Her other decorated it. She started her sweep in the small lounge area that shared air with the tiny kitchen. Black drapes kept the light out when she needed sleep during the day. She had candles dotted about the room, because she liked them. The old overstuffed couch was comfortable enough to sleep on and sat in front of a TV that rarely saw use. Who has time for TV?

Her tiny bedroom had an elaborate four-poster bed complete with black hessian drapes. It was thematic for her other, but was also cheap. She ducked back out and checked the bathroom. Empty. Her home was secure. Time to get to the sanctum.

She swung out onto the fire escape, then monkeyed up the outside of the building. While she climbed, she wondered about the drifter in her environmental studies lecture. He was all tough guy exterior, but she knew he’d seen shit. He had the same look she saw in the mirror. She reached the roof, checking for anyone else, but the only things waiting for her were pigeons. She kept low, because there was no need to draw the eye of anyone in nearby buildings. Astra snuck between the various solar panels, antennas, generators, pumps, air conditioners, and the old furnace, eventually shoring up against her water tower.

It was a ruin, of course. That’s why she chose it. The ladder to the top had died a long time ago, but she didn’t need a ladder. The main roof access door lived in a small bunker with a cooling tower on top; it was close to the water tower. Astra wall-ran up the bunker’s side, grabbed onto the cooling tower, shimmied higher, and launched herself across to the water tower. Her fingers found purchase on the top lip of the water tower and she muscled herself atop it, then slipped inside through the service hatch in the roof and eased herself to the floor.

The interior of the water tower was spacious enough. She ignored the rest of what was here, heading straight for the armour. The light from the service hatch was minimal, but she knew the armour better than her own face. She’d been wearing it for eight years now. Astra donned it, feeling stronger, safer as she became who she was supposed to be. Not the other.

She was Astra Invicta. She was the Night Guardian.

* * *

The waterfront had fog again. Streetlights barely pierced the haze as ocean wavelets echoed in the stillness.

The monsters she’d killed last night were gone, but their comrades were still here, hidden and watching. She could feel it—an itch under her skin, and only stamping them out would scratch it.

Astra ghosted along the low buildings, looking out over the ocean. It was peaceful here, if you didn’t think too much about what was under it. She perched, a gargoyle in metal, waiting and watching. She held her position for hours. Commuters turned into evening exercisers, then faded away to nothing, leaving the waterfront deserted aside from the odd stray car.

There.

It was hokey as fuck, but a figure Astra could only describe as ‘shadowy’ seethed along the cycleway. Nothing says ‘sus’ in quite the same way as someone afraid of the light. It was moving like a man, but who knew for sure if it was human after the freaks she’d met the last two nights? It was hard to make out. The whatever-it-was-but-let’s-hope-it’s-human headed toward the stairs in the breakwater wall.

Astra broke her gargoyle pose and headed for her roof’s fire escape and shimmied down. She’d chosen this building because the streetlights were out on the road beside it. She scampered across the street, headed for the breakwater, and made the sand. Astra headed for the sewer pipe, then waited outside for a few heartbeats, listening. Nothing. She slipped inside. Someone—or something—had cleaned up the bodies from last night. There wasn’t even a spent casing from the pistol the monster had tried to shoot her with.

The tunnel network was far more complicated than a stormwater system should be. It had cavernous areas, other large tunnels, and plenty of locked doors and stairs to the living world above. Astra had paced along some parts of it last night, but found no evidence of an underworld of monsters in residence. Until, of course, the shadowy fuck headed in.

But did he come in here? I don’t remember seeing him since I was across the street. Astra recalled her loss of focus earlier in the day when speaking to the super, and tried to get herself back together. This is just like day two of a three-day tournament. I’m tired. I’ve been tired before.

She slipped through a few patches of water. It was dark in here, very little light making its way down through the gratings above. She’d turned back last night because she had no light. Tonight, she’d brought a glow stick. She snapped it in the middle. While its light was a meagre greenish yellow, it had the advantage of being impossible to douse in water, difficult to break like a flashlight, and worked for a long time. Astra hung it from her belt and continued on, counting the turns she made, mapping the tunnels in her mind. Even the shadowy fuck had escaped tonight. She’d be ready next time.

She paused. There was a voice ahead. Or, more of a low growl with words mixed in like vegetables floating in a stew. She placed her feet with care, and rounded a corner to find the shadowy fuck right there in one of the cavernous areas. The centrepiece of the cavern was the inverse dais of a recessed concrete depression. At least two stories above her, a grating let in a little starlight. Mist filled the depression, and it looked like it really liked the shadowy fuck. It curled around him, flowing about his feet like a collection of eager smoke puppies. The shadowy fuck himself was more shadowy up close. He had a full on cloak made of shadow, and a dark hood made of the same wispy, otherworldly material pulled over his head.

The creature was the thing growl-speaking. To itself, it seemed, because it was alone. “Difficult to know. Could she have tricked me? Plants, plants… there are no plants.”

“Asshole,” Astra said. “Tell your creatures to get out of town. Humans are not for killing. Not while I’m here.”

The creature didn’t whip about. It turned nice and slow to glare at her from under the hood. Its eyes glowed molten red, and its—his? Yeah, this one’s a dude—his mouth was full of glistening teeth. A ridged brow spoke of a bestial ancestry. He faced her. “Little mortal. You think that armour can save you?”

“Come find out.”

He surged at her, the cloak of shadows trailing in tatters, his arms outstretched, clawed fingers extended. It was a basic rookie move, the thing you’d do if you thought you were above everyone you were about to murder. Astra timed her counter offensive, slamming a yoko geri right into the creature’s face. The crunch echoed in the tunnel as her sidekick landed. It staggered back, gagging, and she followed her counter with six punches to its midsection, then smashed him with an elbow strike to the side of the head so hard he went down.

He slammed to the concrete, and the mist swallowed him. Astra crouched, looking around and listening. Crouched, she was half-submerged in mist. She felt about for her opponent, but he wasn’t there. Her fingers came away tacky, and she lifted them up. They were glistening, but not with the dark of blood. The yellow-green of the glow stick was useless for telling what colour it was, but this thing didn’t bleed red.

“What are you?” She kept her tone light. “You’re far from home, aren’t you? Not the rank and file. No, you’re in charge. Something more divine than mythical, am I right?”

Nothing. The fucker had fled.

Astra stood, then headed further through the tunnels. A flickering light drew her from ahead. She found a banged-up door hanging loosely on its hinges below an old maintenance bulb. The door was metal, and the lock had taken a massive impact to pop it open. She reached for the door, and under the Edison glow of the light, gold stained her fingers. This thing bleeds gold. Actual gold. She breathed, “Fuck.”

It didn’t matter what colour or material it bled, of course. That it could bleed was the point. She opened the door, hustling along the passage. Large pipes lined the walls, and she kept a weather eye out for hiding spots. She passed a fallen monster, just like the kind she’d killed last night, and paused by the body. Massive blunt force trauma to the chest had killed it. She touched its throat. Still warm.

The tunnel led her on, and she emerged into a small maintenance chamber. Tools lined one wall, and a metal door barred one end. The shadowy fuck faced two of the monster things. They guarded the door.

Everyone looked at each other. No one moved. Astra cleared her throat. “Do you want me to go first? I can go first.”

“No, I’ve got—” Whatever the shadowy fuck had was lost to history—tears in rain style—as one monster gave a blood-curdling yell and launched itself at the golden-blooded creature. He turned, his shadow cape flowing like smoke, and punched the creature in the face so hard its skull popped like a gourd. “Where is she? Tell me!”

The remaining monster looked at him, then at Astra, pulled out a sidearm, and shot the man in the chest. Bang bang bang, three shots centre mass. The man hissed, flowed forward, then… collapsed on himself, like his entire being was smoke and water. The cape dissolved into mist, seething and hissing as it dissipated.

While this happened, Astra closed the distance to the monster, slipped under its arm as it tried to orient the weapon on her, grabbed his wrist, and rose quickly, snapping its elbow against her shoulder. The monster screamed, so she elbowed it in the face to shut it the hell up, then used its arm in a savage throw. It hit the concrete face-first with a crunch and lay still.

Astra steadied her breathing. The smokey fuck was just gone, like he’d never been. Not even a drop of golden blood remained; her fingers were clean of it.

Golden blood. Moves like smoke. How’s that for a warning label?

Astra had thought he might have been in charge of the monsters. They’d tussled; he’d not won that encounter, but as she looked at the monster whose skull he’d pulped with the same effort she’d need to do that to an apple, she wondered if his heart had been in it.

Gold for blood. A monster that kills monsters. Friend or enemy? Is Valhaven in some kind of monster gang turf war?

She breathed out. “Fuuuuck.”

🔁 Writer’s Note

You can’t introduce a Big Bad without giving them teeth.

The redcaps are Morgana’s claws. They’re quick, cruel, and ever so happy to carve a message into the heroes’ flesh.

This isn’t the big fight.

But it’s where the blood starts flowing.

📘 Preorder The Three Faces of Fate, launching 1 May.

👇👇👇

• Today’s music: Leaves by Taiko. 🎧 Listen on Soundcloud.

Leaving Your Mark

My entire life was a lie.

I know that sounds dramatic, but hey, I am now the kind of person who beards wizards and talks to dragons. Before arriving at Hearthlight, I was doing it all wrong, and I’m not talking about magic. I’m talking about living only for myself, and Hearthlight had made me realise there was a better way.

The wizard and dragon didn’t hurt, though. As far as motivators went, they were S-tier.

It was time to pay some of it forward.

I started early on my morning walk. I needed to collect a few things and had a busy day ahead. Once I had what I needed, I set to work. I took a coffee back to my room at the pub, and ignored Bernard’s implied question—the man did a mean raised eyebrow.

It took hours, but I finished before dinnertime. I had a gift for everyone, and paused to survey my handiwork.

For Trudy, I’d made a hand-painted flavour board. It was a rustic wooden menu with tiny illustrations of her top flavours, and I’d added two things to her already perfect selection of treats. First was a little doodle of Maxwell licking spilled gelato on the bottom, right below a bonus detail: a new flavour named after her. “Trudy’s Trouble” was dark chocolate, raspberry, and a little mischievous joy. I was sure she’d know how to make it.

Dorothy? Well, hers was surprisingly easy. I’d found an old photo frame in a store, and cleaned it up. Then I’d embossed a small note on a piece of genuine Hearthlight wood I’d picked up during my travels. It said, “Some roots grow stronger after a storm.” I left the frame empty. It was an invitation for her to fill it with a new memory, perhaps with Mike, Sam, and Maxwell.

Speaking of Mike, I’d made him a new signboard. Mike’s Meats needed a bright splash of red, and his old sign was a little faded by the sun. It felt unlike the man himself, so I thought he needed a reminder of what people saw in him. His new sign was a fire engine red, with vivid white lettering, a reminder he was a friend and beacon to all in the hamlet.

Sam’s gift took me a little longer, because I’m no artist. I made him a hand-drawn comic, titled “Maxwell the Mighty.” It was only six panels and showed Maxwell saving the hamlet from a dragon using only a leash and a stick. In the last panel I simply wrote, “You write the next adventure.”

Of course, that meant I needed a gift for Maxwell. His was a leather tag for his collar, and I’d found a place to emboss it. One side I’d had stamped with MAXWELL THE MIGHTY, the other side reading CERTIFIED TREAT INSPECTOR. I suspected Maxwell couldn’t read, but you could never tell with Hearthlight animals.

And what of Hollis? I found him a new journal, with a hand-sewn spine and leather cover. On the inside I’d written a single headline: THE LIGHT THAT REMAINS: NOTES FROM THE QUIET REBUILD. Beneath that, I’d left a note: “For the next chapter — in case you forget how much you’ve already helped.”

I suspected forgetting Hollis’s cat-slash-dragon might be a fatal mistake, so I got the cat a small collar charm. One side showed a miniature dragon curled up, sleeping as cats often do with a tail over their nose. The back had a message I was more confident the cat could read. “You’re more loved than feared.”

My stomach rumbled, reminding me it had missed lunch. I gave a wry smile, because our usual dinnertime would be postponed. I had to deliver these mementos before I could rest. Hearthlight’s people deserved to know how special they were. Tomorrow, I’d leave.

But tonight, I’d remind them they mattered.

• Roll result? A well-meant mess of wood shavings, paint splotches, and glue-sticky fingers, all in the name of heartfelt goodbyes.

• XP gained: 1 custom flavour of community, 1 mighty tail-wag of approval, +1 to crafting checks (emotional and otherwise), and a quiet +1 to “remembered fondly” rolls.

The finale awaits!

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