MeiLin Miranda's Blog - Posts Tagged "free"

Ethergrams and Homilies:

As it came to pass, Simon did not get over to the Runnels house that night. He stood outside for a fair piece looking up at the door, but couldn't bring himself to walk up the steps, knock, and hand over Miss Duniway's ethergram; revealing someone's private correspondence went against everything he believed in as an ethergraph engineer.

But in the morning, a reply came through first thing, a reply that seemed so nonsensical for such a quick turnaround that he started wondering about Miss Duniway himself. He delivered the ethergram to Annabelle, and ended up at the jail as soon as his office closed for the rest of the day, it being Sunday; back then everything closed for church, and an afternoon of either quiet reflection or wailing, depending on your denomination.

A Demonstration of Skill:

Annabelle knelt down and opened the leather case.

Inside were a pair of etheric pistols, the first John had ever seen apart from engravings. "Are those really...? Where did you get them? They cost a small fortune! And you can't possibly shoot with them!"

"You try first," she said, handing one over grip-first. She pointed downrange. "The wine bottle to the right, mid-height."

John nodded. "All right, then. I've never worked with one before, though." He aimed at the bottle and reached into the pistol with his mind, as he would to wind his clock or spark his firestarter. He found the hermetauxite hidden in the gun, concentrated on a clear picture of the bottle, and poured all his ability into the ore. He pulled the trigger.

Scryer's Gulch has undergone something of a small explosion of interest; Smashwords downloads of the free ebook of episodes 1-10 went from 925 on Saturday to 3400 as of this morning. I have no idea why. But if you want to find out, come by the site and catch up. Scryer's is a quick, fun read, and it updates every Wednesday.