C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 97

An Announcement & Some Snippets—C.M. Simpson

I’ve been sitting on this announcement for a while, now, but have been told it’s okay to share: I’m writing a series for the Age of Magic!Set in a world well on the way to recovering from a global disaster of apocalyptic proportions, these stories follow one woman’s journey to harness her own unexpected magical abilities, and save her homeland from the ever-growing threat of raiders. Along the way, she joins forces with a shadow mage and a large, wild cat, and accidentally adopts two children. With magic rising in the catacombs and caverns, and the raiders coming in greater numbers, Marsh’s world is changing—and maybe not for the better. Her challenge is to meet the change and raise the stakes to beat it.Three books into the writing, and I’m almost excited. Working with Marsh is a challenge, given she’s as strong-willed as I am, and has some pretty definite ideas on where she wants to go. Every day, when I finish the writing part of the day it’s “Wait! You can’t…” and then add in whatever tight spot I’ve tucked her into, or situation I’ve left her to face, while I’m doing other things.It’s lucky for me she’s trapped behind the screen.To celebrate the impending release of her adventures, here are the first 200 words from each novel, and you can expect to see snippets from future edits, or the book I’m working on, to follow—and covers… there will be covers - from the redoubtable Mihaela Voicu. Until then, enjoy:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Book 1: Trading into Shadows
Through the caverns Marchant ran, fleeing from the shadows reaching through the dark. She ran from their flaming eyes, and grasping claws, trying to get out of range of limbs that stretched and flowed like molasses through the cracks of the Irth. It wasn’t long before she’d put some distance between her and the shadow monsters, but she kept running. A little distance was never going to be enough.Towing a frightened pack mule, with the two children she’d managed to grab and toss aboard, Marsh kept running, back along the trail, following the glow-rods marking the way. They were meant to mark a safe-zone, too, forming a barrier the shadow monsters could not cross. Trouble was, the damned things stalked the line of light, and if any of the glows went out… well, that’s what the caravan guards were for—if you could afford to hire them.Or if your boss wasn’t too tight-fisted and hired light, or stuck you with a caravan, and no guards of your own. You’da thought he’d take better care of the goods he needed her to deliver, even if he didn’t give two gems’ worth of a damn about her. Well, she’d be saying something about that when she got back to Kerrenin’s Ledge. If she got back…
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Book 2: Trading into Darkness
The trail ahead of Marchant passed through a tall stand of calla shroom, but Marsh had no time to admire their graceful white trunks, or the soft glow coming from the underside of their caps. Nor did she have time to collect any of the smaller shrooms and toadstools growing at their feet. Stretching her magic into the cavern around her, she knew Mordan had sensed the ambush, too.The big kat stalked silently a half dozen yards to her right, moving silently through the cavern dark, even as Marsh adjusted her eyes to see better. The problem with calla shrooms was that they were big enough to hide behind… unless you weren’t from the world below, and were built just a little taller and wider than its inhabitants.But she wasn’t that lucky. She was slender and slight of build, like all the cavern folk, her skin pale and shaded like the stone amongst which she made her home. Her eyes were a shade darker than her skin, but with green flecks, and a slightly golden tinge, and her hair a swiftly disciplined mass of copper, drawn back into a braid to keep it out of her eyes. She didn’t need it blocking her vision, even when she was using her magic to see by.It wasn’t easy to hold her scan for other life in the cavern, while she asked the shadow threads to reveal how many, and who, waited in the dark. She kept moving forward, knowing she was moving further into the trap that had been set. She had the kat—and the big beast was confident they could take the small force waiting.
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Book 3: Trading towards Light
Now you’ve done it…Roeglin’s voice whispered through Marsh’s head, and she resisted the urge to give him the finger.It wasn’t very hard; her mule had started snorting and stomping as soon as the first shadow monster had shrieked their discovery, and Marchant needed both hands to control it—which was a problem, since she also needed her hands to defend herself against the monsters, now howling through the dark towards them.The feel of Mordan’s blatant disgust as the big kat ran beside her was easy to ignore.“Ride!” Gustav shouted. “We’ll try to outrun them.”“Where to?” Marsh shouted back, but she was already kicking her mule into a gallop and following him down the trail, the hoshkat running beside her.Behind her the shadow guards followed, their mules needing no urging.“Mid-Point!” Gustav shouted back. “We’ll hole up in the station.”-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find more books in this setting on Amazon, but the best place to start might be with the Age of Magic Welcome Pack , which contains the first book of each series in the setting, and which you can find right HERE:
Until next time, happy reading, everyone!

Friday's Flash - The Man from the Juniper Tree

This is the third… fourth?... thing I want to do with this blog. I know I’ve done this before, but, this year, I want to have a piece up every Friday. This year, these pieces will be taken from one of my two published flash fiction collections— 365 Days of Flash Fiction , 366 Days of Flash Fiction —and from the upcoming collection, Another 365 Days of Flash Fiction .
All these collections are of genre-based pieces of fiction, ranging between 100 and 1,000 words. Today’s piece is the January 25th entry in 365 Days of Flash Fiction . It was inspired by one of Chuck Wendig’sTerribleminds Flash Fiction Challenges, way back in 2014.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------The Man from the Juniper Tree
Cassidy stared at the gleeful smile on the Burman’s face, tried to lift a hand and break the connection between his head and the mainframe. Failed. He looked to Marlena for help, but the girl stood silent, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes flicked between his entrapment and Burman, helpless in light of the gun pressed up hard under her diaphragm.“Cass,” she whispered, her voice helpless and awash with grief.Cassidy heard her, but felt the deadly lethargy spreading through his limbs. Where he had felt shocked into immobility, he now found he was numb, his body a leaden weight pinning him to the chair. There was a picture on the wall above the desk, one taken on the open day at a foreign embassy.It gave nothing of the embassy away, but framed the juniper tree perfectly, reminding him of the day he’d first encountered the agency. The chief had found him, standing in the juniper tree’s shadow trying to keep a dark-clad woman on her feet, weeping as he held her tight to his side—his boss’s partner. He’d pleaded with her not to die, but his pleas had been in vain, and the boss had dragged them both out before the security guards could reach them.Cassidy fought to bring his mind back to the present, but the desk swam before his eyes and his memory pulled him through the years of training and living under the chief’s roof, the missions, the funeral, his adopted father’s ever-present sadness.“You’re just like her,” Hillier had said at the graveside. “Same fire.”Fire Burman was now putting to good use. Cassidy could feel it drawing the life out of him, could see only the Burman’s malicious smile as she shifted the pistol down and put a bullet through the top of Marlena’s thigh. Cassidy didn’t see her leave the office, but he heard the door close, heard Marlena sobbing as she dragged herself over to the chair.Cass wanted to tell her it would be all right, that he’d hacked his way from one system to another, raiding drug-supported corporations, weapon-smuggling front companies and taking on service deniers and info-nappers. He wanted to say this system would be no different, that the company interface was his friend, but the paralysis that stopped him moving wouldn’t let him. It held his jaw locked tight.Dammit! Should have seen this coming. Should have… Cassidy’s mind wandered back over the project’s progress reports, and remembered he could join the data-stream. He wondered if he could save himself, and wished he’d managed to get his treacherous second-in-command to tell him how it was done, wished he’d asked more questions about how the computer tapped the excess energy produced by each person hooked into it—just a little, she’d said. Yeah, right.“Where’s Cassidy?” The sound of the chief’s voice made Cassidy jump, jolting him out of the exploration he’d been making of the interface, making him remember Burman’s promise. She’d make his adopted father kill him, cause the head of the agency to drain every last drop of life from his protégé so that she could rise, and Marlena’s place in the succession was assured. Marlena had protested too soon to save him.Thinking of Marlena reminded Cassidy of the female agent’s presence. He became aware of the pressure on the arm of the chair, of Marlena’s scrabbling attempts to reach the jack plugged into his head, became aware of her expletive, just before she seized the chair with both hands and toppled it and him to the floor.“Sshh, sshh, sshh,” she whispered, as though she wasn’t the one who had cried out in pain and caused the crash. “Sshh.”Cassidy noted the way he’d caught his feet under the lip of the desk, and felt ridiculously relieved they’d stopped his rag-doll legs banging his knees into his face. He tried to re-focus on the interface, only to have the chief’s voice pull him back to his predicament.“What’s this?” Hillier asked.“The latest from the labs,” Burman responded.Cassidy heard the scrape of something being pushed across a table.“The laptop,” whimpered Marlena. “Got to be quick. Quick. Quick.”Cassidy wished she’d shut up.“Why don’t you try it out?” Burman suggested. It’s got the latest software. There’s even a mission simulation.”“I have a report to write.”“No problems, just log in from here. Come on, Jon, give it a go.”“Anything for an iota of peace,” Hillier grumbled, and there was a click. “Nice.”Cassidy felt a pull at his insides, a sudden tiring tug.“No, no, no,” Marlena said, her voice tearful. She patted Cassidy’s cheek. “It’s wireless, Cass. Wireless. You’ve just gotta get into the mainframe. Please…”Wireless. Which means… Cassidy found the port and leapt for it. Why does she want me in the mainframe?“Holy Hell! Cass is going to love this!” It was the highest compliment Hillier could pay, but Cassidy doubted Burman would appreciate it. Truth was, he did love the new system. He flipped and swirled and wondered how he could save himself. Tried to think like a hacker instead of a man whose mind was trapped in a machine. He didn’t need to find the data link to his body to know it was growing weaker by the minute.Cassidy studied the data-stream, noted the security cameras’ feed, dived in, found the alarms, alerted the guards. Twisting, he fed the image to the laptop, bringing Hillier at the run. He shut the laptop down.The chief took one look at Marlena and dialled the ambulance. Cassidy flashed the interface tell-tale, catching Burman’s attention. He had a surprise for her, was relieved when her fingers seized the connection.Rummaging through the databanks, he’d found the power commands. Laughing, he tweaked them, feeding the mainframe’s power-feed into Burman’s fingers, frying her from fingertip to toe. Laughing, he returned to his head in a wireless leap, hoping the medics made it on time.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two flash fiction collections at the links below. The third collection will be released later this year.
books2read.com/u/bap506 books2read.com/u/3J21B3

Wednesday’s Verse—The Nemesis Fey

This week’s verse shifts away from the undead to another staple of urban fantasy—the fey. It is taken from Another 365 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry to be released later in the year, once both collection and cover are complete.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------The Nemesis Fey
It lives upon the summer high.It survives the winter low.It comes pouncing out in darkest night.It wakes to hunt as darkness grows.Its wings, they glimmer silver,its body gossamer grey.Its eyes, they glow like mirrors,our nemesis, the fey.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year. books2read.com/u/mVLQZb books2read.com/u/bxgyLd

Tuesday’s Short—A Legacy of Elves

This week’s short story takes us from a far-flung future of VR battle arenas, to a post-apocalyptic Earth, where magic has returned and elves and trolls are real. Welcome to A Legacy of Elves.

We had to find refuge from the trolls before sunset, but a chapel in the woods? With hot, running water? It had to be a trap—even if the pixies and the unicorns didn’t think so. But the pixies needed help, so we stuck around—and now we have to deal with the trolls…A Legacy of Elves

The glade had been over-paved with concrete, its trees long ago destroyed. The well-spring giving the surrounding forest life lay buried deep underground, feeding fresh water into a long-abandoned sewer system. In its place, stood the arching ceiling of a small chapel, whose whitewashed walls bore faded images of everything the glade used to be.The Honey Badgers knew nothing of this. We only knew we had found a safe place to camp for the night, a place the trolls wouldn’t come. We had arranged the chapel proper into compartments, divided by lines of gear. Each Honey Badger had their own space because, contrary to that old saying, Honey Badgers do care.We’d been forced to abandon the centre of the city when the scrapers started to collapse, making the overgrown canyons between them even more dangerous than before, but we hadn’t gone far, because the city was all we knew— the only place we had any idea of how to be safeForty years ago, magic had met plague and natural disaster in a maelstrom of havoc. Science had been treasured and abandoned in equal parts. Of those who hadn’t been able to flee the natural disasters devastating human civilisation, some had actually survived. Of those who had grown up in the world that was, some had reached old age, protected by those they had protected through the Maelstrom and its aftermath. Now, they raised their children in the ruins, and contemplated what to do next.Like them, we knew of the Otherlands, knew of the Dwellers-in-the-Stars, and we knew our world had been left to lie fallow, too unstable for any to colonise, but still too populated for any to claim. ‘Honey Badgers’ was the name chosen by the oldest of us in his Harley-riding days, because Honey Badgers just don’t care. Those of us he rescued called him Papa Bear. If he’d had any other name, it was lost with his Harley, and the world he knew.When we found the chapel, on the fringes of the skyscrapers, Papa Bear had been cautious.“Make sure it’s not about to collapse,” he said.I nodded and scouted on ahead to check. Far as I could tell, the building was as sound as any other— and with thicker walls, high narrow windows and lockable doors. In the end, it had been the doors that made Papa Bear decide in favour of calling an end to the day.“Lockable, huh?” Papa Bear said, just after the first roar reverberated through the concrete canyons and rebellious trees. “Better get our asses inside, then.”Asses… it was just the way Papa Bear talked.Jonas looked down at the children and nodded.“Hurry up,” he’d said, and they scurried off to join Yolanda, Jonas’s partner and the woman they’d chosen as mother. It was a relief for me to still be able to walk where I wanted without needing to confirm the pitter-patter of little feet behind me, but there were days I wondered.By the time I got in there, after making a second walk around, Yolanda had found a broom, its strong, plastic bristles still in good enough condition to help her move the leaves that had built up inside.“But I like ’em underfoot,” Carlita had wailed, and I saw Jonas frown.“We don’t know what’s underneath ’em.”As far as I was concerned, he made a good point. Country might be a bit colder than it used-to-was, but it was still home to a host of poisonous bities that had only gotten worse since the magic came.“Yeah, we do,” our littlest rescue argued, and I remembered she had ‘the gift’, or ‘a gift’, or somesuch. We never could define it. We just knew it worked.“Over there youse gots a mouse nest, and they need the leaves.” She pointed. “And over there youse gots a wolf spider, but she’s leaving, now, case she gets stepped on, and in that corner is a ’kidna who jus’ wantsta be left alone.”“And what about the rest?”“Ants and beetles and leaf roaches and…” her little brow furrowed. “Oh. Wait a minute. Papa Bear?”“Yes, sweetie?”“The pixie wants to stay.”Papa Bear’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline.“Well, he was here first. It’s his house. Does he mind if we come in?”The frown stayed on Carlita’s face, and then cleared.“He says it’s okay, but youse gotsta clean up after the unicorns.”Unicorns, huh? I suddenly had a sinking feeling, but the idea didn’t seem to faze our Papa Bear one bit.“You tell him, he has a deal.”Carlita smiled, the tiniest of smiles, and the pixie was suddenly the best thing I had heard of in the last two years. Anything that could make that little girl smile had earned its place.We’d rescued her from a tree, after killing the plaguers who’d been trying to eat her. Not one of us had been able to claim dry eyes, when that little girl had laid a flower on one of the plaguer’s chests, before Papa Bear had lit the pyre.“’Bye mama.”’Bye mama. I knew Jonas would have given a lot to have never heard those words, but he’d been glad to take the little girl into his arms and carry her to Yolanda. And I’d been glad to let him. He wasn’t the only one for whom those words bit deep.“She’s ours now.”“If she’s got no sign of plague when the rest of them are so far gone, she’s safe,” Papa Bear had declared, and Carlita had become the littlest Honey Badger.“’Cos she don’t care about runnin’ away when she hasta,” Papa Bear had said.“Well, you can have the leaves in your space,” Yolanda told the little girl, and I felt the memory fade as she started sweeping up the rest.Carlita, of course, chose to sleep closest to the pixie. The rest of us Honey Badgers marked out our spaces, some helping Yolanda sweep the leaves into a pile against the wall where the mouse and echidna had taken shelter. We wheeled the bikes inside, and weren’t entirely surprised when three unicorns materialised from the trees, and followed.The biggest ’corn surveyed us, and then stomped right up to Papa Bear. It pushed its nose against his forehead, and then snuffed him from top to toe, much to everyone’s amusement. When it was done, it turned its head towards where Carlita said the pixie was, and snorted, but the pixie stayed as invisible as before. With another snort, the unicorn joined it and Carlita in the corner. The other unicorns made themselves comfortable around the room.Jonas would have protested when one lay down between Rosalie and Oscar, but Yolanda laid a hand on his arm. I was glad she did. Those two needed a friend. Winding an arm around his partner’s waist, Jonas accepted the unicorn’s choice. At least the children would have another protector.Outside, the bridge troll roared again, and we all heard the distinctive rustling skitter made by the small-and-furries that acted as harbingers for its arrival. I followed Jonas as he closed the chapel doors, then went out into the kitchen to see what other exits needed blocking. I waited for the usual sense of urgency to fall, and was surprised when it didn’t.I watched his back as he bolted the door in what appeared to be a laundry, and then we checked to see if the small lavatory next to the shower stall worked. When one flushed and the other produced clear, if cold water, I pushed down a faint sense of unease. Nothing could be this good.The pantry beside the kitchen was empty of anything, except more leaves and dust. I thought back to the country we had crossed to reach the chapel, and could see, from the look on his face, that Jonas was doing the same. We had come out of one skyscraper canyon, and journeyed through several blocks consisting of rubble hillocks that had once been double-story inner-city flats. A clowder of cats had watched us pass, some appearing out of the mounds to stare.I, for one, hadn’t been able to relax until we’d crossed into a large single-storied span of interconnected caverns. It had been a mall, and we passed down the main hall bisecting it. We’d all been surprised by the forested space facing us on the other side. The chapel’s white dome had been a beacon through the trees, particularly with the rail bridge sitting on the horizon.Another roar shook the evening, and I heard the whistling flight of startled pigeons. I was glad the Honey Badgers had found the chapel, relieved we had such heavy wooden doors with which to block the night. And the mall might still have something whose use-by date was meaningless.“What are we eatin’, tonight?” Papa Bear asked, when we re-emerged.I let Jonas answer; I wasn’t known for saying much, anyway.“Rations.”“We secure?”“Yup—and we got water.”“We do?”“And ablutions.”“Cold?”“Yup.”“Well, can’t have everything, I guess.”We settled in, dusk fading into full night as the trolls skittered and stomped and snuffled around outside. Papa Bear slept in, snoring his way past the grey light of dawn and waking to the reflected gold of sunrise. I felt surprisingly calm, lying in my sleeping bag and watching the ceiling turn from grey through to a honey-coloured white.Usually Papa would have cursed a blue streak, but instead he nudged Jonas with the toe of his boot, watching him leap to his feet, and look around in alarm. When Jonas registered the calm surrounding him, he watched as Papa sat down in a shaft of sunlight and gave an almost contented sigh.“What do you say, boy? Should we stay another night?”Had to say, there were times when I wished Papa Bear would ask me, but I’d taught him well, and he always looked to Jonas first. Made me smile.“Well, we’re out of the high-rise zone,” Jonas said. “Another night probably won’t hurt. We could forage.”Leaves rustled in the corner closest the door.“The pixie says we could stay longer, if we liked,” Carlita piped, her voice light and clear in the chapel, then she added, “I’d like to stay forever.”One of the unicorns shifted its feet, and walked over to the door. It nudged the latch, and then farted loudly.“Hold up,” Oscar said, hurrying to his feet. He pushed past it and cautiously opened the door.I saw my own amazement reflected on Jonas’s face, as the boy laid a hand on the unicorn’s muzzle and peered outside. This was the first time in weeks Oscar had shown consideration for anything, and we’d all been waiting for some sort of breakthrough. If the unicorns could make him care, then maybe staying was a good idea.I watched what he did, and saw that he only let the unicorn leave when he was sure it was clear. The other unicorns followed swiftly, and Carlita breathed a sigh of relief.“That was close,” she said. “Youse nearly hadsta scrub the floors.”“Well, we havta go find food,” Papa Bear said. “Does your pixie have any suggestions?”“He’s not my pixie,” Carlita said. “He’s his own pixie. He just likes me.”“Okay, but can he help us find food?”Carlita looked at the corner where she usually looked when asking the pixie questions. She stared at it for a long time, and then she turned back to Papa Bear.“He says only if you help him, first.”From the upwards dance of Papa Bear’s eyebrows, that was unexpected. Apparently the pixie wasn’t one to miss an opportunity.“He says this is a good place to stay, a safe place. We could live here forever.” She looked around at the white-washed walls with their murals of trees and a small spring at one end.“I’d like to live here, forever,” she said, her voice wistful.Jonas looked at Papa Bear, not quite hiding how much he liked the idea of staying, and I knew the same look was on my face when Papa checked in my direction. Just ’cos he doesn’t ask me much doesn’t mean he doesn’t tryand get my opinion.We all knew we needed to stop for a while. We’d been moving for months. We all knew we’d have to stop soon if we were to make a future. And this had been the most promising place we’d seen so far.Papa Bear knew when he was beat, but he glared at Carlita and said, “Your pixie friend had better come on out and speak his own mind. I’d like to deal direct.”She nodded, a look of relief crossing her face as she went to stand beside Yolanda, hugging her foster-mum’s leg for comfort. The pixie appeared, right on cue, not in the corner where Carlita had been looking, but on the backpack standing beside Papa Bear’s bed.Jonas couldn’t help it. He stared. For one thing, the pixie was bigger than we expected, almost a whole foot tall. And, for another, he was dressed in some kind of chain mail, over leather breeches and calf-high boots.“Smugglers took my clan,” he said.“Thought you said this place was safe.”The pixie gestured around the chapel.“This place is safe, but we were staying in the mall. Seems some humans have developed a taste for our dust… again.”“This has happened before?”“Many times before,” the pixie said, “and not just with humans. Almost any sentient race can develop a taste for it.”“You mean, like, a taste, as in eatin’ it?”“As in.”Papa Bear took a deep breath.“Okay, so how many of them are there? Where are they? And how badly are your folks hurt?”“Five. Blue house near the railway bridge. I don’t know. And, in case you need to know, there are thirty of my folk, old and young alike.”“Do you have a layout of the house? And when’s the best time to hit ’em?”“I can draw you a map, and the best time to hit ’em is at night.”“When the trolls are out.”“Yeah, the trolls…” The pixie thought about that for a moment, and then smiled. “Well, you’d have to get rid of them anyway, if you made this place permanent.”“Is it worth it?”“What?”“This place?”“Silver moons and fairy stars, of course it is.”“Why?”“You seen any better on your travels?”Papa Bear studied the pixie, and the pixie stared back, but its face was closed so far as I could see. There was something, but the pixie wasn’t about to reveal it. Papa Bear continued to stare until the pixie wriggled uncomfortably.“So… you in?”We all waited. I think even Oscar, for all his tough stand-offishness, held his breath. Papa Bear looked around the chapel, made a show of breathing in the woodsy air, caught Jonas’s eye.“Running water, eh?”“Clean running water.”“Hmmm.”It was a big plus and we all knew it. We’d been playing chicken with water sources for a while. Clean water was nothing to be sneezed at, and for it to be running to boot, well… Papa Bear leant forward, resting his forearms on his knees.“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want us to take out a nest of drug runners and a tunnel of trolls.”The pixie stared at him.“Get me back my people,” he said, “and you can take your time with the trolls.”“If we survive ’em in the first place.”The pixie shrugged, and met Papa Bear’s gaze without flinching. I glanced up at the windows and noted full day had come.“Why don’t we see if the mall gives us a ghost,” I said, and everyone stopped moving.Papa Bear was the first to break the staring contest. His jaw dropped open and he stared at me.“So you can speak.”I shrugged and gestured at the inside of the chapel. Now that he was looking at me, it was hard to find the right words. Papa Bear laughed.“Lost your voice again, huh?’I nodded, looking down at my feet, and then I stood up and walked out the front door and into the day. Didn’t take long for Jonas to catch up with me. To my surprise, Oscar came hot on his heels. They fell in step beside me, Jonas handing me the rucksack I usually carried when I went foraging.“Any idea which end of the mall you wantta hit first?” he asked.I showed him, and, yes, I used my words. They weren’t many, but they did the job. The mesh fence covered with tattered shadecloth had, indeed, meant there was a hardware store and garden, just as the bit that looked like a grocery store meant there was a bottle shop right next door. We found what we needed, and then some—and not just for the raid.We found seeds that might still be viable, plants that had gone wild, self-perpetuating as they spread through split bags of potting mix and fertiliser, books on herbs, on preserves, on everything we needed. Most were pulp, but some had been wrapped in plastic and promised information. I left them with reluctance, leading Jonas and Oscar to where we could find twine, and the remnants of cloth inside sealed bales and roles. Glass bottles and batteries, that looked as though they’d survived the years, completed the list.Much of the stocks of alcohol in the front of the store had been looted, but there was a storeroom that had remained stubbornly locked. It was a pity that its walls were no longer as strong as its door, and fortunate that I was obviously the first to think of it. A couple of axes from the hardware store had us unstacking the shelves from the outside.I was smiling as I found the good stuff, high alcohol content, perfect for what I had in mind. I never had told Papa Bear what I’d learned growing up. From the look on Jonas’ face, he was starting to wonder. Oscar, on the other hand, was enchanted.“Cool,” he said, his voice barely above a breath.“You’re serious?” Jonas said, when I explained.I drew a map, pointing out the bridge supports and their proximity to the blue house.“Bound to be a distillery in there,” I said, tapping on the house. “Should blow just fine. And trolls don’t do so well with fire.”I was mimicking Papa Bear’s phrasing, but that was okay. I didn’t want to talk the way I’d learned growing up. There were memories attached to that, which I just didn’t want to stir. They were stirring enough, as I showed Jonas and Oscar how to make the Molotov’s, and then explained how we were going to use the gas bottles we’d found.Those trolls didn’t stand a chance, and when the drug runners came out to see what was going on, they wouldn’t stand a chance, either. There was only one flaw in my plan— reality.I let Jonas lay out the plans, confirming what I’d said. Papa Bear wasn’t too happy when we brought back the Molotov’s we’d made.“That’s a waste of good whisky,” he exclaimed, but I could tell from the shadows in his eyes that I was going to have some questions to answer afterwards.“Why don’t we do a bit of recon?” he suggested. “We can cart this lot closer, get an idea of what we’re facing.”I hadn’t been entirely surprised when he’d pointed a finger at me.“You can go scope out the troll lair, work out exactly where you want those gas canisters put.”I shrugged and agreed, peeling out of there so I could get to the bridge lair well ahead of the rest. The pixie was helping Papa Bear stow the Molotov’s in modified saddle bags for the unicorns. It would keep them busy for a while. Rosalie and Yolanda were busy fashioning torches out of twigs, twine and alcohol-soaked rags.I hadn’t counted on Oscar coming along for the ride.“Papa Bear know you’re here?”“Boy, you sure can talk when you want to,” he retorted, and then, “Not exactly.”“You gonna tell him?”“When we get back.”And that had been the end of that. I didn’t have the time, or the inclination, to argue with him, and he wasn’t going to be dissuaded.We snuck up past the blue house, in the gully between the embankment leading up to the railbed, and the house. There was a narrow valley, lined with wild grasses and scrub. Animals had worn a narrow path along the lowest point, and we left no trail.I taught Oscar to be aware of his profile, to make sure no part of him stuck up where it was going to bring trouble. I showed him how to hold the bushes back, rather than just push through them, and then to release them gently when he’d passed. That way we left almost no sign. There wasn’t much we could do about the grass, but it sprang back up leaving minimal trace.I counted three ways into the back of the blue house, and saw no guards at any of them. We took the third, Oscar going pale as I carefully opened the door.The stench inside was atrocious, worse than that of any lab I’d ever had the misfortune of visiting— and those had been more than I cared to say. Papa Bear had rescued me from the ruins of the last one I’d blown six ways to Hell, even though he hadn’t know I’d been the one to blow it.And I had never sought to enlighten him. Today, though, I’d watched him remember when he’d found me, and where, and I’d seen him look at the Molotov’s and listen to Jonas laying out my plans, and I’d seen him connecting the dots. I was not looking forward to having to explain, but I would. I didn’t think he’d hold it against me.What we found in the blue house was worse than any mess I’dever left behind. It looked like the trolls had found the dust runners, at least three nights ago. I wondered why the pixie hadn’t known that, and then decided he hadn’t had time to check, hadn’t known how, or hadn’t dared. He’d been in the chapel, when we arrived, but I had the sense he’d been waiting for something. I made a note to ask Carlita when we got back.Either way, we weren’t going to need to take out the dustrunners. The trolls had already done that for us. I wrinkled my nose at the mess, and picked my way through spilled chemicals and entrails to the front door. I met Papa Bear and the pixie on their way in.“They’re dead,” I said, and earned myself another look of surprise.“Girl, you’re gettin’ right chatty,” Papa Bear said, and I glowered at him.“That just leaves the trolls.”“They sleep during the day.”“I know,” I said, and picked up a pile of muck from the floor.They screwed their faces up in disgust as I rubbed it over my clothes and hair. To be honest, I’m not sure how I managed not to throw up, except I knew I was going into a troll lair and, whether they slept or not, the stench was going to keep me alive.“Stay here,” I said, pulling a pair of night-vision goggles out of the bag. “No. Get the stuff. We can have it close by.”I didn’t need to say which stuff they had to get, but the smugglers had given us the perfect staging point, and it would be a crying shame to waste it. Papa Bear turned to Oscar.“Wait here,” he said. “Don’t follow her, unless she screams.”I smirked as Oscar nodded, jerking his head up and down several times, more because he knew it was the right thing to do than because he was going to be any use if I needed him. I left him, peering nervously out of what had once been the lounge-room window.The trolls’ lair was everything I’d feared, and worse. I found the pixies, still in the cages into which the dustrunners had stuffed them. There were empty cages, too, and I’d weep later for the pixies’ loss.I also noticed the bodies of several elves lying haphazardly in one corner, and swallowed bile. When one of the bodies moved, I knew I was going to need to do something spectacular to get as many of them out alive as I could.Forcing my mind away from the prisoners, away from the tiny hands clutching the bars of their cages and the hopeful eyes watching me in the dark, I counted the trolls. There were seven. Three of the large bridge-trolls, and four lesser hunters. Innumerable fuzzy lumps dotted the cavern, and I stared. I was going to have to come up with something extra spectacular if we were to survive.And, as what to do came to mind, I realised I was going to need to lure the trolls away from their cave long enough to get the propane cylinders inside. And we were going to have to set them off around dawn— after we had managed to get all the prisoners out, and close enough to sanctuary that the trolls could not follow without risking the sun. Yeah, that should do it.Having made up my mind, I picked up four of the cages, two to each hand, and I turned to head down the tunnel. As I went, I made sure to kick the bottom of the stack, and then I started to run. Behind me the cages came tumbling down, and the trolls woke with a start.I could hear them sniffing the air, puzzled by the expected odour of carrion, and I realised I’d worked my disguise just a little too well. There was only one more thing to do, one thing guaranteed to really piss them off.I started to sing Amazing Grace, and behind me, I heard a roar.Oh, shit.“How sweet the sound,” I sang, and it didn’t matter that my voice was a little off key.I thought I could hear them at my heels when I hit the tunnel entrance, and fled into the full light of day. I felt the sun’s warmth, but I kept running, the cages banging awkwardly at my legs. Behind me, several furry shapes hurtled out of the bridge’s shadow before they realised it was still light. I was never so happy, as when Oscar came running down the front stairs of the blue house and took the cages from one hand.To my disappointment none of the bigger trolls followed me into the sun, but they stood in the deep shadows of their entrance tunnel and roared their promise of vengeance. Papa Bear arrived in time to hear them. He let go his wheelbarrow and took the cages from my other hand.“I take it you have an explanation for this?” he asked, undoing the cage doors and helping the pixies out.“Change of plan,” I said, and watched his face pale as I explained.“You can do this?”“I can try.”“You’ve done something like this before?”I blushed, and shook my head.“Not with trolls.”He bent down to look into my face.“I just bet you haven’t. What have you in mind?”I explained, my words halting and clumsy as I brought them into the light, and even Papa Bear looked worried.“You are goat-sucking crazy!” he said, and I had to agree.The pixies were beside themselves with glee. That alone should have been enough to give me second thoughts.“I need a shower,” I said, but the pixie refused to let me go back to the grove.“But…”There is water here,” it said, and I discovered the other reason the dust runners had chosen the house. Water. And solar heating. I made a note of that. Somehow, I would work out how to install something similar at the chapel. There was no sense in planning to move this installation. We had no time; it was going to go up in flames with the dawn.We had the gas bottles set up at the base of the bridge, and more bottles loaded into wheelbarrows ready for taking down the tunnel. A barrowful of Molotov’s, and a long fuse made of alcohol-soaked cloth, twisted into a clumsy rope, also stood by. I knew the trolls would follow the scent of humans back to the chapel, but we laid a few different trails to keep them busy—trails that wouldn’t end well.Papa Bear watched me supervise the set up, and his brow furrowed, but I still couldn’t tell if he was angry or bemused. He didn’t seem to have a problem with letting any of the other Honey Badgers work alone with me. I took that as a good sign—or as a sign he didn’t think I’d live to be a problem beyond the dawn. Either one was feasible.When the trolls emerged, they would follow my scent through all the places the pixie had insisted I go before letting me have a shower. That would bring them back to the blue house and the first set of explosives. If we’d timed it right, they would find the next trail and head over the other side of the railway tracks. On their return, they’d pick up the scent of us leaving their lair with their larder.When dusk came, the plan worked like a charm. The trolls followed my scent, and we used the sound of our various traps being set off to track their progress. We’d positioned the cylinders, Molotov’s, and fuses, both in the lair and under the bridge supports, and the last of the pixie cages were removed successfully shortly after the trolls started to hunt.The unicorns hadn’t been happy about being used as pack mules for the second time that day, but they were much more cooperative when we loaded the first pixie cages onto their backs. As soon as the last cage was on board, I had Papa Bear get them moving.“I’ll check the elves,” I said.“They’re not nice folk,” Papa Bear told me. “They’re not the ones who used to live in the forests in fairytales, you know. They’re the ones from under the hills.”“We still can’t blow them up.”“Have it your way,” he said, and we both lifted our heads to listen to the warning that said the trolls had almost reached the end of our trail. “Better hurry.”With that, he got the unicorns moving, hustling the pixies into the night, towards where he would have the time to free them. I returned back down the tunnel. As it was I found only one elf still alive. The remains of the others were hanging off shards of wood, their bodies singed and charred. Apparently trolls do cook their food. I threw up, and then heard someone weeping softly in the dark— an elf, half-buried under empty pixie cages and carrion.“They saved me,” he whispered. “I would have died, but they saved me.”I caught sight of the circlet on his brow.“You a prince?”“Does it matter? They should not have died… should not…”“Then don’t make their sacrifice in vain,” I said. “Come with me.”“You know a safe place?”I dragged him to his feet.“Only if we go, now. They are coming.”“Coming?”“Hurry,” I said, then opened the cylinders.He came, but too slowly, so I went back and slung his arm over my shoulder, half-supporting, half-dragging him down the corridor. When we were halfway along, I lit the fuse, and I prayed it would be enough. Any minute now, I would hear the last explosion, and it would be too late. I had to be well on my way to the chapel before the trolls got to the blue house.We hurried. The further we went, the slower the elf moved, until we were barely making a walking pace. Still, I persisted. The first real sign of trouble came when we had passed through the mall and the grove opened up before us. Papa Bear and his unicorn team, were just disappearing into the trees.The elf stopped, throwing his weight against mine to halt our forward motion. “Stop!” the elf said, his voice croaking weakly in my ear. “Stop. I can’t…”“Can’t what?”“I can’t enter without an invitation.”“But we’re not even at the chapel.”“The forest… It’s the forest.”“The forest is someone’s home?”“Yes. I cannot enter unless they invite me.”“Hey!” I called. “Hey, pixies!”This made even Papa Bear look back, and the pixie who’d given us permission to stay in the chapel turned, too.“Gotta problem.”I saw realisation dawn on the pixie’s face. He tapped Papa Bear on the shoulder.“Get them into the chapel,” he ordered, indicating the ’corns and the cages. “I can deal with this.”“She won’t leave him.”Dang. Papa Bear knew me far too well.He looked worried, but he did as he was told, which was a first for him. I guess he figured he could get back out here and lend a hand once the rest of them were safely tucked away. I waved and he went all the quicker.Oscar, however, gave the unicorn a pat, urging it to go on without him. And then he turned back to me. The pixie ignored him, walking over to where I’d stopped at the edge of the park. The look he turned to me was worried, but the look he gave the elf was definitely not friendly.“Which clan are you?”“Winter,” and I sensed no evasion in the elf’s reply.“From the Land-Under-the-Hill?”“Yes.” The elf wet his lips and looked back toward the bridge. “Please, help me.”“What do you want?” the pixie asked.I thought that was obvious, but there was something in the way the pixie asked that kept me silent. The little man had a purpose, and it was important. My fey lore was way off, but I swore, then and there, it wasn’t going to stay that way.The elf stayed silent, his gaze darting from me to the pixie. He seemed to be waiting for me to intervene, but, from the look on the pixie’s face, I knew I could not. There was too much at stake. The elf must have figured out which way I was thinking, because he gave this sort of sigh, and slumped against me.“I. seek. sanctuary,” he said.A loud whump sounded behind us. It was accompanied by the sound of outraged roars. The elf gave an uneasy glance over his shoulder. Whatever was at stake with the invitation was obviously not as worrying as his memories of the troll rotisserie.“I seek sanctuary,” he repeated. “I swear to bring no harm, enable no harm, and countenance no harm to the place or places, or to the peoples and creatures within the place or places, who grant it.”The pixie waited, arms folded. It stared at the elf and drummed his fingers on the biceps of the opposite arm. The elf caved.“What other conditions do you require?” Even I could hear the pleading in his voice.“That, in addition, you become a protector of the places of sanctuary, and the peoples therein, giving one consecutive year for every day of safety you are granted there.”“I so swear,” the elf said, but he agreed so fast that I wondered what the pixie had missed.The pixie was obviously worried, as well, but there was no more time to think on it. Sunlight shimmered on the horizon’s edge.“Then the peoples of this grove grant you sanctuary,” he said, and the elf allowed me to half-drag, half-carry him across the street and into the trees.We had barely gone three paces before one of the unicorns materialised out of the grey-lit forest shadows. It nudged its head under the elf’s other arm, helping us move through the trees more swiftly.A second whump followed the first, and I thought I heard the skitter of claws. I tried to go even faster, but could not, so had to rely on Papa Bear and Jonas as they went past us, each carrying one of the swords they had taken from the trolls’ lair, when they were collecting the pixie cages.The elf looked grieved to see the blades being wielded by humans, but he was in too much pain to care. Jonas and Papa Bear took out the first half dozen small-and-furries just as we reached the chapel stairs, and we were all inside and barring the doors shortly thereafter.Yolanda was ahead of us in what the elf might need, and she had laid out a pallet. We got him cleaned up and onto it, while Jonas and Oscar locked the doors and secured the chapel for the rest of the night.All of us waited for the blast that would tell us that the pixie’s revenge was complete. When it came, the windows rattled, but they did not shatter. The trees and intervening buildings protected them from the blast.We listened as the trolls howled with dismay, knowing they would try to reach the bridge, and knowing the way was blocked. Shortly thereafter, we watched the ceiling turn golden, and listened as the trolls screamed and died. Papa Bear looked over at the pixie.“I don’t suppose there’s any rules we oughtta know about stayin’ in a pixie grove, is there?” he asked.The pixie returned his gaze, and then looked over the rest of us. He looked far too pleased with himself.“We will arrange teachers,” he said, “but for now you should rest. The afternoon will be time enough.We breathed a sigh of relief, as he turned towards the nest of leaves and blankets Carlita had prepared for him and his folk, but then he stopped.“And you should know that this is not a pixie grove.”I heard Papa Bear give the sort of groan that meant he’d guessed there was a catch, and we all waited for the pixie to explain.“It’s the birthplace of an elven homeland, and they will walk among us soon.”I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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A Legacy of Elves is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.books2read.com/u/brzGZb



You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?
 

Just Released - Miguel Unmade

January's short story is now live. Set in the Lunar Wolves section of the Odyssey universe, it brings several of the series and settings of this universe together, providing a major link between them. Featuring Delight (from Odyssey), Melerom (from Melerom Leads the Dance ), Felicity Jones and her lizardine consort... or is that vice versa (from The Reptile's Blade ) and linking events from Serpents' Souls and Dragons' Hearts , with Abby, a major character in The Transporter's Favour , the fourth book of the Mack 'n' Me 'n' Odysseyi series, this story takes place in the Lunar Wolves arena (see Bid the Moon Goodbye , or Earth & Lunar Dreaming ). It also introduces what looks like another character who needs his own series - and I'm very excited to see it go live. You can find links to all the major retailers HERE.


Captured by the space wolves and held aboard their battle cruiser, Miguel doesn’t think things could get worse—and then he discovers he’s sharing his cell with the very two psychopaths he’s been trying to avoid. Dragged into their next deadly scheme, he faces two choices—do what they want and live as their captive, or save Earth and die horribly as a result. Either way, he loses. Just how much he loses is up to him.
Miguel Unmade is now available from most major ebook retailers (or soon will be), and links to it can be found HERE AT BOOKS2READ.

Carlie’s Chapter 2—Dear Tiger: I Miss You

LAST WEEK, Simone hid a package. This week, things caught up with her...Chapter 2 – The Secret Letter
From: Simone Michaels, Boarder 9652, Mail Room 23, Locked Bag 359, Box 908, Delta Quadrant, Midpoint Campus, Ambron’s Interstellar Academy, FedExplore Inc. Mail Room 98, East Melbourne Mail Complex, Australia, Terra Firma

Date: 12 August 3049

Dear Tiges
THEY MOVED ME!!!They took me off Emerald, and they moved me! What am I gonna do?They wouldn’t let me write you until I was, and I quote “settled”. I should let you know that what they meant by settled was two weeks of every kind of test and exam you can think of. Oh, and when I say they moved me, I mean they moved me through at least three different worlds before they settled me here. In Melbourne! On good, old Terra.The first world wasn’t actually for testing. It was where mum and dad’s expedition had been based out of. You know, the place where they keep the guys that do the number crunching and say how long the funds are going to last for the expedition, and who can have how much and when.If it looks like the expedition has found a world that FedExplore can sell chunks of to a number of different interest groups, then the expedition gets more money, more often, and it can stay longer. If it’s nothing but a ball of useless dust or slush or whatever, then the expedition gets pulled and sent somewhere else.Anyway, this office was the place where they told me that mum and dad’s expedition had disappeared. They also told me—and this is secret, Tiges, so I’ll post this letter secretly in case they’re reading my mail—they told me that Intergalactic Policing Services had indicted the planet.You know, indicted, as in cut it off from the rest of the known universe, with no one getting in and no one getting out, so even if mum and dad’s expedition hadn’t disappeared, they’d never have been allowed to leave, and I still wouldn’t be able to see them. Ever. Again.Tiges, this is horrible!FedExplore aren’t even allowed to retrieve the data-ship, and you know how impressed that would have made them. I don’t know what’s going on, Tiges, but it sure is weird.And another thing, you know that package? They asked me if I’d received any large parcels in the mail lately. Of course, I said no. I didn’t want to disappear, after all, and who knew what was going on.I said I hadn’t even received any letters from my mum and dad. The FedExplore guy said he was sorry, but he also looked relieved, like me getting no letters was good news for him, even if it was mega-sad for me.He said they’d let me know what had happened as soon as the IGPs would talk to them.It’s got me worried, Tiges. What could have gone so wrong that the IGPs won’t talk to mum and dad’s bosses? No way I’m gonna tell them about the parcel, now. I’ve left it in my trunk. Sure am glad you told me how to line it so the scanners don’t work. The way things are going, I’m never going to know what’s inside it, because I’m too scared to open it.I gotta go, Tiges. If I want to post this letter somewhere so that they don’t know I’ve sent it, it’ll have to be while we’re on this class excursion. You be careful when you write me back. Don’t say a word about the you-know-what in case they do read my mail. See if you can find out anything for me.

Thanks heaps,

Simone.

P.S. If I give you the address for my friends, can you tell them I’ll write as soon as I can… and can you tell them that I really miss them?
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The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
books2read.com/u/4Awrze
books2read.com/u/mgrxdR




















books2read.com/u/4DoG8D books2read.com/u/b5Mng1
books2read.com/u/3GYBla books2read.com/u/4782k8

Today’s Completion—Rogue Retrieval

Writing is happening, but slowly. In amongst the editing and blogging, I’ve just finished a second short story for the month. Set in the Mack ‘n’ Me universe between The Depredides Dance and Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host , this short story is a novella-length tale of one of the many missions they ran between Books 1 and 2 of the Mack ‘n’ Me ‘n’ Odyssey series.These are the first 500 words – before they go through the editing process:Rogue Retrieval
The last person I expected to see when I stepped into the restaurant with the first meals of the night, was Mack—yet there he was, large as life, and twice as mean. When I caught sight of his seven-foot figure leaning against the wall just inside the entrance, it was all I could do not to drop what I was carrying and bolt for the alley out back.
He was waiting for something, and somehow I didn’t think it was for the concierge to check the bookings in case there was a free table. The way his eyes moved over the patrons enjoying their meals, he was looking for something else. Given I’d jumped ship three months back, and he’d have been trying to find me, ever since, it wasn’t hard to work out what.
Despite the sudden spike of adrenaline and tremor running through my hands, I kept it all together, making my head think thoughts of who was getting what meal, and how fast, as I went through my implant looking for intruders.
Not that I relaxed when I didn’t find any. Mack might have discovered some new tricks since the last time. Him or Tens. It was hard not to search the room for the communications engineer, but I managed it. I even kept my pace to the usual level of efficient waitress, until I was back through the door to the kitchen.
“Chief,” I called, as soon as the door had swung shut behind me. “Chief.”
I’d stripped off my apron, and the cute little wait-cap we all wore and headed for the door, dropping by the small office connecting to the kitchen, before I left.
“I’m sorry, but something’s come up. I’ve got to—”
Can’t say the sudden grip around my bicep and blaster muzzle pressed hard into my temple came as a complete surprise, but I’d been hopeful.
Chief looked up from where he was counting out my wages, stuffing them into an envelope as he rose from his seat. I wondered how he expected to give them to me, but he offeredthem to someone standing just out of sight around a filing cabinet. Man, I hated his office.
I always had, right from when he took me on to now. Next time, I was going to walk if I didn’t like the boss’s office. If there was a next time…
I hated the office a lot more when Delight stepped into view, taking the envelope from Chief’s fingers as she came.
“Thanks, Chief. Odyssey appreciates your understanding on this matter."
Odyssey… which meant…
I shifted my gaze as best I could without turning my head. I really needed to see who had hold of my arm. It was both a relief and not when Pritchard came through the door behind me, the look on his face melting into relief when he saw me.
“Nice work,” he said, although I thought it was anything but.
Tens slid into my head, like he’d never left it. Boy had learned new tricks.
“Watch who you’re calling ‘boy’,” he said, his grip tightening on my arm, and I was tempted to try kicking his ass right then and there.

Wednesday’s Verse—The Waking Dead

This is the third new feature for this blog—or semi-new, if you’d prefer, given I’ve touched on it, before. This year, every Wednesday, I’ll be taking a poem from one of my three poetry collections—including the one to be released later in the year—and putting it on my blog as a free read.
This week’s verse is from Another 365 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry to be released later in the year, once both collection and cover are complete.
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The Waking Dead  I heard them screamingScreaming?Screaming.
Screaming fit to wake the dead.The dead?The sleeping dead.
The sleeping dead who wakenWaken?And from their sleeping rise.
The dead that rise to walk the earth.The Earth?The ground beneath our feet.
Beneath our feet, as the whole world turns,the earth that lets them sleepuntil the dead do seek to rise,and with the living, company keep.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year.
books2read.com/u/bxgyLd books2read.com/u/mVLQZb

Tuesday’s Short—A Battle of Minds

For the second new thing I’m trying this year, I’m taking a leaf out of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s book, and putting up a short story so people can read it for free for one week, before it gets taken down, and another story put up. Since I couldn’t decide what story to put up, I’m going to show them in alphabetical order by title, so this week’s short story is one of my earliest: A Battle of Minds:

Someone wants VR combat star Danzer dead—and they’re more than happy to kill him in the middle of a public arena and take the audience with him. When security personnel for the VR games insist on overseeing the match between him and his most dangerous opponent, no one knows if it will be enough. Will Security succeed in their intervention, or will their efforts result in more than Danzer losing his life? 
A Battle of Minds
The words stood out, stark and black, against the thick white paper, but Danzer didn’t notice the quality of the page, only the words… and the threat inherent within them.
The twist and grapple of unseen handsTwo seated figuresKnuckles white where fists clutch chairs.
A stab of lightning.A shimmering block.Sweat beads on browsThe twomindslock.

A figure slumps into his seat,His silent screamUnheard by ears.The other opens blurring eyesanddrawshis mindback.
He leaves the room.
The first mandies.
Danzer stared at the page that held the poem before crumpling it slowly in his fist. It described the VR battle-room perfectly, although it mentioned nothing of the tall clear walls topped with bulletproof glass and of the faces beyond the windows.He knew that arena like the back of his hand. The two chairs had intrigued him even before he had been old enough to accept the trodes that allowed him to see the battle for himself.Until his tenth birthday, he had been forced to watch it, second hand, on a compucording. Now he was old enough to compete.He had studied the techniques used in the fights, forcing his mind to accept them, to understand them, forcing his VR self to execute each move to perfection. He had gone one step further then, and been marked as strange by the others.He had studied each technique in real life and cleared the chair from his side of the arena. When he did something in the VR contest in his mind, his body usually acted it out in the arena—it was the same way the early VR systems had worked. Of course, science had changed the early systems.The final advance had been hailed as a technological breakthrough. It was a system that read the twitches made by muscles as the mind thought out an action, then translated those twitches into virtual space but, Danzer thought, it had taken some of the magic away. He had brought the magic back, as was witnessed by the increase in viewers whenever he fought, and the fact that more than one of the other contestants had taken their fights out of their seats as well. The system developers were screaming that it was a major regression, a hindrance to the progress of science. The viewers loved it and the accountants, raking in the profits of this slip back in time, weren’t listening to outraged cries from any corner.Danzer wasn’t far off perfect in actuality, but it took time to practice, time that competed against the hours needed to succeed in the VR arena. He bunched his fist around the crumpled poetry.Someone was afraid of his success. The first warning had come as a vid-blanked phone call telling him not to compete against Anthrax the Magician.Danzer didn’t understand the caller’s concern. Anthrax had made a habit of beating him in all their previous bouts—what made them think he was going to defeat the mage now?He’d ignored the call and drawn up the recordings of his previous fight against the VR magician. Anthrax was never an easy opponent. Danzer had only come close to beating him once, when he’d used a piece of experimental magic himself.Anthrax hadn’t been expecting it. It had blown the Magician’s next, carefully constructed spell to pieces and knocked the magician to the edge of the ring.Danzer had followed it with the best attack routine in his repertoire. Anthrax had withstood it, but he’d been forced to use his ‘magic’ to transport himself to the other side of the circle until he faced Danzer’s back.Danzer winced. Ice daggers in the back, and the side. Anthrax had used his new position to its full advantage.Danzer’s routine hadn’t allowed him to pivot out of the way in time, and he’d spent a month in hospital trying to get rid of the shadow pains the damage had left. He’d lost the match, of course. It was a mistake he’d spent hours correcting.Experimental magic—Virtual Magic, it had started to be called—had not been easy to master. First you had to think of the effect you wanted, then you had to design a program that could be carried into the fight in the battletrodes you wore. Once the program was inside the trodes, you tested it in the practice arenas to see if it created the virtual effect you thought it did.It had taken Danzer more hours than he’d cared to lose to work out the intricacies of spell-programming but, once he had understood it, he had managed to work up a few tricks of his own. The programs worked on the same principle that made the contestants feel some of the pain from the damage they would have sustained from their opponents' attacks. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to last past the end of the match but, on some occasions, it had been known to cause a sympathy effect in actuality.Bones broke for no reason, the sudden chill of ice daggers left frostbite deep inside muscle tissue or actually caused the muscle structure to tear. More often than not, though, no damage occurred but the contestant felt as though it had - it was a small matter of the mind believing the events that had occurred in the arena. These were called shadow pains or phantoms. The worst of them was a temporary coma and that came about in the rare event the fighter’s mind was convinced a deathblow had been received.Danzer shook his head; the mind was a powerful thing and all the fighters had teams researching the shadow-pain phenomena. Nothing had been found yet. He let himself dwell on the possibilities a moment longer before returning to his memory of the last match with Anthrax.Anthrax had made the obligatory bow to the judge before turning and leaving the ring. He’d totally ignored Danzer’s attempt to congratulate him on his win.Danzer had sensed an utterly cold indifference in the magician. It was not something he’d experienced before. There’d been hatred and bitter rivalry. There’d even once been a psychopathic deadliness, although that had been in the beginners’ ranks and the combat organizers had weeded it out quickly enough. They’d sent that individual to rehab. Anthrax had joined them soon after.Remembering Anthrax made Danzer recall the next warning. A letter, the letter that lay on his desk, delivered by courier and just as adamant in its warning.He was to refuse to meet Anthrax in the arena or trouble would befall him. Danzer rolled his shoulders and stared at the doorway, remembering the courier’s expectant face as he’d handed over the envelope. He hadn’t known what he was delivering.Nor had Danzer, when he’d given the boy his tip. His fist tightened on the paper crushed inside it. He knew he should inform the organizers, should tell security of the threats. He was going to join the first rank of gladiators soon, and that made him important.Danzer shook his head. Important enough to kill? He thought not. He knew he was good but he wasn’t that good, doubted he could ever be that good, except when he danced his repertoire in the practice ring.With an effort, he unclenched his fist and smoothed the crumpled poetry. He would have to go to security. It was in the rules: correspondence received by one competitor concerning another was Security’s business. He sighed.They would probably be over the moon. Aside from persistent fans, this was the most excitement he could recall since they weeded out the psychopath in his early training. He shivered.That girl had really had some problems… but to try and use the programs to kill... He shivered again. She had succeeded once, before she failed one of the psych tests in the constant barrage of examinations they faced.No one had complained about psych evaluations after that. The psychopath had been a major blow to morale, causing the highest rate of voluntary dropouts seen in any course since the beginning of VR Combat Entertainment.Danzer laid the poetry beside the letter and reached for the phone. He had to tell Security—even if they thought he was crazy for doing so, even if they roasted him for not telling them about the phone call.He had a battle tonight and, from what he had heard, the fans had bought out the observation deck and the live computer relays. He shrugged. That probably had more to do with Anthrax than himself.He was fighting the magician tonight.The thought made Danzer grin. Anthrax wasn’t the only one who could make the VR program dance to the touch of magic. He’d been practicing. Anthrax was in for a few surprises this time.Pushing the thoughts aside, Danzer called Security.
*   *   *
Four rooms away, a monitor chimed, and his nemesis crossed to answer the alert. He’d tapped into Danzer’s phone. When he saw the machine indicate an open line, he smiled and hit a button to send through the virus he had on stand-by.The software was sugar-coated, concealed within a sleeper program, so that it could bypass the security relay inside Danzer’s battletrodes. Once the monitor showed ‘successful upload’, he switched the machine off and called the courier to come and take it away. He had nothing more to do than wait for the match to begin.
*   *   *
Danzer knew there was money being placed on the fight. There always was. He could bet on it himself if he wanted to. He never did.  It wasn’t that he didn’t have faith in his ability. He just couldn’t be bothered. He earned enough.He wondered if Anthrax gambled on himself winning, but wondering about Anthrax reminded him that he still had a few hours before their battle. He glanced at the letter and its poem, sitting on his desk.Security would be up soon. They had sounded concerned. Security would be up soon; Danzer sighed. He wouldn’t be able to check his programs before he entered the arena.It wasn’t a problem. He’d done all the checking he required when he’d been developing them, and then checked them again. He’d last run through them that morning; the programs ran like clockwork.He glanced at where his combat trode hung beside the com phone. He’d switched it on to make sure it was fully charged, and keep it that way. No point risking low power half way through a fight. A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts; Security had arrived.Danzer showed them the note and its accompanying verse. They took it, asking him questions about possible enemies which he couldn’t answer. He described the courier and gave them his company name.He didn’t bother telling them he thought the lad was innocent. They’d work that out for themselves, eventually, and it would keep them out of his hair. His mind wandered and he thought about the match tonight, mentally playing through his strategy once more. Anthrax wasn’t going to like it.Danzer smiled, then suddenly realized that the security officers were quietly staring at him.“Sorry?” he asked. “I didn’t quite catch that.”“We were wondering if you wanted someone riding shotgun on the match tonight,” the security leader said, obviously repeating something he had said only moments before.At first Danzer wanted to dismiss the offer out of hand, then the thought of what it might do to the magician’s morale crossed his mind.“I’d appreciate that,” he replied.The security chief nodded.“I’ll leave Officers Latten and Ratel for now,” he said. “They can make sure nothing happens to you between now and the fight.”“Thank you.”“And I’ll put Gunnar on the trodes.”Danzer nodded, trying to mask his instinctive rejection of a trode-rider in the match, as he nodded his agreement. He waited until the door had closed behind the chief and his officers, before studying the two guards that had been left behind.Latten returned his gaze with a no-nonsense stare of his own. Ratel was already moving around his apartment, inspecting it—snooping, Danzer decided.He opened his mouth to say something but Latten cleared his throat.“Before you begin, sir, there are a few things you must understand about helping us keep you alive,” he began.Those 'few things' kept Danzer occupied until transfer time. It wasn’t until the alarm rang that he was able to prepare himself for the match. With the absence of his last minute check, he was beginning to feel some doubts about the game that lay before him.In his mind, he knew he was familiar with the new routine, including the surprise programs that lay secure inside the combat trodes. He knew he was good at it, and he knew the alternative routines he had planned.He couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong; he just felt it. It nagged at him, jarring the solidity of his confidence. Unplugging the combat trodes from the socket they shared with the com unit, he set them in place, sighing when the pre-match escort knocked at the door.Danzer glanced at his guards as he stepped through to the bathroom. They’d requested that he not be in the entry hall, when they answered the door. Leaving the bathroom door slightly ajar, he stood back from it. The gap gave him a clear view of the room beyond while concealing him from sight. Latten had tested it with him.“Combat Entertainment Escort for Mr Danzer,” one of the newcomers, a red-headed arena guard, announced.“Security Officer Latten, Mr Danzer’s personal guard,” Latten replied.Danzer watched as the two of them glared at each other. It reminded him of two big dogs trying to work out if they could eat each other with impunity. It reminded him of the atmosphere in the dressing rooms before a fight.He stepped from the bathroom and picked up his trode.“Ready when you are, Escort, Guards.”As he spoke, he was fitting the set to his normal trode. He had only the walk to the dressing rooms and the dressing itself before he faced Anthrax.He suppressed the sudden jangle of nerves that made his body tremble and wished he’d had time to go over his routine once more. Anthrax was the hardest opponent he had ever faced.The escort left him at the dressing room door, but Latten and Ratel entered with him. Danzer was barely aware of them. Already his mind was speeding up, reaching out for the connections in the combat trode.He found his cubicle and reached for the costume that hung there. Latten beat him to it, lifting it from its peg and inspecting it, running his hands over its silken material and investigating every fold, every seam. Danzer waited as Latten passed the garments to Ratel.Her search was just as thorough. Danzer felt the palms of his hands become sweaty as he waited and tried to subdue the first flesh tremors of pre-combat nerves before they were noticed. He almost snatched the garments from Ratel when she held them out to him.The two security guards watched him change, and they watched the changing room. Danzer’s mind found the connections it needed for the coming combat, and latched onto them. There was enough nervous energy thrumming through his body that he almost activated the trodes by accident.He signaled for Latten and Ratel to take him to the arena. The escort rejoined them at the door.Actuality was fading rapidly. Danzer could almost see the virtual reality that had been prepared for them. He could almost feel the moistness of tropical air on his skin. He wasn’t aware of Anthrax taking his seat in the other compartment or of his escort and guard withdrawing.The virtual world came into being as the door shut behind him, separating him from the protection team; they would watch him on monitors, and through the glass.There were pine trees all around them. Dry, brown needles crunched underfoot. A soft breeze blew the scent of meadow grasses to them. Their mission, their contest, was to find the keep and take it for themselves.Anthrax knew this. He also knew that the scenario Danzer was receiving was different.Danzer saw tropical vines hanging from moist-barked trees. He saw brilliant colors flash as birds scooted away through the jungle leaves. He smelt the sweet perfume of a jungle lily.There was an outcropping of rock that he had to capture and hold. It was the whole point of the game. Anthrax, Danzer thought, would have the same goal. He was unaware that there was a virus in his trodes, that the virus masked the official program perfectly, and had masked itself from those viewing the combat with the same degree of success.Sweat sheened Danzer’s skin as his body responded to the humidity programmed into his mind. Anthrax shivered as a hint of ice sharpened the breeze’s touch.In the jungle, Danzer began the hunt for his opponent.Anthrax circled the huge pine he had found. If he climbed it, he could see the keep. In the jungle, Danzer’s approach was different.He slunk, low-profiled and swift moving, his movements sinuous along the tropical floor. He was oblivious to the sound his feet made on the pine needles as he ducked carefully beneath the broad leaves of a tree-hugging bromeliad only he could see.In the arms of the pine, Anthrax heard him move and smiled. The keep was situated on the other side of the trees. All that was left before he claimed another victory was the demise of his opponent. It would be the first real death in VR combat, excluding a training incident, for nearly twenty years and no one would know he had done it.The magician rose and ran along the pine branch he had been sitting on, using a combination of web-building magic and sheer agility to cross into the next line of trees. He could feel the audience’s appreciation along one of the feedback links.Danzer was feeling their derision. At first he did not recognize what it was, then he did not understand it. Anthrax, watching him move below, knew why they laughed.In the jungle, Danzer had to duck under branches and scramble over logs that did not exist in the pine forest. His movement looked comically clumsy when viewed out of context. The magician moved lower, down the branches, suppressing the urge to spring onto the back of his prey.He shifted form to one more suited to stalking through the trees. The swell of appreciation from the feedback link applauded him. Below him, some inexplicable sixth sense warned Danzer and he spun to look upwards at the clear patch between the trees.Now was the time of danger, Anthrax remembered as he sprang, for here was where the most pressure would be placed on the program acting as a living veil over Danzer’s eyes. If his enemy acted outside the program’s ability to react...Danzer skated backwards, an elegant move Anthrax made a note to study later. He almost swore aloud when his opponent hesitated. It didn’t matter; the skating maneuver had ruined the timing of Anthrax’s spring. Now Danzer shifted form.The audience’s derision faded as his movements came into context with the surroundings they could see. Anthrax’s muffled curse translated as a feline growl. He forced himself to smile, showing fangs over two inches long.Danzer had transformed into a gibbon, then added his own personal touches. Lion-fanged, wolf-headed and scorpion-tailed, the creature leapt after the mage, its hands fastening onto the branch on which Anthrax sat. The scorpion’s tail lashed forward as Anthrax leapt skyward.The program infecting Danzer’s trodes mutated in an attempt to maintain its deception. Danzer ripped the stinger clear of the branch’s bark and dropped in an attempt to avoid the flames suddenly engulfing the branch.Anthrax’s phoenix scream echoed around him. The jungle began to move.In the observation deck above him, Ratel and Latten leaned closer to the window to see what was happening. The computers on their laps displayed two different scenes, but both contained fire. Now a sudden glare was lighting the arena below and Danzer was tumbling away from it; the chair from his half of the arena had long been removed and the glass partitioning the arena protected Anthrax from his antics.In a secured cubicle beneath the stadium, Security’s trode rider groaned. Officer Gunnar was suffering from double-vision, seeing jungle superimposed over pine forest and smelling smoke from two directions. His skin alternated between goose-bumped cold and slick damp from tropics-inspired heat. His hands clenched around the arms of his seat, his arms twitching as he tried to reach the switch that would de-activate the trodes.Danzer’s tumble had made his whole body shake as though he was suffering from a fit and he couldn’t get his mind to focus enough to release the trodes themselves. Somewhere to the left of reality, he could sense Anthrax preparing for his next assault. Gunnar’s scream for assistance came out as croak and he knew, then, that his only hope of survival was the team monitoring his body and mind two rooms away.In the jungle, sweat trickled into Danzer’s eyes, partially blinding him. He had landed awkwardly and Anthrax was no longer to be seen. The flames continued to burn, somehow more vigorous than one would expect in the jungle’s damp.As if he had signaled it, rain began to fall. At first it was only a distant patter on the leaves of the canopy, then it was a suddenly thunderous downpour as the leaves gave way and the water flooded in.Danzer stepped beneath what looked like a thick pattern of branches. The audience watched in sudden fear as they saw him crouch in the openness of a forest clearing, while Anthrax turned the rain from a benign grey to a sudden viscous blue.Ratel and Latten looked at each other’s screens, then glanced into the arena. Blue darts materialized in Danzer’s half of the arena and fell towards the Combat star’s cowering figure. Danzer seemed oblivious to his danger. It was as though the program was manifesting itself in the real-life arena as well as in virtual space.They did not exchange words but pushed their way clear of their seats, ignoring the outraged protests of viewers who found they suddenly could not see. They did not miss the sudden avaricious interest of the news-cameras as the virtual Danzer felt the first acidic drops singe his flesh and the real-life Danzer flinched beneath the sudden sting of a very material, very real burning pain.The virus failed. The pain of Anthrax’s acid rain burst through the curtain it had woven across Danzer’s mind and allowed the real program to retake control. In the cubicle Gunnar felt the drops sear his back and tried to pull free of the program.Danzer screamed and brought a hand up to shield himself from the pouring rain. The agony almost broke his concentration and, in the end, it was only his hours of laborious training that saved him. The magic brought a shield to his hand.Danzer spun it, sending it aloft so that it hovered between him and Anthrax’s deadly shower. Drifting there, it continued to spin. The rain landing in its center swam across its surface in a suddenly horizontal current and, instead of dripping from the shield’s edges, leapt outwards, spraying itself in a wide circle.The crowd gasped, then applauded. Gunnar sighed in relief, unaware of the med team that had reached his door.In the viewing room, Ratel and Latten turned to glance into the arena. A shimmering, golden plate of energy had formed between Danzer, and the sparkling blue darts, deflecting the darts so that they were sprayed in a circle from the plate’s top.The guards stood, momentarily transfixed, as the darts embedded themselves into the arena wall and sharded into harmless sparks against the dividing glass, then they began to run. In the arena opposite, Anthrax hissed in startled surprise and threw another spell into action.Danzer shook his head and let the shield fall in golden folds about himself. He could see. His lips drew back from his teeth as he knelt to examine the fallen needles and reached out a hand to touch the rough bark of the nearest pine. Something was wrong; the program should not have switched terrain so suddenly. Somewhere, somehow, someone had interfered with the contest.Still crouching, he raised his head and let his eyes search for Anthrax. The mage couldn’t be far away, shifting landscape or no. His eyes picked up the subtle movement of long grass on a hill above the pines. Beyond it, Danzer glimpsed a keep and knew, without being told what his mission was. He leapt after his opponent, changing his shape as he went.On his side of the arena, Anthrax sensed his opponent’s pursuit and swore. The sound formed itself as a particularly vicious snarl that rippled the black lips of the cougar he appeared to be. Within the blink of a thought, he was a man once more, and facing downhill at the running monstrosity charging up the slope towards him.Danzer saw the magician take his stand and shed the thick coat of black fur and bulk he had adopted as a bear. He did not notice when Ratel and Latten entered his arena and closed the door behind them. He did not see how they settled at the wall’s edge as he began to weave the first of his spells.Anthrax did see. It was an ability he had been trying to develop and one in which he was becoming more proficient—the ability to detach enough of his mind from the virtual reality so that he could view the real world alongside the unreal. It was a little like seeing double, but it enabled him to be aware of the door to his own battleground opening and closing as four Combat Game security guards entered.His lips lifted in a snarl of anticipation. He had been experimenting with his magic as well—as Danzer had already learned. With a little fidgeting with the trodes, coupled with a little access program to the arena’s atmospherics, he was able to create a concentration of airborne energy that mimicked the effects of the spell programs he was utilizing. Those guards weren’t going to know what hit them.Danzer saw Anthrax raise his hands, noted how the Combat star’s hair began to lift as though a soft breeze played against its strands. The breeze carried the sound of the magician’s voice as he activated the program that would bring his spell into being.The medics finished burning their way through the door that led to Gunnar’s office.Danzer opened his mouth to activate a counter-program.Anthrax raised his voice to a roar as he reached the next to last syllable.The medics eased the trode from Gunnar’s head, sedating him as they separated the flesh of his back from the vinyl padding of his chair.Ratel and Latten noticed how the hair on their arms stood abruptly on end and dived for Danzer.Danzer rattled his way through the voice-activation of the spell, beginning the last syllable as Anthrax completed his chant.Ratel brought Danzer to the floor while Latten tore the combat trode from the man’s head.The magician’s hands stopped abruptly together in a clap echoed by the thunder of power that exploded out from him.On the hillside, it flattened the grass. In the magician’s actual arena, it spread out from him in a concentric shockwave that tasered the security guards. In the observation room, it made sparks jump from the sockets on Gunnar’s trodes.Danzer roared with fury, struggling in Ratel’s arms as Latten started to move towards the door.The arena audience was temporarily blinded from the brief burst of intense light radiating from the VR arenas while those who followed it with active trodes were knocked temporarily unconscious by the blast.A second shockwave mirrored the blast in Anthrax’s cubicle and rolled through Danzer’s side of the arena. It knocked Latten from his feet and felled Ratel as she began to haul a still struggling Danzer from the combat area.The news cameras went temporarily blank in the aftermath of the glare, before resuming their filming of the combat zone.Anthrax left the arena, his passage unnoticed in the mayhem he had created.Only one set of eyes were aware of his leaving and they had observed him, trodeless and through a smoke-tinted screen, two thousand miles away. In the same room as the observer, two VR techs hung limply in their chairs, trodes smoking, while a third, who’d observed the scene untroded and without sunglasses, tried in vain to see the hand he waved in front of his face.Anthrax made his way to the roof, ignoring the looks his costume drew from the woman who shared the lift with him for three floors’ passage. Later, he thought, he would arrange a particularly nasty accident involving her and a coffee machine, one that would occur just before the VR security team could speak to her.On the roof, he waited.Below him, in the arena, Danzer stirred. Ratel’s arms were still wrapped around his chest, but they slid limply to the floor as he sat up and shifted his bulk off her. She groaned.The door slammed open. Blue-suited medics swarmed through it, one of them cursing when he noticed the smoke rising from the combat trode lying on the floor.Ratel sat up just as Danzer cried out in sudden pain and placed his hands against his head. He was convulsing, falling back as he did so, his heavy body slamming into his guard before she was ready to catch it. She hit the floor with an impact that had her gasping for breath.“Grab him! Damnation! Grab him and hold him still!”It was the medic. He was shouting his frustration at her as he ripped open his medpak, both hands busy as he pulled a trode set from its pocket and slotted an inch wide blue-disc into it. Ratel wrapped her arms around his biceps and over his chest, locking her hands together in an effort to keep her grip.“Damn it. Keep him steady.”Danzer was twisting in her arms Ratel wrapped both legs around his waist and tried to hold him still. She still wasn’t seeing straight. As soon as the medic was finished with the Combat star, she was going to make him pay her some attention.Someone threw themselves across Danzer’s legs.“Get me a programmer,” the medic roared, then he muttered. “Shit, two of them in under fifteen minutes.”Another medic was helping Ratel pin Danzer’s torso. The fighter was still struggling, and the first medic hadn’t yet been able to slip the med trode into the connections on his head.“Come on sweetheart,” he crooned. “Just a second’s stillness. Just a second…”Danzer paused, his body suddenly rigid with the aftershock of some unseen mental picture. There was a barely audible click then,“Gotcha,” the medic said with satisfaction. “You can let him go now.”Ratel let the fighter go. The two medics who had helped restrain him lifted his suddenly limp mass off her. She pushed herself into a sitting position, and was snapped at again.“I didn’t say you could go anywhere, officer.”Ratel stopped in a sitting position. The medic was staring at her. When he spoke again, his voice held a gentler note.“You can accompany him in the ambulance, but first I want to make sure you’re okay. That was quite a knock you took.”
*   *   *
On the roof, Anthrax watched the helicopter descend.Nothing to it, he thought, aware that the VR security crowd would be all over him in another ninety seconds.They were thirty seconds too slow, and he watched them arrive from twenty feet above the rooftop and the safety of the helicopter’s cockpit. He was gone before the first las was fired, nestled in the snug darkness of the helo’s passenger compartment.It did not surprise him when the vid-com spoke.“Two technicians died,” the voice told him, “a third is permanently blind and I am led to believe that Danzer still lives.”“I am still fine-tuning the timing.”“You timed your own blast well enough.”“That is simple. The circuits are close to me. His were remote. I had to relocate them once the virus was disrupted. The connection to them became blurred.”Actually, he had lost the connection entirely, but he wasn’t about to let his future employer know that. There was silence for a moment.“How did you avoid killing the spectators?”“Theirs were remote circuits, observation only. They allowed no access to the program itself. The circuits made available to your techs, and the security observer riding shotgun, were direct-linked to the program running the combat scenario. All that we experienced, they experienced also, the sights, smells, pains, exertions. The relays in the observation circuits block all that out only allowing the spectators to observe. The combat trodes and the trodes worn by your techs and the shotgun have no such dampener installed.The effect generated by the shockwave works two-fold; it creates a stunning field of static electricity in the areas designated by the programmer, as you observed, and shorts out the circuits in any trode linked to the primary program without an exclusion program installed. Those trodes linked to observation merely generate a small shock causing temporary unconsciousness; those direct-linked, allow enough current through to fry a man’s brain.”“And the light from the arena?”“That signaled the release of energy in the stunning field I had created.”“And you can duplicate all these effects?”“Yes.”“Including the blue rain.”“Yes.”Again there was silence as his employer considered what he had just seen. The magician waited. When the voice broke the silence once more, it was with the offer Anthrax had sacrificed a career to achieve.“You will be three things for me,” his new employer told him, “a researcher in my labs, a bodyguard and an assassin. Of course, we will need to change your looks… Give me a few minutes with my lab techs. You may want to negotiate this.”Anthrax nodded and heard the faint blip as the transmission ended. With a sigh, he allowed his thoughts to turn to Danzer.His rival still lived. Now all that he needed to do was find a way to draw his best opponent from the virtual world of entertainment to the virtual worlds built into real life—an entirely new arena of battle, and one Anthrax was on his way to mastering.While he was still thinking on how to achieve this, the vid com fizzed back to life. This time, instead of darkly reflecting himself, the screen cleared to reveal a picture of his new employer.“Now,” the man said, “it’s time we talked terms.”Anthrax felt his victory turn to a cold lump in his gut. He knew this man, would never have suspected his involvement in the coming coups. His new employer hadn’t been joking when he said Anthrax would need to change his appearance, but that wasn’t what made the magician's innards turn to ice.No, what did that, was the sheer level of cold-blooded ruthlessness needed to envision and set in motion what Anthrax had been hired to do… and the fact that he was now completely at the mercy of a man who hadn’t hesitated to use it. Perhaps he needed Danzer for more than he'd realized.

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A Battle of Minds is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.books2read.com/u/mqOKvb
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?
  

Carlie’s Chapter 1—Dear Tiger: I Miss You

This year, I’m trying something new – serializing a chapter book series. I’ve started with the first series I completed as Carlie Simonsen: the Letters Across Space series.Chapter 1 – Dear Tiger
From: Simone Michaels, Alpha Centauri Home Room, Losandro’s Interstellar Academy, Mail Bag 4029, Galmon Mail Center, Emerald Moon, Tychon

Date: 22 Landing 3049

Dear Tiger
Today was a great day, well, as good as any day gets when I’m stuck here on the moon, and mum and dad are away. I hope the expedition goes well for them, because, once the base camp is set up, I will be able to stay with them for the school break. They write to me often, and I am so looking forward to seeing them again.Actually, I’m lying. It’s been a terrible day. Mum and dad haven’t written to me for almost three months. Even with the time lag in sending messages, that’s too long—and today, when I was in the middle of a practice test, out headmistress, Mrs. Coleman, came to the door and spoke to my English teacher, Mr. Ross. I saw them look at me, and then old Rossy shook his head, and they looked at me again. Only this time, they looked kinda sad. It was freaky.It wouldn’t have been so bad except that Rossy asked me to stay back after class.He said I had to see Mrs. Coleman after lunch.I’m so nervous, Tiges. I keep trying to think of something that I might have done to get into trouble, except that I know that it’s nothing I’ve done. You see, in the dorm we draw straws to see who has to go and spy on the mail room at recess, and today it was me, and today I saw a really big parcel come in.I could have ignored it, except that it was put in my home room’s mail basket, and I knew I’d get scorched if I didn’t find out who it was addressed to. I waited until the sorters had gone. You know how they stop for a short break about ten minutes after we do. When they’d all left, I raced up to the basket and took a quick peek at the parcel.I got all kinds of goosebumps when I saw it was addressed to me.I don’t think it’s from mum and dad; the packaging is too official. It frightens me. You see, Tiges, it’s happened before. Kids receive official-looking packages, and then they disappear. Their stuff gets taken from their dorm, and they’re never heard from again. I don’t want that to happen to me.I took the parcel, and I hid it in the bottom of my travel trunk, at the back of my locker. I figured if no one knew I’d received it, then no one would want to make me disappear. I really don’t want to disappear, Tiges.I like it here. It’s been hard to be away from mum and dad for so long, but it’s been better than being dragged from one frontier world to another with only the computer for a teacher, and whatever whacky life-forms are living on the planet for friends. It’s not as good as seeing new places all the time, but at least I’ve got real friends now, and in some ways that’s better.I know you didn’t like it here, but that’s where we’re different. You like the whacky life-forms, and the computer teachers, and no one interrupting you. I like meeting people, and getting to know them a bit better, which is why I’m so scared of what that package might mean.I don’t want to move again. I don’t want to leave all my friends behind.I don’t want anything to have happened to my mum and dad.And, Tiges, I’m afraid that something bad hashappened to them. I’m afraid that this parcel carries some really bad news.Oops, gotta go. There’s a prefect at the door.
I’ll write you again soon, Tiges.

Best

Simone.
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The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
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