Brandon Sanderson's Blog, page 3
October 10, 2023
Yumi | Chapter Two
Yumi had always considered the appearance of the daystar to be encouraging. An omen of fortune. A sign that the primal hijo would be open and welcoming to her. The daystar seemed extra bright today—glowing a soft blue on the western horizon as the sun rose in the east. A powerful sign, if you believed in such things. (An old joke notes that lost items tend to be in the last place one looks. Conversely, omens tend to appear in the first place people look for them.) Yumi did believe in signs. She had to; an omen had been the single most important event in her life. At her birth, a falling star had marked the sky—indicating that she had been chosen by the spirits. She’d been taken from her parents and raised to accomplish a holy and important duty. She settled down on the warm floor of her wagon as her attendants, Chaeyung and Hwanji, entered. They bowed in ritual postures, then fed her with maipon sticks and spoons—a meal of rice and a stew that had been left on the ground to cook. Yumi sat and swallowed, never so crass as to try to feed herself. This was a ritual, and she was an expert in those. Though today she couldn’t help feeling distracted. It was nineteen days past her nineteenth birthday. A day for decisions. A day for action. A day to—maybe—ask for what she wanted? It was a hundred days until the big festival in Torio City, the grand capital, seat of the queen. The yearly reveal of the country’s greatest art, plays, and projects. She had never gone. Perhaps . . . this time . . . Once her attendants finished feeding her, she rose. They opened the door for her, then
hopped down out of the private wagon. Yumi took a deep breath, then followed, stepping out into sunlight and down into her clogs. Immediately her two attendants leaped to hold up enormous fans, obscuring her from view. Naturally people in the village had gathered to see her. The Chosen. The yoki-hijo. The girl of commanding primal spirits. (Not the most pithy of titles, but it works better in their language.) This land—the kingdom of Torio—couldn’t have been more different from where Painter lived. Not one glowing line—cold or warm—streaked the sky. No apartment buildings. No pavement. Oh, but they had sunlight. A dominant red-orange sun, the color of baked clay. Bigger and closer than your sun, it had distinct spots of varied color on it—like a boiling breakfast stew, churning and undulating in the sky. This scarlet sun painted the landscape . . . well, perfectly ordinary colors. That’s how the brain works. Once you’d been there a few hours, you wouldn’t notice the light was a shade redder. But when you first arrived, it would look striking. Like the scene of a bloody massacre everyone is too numb to acknowledge. Hidden behind her fans, Yumi walked on her clogs through the village to the local cold spring. Once at the spring, her attendants slipped her out of her nightgown—a yoki-hijo did not dress or undress herself—and let her walk down into the slightly cool water, shivering at its shocking kiss. A short time later, Chaeyung and Hwanji followed with a floating plate holding crystalline soaps. They rubbed her once with the first, then she rinsed. Once with the second, then she rinsed. Twice with the third. Three times with the fourth. Five times with the fifth. Eight times with the sixth. Thirteen times with the seventh. You might think that extreme. If so, have you perhaps never heard of religion? Yumi’s particular flavor of devotion, fortunately, did have some practical accommodations.
The later soaps were only such by the broadest definition—you would consider them perfumed creams, with a deliberately moisturizing component. (I find them especially nice on the feet, though I’ll probably need them for my whole body once I arrive in the Torish version of hell for abusing their ritual components for bunion relief.) Yumi’s final rinse involved ducking beneath the water for a count of a hundred and forty- four. Underneath, her dark hair flowed around her, writhing in the current of her motion as if alive. The compulsory washing made her hair extremely clean—which was important, as her religious calling forbade her from ever cutting it, so it reached all the way to her waist. Though it wasn’t required of the ritual, Yumi liked to gaze upward through the shimmering water and see if she could find the sun. Fire and water. Liquid and light. She burst out of the water at the exact count of one forty-four and gasped. That was supposed to get easier. She was supposed to rise serenely, renewed and reborn. Instead she was forced to break decorum today by coughing a little. (Yes, she saw coughing as “breaking decorum.” Don’t even ask how she regarded something truly onerous, like being late for a ritual.) Ritual bathing done, it was time for the ritual dressing, also carried out by her attendants. The traditional sash under the bust, then the larger white wrap across the chest. Loose undergarment leggings. Then the tobok, in two layers of thick colorful cloth, with a wide bell skirt. Bright magenta, her ritual wear for that day of the week. She slipped her clogs on again and somehow walked in them, natural and fluid. (I consider myself a reasonably adroit person, but Torish clogs—they call them getuk—feel like bricks tied to my feet. They aren’t necessarily hard to balance in—they’re only six inches tall—but they grant most outsiders the graceful poise of a drunk chull.)
With all of that, she was at last ready . . . for her next ritual. In this case, she needed to pray at the village shrine to seek the blessings of the spirits. So she again let her attendants block all view of her with their fans, then walked out and around to the village flower garden. Here, vibrant blue blossoms—cuplike, to catch the rain—floated on thermals. They hovered around two feet in the air. In Torio, plants rarely dared touch the ground, lest the heat of the stone wither them away. Each flower was maybe two inches across, with wide leaves catching the thermals—like lilies with fine dangling roots that absorbed water from the air. Yumi’s passing caused them to swirl and bump against one another. The shrine was a small structure, wood, mostly open at the sides but with a latticed dome. Remarkably, it also floated gracefully a few feet off the ground—this time by way of a single lifting spirit underneath that took the physical shape of two statues, each with grotesque features, facing one another. One vaguely male crouched on the ground; one vaguely female clung to the bottom of the building. Though divided once made physical, they were still part of the same spirit. Yumi approached among the flowers, the soft thermals causing her skirt to ripple. Thick cloth didn’t rise enough to be embarrassing—merely enough to give shape and flare to the bell of her outfit. She removed her clogs once more as she reached the shrine, stepping up onto the cool wood. It barely wobbled, held firm by the strength of the spirit. She knelt, then began the first of the thirteen ritual prayers. Now, if you think my description of her preparations took a while, that’s intentional. It might help you understand—in the slightest way—Yumi’s life. Because this wasn’t a special day, in terms of her duties. This was typical. Ritual eating. Ritual bathing. Ritual dressing. Ritual prayers. And more. Yumi was one of the Chosen, picked at birth, granted the ability to influence the hijo, the spirits. It was an enormous
honor among her people. And they never let her forget it. The prayers and following meditations took around an hour. When she finished, she looked up toward the sun, slots in the shrine’s wooden canopy decorating her in alternating lines of light and shadow. She felt . . . lucky. Yes, she was certain that was the proper emotion. She was blessed to hold this station, one of the very fortunate few. The world the spirits provided was wonderful. The sun of vivid red-orange shining through brilliant clouds of yellow, scarlet, violet. A field of hovering flowers, trembling as tiny lizards leaped from one to another. The stone underneath, warm and vibrant, the source of all life, heat, and growth. She was a part of this. A vital one. Surely this was wonderful. Surely this was all that she should ever need. Surely she couldn’t want more. Even if . . . even if today was lucky. Even if . . . perhaps, for once, she could ask? The festival, she thought. I could visit, wearing the clothing of an ordinary person. One day to be normal. Rustling cloth and the sound of wooden shoes on stone caused Yumi to turn. Only one person would dare approach her during meditation: Liyun, a tall woman in a severe black tobok with a white bow. Liyun, her kihomaban—a word that meant something between a guardian and a sponsor. We’ll use the term “warden” for simplicity. Liyun halted a few steps from the shrine, hands behind her back. Ostensibly she waited upon Yumi’s pleasure, a servant to the girl of commanding primal spirits. (Trust me, the term grows on you.) Yet there was a certain demanding air even to the way Liyun stood.
Perhaps it was the fashionable shoes: clogs with thick wood beneath her toes, but sleek heels behind. Perhaps it was the way she wore her hair: cut short in the rear, longer in the front—evoking the shape of a blade at each side of her head. This wasn’t a woman whose time you could waste, somehow including when she wasn’t waiting for you. Yumi quickly rose. “Is it time, Warden-nimi?” she said, with enormous respect. Yumi’s and Painter’s languages shared a common root, and in both there was a certain affectation I find hard to express in your tongue. They could conjugate sentences, or add modifiers to words, to indicate praise or derision. Interestingly, no curses or swears existed among them. They would simply change a word to its lowest form instead. I’ll do my best to indicate this nuance by adding the words “highly” or “lowly” in certain key locations. “The time has not quite arrived, Chosen,” Liyun said. “We should wait for the steamwell’s eruption.” Of course. The air was renewed then; better to wait if it was near. But that meant they had time. A few precious moments with no scheduled work or ceremony. “Warden-nimi,” Yumi said (highly), gathering her courage. “The Festival of Reveals. It is near.” “A hundred days, yes.” “And it is a thirteenth year,” Yumi said. “The hijo will be unusually active. We will not . . . petition them that day, I assume?” “I suppose we won’t, Chosen,” Liyun said, checking the little calendar—in the form of a small book—that she kept in her pouch. She flipped a few pages. “We’ll be . . . near Torio City? We’ve been traveling in the region.” “And?”
“And . . . I . . .” Yumi bit her lip. “Ah . . .” Liyun said. “You would like to spend the festival day in prayer of thanks to the spirits for granting you such an elevated station.” Just say it, a part of her whispered. Just say no. That’s not what you want. Tell her. Liyun snapped her book closed, watching Yumi. “Surely,” she said, “that is what you want. You wouldn’t actively desire to do something that would embarrass your station. To imply you regret your place. Would you, Chosen?” “Never,” Yumi whispered. “You were honored, of all the children born that year,” Liyun said, “to be given this calling, these powers. One of only fourteen currently living.” “I know.” “You are special.” She would have preferred to be less special—but she felt guilty the moment she thought it. “I understand,” Yumi said, steeling herself. “Let us not wait for the steamwell. Please, lead me to the place of ritual. I am eager to begin my duties and call the spirits.”
.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { width: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-entry-content { width: calc(100% - 0px);}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.classic-layout-list.mode-list .no-img .post-entry-content { width: 100%;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .filter-bg-decoration .filter-categories a.act { color: #fff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.enable-bg-rollover .post-thumbnail-rollover:after { background: -webkit-linear-gradient(); background: linear-gradient();}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { width: 44px; height: 44px; line-height: 44px; border-radius: 100px; margin: -22px 0 0 -22px; border-width: 0px; color: #ffffff;}.bottom-overlap-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin-top: -22px;}.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 0 10px;}.content-align-center.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-align-center.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 auto 10px;}.dt-icon-bg-on.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { background: rgba(255,255,255,0.3); box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico:before { font-size: 32px; line-height: 44px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico:before { color: #ffffff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-date a { background: #ffffff; box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-date a * { color: #2d2d2d;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-title,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.owl-carousel .entry-title { margin-bottom: 5px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: bold;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-meta { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .portfolio-categories { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-excerpt { margin-bottom: 5px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.centered-layout-list) .post-entry-content { padding: 10px 20px 10px 20px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.centered-layout-list):not(.content-bg-on):not(.mode-list) .no-img .post-entry-content { padding: 0;}@media screen and (max-width: 768px) { .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 article { -ms-flex-flow: column nowrap; flex-flow: column nowrap; margin-top: 20px; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on article { border: none; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.content-bg-on.centered-layout-list article { padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 20px; padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article:first-of-type, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-entry-content { width: 100%; margin: 0; top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-entry-content:after { display: none; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .project-even .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.centered-layout-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { -ms-flex-order: 0; order: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.centered-layout-list .post-entry-title-content { -ms-flex-order: 1; order: 1; width: 100%; padding: 20px 20px 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.centered-layout-list .post-entry-content { -ms-flex-order: 2; order: 2; padding-top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-categories { top: 10px; left: 10px; bottom: auto; right: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-date a { top: 10px; right: 10px; left: auto; bottom: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-entry-content { padding: 20px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-title { margin: 3px 0 5px; font-size: 20px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26px; line-height: 16px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-meta { margin: 5px 0 5px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-excerpt { margin: 15px 0 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-details { margin: 5px 0 10px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-details.details-type-link { margin-bottom: 2px; }} [image error] Yumi | Chapter One [image error] Yumi | Chapter Two [image error] Yumi | Chapter Three [image error] Yumi | Chapter Four [image error] Yumi | Chapter Five [image error] Yumi | Chapter Six [image error] Yumi | Chapter Seven
Tress | Chapter Two
Perhaps you were surprised to hear those last words. Tress wanted to stay on the Rock? She liked it there? Where was her sense of adventure? Her yearning for new lands? Her wanderlust? Well, this isn’t the part of the story where you ask questions. So kindly keep them to yourself. That said, you must understand that this is a tale about people who are both what they seem and not what they seem. Simultaneously. A story of contradictions. In other words, it is a story about human beings. In this case, Tress wasn’t your ordinary heroine–in that she was in fact decidedly ordinary. Indeed, Tress considered herself categorically boring. She liked her tea lukewarm. She went to bed on time. She loved her parents, occasionally squabbled with her little brother, and didn’t litter. She was fair at needlepoint and had a talent for baking, but had no other noteworthy skills. She didn’t train at fencing in secret. She couldn’t talk to animals. She had no hidden royalty or deities in her lineage, though her great-grandmother Glorf had reportedly once waved at the king. That had been from atop the Rock while he was sailing past, many miles away, so Tress didn’t think it counted. In short, Tress was a normal teenage girl. She knew this because the other girls often mentioned how they weren’t like “everyone else,” and after a while Tress figured
that the group “everyone else” must include only her. The other girls were obviously right, as they all knew how to be unique–they were so good at it, in fact, that they did it together. Tress was generally more thoughtful than most people, and she didn’t like to impose by asking for what she wanted. She’d remain quiet when the other girls were laughing or telling jokes about her. After all, they were having so much fun. It would be impolite to spoil that, and presumptuous of her to request that they stop. Sometimes the more boisterous youths talked of seeking adventure in foreign oceans. Tress found that notion frightening. How could she leave her parents and brother? Besides, she had her cup collection. Tress cherished her cups. She had fine porcelain cups with painted glaze, clay cups that felt rough beneath her fingers, and wooden cups that were rugged and well- used. Several of the sailors who frequently docked at Diggen’s Point knew of her fondness, and they sometimes brought her cups from all across the twelve oceans: distant lands where the spores were reportedly crimson, azure, or even golden. She’d give the sailors pies in exchange for their gifts, the ingredients purchased with the pittance she earned scrubbing windows. The cups they brought her were often battered and worn, but Tress didn’t mind. A cup with a chip or ding in it had a story. She loved them all because they brought the world to her. Whenever she sipped from one of the cups, she imagined she could taste far-off foods and drinks, and perhaps understand a little of the people who had crafted them.
Each time Tress acquired a new cup, she brought it to Charlie to show it off. Charlie claimed to be the groundskeeper at the duke’s mansion at the top of the Rock, but Tress knew he was actually the duke’s son. Charlie’s hands were soft like a child’s rather than callused, and he was better fed than anyone else in town. His hair was always cut neatly, and though he took his signet ring off when he saw her, it left a slightly lighter patch of skin that made it clear he usually wore it–on the finger that marked a member of the nobility. Besides, Tress wasn’t certain what “grounds” Charlie thought needed keeping. The mansion was, after all, on the Rock. There had been a tree on the property once, but it had done the sensible thing and died a few years earlier. There were some potted plants though, which let him pretend. Grey motes swirled in the wind by her feet as she climbed the path up to the mansion. Grey spores were dead–the very air around the Rock was salty enough to kill spores–but she still held her breath as she hurried past. She turned left at the fork– the right path went to the mines–then wove up the switchbacks to the overhang. Here the mansion squatted like a corpulent frog atop its lily. Tress wasn’t certain why the duke liked it up here. It was closer to the smog, so maybe he liked the similarly tempered company. Climbing all this way was difficult–but judging by how the duke’s family fit their clothing, perhaps they figured they could use the exercise. Five soldiers watched the grounds–though only Snagu and Lead were on duty now–and they did their job well. After all, it had been a horribly long time since anyone in the duke’s family had died from the myriad of dangers a nobleman faced while living on the Rock. (Those included boredom, stubbed toes, and choking on
cobbler.) She’d brought the soldiers pies, naturally. As they ate, she considered showing the two men her new cup. It was made completely of tin, stamped with letters in a language that ran top to bottom instead of left to right. But no, she didn’t want to bother them. They let her pass, although it wasn’t her day to wash the mansion’s windows. She found Charlie around back, practicing with his fencing sword. When he saw her, he put it down and hurriedly took off his signet ring. “Tress!” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t be by today!” Having just turned seventeen, Charlie was two months older than she was. He had an abundance of smiles, and she had identified each one. For instance, the wide- toothed one he gave her now said he was genuinely happy to have an excuse to be done with fencing practice. He wasn’t as fond of it as his father thought he should be. “Swordplay, Charlie?” she asked. “Is that a groundskeeper’s task?” He picked up the thin dueling sword. “This? Oh, but it is for gardening.” He took a half-hearted swipe at one of the potted plants on the patio. The plant wasn’t quite dead yet, but the leaf Charlie split certainly wasn’t going to improve its chances. “Gardening,” Tress said. “With a sword.” “It’s how they do things on the king’s island,” Charlie said. He swiped again. “There is always war there, you know. So if you consider it, it’s natural the groundskeepers would learn to trim plants with a sword. Don’t want to get ambushed when you’re unarmed.” He wasn’t a good liar, but that was part of what Tress liked about him. Charlie
was genuine. He even lied in an authentic way. And seeing how bad he was at telling them, the lies couldn’t be held against him. They were so obvious, they were better than many a person’s truths. He swiped his sword in the vague direction of the plant once more, then looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. She shook her head. So he gave her his “you’ve caught me but I can’t admit it” grin and rammed the sword into the dirt of the pot, then plopped down on the low garden wall. The sons of dukes were not supposed to plop. One might therefore consider Charlie to have been a young man of extraordinary talents. Tress settled in next to him, basket in her lap. “What did you bring me?” he said. She took out a small meat pie. “Pigeon,” she said, “and carrots. With a thyme- seasoned gravy.” “A noble combination,” he said. “I think the duke’s son, if he were here, would disagree.” “The duke’s son is only allowed to eat dishes with names that have weird foreign accents over their letters,” Charlie said. “And he’s never allowed to stop sword practice to eat. So it is fortunate that I am not him.” Charlie took a bite. She watched for the smile. And there it was: the smile of delight. She had spent an entire day in thought, contemplating what she could make with the ingredients that had been on sale in the port market, hoping to earn that particular smile. “So, what else did you bring?” he asked.
“Charlie the groundskeeper,” she said, “you have just received a very free pie, and now you presume to ask for more?” “Presume?” he said around a mouthful of pie. He poked her basket with his free hand. “I know there’s more. Out with it.” She grinned. To most she wouldn’t dare impose, but Charlie was different. She revealed the tin cup. “Aaah,” Charlie said, then put aside the pie and took the cup reverently in both hands. “Now this is special.” “Do you know anything about that writing?” she asked, eager. “It’s old Iriali,” he said. “They vanished, you know. The entire people: poof. There one day, gone the next, their island left uninhabited. Now, that was three hundred years ago, so no one alive has ever met one of them, but they supposedly had golden hair. Like yours, the color of sunlight.” “My hair is not the color of sunlight, Charlie.” “Your hair is the color of sunlight, if sunlight were light brown,” Charlie said. It might be said he had a way with words. In that his words often got away. “I’d wager this cup has quite the history,” he said. “Forged for an Iriali nobleman the day before he–and his people–were taken by the gods. The cup was left on the table, to be collected by the poor fisherwoman who first arrived on the island and discovered the horror of an entire people gone. She passed the cup down to her grandson, who became a pirate. He eventually buried his ill-gotten treasure deep beneath the spores. Only to be recovered now, after eons in darkness, to find its way to your hands.” He held the cup up to catch the light.
Tress smiled as he spoke. While washing the mansion’s windows, she’d occasionally hear Charlie’s parents berate him for talking so much; they thought it silly and unbecoming of his station. They rarely let him finish. She found that a shame. For while yes, he did ramble sometimes, she’d come to understand it was because Charlie liked stories the way Tress liked cups. “Thank you, Charlie,” she whispered. “For what?” “For giving me what I want.” He knew what she meant. It wasn’t cups or stories. “Always,” he said, placing his hand on hers. “Always what you want, Tress. And you can always tell me what it is. I know you don’t usually do that, with others.” “What do you want, Charlie?” she asked. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Other than one thing, that is. One thing I shouldn’t want, but I do. Instead, I’m supposed to want adventure. Like in the stories. You know those stories?” “The ones with fair maidens,” Tress said, “who always get captured and don’t get to do much besides sit there? Maybe call for help now and then?” “I suppose that does happen,” he said. “Why are they always fair maidens?” she said. “Are there maidens that are unfair? Perhaps they mean ‘fare,’ as in food. I could be that kind of maiden. I’m good with food.” She grimaced. “I’m glad I’m not in a story, Charlie. I’d end up captured for certain.” “And I would probably die quickly,” he said. “I’m a coward, Tress. It’s the
truth.” “Nonsense. You’re merely an ordinary person.” “Have you . . . seen how I respond around the duke?” She grew silent. Because she had. “If I weren’t a coward,” he said, “I’d be able to tell you things I cannot. But Tress, if you did get captured, I’d help anyway. I’d put on armor, Tress. Shining armor. Or maybe dull armor. I think if someone I knew were captured, I wouldn’t take the time to shine the armor. Do you think those heroes pause to shine it, when people are in danger? That doesn’t sound very helpful.” “Charlie,” Tress said, “do you have armor?” “I’d find some,” he promised. “I would figure something out, surely. Even a coward would be brave in the proper armor, right? There are lots of dead people in those types of stories. Surely I could get some from one of–” A shout sounded from within the mansion, interrupting the conversation. It was Charlie’s father grousing. So far as Tress had been able to tell, yelling at things was the duke’s one and only job on the island, and he took it very seriously. Charlie glanced toward the sounds and grew tense, his smile fading. But when the shouts didn’t draw near, he looked back at the cup. The moment was gone, but another took its place, as they tend to do. Not as intimate, but still valuable because it was time with him. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “for bringing up silly things like fare maidens and robbing armor from dead people. But I like that you listen to me anyway. Thank you, Tress.”
“I am fond of your stories,” she said, taking the cup and turning it over. “Do you think any of what you said about this cup is true?” “It could be,” Charlie said. “That’s the great thing about stories. But look at this writing–it says it did once belong to a king. His name is right here.” “And you learned that language in . . .” “. . . gardening school,” he said. “In case we had to read the warnings on the packaging of certain dangerous plants.” “Like how you wear a lord’s doublet and hose . . .” “. . . because it makes me an excellent decoy, should assassins arrive and try to kill the duke’s son.” “As you’ve said. But why then do you take off your ring?” “Uh . . .” He glanced at his hand, then met her eyes. “Well, I guess I’d rather you not mistake me for someone else. Someone I don’t want to have to be.” He smiled then, his timid smile. His “please go with me on this, Tress” smile. Because the son of a duke could not openly fraternize with the girl who washed the windows. A nobleman pretending to be a commoner though? Feigning low station to learn of the people of his realm? Why, that was expected. It happened in so many stories, it was practically an institution. “That,” she said, “makes perfect sense.” “Now then,” he said, retrieving his pie. “Tell me about your day. I must hear.” “I went browsing through the market for ingredients,” she said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I purchased a pound of fish–salmon, imported from Erik Island, where they have many lakes. Poloni marked it down because he thought it was
going bad, but that was actually the fish in the next barrel. So I got my fish for a steal.” “Fascinating,” he said. “No one throws a fit when you visit? They don’t call their children out and make you shake their hands? Tell me more. Please, I want to know how you realized the fish wasn’t bad.” With his prodding, she continued elucidating the mundane details of her life. He forced her to do it each time she visited. He, in turn, paid attention. That was the proof that his fondness for talking wasn’t a failing. He was equally good at listening. At least to her. Indeed, Charlie found her life interesting for some unfathomable reason. As she talked, Tress felt warm. She often did when she visited–because she climbed up high and was closer to the sun, so it was warmer up here. Obviously. Except it was moonshadow at the moment, when the sun hid behind the moon and everything became a few degrees cooler. And today she was growing tired of certain lies she told herself. Perhaps there was another reason she felt warm. It was there in Charlie’s current smile, and she knew it would be in her own as well. He didn’t listen to her only because he was fascinated by the lives of peasants. She didn’t visit only because she wanted to hear his stories. In fact, on the deepest level it wasn’t about cups or stories at all. It was, instead, about gloves.
.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { width: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-entry-content { width: calc(100% - 0px);}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.classic-layout-list.mode-list .no-img .post-entry-content { width: 100%;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .filter-bg-decoration .filter-categories a.act { color: #fff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.enable-bg-rollover .post-thumbnail-rollover:after { background: -webkit-linear-gradient(); background: linear-gradient();}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico { width: 44px; height: 44px; line-height: 44px; border-radius: 100px; margin: -22px 0 0 -22px; border-width: 0px; color: #ffffff;}.bottom-overlap-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin-top: -22px;}.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 0 10px;}.content-align-center.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-align-center.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 auto 10px;}.dt-icon-bg-on.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico { background: rgba(255,255,255,0.3); box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico:before { font-size: 32px; line-height: 44px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .gallery-zoom-ico:before { color: #ffffff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .fancy-date a { background: #ffffff; box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .fancy-date a * { color: #2d2d2d;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .entry-title,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.owl-carousel .entry-title { margin-bottom: 5px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: bold;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .entry-meta { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .portfolio-categories { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .entry-excerpt { margin-bottom: 5px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228:not(.centered-layout-list) .post-entry-content { padding: 10px 20px 10px 20px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228:not(.centered-layout-list):not(.content-bg-on):not(.mode-list) .no-img .post-entry-content { padding: 0;}@media screen and (max-width: 768px) { .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 article { -ms-flex-flow: column nowrap; flex-flow: column nowrap; margin-top: 20px; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on article { border: none; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.content-bg-on.centered-layout-list article { padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 20px; padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article:first-of-type, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-entry-content { width: 100%; margin: 0; top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-entry-content:after { display: none; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .project-even .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.centered-layout-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { -ms-flex-order: 0; order: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.centered-layout-list .post-entry-title-content { -ms-flex-order: 1; order: 1; width: 100%; padding: 20px 20px 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228.centered-layout-list .post-entry-content { -ms-flex-order: 2; order: 2; padding-top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .fancy-categories { top: 10px; left: 10px; bottom: auto; right: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .fancy-date a { top: 10px; right: 10px; left: auto; bottom: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-entry-content { padding: 20px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .entry-title { margin: 3px 0 5px; font-size: 20px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26px; line-height: 16px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .entry-meta { margin: 5px 0 5px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .entry-excerpt { margin: 15px 0 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-details { margin: 5px 0 10px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-54036e470f54930fedb2b3059ff75228 .post-details.details-type-link { margin-bottom: 2px; }} [image error] Frugal Wizard | Chapter One [image error] Frugal Wizard | Chapter Two [image error] Insert: Your Own Dimension [image error] Frugal Wizard | Chapter Three [image error] FAQ: Have I Time Traveled? [image error] Frugal Wizard | Chapter Four [image error] Frugal Wizard | Chapter Five [image error] Frugal Wizard | Chapter SixFrugal Wizard | Chapter Two
Part of me wanted to stalk out and demand answers. Play the role of irate customer, make them break character. Yet . . . Something about all this . . . A part of me was convinced that they weren’t actors. That—insanely—this was all authentic, and I should stay hidden. Damn. That sounded ridiculous, didn’t it? Nevertheless, my gut said I was a person who trusted his gut. So I stayed put, watching covertly from the shadows as the sunlight waned. I waited a little too long, because eventually, the place went dark. Basement from a horror movie dark. Clouds moved in, obscuring the stars—and there was apparently no moon tonight. Plus, I didn’t see a single light in the town. I’d expected some torches or bonfires. I patted the tree I’d been hiding behind. “Thanks for the cover,” I whispered. “You’re a good tree. Tall, thick—and most importantly—wooden. Four and a half stars. Would hide behind you again. Half a point off for lack of refreshments.” Then I paused. It was the second time I’d done something similar, and I found myself itching to record the experience and my thoughts about it in a notebook. Was that a clue to who I was? Some kind of . . . reviewer? I slipped out from behind the highly rated tree and found that my skills as a sneak were exceptional. I moved through the rows of partially grown plants, barely making a sound, despite the darkness. Awesome. Perhaps I was a ninja.
Beyond the field, I found the road, which was fashioned of packed earth. I headed toward the town, glad that the clouds had thinned enough to let a little starlight through. It turned the village from “horror movie basement” dark to “horror movie in the woods” dark. An improvement, maybe? I wasn’t accustomed to such primal darkness. The shadows were deeper than any I’d ever seen, as if strengthened by the knowledge that I couldn’t control them with the flip of a switch. I reached the village and moved among the silent homes. There couldn’t be more than twenty buildings here. All with wooden walls and thatched, triangular roofs. (Two stars. Probably has terrible wifi.) I heard a river somewhere in the near distance, and there was a large lump of darkness farther on. I found the river— wide, but shallow—on the other side of the village. Here, I knelt and scooped up some water to drink. My medical nanites would neutralize any bacteria before they gave me too much trouble. I froze in place, hands halfway to my mouth. Medical . . . nanites? Yes, tiny machines inside my body that performed basic health-care functions. They’d stop toxins, prevent disease, and break down what I ate to provide ideal nutrition and calories. In a pinch, they could provide emergency wound-healing functions. Last time I’d been shot, I’d been back on my feet within the hour—but my nanites had been knocked completely out for a good two days. Hot damn! A piece of the puzzle. Did I have any other augments? I couldn’t remember, but I did know I’d need more food than an average person. Specifically, I needed high-calorie food, or . . . carbon? Technically, anything organic would work. But some sources were better than others.
I glanced back at the town. A child had started crying, and the solitary wails creeped me out. Controlling my nerves, I slipped along the river until I reached a wooden bridge and crossed it. The large shadowy lump turned out to be a fortification of upright logs, driven down into the ground with sharpened ends toward the sky, about eight feet tall. The wall looked sturdy enough, though I’d have expected something taller and made of stone. Castle-like. A wooden palisade left me a tad disappointed. I withheld my review, though. Maybe it was period accurate. This had to be where I’d find the more important people in the town—like the man with the deep, authoritative voice. I scouted around the entire outside of the fortification— it was only large enough to enclose a few buildings—but the gate was closed and there was a big pit dug all the way round. There was also an elevated wooden platform at one corner, inside the wall. A guard post. I’d never make it inside without drawing attention if I tried to jump the pit and climb the fence. Therefore, I used my entire life’s experience—roughly half a day so far—to devise a plan. I hid behind a nearby tree with a view of the gates, then waited for them to open. (Tree report: Three stars. Uncomfortable root network. Not for an inexperienced hider. See my other reviews of trees in the area for more options.) I was contemplating demoting another half star from the tree when I heard something approaching quickly along the road. For a brief moment, my heart leaped. A car? No. Beating hooves. Two horses with riders emerged from the gloom, illuminated by starlight, traveling way faster than I thought safe to do at night. The riders stopped by the gate and called
to those inside. I was too far away to hear the exchange, but the double gate wobbled open soon after. I couldn’t tell much about the two hooded riders as they trotted through the gates. A few lights inside illuminated two larger structures—one made of stone, the other made of the same wood-and-thatch of the village. There was apparently something odd about the visitors, for most of the people inside—including the guards—gathered around them. Leaving nobody watching the gates. I took my opportunity, slinking forward through the darkness. My sneaking skills got me through the gates without being spotted. My instinct for how to stick to the shadows, how to not present a profile, and how to move without making noise made me concerned about where I’d gotten these skills. That, and the fact that I kept wanting to rest my hand on a nonexistent gun. They didn’t seem the type of abilities that belonged to a law-abiding citizen who spent his days reviewing trees. I crouched beside some barrels, taking stock of what I could see. In the center of the courtyard was a large black stone with a jagged top, taller than it was wide. Like a small version of the Washington Monument with the top broken off. On the far side of the courtyard was a small stable. There, the two riders had dismounted and handed their horses to a groom. A boy ran for the stone building. It seemed to be of much finer construction than the others. Perhaps it was the lord’s manor? And maybe the wooden one was a meeting hall? Curiously, a series of dishes with lit candles at the sides were set in front of the stone building. Bowls of fruit, some saucers filled with cream, and . . . And a single, singed piece of paper.
The boy soon returned and gestured for the two riders to follow him. The three entered the wooden building I’d guessed was the meeting hall, and I thought I heard the word “refreshment” as they entered. Perhaps I should have been interested in those men, but my attention turned wholly to that sheet of paper. Was it from my book? Why leave it out in front of the building like that? This was all so bizarre. Was I part of some ridiculous social experiment? A reality television game? I forced myself to wait a few tense minutes until, as I’d expected, a man in an orange cloak left the manor, accompanied by two men carrying long, one-handed axes and round, wooden shields. No armor that I could see. They had a vaguely Viking look to them. “Oswald,” one of them shouted toward the wooden watchtower. “Close the gate.” As the lord and his two men entered the hall, a younger soldier came scrambling down from the tower. He grinned to the others and bowed a little too much to the lord, then crossed over and began to swing the gates closed. It was time to make my move. Like the old saying goes. Carp diem. Seize the fish. I was out and scuttling across the courtyard before I had time to think. My body seemed to know that while I couldn’t miss my opportunity, I shouldn’t sprint. That would make too much noise. Feeling exposed, I swiftly walked past the large black stone, then past the bowls and the candles, where I snatched the paper. Within seconds, I had found cover beside the meeting hall. My heart was thundering. I took a few long, quiet breaths to calm myself, then glanced at my paper. Right. Darkness. Horror movie. All that. Well, there was a window a little farther along. The shutter was latched, but light seeped out. I crept over, then held my paper close to the cracks.
It was filled with printed words, matching the other pages I’d found. But this one was barely singed. It read:
Your Own Dimension The intricacies of dimensional travel are unimportant, and we recommend you not trouble yourself with them. We here at Frugal Wizard Inc.® have done the hard part for you. All you need to do is pick the package you want, and we will deliver one pristine, Earth-lite
dimension to you. I stopped reading, the words blurring as my eyes unfocused. Another tiny puzzle piece snapped into place. This wasn’t a theme park, a strange social experiment, or a game. This was another dimension. And I owned it.
The Sunlit Man | Chapter Two
Nomad slammed to the ground side-first, dragged with frightening speed after the hovercycle. Your healing is engaged, Aux said. And your body has adjusted to the local environment’s lower air pressure. But, Nomad, you’ve got so little Investiture left. Try not to get too beat up by this next part, all right? Even as Aux said it, Nomad ripped through barriers of withered plants and smashed repeatedly against rocks, dirt grinding into his skin. But again, Nomad was built of strong stuff. A base level of Investiture toughened him. Though healing would use Investiture up faster than other abilities, so long as he kept a minimum baseline, he might not need much healing. He wasn’t immortal. Most advanced weapons would be instantly lethal to him—storms, even many primitive ones could kill him if used persistently, running him out of Investiture. However, where an ordinary man’s arms would have been twisted from their sockets—their skin flayed as plant detritus became like razors in the high speed—he stayed together. And even managed to heal from the burns. Down to six percent, Aux informed him. That wasn’t too bad, all things considered. But … did you feel that heat? It was unreal. There was Investiture involved for sure, but I couldn’t grab any of it. Opening myself up to absorb that would have destroyed me. We will need a safer way to harvest it. Nomad grunted as he crashed into the ground again. With effort, he managed to turn himself to put the brunt of the further damage on his thigh and shoulder. Though the wind put out the flames on his clothing, the force of slamming against things ripped the remnants of his jacket and shirt away. His skin held, though. He didn’t mind the rough treatment of his escape. It was better than
being left in that sunlight. He closed his eyes, trying to banish a greater pain. The memory of the unfortunate prisoners’ screams when the sunrise hit them, turning them to ash in seconds. He was sure some of them had been calling to him for help. Once, he’d have been unable to ignore that. But millions, perhaps billions, of people died each day around the cosmere. He couldn’t stop that. He could barely keep himself alive. It hurt regardless. Even after years of torment, he still hated watching people die. He tucked in his chin, protecting his face from the jolting chaos of being hauled across the rough surface of this harsh world. He could see the sky darkening. The fearsome sunlight vanished beneath the horizon as if it were dusk, though Nomad was the one moving. The hovercycle was fast enough to round the planet ahead of the rising sun, staying out of the dawn’s burning clutches. This planet must have a slow rotation, the hero observes to his erratic valet. Note how these vehicles can easily outrun the sun. Ahead, opposite the sun, an enormous planetary ring rose in the sky—a broad arc that reflected the sunlight. Nomad had little opportunity to enjoy the return to safe twilight. Several of the people on the cycle tried to pry loose his chain, but at such speeds—and with him as a weight on the end—that would be difficult even if he hadn’t sealed the loop. He wondered if perhaps they’d stop to deal with him, but they kept on flying after the other cycles, never more than a few feet off the ground. Eventually they slowed, then stopped. Nomad came to rest in a patch of wet soil, appreciating the sensation of something soft. He groaned and flopped over, trousers a mess of
rips and tatters, freshly healed skin beaten and battered, hands still manacled. After a moment of agony—spent trying to appreciate the fact that at least no new pains were being added—he turned his head to see why they’d stopped. He could see no reason. Perhaps it was just for the drivers to get their bearings—because after a short conversation, the hovercycles took off again. This time, they rose higher in the air, leaving Nomad to dangle. This was better, at least, because as they flew, he didn’t get slammed into anything. He assumed they stayed low earlier because they hadn’t wanted to risk rising too high into the sunlight. They flew for what felt like an hour until they finally reached something interesting: a floating city. It moved through the landscape, an enormous plate, lifted by the thrust of hundreds of engines burning underneath it. Nomad had been on flying cities before, including one on a planet near his homeworld, but rarely had he seen one so … ramshackle. A motley collection of single-story buildings, like an enormous slum, somehow raised up above the ground—but only thirty or forty feet. Indeed, it seemed like even getting to that modest height was straining the city’s engines, their lift barely enough to clear the landscape’s obstacles. This wasn’t some soaring metropolis of technological splendor. It was a desperate exercise in survival. He looked back into the distance, where the light on the horizon had faded to invisibility. Yet he knew the sun was there. Looming. Like the date of your execution. “You have to remain ahead of it, don’t you?” he whispered. “You live in the shadows because the sun here will kill you.” Storms. An entire society that had to keep moving, outrunning the sun itself? The implications of it set his mind working, and old training—the man he’d once been—started to worm through the corpse he’d become. Why wasn’t the weather on this planet, even in the
darkness, a tempest? If the sun was superheating one side all the time, you’d never be able to survive on the other side. That they could was evident, so he was missing something. How did they feed themselves? What fuel powered those engines, and how did they possibly have time to mine or drill for it while moving? And speaking of mines, why not live in caves? They obviously had metal to spare. They’d used some to chain those poor sods to the ground. He’d always been inquisitive. Even after he’d become a soldier—pointedly turning away from the life of a scholar—he’d asked questions. Now they teased him until he beat them back with a firm hand. Only one mattered. Would the power source of those engines be enough to fuel his next Skip and get him off this planet before the Night Brigade found him? The hovercycle roared, climbing toward the city. He dangled under the last of the four, weighing it down, the engines underneath throwing fire his direction and heating his chain. Auxiliary could handle it, fortunately. Curiously this small rise in elevation made Nomad’s ears pop. Once the cycles reached the surface level of the city, they didn’t park in the conventional way. They moved in sideways and locked into the city’s edge, their engines remaining on, adding their lift to that of the main engines. Nomad dangled by his hands and chain, his pains fading as he healed once again, though this healing was minimal compared to what he’d needed to recover from that sunlight. From this vantage, he could see lumps of barren hills and muddy pits below, like sludge and moors. The city had left a wide trail of burned, dried-out dirt behind it. Obviously, with a scar like that to follow, it was easy for those flying cycles to track their way home. He was surprised how well he could see. He blinked, sweat and muddy water dripping into his eyes, and looked up at that ring again. Like most, it was actually a collection of rings.
Brilliant, blue and gold, circling the planet—sweeping high in the air, extending as if into infinity. They pointed toward the sun, tipped at a slight angle, reflecting sunlight down onto the surface. Now that he could study it, a part of him acknowledged how stunning the sight was. He’d visited tens of planets and had never seen anything so stoically magnificent. Mud and fire below, but in the air … that was majesty. This was a planet that wore a crown. His chain shook as someone began to haul him upward. Soon he was grabbed by his arms and heaved up onto the metal surface of the city, into a crooked street lined with squat buildings. A small crowd chattered and gestured at him. Ignoring them, he focused instead on the five distinctive figures behind them—people with embers in their chests. They stood with heads bowed, eyes closed—embers having cooled. Two were women, he thought, though the fire that consumed their chests had left no semblance of breasts, only that hole stretching two handspans wide, bits of the ribs poking through the charred skin. Embers in place of hearts. The rest of the people were dressed as he’d seen below: high collars that reached all the way to the chin, swathed in clothing, each wearing gloves. Several wore the white coats, formal, with open fronts but insignias on the shoulders. Officers or officials. The rest wore muted colors and seemed to be civilians. Some of the women wore skirts, though many preferred long, skirtlike jackets, their fronts open to reveal trousers underneath. Many—both men and women—wore hats with wide brims. Why did they wear those when there was barely any light? Don’t think about it, he told himself, exhausted. Who cares? You’re not going to be here long enough to learn anything about their culture. Many had pale skin, though nearly as many had darker skin like his. A smaller number had a variety of shades between. The crowd soon stilled, then lowered their eyes and backed away,
parting to make way for some newcomer. Nomad settled back on his heels, breathing in and out deeply. The newcomer proved to be a tall man in a black coat—with eyes that glowed. They simmered a deep red color, as if lit from behind. The effect reminded Nomad of something from his past, long ago—but this was less like the red eyes of a corrupted soul, and more like something that was burning inside the man. His black coat glowed too, along the edges, in a similar red-orange shade. Nomad thought he had one of those embers in his chest as well, though that was covered with thin clothing. It didn’t seem to have sunk as deeply into the skin as the others, as he still had the shape of his pectorals. His glow was mimicked by many of the buildings, the rims of walls glowing as if by firelight. Like the city had recently been aflame, and these were its ashes. The man with the glowing eyes raised a thick gloved hand to quiet the crowd. He took in Nomad, then nodded to two officers and pointed, barking an order. The officers fell over themselves to obey, scrambling to undo Nomad’s manacles. Nervous, they backed away as soon as the manacles were off. Nomad rose to his feet, making many of the civilians gasp, but didn’t make any sudden moves. Because, storms, he was tired. He let out a long sigh, pains having become aches. He told Auxiliary to stay in place as a chain; he didn’t want them to realize he had access to a shape-changing tool. The man with the glowing eyes barked something at him, voice harsh. Nomad shook his head. Glowing Eyes repeated his question, louder, slower, angrier. “I don’t speak your tongue,” Nomad said hoarsely. “Give me a power source, like one from the engines of those cycles. If I absorb that, it might be enough.” That depended on what they were using as fuel—but the way they kept an entire city
floating, he doubted their power source was conventional. The idea of fueling a city like this with coal was laughable. They’d be using some kind of Invested material, perhaps charged in that sunlight. The leader, finally realizing that Nomad wasn’t going to respond, raised his hand to the side—then carefully pulled off his glove, one finger at a time. People gasped, though the move revealed only an ordinary, if pale, hand. The man stepped up to Nomad and seized him by the face. Nothing happened. The man seemed surprised by this. He shifted his grip. “If you lean in for a kiss,” Nomad muttered, “I’m going to bite your storming lip off.” It felt good to be able to joke like that. His distant, former master would be proud of him. In his youth, Nomad had been far too serious and rarely allowed himself levity. More because he’d been too embarrassed and frightened by the idea of possibly saying something cringeworthy. Get dragged through the dirt enough times—get beaten to within an inch of your life, to the point where you barely remembered your own name—well, that did wonders for your sense of humor. All you had left at that point was to laugh at the joke you had become. The onlookers were really amazed by the fact that nothing happened when Glowing Eyes touched him. The man took Nomad one final time by the chin, then let go and wiped his hand on his coat before replacing his glove, his eyes—like the burning light of firemoss—illuminating the front brim of his hat and the too-smooth features of his face. He might have been fifty, but it was hard to tell, as he didn’t have a single wrinkle. Seemed there were advantages to living in perpetual twilight. One of the officers from before stepped up and gestured at Nomad, speaking in hushed
tones. He looked incredulous, pointing toward the horizon. Another of the officers nodded, staring at Nomad. “Sess Nassith Tor,” he whispered. Curious, the knight says. I almost understood that. It’s very similar to another language I’m still faintly Connected to. “Any idea which one?” Nomad growled. No. But … I think … Sess Nassith Tor … It means something like … One Who Escaped the Sun. Others behind repeated the phrase, taking it up, until Glowing Eyes roared at them. He looked back at Nomad, then kicked him square in the chest. It hurt, particularly in the state Nomad was in. This man was definitely Invested, to deliver so strong a kick. Nomad grunted and bent over, gasping for breath. The man seized him, then smiled, now realizing that Nomad wouldn’t fight back. The man enjoyed that idea. He tossed Nomad to the side, then kicked him in the chest again, his smile broadening. Nomad would have loved to rip that smile off with some skin attached. But since fighting back would make him freeze, the best thing to do was to play docile. Glowing Eyes gestured to Nomad. “Kor Sess Nassith Tor,” he said with a sneer, then kicked Nomad again for good measure. A few officers scrambled forward and grabbed him under the arms to drag him off. He found himself hoping for a nice cell—someplace cold and hard, yes, but at least he could sleep and forget who he was for a few hours. Such modest hopes were shattered as the city started to break apart.
.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { width: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-entry-content { width: calc(100% - 0px);}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.classic-layout-list.mode-list .no-img .post-entry-content { width: 100%;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .filter-bg-decoration .filter-categories a.act { color: #fff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.enable-bg-rollover .post-thumbnail-rollover:after { background: -webkit-linear-gradient(); background: linear-gradient();}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico { width: 44px; height: 44px; line-height: 44px; border-radius: 100px; margin: -22px 0 0 -22px; border-width: 0px; color: #ffffff;}.bottom-overlap-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico { margin-top: -22px;}.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 0 10px;}.content-align-center.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-align-center.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 auto 10px;}.dt-icon-bg-on.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico { background: rgba(255,255,255,0.3); box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico:before { font-size: 32px; line-height: 44px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .gallery-zoom-ico:before { color: #ffffff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .fancy-date a { background: #ffffff; box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .fancy-date a * { color: #2d2d2d;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .entry-title,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.owl-carousel .entry-title { margin-bottom: 5px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: bold;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .entry-meta { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .portfolio-categories { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .entry-excerpt { margin-bottom: 5px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd:not(.centered-layout-list) .post-entry-content { padding: 10px 20px 10px 20px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd:not(.centered-layout-list):not(.content-bg-on):not(.mode-list) .no-img .post-entry-content { padding: 0;}@media screen and (max-width: 768px) { .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd article { -ms-flex-flow: column nowrap; flex-flow: column nowrap; margin-top: 20px; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on article { border: none; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.content-bg-on.centered-layout-list article { padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 20px; padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article:first-of-type, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-entry-content { width: 100%; margin: 0; top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-entry-content:after { display: none; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .project-even .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.centered-layout-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { -ms-flex-order: 0; order: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.centered-layout-list .post-entry-title-content { -ms-flex-order: 1; order: 1; width: 100%; padding: 20px 20px 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd.centered-layout-list .post-entry-content { -ms-flex-order: 2; order: 2; padding-top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .fancy-categories { top: 10px; left: 10px; bottom: auto; right: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .fancy-date a { top: 10px; right: 10px; left: auto; bottom: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-entry-content { padding: 20px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .entry-title { margin: 3px 0 5px; font-size: 20px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26px; line-height: 16px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .entry-meta { margin: 5px 0 5px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .entry-excerpt { margin: 15px 0 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-details { margin: 5px 0 10px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-1d8fedc6aca7d772c98c2667320988dd .post-details.details-type-link { margin-bottom: 2px; }} [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter One [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Two [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Three [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Four [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Five [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Six [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Seven [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Eight [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter Nine [image error] The Sunlit Man | Chapter TenOctober 9, 2023
Yumi | Chapter Three
It’s terrifying how nightmares transform. I’m talking about ordinary nightmares now, not the kind that get painted. Terror dreams—they change. They evolve. It’s bad enough to encounter something frightening in the waking world, but at least those mortal horrors have shape, substance. That which has shape can be understood. That which has mass can be destroyed. Nightmares are a fluid terror. Once you get the briefest handle on one, it will change. Filling nooks in the soul like spilled water filling cracks in the floor. Nightmares are a seeping chill, created by the mind to punish itself. In this, a nightmare is the very definition of masochism. Most of us are modest enough to keep that sort of thing tucked away, hidden. On Painter’s world, those dark bits were strikingly prone to coming alive. He stood at the edge of the city—bathed from behind in radioactive teal and electric magenta—and stared out at the churning darkness. It had substance; it shifted and flowed similar to molten tar. The shroud. The blackness beyond. Nightmares unformed. Trains traveled the hion lines to places like the small town where his family still lived, a couple of hours away. He knew other places existed. Yet it was difficult not to feel isolated while looking into that endless blackness. It stayed away from the hion lines. Mostly. He turned and walked the street outside the city for a short time. To his right, those outer buildings rose as a shield wall, with narrow alleyways between. As I said before, it wasn’t a true fortification. Walls didn’t stop nightmares; a wall would merely prevent people from stepping
out onto the perimeter. In Painter’s experience, no one came out here but his kind. The ordinary people stayed indoors; even one street farther inward felt infinitely safer. The people lived as he once had, trying hard not to think about what was out there. Seething. Churning. Watching. These days, it was his job to confront it. He didn’t spot anything at first—no signs of particularly brave nightmares encroaching upon the city. Those could be subtle, however. So Painter continued. His assigned beat was a small wedge that began several blocks inward of the perimeter, but the outside portion was the widest—and the most likely place for signs of nightmares to appear. As he did his rounds, he continued to imagine that he was some lone warrior. Instead of, essentially, an exterminator who had gone to art school. To his right he passed the capstone paintings. He wasn’t certain where the local painters had come up with the idea, but these days—during dull moments on patrol—they tended to do practice work on the outer buildings of the city. The walls facing the shroud didn’t have windows. So they made for large inviting canvases. Not strictly part of the job, each was a certain personal statement. He passed Akane’s painting, depicting an expansive flower. Black paint on the whitewashed wall. His own spot was two buildings over. Just a blank white wall, though if you looked closely you could see the failed project beneath peeking through. He decided to whitewash it again. But not tonight, because he caught signs of a nightmare at last. He stepped closer to the shroud, but didn’t touch it of course. Yes . . . the black surface here was disturbed. Like paint that had been touched when near to drying, it was . . . upset, rippling. It was difficult to make out, as the shroud didn’t reflect light, unlike the ink or tar it otherwise
appeared to be. But Painter had trained well. Something had emerged from the shroud here and started into the city. He retrieved his brush, a tool as long as a sword, from his large painter’s bag. He felt better with it in hand. He shifted his bag to his back, feeling the weight of the canvases and ink jar inside. Then he struck inward—passing the whitewashed wall that obscured his latest failure. He’d tried four times. This last one had gotten further than most of his attempts. A painting of the star, which he’d started after hearing the news of an upcoming voyage intended to travel the darkness of the sky. A trip to the star itself, for which scientists planned to use a special vessel and a pair of hion lines launched an incredible distance. In this, Painter had learned something interesting. Contrary to what everyone had once assumed, the star wasn’t merely a spot of light in the sky. Telescopes revealed it was a planet. Occupied, according to their best guess, by other people. A place whose light somehow cut through the shroud. The news of the impending trip had briefly inspired him. But he’d lost that spark, and the painting had languished. How long had it been since he’d covered it over? At least a month. On the corner of the wall near the painting, he picked out steaming blackness. The nightmare had passed this way and brushed the stone, leaving residue that evaporated slowly, shedding black tendrils into the night. He’d expected it to take this path; they almost always took the most direct way into the city. It was good to confirm it nonetheless. Painter crept inward, reentering the realm of the twin hion lights. Laughter echoed from somewhere to his right, but the nightmare probably hadn’t gone that direction. The pleasure district was where people went to do anything other than sleep. There, he thought, picking out black wisps on a planter up ahead. The shrub grew toward the
hion lines and their nourishing light. So as Painter moved down the empty roadway, he walked between plants that looked as if they were reaching arms up in silent salute. The next sign came near an alley. An actual footprint, black, steaming dark vapors. The nightmare had begun evolving, picking up on human thoughts, changing from formless blackness to something with a shape. Only a vague one at first, but instead of being a slinking, flowing black thing, it probably had feet now. Even in that form they rarely left footprints, so he was fortunate to have found one. He moved onto a darker street, where the hion lines were fine and thin overhead. In this shadowy place, he remembered his first nights working alone. Despite extensive training, despite mentorship with three different painters, he’d felt exposed and raw—like a fresh scrape exposed to the air, his emotions and fear close to the surface. These days, fear was layered well beneath calluses of experience. Still, he gripped his shoulder bag tightly in one hand and held his brush out as he crept along. There, on the wall, was a handprint with too-long fingers and what looked like claws. Yes, it was taking a form. Its prey must be close. Farther along the narrow alley, by a bare wall, he found the nightmare: a thing of ink and shadow some seven feet tall. It had fashioned two long arms that bent too many times, the elongated palms pressed against the wall, fingers spread. Its head had sunk through the stone to peek into the room beyond. The tall ones always unnerved him, particularly when they had long fingers. He felt he’d seen figures like that in his own fragmented dreams—figments of terrors buried within. His feet scraped the stones, and the thing heard and withdrew its head, wisps of formless blackness rising from it like ash from a smoldering fire.
No face though. They never had faces—not unless something was going very wrong. Instead they usually displayed a deeper blackness on the front of the head. One that dripped dark liquid. Like tears, or wax near a flame. Painter immediately raised his mental protections, thinking calm thoughts. This was the first and most important training. The nightmares, like many predators that fed on minds, could sense thoughts and emotions. They searched for the most powerful, raw ones to feed upon. A placid mind was of little interest. The thing turned and put its head through the wall again. This building had no windows, which was foolish. Nightmares could ignore walls. In removing windows, the occupants trapped themselves more fully in the boxes of their homes, feeding their claustrophobia—and making the jobs of the painters more difficult. Painter moved carefully, slowly, taking a canvas—a good three-foot by three-foot piece of thick cloth on a frame—from his shoulder bag. He set it on the ground in front of him. His jar of ink followed—black and runny. Nightmare painters always worked in black on white, no colors, as you wanted something that mimicked the look of a nightmare. The ink blend was designed to give excellent gradations in the grey and black. Not that Painter bothered with that much nuance these days. He dipped the brush in the ink and knelt above his canvas, then paused, gazing at the nightmare. The blackness continued to steam off it, and its shape was still fairly indistinct. This was probably only its first or second trip into the city. It took a good dozen trips before a nightmare had enough substance to be dangerous—and they had to return to the shroud each time to renew, lest they evaporate away. Judging by its appearance, this one was fairly new. It probably couldn’t hurt him.
Probably. And here was the crux of why painters were so important, yet so disposable. Their job was essential, but not urgent. As long as a nightmare was discovered within its first ten or so trips into the city, it could be neutralized. That almost always happened. Painter was good at controlling his fear with thoughts like these. That was part of his training—very pragmatic. Once his breathing calmed, he tried to consider what the nightmare looked like, what its shape could have been. Supposedly if you picked something that the entity already resembled, then painted that, you would have more power over it. He had trouble with this. Or rather, during the last few months it had felt like more trouble than it was worth. So today he settled on the shape of a small bamboo thicket and began painting. The thing had spindly arms, after all. Those were kind of like bamboo. He’d practiced a great number of bamboo stalks. In fact, you could say that Painter had a certain scientific precision in the way he drew each segment—a little sideways flourish at the start, followed by a long line. You let the brush linger a moment so that when you raised it, the blot the brush left formed the end knob of the bamboo segment. You could create each in a single stroke. It was efficient, and these days that seemed most important to him. As he painted, he fixed the shape in his mind—a central powerful image. As usual such deliberate thought drew the thing’s attention. It hesitated, then pulled its head out from the wall and turned in his direction, its face dripping its own ink. It moved toward him, walking on its arms, but those had grown more round. With knobbed segments. Painter continued. Stroke. Flourish. Leaves made with quick flips of the brush, blacker than
the main body of the bamboo. Similar protrusions appeared on the arms of the thing as it drew closer. It also shrank in upon itself as he painted a pot at the bottom. The painting captured the thing. Diverted it. So that by the time it reached him, the transformation was fully in effect. He never lost himself in the painting these days. After all, he told himself, he had a job to do. And he did that job well. As he finished, the thing even adopted some of the sounds of bamboo—the soft rattle of stalks beating against one another to accompany the omnipresent buzz of the hion lines above. He lifted his brush, leaving a perfect bamboo painting on his canvas, mimicked by the thing in the alley, leaves brushing the walls. Then, with a sound very much like a sigh, the nightmare dispersed. He’d deliberately transformed it into a harmless shape—and now, trapped as it was, it couldn’t flee to the shroud to regain strength. Instead, like water trapped on a hot plate, it just . . . evaporated. Soon Painter was alone in the alley. He packed up his things, sliding the canvas back into the large bag, alongside three unused ones. Then he returned to his patrol.
.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { width: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-entry-content { width: calc(100% - 0px);}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.classic-layout-list.mode-list .no-img .post-entry-content { width: 100%;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .filter-bg-decoration .filter-categories a.act { color: #fff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.enable-bg-rollover .post-thumbnail-rollover:after { background: -webkit-linear-gradient(); background: linear-gradient();}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { width: 44px; height: 44px; line-height: 44px; border-radius: 100px; margin: -22px 0 0 -22px; border-width: 0px; color: #ffffff;}.bottom-overlap-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin-top: -22px;}.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 0 10px;}.content-align-center.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-align-center.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 auto 10px;}.dt-icon-bg-on.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico { background: rgba(255,255,255,0.3); box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico:before { font-size: 32px; line-height: 44px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .gallery-zoom-ico:before { color: #ffffff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-date a { background: #ffffff; box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-date a * { color: #2d2d2d;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-title,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.owl-carousel .entry-title { margin-bottom: 5px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: bold;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-meta { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .portfolio-categories { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-excerpt { margin-bottom: 5px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.centered-layout-list) .post-entry-content { padding: 10px 20px 10px 20px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62:not(.centered-layout-list):not(.content-bg-on):not(.mode-list) .no-img .post-entry-content { padding: 0;}@media screen and (max-width: 768px) { .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 article { -ms-flex-flow: column nowrap; flex-flow: column nowrap; margin-top: 20px; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on article { border: none; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.content-bg-on.centered-layout-list article { padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 20px; padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article:first-of-type, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-entry-content { width: 100%; margin: 0; top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-entry-content:after { display: none; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .project-even .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.centered-layout-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { -ms-flex-order: 0; order: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.centered-layout-list .post-entry-title-content { -ms-flex-order: 1; order: 1; width: 100%; padding: 20px 20px 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62.centered-layout-list .post-entry-content { -ms-flex-order: 2; order: 2; padding-top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-categories { top: 10px; left: 10px; bottom: auto; right: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .fancy-date a { top: 10px; right: 10px; left: auto; bottom: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-entry-content { padding: 20px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-title { margin: 3px 0 5px; font-size: 20px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26px; line-height: 16px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-meta { margin: 5px 0 5px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .entry-excerpt { margin: 15px 0 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-details { margin: 5px 0 10px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-3f01908ffa548ad3e4334006a3eb7a62 .post-details.details-type-link { margin-bottom: 2px; }} [image error] Yumi | Chapter One [image error] Yumi | Chapter Two [image error] Yumi | Chapter Three [image error] Yumi | Chapter Four [image error] Yumi | Chapter Five [image error] Yumi | Chapter Six [image error] Yumi | Chapter SevenTress | Chapter Three
Tress had noticed that a nice pair of gloves made her daily work go so much better. Now, she meant the good kind of gloves, made of a soft leather that molds to your hands as you use them. The kind that–if you oil them well and don’t leave them out in the sun–don’t ever grow stiff. The kind that are so comfortable, you go to wash your hands and are surprised to find you’re still wearing them. The perfect set of gloves is invaluable. And Charlie was like a good set of gloves. The longer she spent with him, the more right their time together felt. The brighter even the moonshadows were, and the easier her burdens became. She did love interesting cups, but a part of that was because each one gave her an excuse to come and visit him. The thing growing between them felt so good, so wonderful, that Tress was frightened to call it love. From the way the other youths talked, “love” was dangerous. Their love seemed to be about jealousy and insecurity. It was about passionate shouting matches and more passionate reconciliations. It was less like a good pair of gloves, and more like a hot coal that would burn your hands. Love had always frightened Tress. But when Charlie put his hand on hers again, she felt heat. The fire she’d always feared. The coal was in there after all, just contained–like in a good stove. She wanted to leap into his heat, all logic discarded.
Charlie froze. They’d touched many times before, of course, but this was different. This moment. This dream. He blushed, but let his hand linger. Then he finally raised it and ran his fingers through his hair, grinning sheepishly. Because he was Charlie, that didn’t spoil the moment, but instead only made it more sweet. Tress searched for the perfect thing to say. There were any number of lines that would have capitalized on that moment. She could have said, “Charlie, could you hold this for me while I walk around the grounds?” then offered her hand back to him. She could have said, “Help, I can’t breathe. Staring at you has taken my breath away.” She could even have said something completely insane, such as “I like you.” Instead she said, “Huuhhh. Hands are warm.” She followed it with a laugh that she choked on halfway through, exactly mimicking–by pure chance–the call of an elephant seal. It might be said that Tress had a way with words. In that her words tended to get in her way. In response, Charlie gave her a smile. A wonderful smile, more and more confident the longer it lasted. It was one she’d never seen before. It said: “I think I love you, Tress, elephant seal notwithstanding.” She smiled back at him. Then, over his shoulder, she saw the duke standing in the window. Tall and straight, the man wore military-style clothing that looked like it had been pinned to him by the various medals on the breast. He was not smiling. Indeed, she’d seen him smile only once, during the punishment of old Lotari–
who had tried to sneak off the island by stowing away on a merchant ship. That seemed the duke’s sole smile; perhaps Charlie had used the entire family’s quota. Nevertheless, if the duke did have just one smile, he made up for it by displaying far too many teeth. The duke faded into the shadows of the house, but his presence loomed over Tress as she bade farewell to Charlie. On her way down the steps, she expected to hear shouting. Instead an ominous silence followed her. The tense silence that came after a lightning flash. It chased her down the path and around to her home, where she murmured something to her parents about being tired. She went to her room and waited for the silence to end. For the soldiers to knock, then demand to know why the girl who washed the windows had dared to touch the duke’s son. When nothing like that came, she dared hope that she was reading too much into the duke’s expression. Then she remembered the duke’s singular smile. After that, worries nipped at her all night. She rose early in the morning, wrestled her hair into a tail, then trudged to the market. Here she’d sort through the day-old goods and near-spoiled ingredients for something she could afford. Despite the early hour, the market was abuzz with activity. Men swept dead spores off the path while people gathered in chattering knots. Tress braced herself for the news, then decided nothing could be worse than the awful anticipation she’d suffered all night. She was wrong. The duke had sent out a declaration: he and his family were going to leave the
island that very day.
.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { width: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.classic-layout-list.mode-list .post-entry-content { width: calc(100% - 0px);}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.classic-layout-list.mode-list .no-img .post-entry-content { width: 100%;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .filter-bg-decoration .filter-categories a.act { color: #fff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article:first-of-type,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on:not(.mode-masonry) article.visible.first:not(.product) { margin-top: 0; padding-top: 0;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.enable-bg-rollover .post-thumbnail-rollover:after { background: -webkit-linear-gradient(); background: linear-gradient();}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico { width: 44px; height: 44px; line-height: 44px; border-radius: 100px; margin: -22px 0 0 -22px; border-width: 0px; color: #ffffff;}.bottom-overlap-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico { margin-top: -22px;}.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 0 10px;}.content-align-center.gradient-overlay-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico,.content-align-center.content-rollover-layout-list.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico { margin: 0 auto 10px;}.dt-icon-bg-on.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico { background: rgba(255,255,255,0.3); box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico:before { font-size: 32px; line-height: 44px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico > span,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .gallery-zoom-ico:before { color: #ffffff;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .fancy-date a { background: #ffffff; box-shadow: none;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .fancy-date a * { color: #2d2d2d;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .entry-title,.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.owl-carousel .entry-title { margin-bottom: 5px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: bold;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .entry-meta { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .portfolio-categories { margin-bottom: 15px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .entry-excerpt { margin-bottom: 5px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f:not(.centered-layout-list) .post-entry-content { padding: 10px 20px 10px 20px;}.blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f:not(.centered-layout-list):not(.content-bg-on):not(.mode-list) .no-img .post-entry-content { padding: 0;}@media screen and (max-width: 768px) { .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f article { -ms-flex-flow: column nowrap; flex-flow: column nowrap; margin-top: 20px; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on article { border: none; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.content-bg-on.centered-layout-list article { padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article { margin-top: 20px; padding: 0; } .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.blog-shortcode.dividers-on article:first-of-type, .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.dividers-on.classic-layout-list article:first-of-type { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-entry-content { width: 100%; margin: 0; top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-thumbnail-wrap { padding: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-entry-content:after { display: none; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .project-even .post-thumbnail-wrap, #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.centered-layout-list .post-thumbnail-wrap { -ms-flex-order: 0; order: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.centered-layout-list .post-entry-title-content { -ms-flex-order: 1; order: 1; width: 100%; padding: 20px 20px 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f.centered-layout-list .post-entry-content { -ms-flex-order: 2; order: 2; padding-top: 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .fancy-categories { top: 10px; left: 10px; bottom: auto; right: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .fancy-date a { top: 10px; right: 10px; left: auto; bottom: auto; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-entry-content { padding: 20px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .entry-title { margin: 3px 0 5px; font-size: 20px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 26px; line-height: 16px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .entry-meta { margin: 5px 0 5px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .entry-excerpt { margin: 15px 0 0; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-details { margin: 5px 0 10px; } #page .blog-shortcode.blog-list-shortcode-id-8828a51d37aab02ba755ac2e01fa3c4f .post-details.details-type-link { margin-bottom: 2px; }} [image error] Tress | Chapter One [image error] Tress | Chapter Two [image error] Tress | Chapter Three [image error] Tress | Chapter Four [image error] Tress | Chapter FiveSeptember 12, 2023
Cosmere Box On Sale + Stormlight Milestone!
(dramatic music)
Brandon here with your Weekly Update.
(dramatic music)
All right.
(dramatic music)
Big news.
(dramatic music)
Here it is.
(dramatic music)
Stormlight 5
(dramatic music)
Is 75%.
(cheering)
I assume that Taylor’s going to add some cool graphic to that. We have hit the three-quarter mark, and I have stopped to do revisions, as I said. Take a couple weeks on these revisions so that we can get the beta readers working on another section of the book. So, yeah. Yay! I have to finish the book by December 15, so I’m hoping to get back to it. I’ll have October, November, part of December, and maybe a little bit more of September to work on it, and we’ll be pushing for the end.
Skyward Legacy is at, Bing! 35%. Janci is making a little bit of progress there. So, excellent.
Let’s see. What do we got? Some cool updates for you today. You may notice that we have Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. We have the TOR edition right here. I really love how this cover turned out. This is by Tran, and her art is amazing. I was really excited that we were able to get this. And I hope that you guys will enjoy grabbing this book. We also, I believe, are having the same cover on the UK edition for this one because it has that kind of nice white spine that works with what we’re doing in the UK. Their edition is, they’ve got a special Waterstones edition with blue edges with rose designs on it. I love when books do this. I think it looks really great. So, the Waterstones special edition, go and support Waterstones. They have been doing some good stuff with my books.
The Cosmere box from the Year of Sanderson is now available for purchase on Dragonsteelbooks.com. So, go and grab that. The Cosmere box is the world-hopper box, and it has one of my favorite things, a really nice Dopp kit that you will enjoy traveling with wherever you may go. So, you can go pick that one up. I suspect these ones will sell out, so you may want to go quickly and get one.
The convention schedule is available this week So, watch when that announcement comes. You’ll be able to check out all the awesome events that we’re doing, including, I’ve been told, a full room dedicated to open crafting. So, our merch page you can order craft kits for pick up, and you can put them together at the con. But yes, a just crafting room for all the people who are crafty.
All right. all right. My son Oliver did fan art for Doomslug. And he asked me if I’d show it on my channel. So, we showed it on the livestream last week, but I wanted you all to appreciate my 10-year-old son’s picture of Doomslug. This is the first fan art that one of my children has done for me, and he’s very, very proud of his Doomslug picture. So, congratulations to Oliver on his awesome Doomslug. And it has now been seen for everyone to love.
Last thing is our podcast Week 13 winners. So, here we are, pushing toward the ending. Our food heist, at 77%, is Do Not Steal the King’s Potatoes. This has been the little food heist that could. It was our 12th seed, and it has defeated the Gator Gourmands at 23%. I’m not terribly surprised by either of these victories. These are going to make pretty decent t-shirts. In fact, I think they’re going to be among the best t-shirts, this one.
And our bad story idea at 86%, a very commanding victory over Jack the Carjacking Car, Titanic 2: Sink Harder has been the victory in the bad story ideas. We are very close to our ending. We’re basically going to be doing the finals. Right? Is that where we are? So, your next votes coming up will be on the finals for what’s going on. So exciting times, exciting times. Join us on Intentionally Blank if you are very confused by what’s going on here. You’ll be slightly less confused, maybe not completely unconfused.
But hey, I’ll be back next week with another Weekly Update, and thank you all, as always, for watching.
September 7, 2023
Defiant Bundle Preorder + Weekly Update
Hey, everyone! Brandon with our Weekly Update.
All right. We are inching toward the ¾ mark with Stormlight 5. We are at, Bing! 73%. That means next week, almost assuredly, we will be at 75%. So, we need a special graphic for that, Taylor, that just like, a little confetti explosion when we get there. So, look forward to that. I am still writing for a couple of days, and then I’ll be going to revisions. So, probably we’ll announce that next week, would be my expectation and then there’ll be two weeks of no progress.
But Skyward Legacy is, Bing! Still at 34%.
So, apparently, I’m told, I was a little unclear last week about how you get signed editions of defiant. So, let me go down. They’ve given me very clear instructions this time. Defiant bundle is available to preorder. All right? This includes the book and some cool items, one of which I came up with and I’m super excited that we are doing. I can’t announce what those are yet, right? Oh, it’s on the shelf behind me? Oh, it is! So, we have a Hesho plushie as part of that, if you’ve been reading the Skyward series. Let me—yeah, go ahead and grab that for me. And so, we’ve got our Hesho plushie. He is so cute. We’ve got (laughing) I didn’t know if we could announce this. So, these are our things. They tell me that kids love lunch boxes these days. Who knew? But if you do the Defiant bundle, you will get the Slug Squad lunch box. You will open it up, and it will have your Hesho plushie inside, along with a pin, which is Hesho’s mask. So, it’s super, super awesome, and I really like this. And this is available as a bundle with a signed copy of the book, which will also be numbered. Right? So, if you buy it from us, the bundle can be shipped directly to you. You buy it through our store. You get the book, and you get the cool swag, and the book will be signed and numbered. If you want to pick up your bundle at the convention with a valid badge, you order through our convention website, and the links to all this will be below. That you can pick up in person and don’t need to get shipped to you. We will have bundles for sale at the Dragonsteel booth at the convention. So, Barnes & Noble and everybody else, they will have Defiant for sale individually. It won’t be signed. But it’s everywhere you expect to find a book. OK? So that is how it’s going. I’ve gotten a thumbs up from Kellyn. Looks like I’ve made it clear this time. That’s how you get your signed and numbered editions, and you also get your book bundle. We’re just going to put Hesho hanging out right here. So, there we go. Our little fox gerbil.
Barnes & Noble has a preorder sale. This is probably US only, being Barnes & Noble. This is September 6 through 8. It’ll be 25% off for Defiant if you preorder on those days. So, if you want a cheaper version of the book, that’s how you do it.
Regarding adaptations of my books. Here at Dragonsteel, we support the writers’ strike and wish them the best and are in their corner, and are happy that they are, you know, pushing to get the money that they need to survive on. Things have been really rough in the streaming world for them. People have been asking, you know, they were expecting some announcements from me for adaptations of my books, and they’re wondering if the strikes have delayed that. A little bit, but that’s not the main reason that you haven’t heard any updates on adaptations. More things are just pretty chaotic in Hollywood right now. Things that everyone expected to do well in the theaters have not been doing well. Things that people expected to do well on streaming have not necessarily been doing as well in streaming. They’re still figuring out how their business model works in the post-COVID and post-streaming wars era, and that’s caused a lot of uncertainty, and that’s why you haven’t heard anything. People like to start talking. I’ve noticed a lot of people saying, “Oh, he’s going to do a big announcement at Dragonsteel.” Do not expect a big announcement at Dragonsteel. That’s just me managing your expectations. I really thought we would have an announcement this year. I was wrong. I don’t expect an announcement this year. Just things in Hollywood—Hollywood does its own things. They’re going their own way. And we’ll give them the time to sort out their stuff. I do think it’s inevitable that we will have some adaptations, but probably no announcements this year. I know that’ll be very disappointing to some of you. But I continue to work and try and navigate that world as best that I can.
But on to happier things. I’m going to do a livestream with Joe Abercrombie on Daniel Green’s YouTube channel. That’s Thursday, September 7, at 1 o’clock. So, if you want to see me and Joe chat about things, Joe is fantastic. He is extremely entertaining and he’s a very, very good writer. And so, look forward to seeing us both there. That’s Mountain Daylight Time 1 o’clock.
Our own livestream on this channel will be that same day, September 7, but ours will be at 6:00 Mountain Daylight Time. Link below to ask your questions. We have a Reddit thread for that. We will do, as part of that, some spoilers at the end for Frugal Wizard. So, we’ll probably be doing an hour of nonspoiler, and then we’ll add a little bit of time on. We’re not going to go the full two hours because, you know, we have a livestream earlier with Daniel and Joe. So, we’ll go a little bit longer than an hour. But probably expect maybe 15 to 20 minutes of spoiler questions for there. So, if you have burning spoiler questions for Secret Project 2, then we’ll talk about that then.
Last thing is to announce our podcast Week 12 winners. So, this is Week 12. This is the last of our pushing into the Final Four bracket. We have our food heist, The Great Maple Syrup Heist, Dan’s favorite of the food heists, well, the one that made him a food heist afficionado, has severely trounced Pure Illegal Butter Guarantee, 76% to 24%. So not very surprised there. That’s not an upset. That’s how we expected it to go. And in bad stories it was a little bit closer, not terribly a lot closer but a little bit closer. Vikings Versus Cthulhu at 63% had defeated Freefall Burrito World. Which Freefall Burrito World, you did better than I expected you to. Vikings Versus Cthulhu, that’s a t-shirt in the making, so I’m not surprised to see that. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, come watch Intentionally Blank with us every Wednesday.
All right. I’ll be back next week, theoretically, with the big announcement that we are ¾ of the way through Stormlight 5. So, I will see you there.
August 29, 2023
Preorder Your Defiant Bundle Next Week! + Weekly Update
Hey! Brandon here with your Weekly Update. Let’s start with the book updates.
Stormlight 5 is at, Bing! 71%. That’s right, 3% moved up this week. I am getting to the end of a sequence, and I have decided to put off doing revisions until I finish it. So, I’ll be maybe a little faster the next couple of weeks as I get that, and then we will have a dearth for a couple of weeks as I do revisions. But feeling very good about that. We’re approaching 75%, which will feel very cool to have.
Skyward Legacy is still at, Bing! 34%.
So, let’s talk about a whole bunch of updates. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to talk to you about today, and they’re quite fun.
First off is the Warbreaker box from our Kickstarter, the Year of Sanderson. We will begin shipping this week. So, we already nearly have it fully packed. We’re beginning to print the labels today. And so, you’ll start to see them popping up in your emails as we send those off. This box should go out on time or even early. We’re very excited by that. And indeed, we have still trucks coming in for Secret Project 4. We’re anticipating that one being on time too, unless some major disruption happens where we suddenly stop getting trucks of those for some reason. But I believe our third truck just came, which puts us in pretty good shape, because we only need, like, seven to eight trucks to fulfill. Anyway, everything is looking really good for that.
A couple of things that you might be aware of. We have the preorder for the Defiant bundle going live on our store one week from today. What are the bundles? Well, I, for years, tried to get New York to pay attention to me because I thought when a video game comes out you get the nice, cool bundle you can order that comes with a cool thing. I’ve got the one for the Witcher 3 that’s got, like, you know, a statue and stuff like that. Like, why not let us on books buy the cool things. So, this is something we’ve started doing. You’ve seen us doing it over the years. So, we are selling Defiant ourselves through the Dragonsteel store. We actually buy the books from a local bookstore and then we put them in with some goodies that we’ll be announcing pretty soon. It’s a very cool bundle. I pitched what we should get. I’m very pleased with how it’s looking. So, it’ll be, basically, you know, your deluxe edition. The book is the same book, but it does come signed and it comes with some pretty cool swag. So, if you’re into the Skyward books, you may want to be looking at that next week.
We are moving to the only way that we’re going to be selling the book signed is with these bundles. That’s because we’ve just quickly because overloaded with these, and we figure this is a nice thing we can offer with the bundle. So going forward, this is how we’re going to be doing signed books. You can also, of course, get them at the convention. Correct me if I’m wrong. They will be signed at the convention. And so, like—and they will be numbered at the convention too, and the ones in the book bundle will also be numbered. So, if you’re not coming to the convention, the book bundle is your way to get a signed, numbered edition, and it will come with cool swag. At the convention you can also—you will be getting a signed, numbered edition as part of buying your way in. Does everyone have to buy one of those? No. You can buy the ticket if you got your book somewhere else. But the book somewhere else won’t come signed and numbered. But it might be cheaper because some places do sell the books at a steep discount. So, it’s really up to you how you want to go about doing that, but that’s how we’re going to be doing it. So, brace yourself for Stormlight 5. That’s how we’ll be doing Stormlight 5, is if you want to get the signed, numbered edition, either come to the convention, or it’s part of the book bundle. Just because I can’t sign so many books. You guys want lots of signed books, and it’s kind of difficult to keep up with you all. But we’re doing our best.
Check out our social media for highlights of our awesome exhibitors at Dragonsteel 2023, speaking of our convention. Last year we had 16 attending authors, and this year we have over 50. So, it’s becoming quite the fun place to just come and see authors at their booths. This is something that I’ve always kind of wanted to do is have a really nice author featured sort of expo. So, imagine this as kind of like a ComiCon for authors. So, come and see all these authors. A BookCon? Something’s already called BookCon. Anyway, that’s what we’re doing. Watch our social media.
We have another little thing with Defiant. Barnes & Noble has a preorder sweepstakes. Link in the description. This is when a signed Defiant, a custom dice tray, and a copy of Call to Adventure Stormlight Archive, which is one of the boardgames that we’ve made, a very fun game that I like quite a bit. You can get that. This is probably my guess. They haven’t written it down, but since it’s Barnes & Noble it’s probably only US because Barnes & Noble is a US company.
Let’s see. Oh, this is fun. A lot of you have been asking about the narrator for Secret Project 4. So, the narrator for Secret Project 4 is different from the previous three. It’s not a celebrity. I did try. I posted on Reddit. I tried hard to get some celebrities to do these. But the secret projects, the timing was so tight to get them done that none of the celebrities that I talked to were able to do it. They were all very nice, but they just couldn’t quite make it work. So, it is a narrator we’ve used before but it’s not Michael and Kate. We picked someone different for this one just to have some variety. And we’ll be announcing that on this week’s Kickstarter update, which is coming out tomorrow or Thursday. So, if you’re curious about that narrator, we’ll be announcing that.
Michael Whelan, the artist, who does a lot of cool art for us, specifically for the Stormlight Archive, he’s the featured artist in an active Kickstarter campaign. Some of the art featured is from The Way of Kings, Shallan, Rhythm of War. Link in the description. Michael is awesome. He’s just so wonderful and delightful to work with that anytime he mentions, “Hey, I’ve got this thing coming up,” we want to signal boost it because Michael is my favorite illustrator. I’ve loved his illustrations on books since I was a kid, and I’m really thrilled whenever he’s doing anything that I can signal boost.
So, last thing is our podcast Week 11 winners for our brackets. Are you ready for this? This is a double upset week. That’s right. On our food heist, The Gnocchi Brothers Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers Restaurant has been defeated by The Edelstahlkugel, which is quite surprising to me. I thought The Gnocchi Brothers Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers Restaurant would make a nice t-shirt. But you guys have chosen The Edelstahlkugel, which I can’t fault you on. That’s a pretty good story. So that has won 53% to 47%, pretty close vote.
The bad story is also an upset. That means that The Great British Fake-off, my favorite to win, has been defeated by Weekend at Vader’s with an Actual Zombie. I have no idea how we would make a t-shirt of Weekend at Vader’s without it being an absolute copyright problem. I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. We’d have to look into it. But anyway, 55% to 45%, you have chosen Weekend at Vader’s over The Great British Fake-off. So, maybe you just think that that one is the better bad idea. Maybe The Great British Fake-off is just too good an idea to make it.
We’ll be back next week with another Weekly Update, and I think we will have another of our results from—this is our final four, so we’re pushing toward the end of this bracket. I’ve had a lot of fun with this. Thank you all who have been voting on that. We will see you next week with another Weekly Update.
August 23, 2023
New Merch & Store Restock! + Weekly Update
Hey, everyone! Brandon here with your Weekly Update. Let’s start with the book updates.
Stormlight 5 is at, Bing! 68%. Moving along with my deadline being December 15th on this. So, keep following along. Let’s see if I make it. It’s looking really good. But next week I will have to stop and do revisions, last week of August, which I believe will be next week, which means we will slow down a little bit for that week. Skyward Legacy is at, Bing! 34%.
A couple other cool announcements for you. For the first time ever, all of our leatherbounds are in stock. All unsigned.
Mistborn and Cytoverse merch is also back in stock. And they wanted me to show you these wonderful pins. We’ve got an “I Heart Hemalurgy” and the heart is spiked. We’ve got a “Keep Calm and Burn Brass.” And we have a “There’s always another secret” pin. We think that they’re very nifty, and hope that you enjoy them.
The Warbreaker box packing is going really well. The warehouse says we’re at 17% packed at the time of filming. Our last item did come in. So, we have everything. We’re packing up and getting ready to start sending that in a week or so, because we have already sent out all the ones for this month, so we’re ahead.
And indeed, we did get our second truckload of Secret Project 4, which means we’ve had two truckloads so far of Secret Project 4. We need, like, seven or eight to fully fulfill. But they are rolling in, hopefully very consistently. We’ll keep you up to date on that as we get them in.
Dragonsteel 2023, our convention, November 20 through 21. Our convention map is on social media, so check it out. We have nearly twice the amount of space this year as last year, so it should be a little less crowded.
Some fun Mistborn news to share this week. As of this month, the first book has now sold 2 million copies in all formats, in just US and Canada. It’s an interesting milestone. Worldwide, we’re over 20 million Brandon Sanderson books, but this is in US and Canada, 2 million of the first book. That’s kind of fun.
We finished recording the Secret Project 3 Book Club. It’s a very special one, since my wife is leading it. That’ll be going up in September. So, try to finish your book. You all should have copies now. Try to finish your book by September and you can follow along in the Book Club.
So, last thing we have is our podcast winners, from Dan and my podcast, the dumb things that we do that are kind of fun. We have, on our food heist, this is round number two, my favorite The Snackaderms has lost, because The Gator Gourmands, as Dan assumed, have indeed been victorious. I mean, this is the groundskeeper. This is quite the story. Gator Gourmands was 64% and The Snackaderms was 36%. So, the Snackaderms are going to have to sit on the sidelines. They made it to round two but were not able to be victorious.
And for bad story idea, a very close one here. Jack the Carjacking Car has defeated Planetary Shenanigans or Sisyphus Plays Katamari Damacy, which I’m not terribly surprised on because I think Jack the Carjacking Car would make a pretty good t-shirt. Though the other one was partially an inspiration for Secret Project 4. So, you’ll be able to find out. I changed it quite a bit. But you’ll be able to see that that bad story idea may actually have turned into a good story idea. You get to tell me if it actually turned into a good story idea. But Secret Project 4—did I say 3? I meant 4—4 has some reference to that. So, there you go.
We’re also going to do week 10’s winners, because we are behind by a week. So, announcing the food heist winner. We have an upset. The Caceres Casks. Dan can pronounce that, but I can’t. The Soon to be a Major Motion Picture Starring Ana de Armas has been trounced by Do Not Steal the King’s Potatoes (just kidding please do), 78% to 22%. One of our largest disparities, and it was an upset. The King’s Potatoes, it will make a good shirt if it wins. I’m not surprised on that one. It’s just asking to be a t-shirt. So Do Not Steal the King’s Potatoes is our victor.
And in bad story ideas, Titanic 2: Sink Harder has defeated Luke Gorgeous and the Multiverse of Mediocrity. I am fond of both of these stories, so I’m sad to see Luke Gorgeous go. Maybe we’ll do something with that eventually. If you aren’t following along, this is the weird story about a certain filmmaker traveling back in time to change other people’s films to make them worse. It has been defeated by Titanic 2: Sink Harder. I mean, it’s really hard to beat Titanic 2: Sink Harder for just t-shirt possibilities. That was 60% to 40%.
And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch Intentionally Blank. We talk about weird things. And I will be back next week with another Weekly Update. Thank you so much.
